Blue Jays: The danger of judging young players this year

It’s already been a very strange season of Major League Baseball, and for the Blue Jays there’s a danger in judging individual performances too harshly.

The Blue Jays were finally able to return to the field on Tuesday night against Atlanta, and unfortunately things didn’t go very well as they took a 10-1 beating as a welcome back.

It wasn’t pretty, but perhaps we should give this team a little bit of slack given what their last few days have looked like. Rather than head to Philadelphia on the weekend for a three-game series, the team sat idle in Washington and had to wait four days to get back on the field. As a result, the pitching rotation was re-set, and all kinds of routines were thrown out of whack.

Such is life with Major League Baseball this year, and it’s going to provide frustrations for players, coaches, and fans. That said, I think it would be wise it we could all do our best to take a step back and not judge the on-field results too harshly.

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Professional athletes are creatures of routine, and there’s nothing very routine about the way the schedule has been laid out so far. Like the rest of the league, the Blue Jays had to take a few months off while waiting to see if the 2020 season would ever begin, and that didn’t help anyone with the work that was put in over the winter. As for the Blue Jays, they’ve spent time quarantined at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, for a while they didn’t know where their home games would be (and they have yet to play there), and then they were shut down again after just seven games.

That’s not to make excuses for these guys, and as Josh Donaldson famously said a few years ago, “this isn’t the try league”. However, I think it’s important to resist the urge to judge things based on a very small sample size, especially given all of the other variables at play here. I’ll use Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as an example.

Young Vlad has a lot on his plate right now, as he’s dealing with the stresses and changes of life in the big leagues during a pandemic just like everyone else. He’s had the hiccups we’ve already mentioned above that apply to everyone on the Blue Jays and a few other teams, and he’s also dealing with a transition to a new position, both at first base and spending more time at designated hitter. Change can require some time to properly adjust, and unfortunately players aren’t being given that luxury. And perhaps as importantly as anything else, they also aren’t getting to see their families, which can’t be easy for a young father like Vlad Jr.

I won’t argue with if you’re thinking that the slugger looks a little lost at the plate right now, nor will I tell you that it’s wrong to mention it. We’re always going to analyze the work of these players, for the good and the bad. That said, I don’t know how valuable it will be in terms of a tool for long-term evaluation. What I mean is, if someone like Vlad Jr. has a rough season under all of these circumstances, that shouldn’t be enough to start writing anyone off. Not that it would happen that quickly with Vlad Jr., but there are an awful lot of worried fans on social media who are probably going grey over nothing. By comparison, you don’t see a lot of Dodgers fans talking about how Cody Bellinger is turning into a bust.

Hopefully the Blue Jays and the rest of MLB will be able to avoid any more disruptions to the schedule this season, and ultimately play as many games as possible. With more routine and time to make important adjustments, then perhaps it’ll be a little more fair to judge overall performance. For the time being, let’s do our best to remember how weird baseball is in 2020, and how long a typical 162 game season is.