It does not take lengthy after a crushing defeat for any individual to cite Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
“You won’t win until you learn how to lose,” the Laker legend coined.
It wasn’t uttered verbatim after the Blue Jays’ demoralizing defeat in the Wild Card spherical, as lockers slowly emptied and suitcases crammed, however the sentiment lingered. For the 2nd yr in a row, Toronto were given a lesson in dropping.
The loss might sooner or later assist this Blue Jays core win in the future, however there are different, extra tangible, courses from the 2022 season and temporary postseason look. And the ones will assist Toronto once subsequent season, and even this offseason.
“They will be better for it,” GM Ross Atkins stated. “They will be better for these experiences, albeit tough ones. They will they will have grown, for sure.”
The largest Blue Jay lesson from closing season used to be the significance of each recreation, with Toronto falling a recreation in need of the postseason in 2021. It used to be a message preached via each returning Jay from spring coaching till the postseason clinch. And, via common season wins and postseason appearances, the message used to be gained. The Jays took that subsequent step in 2022, and are hoping the early playoff go out will encourage motivation for extra.
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Along with the positives of additional playoff enjoy and enlargement from the younger core, the season-ending feeling of defeat is what 3B Matt Chapman takes clear of the 2022 season, he stated. Chapman’s been in the playoffs thrice and has but to win a recreation, let by myself a World Series. But it motivates him, he stated, record off techniques he’s going to search to give a contribution extra to the Blue Jays and what he’s going to paintings on in the offseason.
“Just remember this feeling and let it motivate you,” Chapman stated.
But there also are concrete issues of studying for the Jays, ones most likely extra related for Atkins and the decision-makers than the 26 males on the box. Last yr, that team-building takeaway used to be the significance of bullpen intensity, and one among this yr’s courses lies in the ‘pen too. Atkins known as the Blue Jays’ aid workforce “one of the better bullpens” in the league at issues in the season, however admitted that playoff good fortune is reliant on that workforce turning into one among the perfect.
That might look like a semantic indifference, however Atkins is correct. The Jays ranked thirteenth in aid ERA this season (3.77). Solid, surely. But go searching the league and you can in finding that the 5 perfect bullpens in baseball all got here from department winners in 2022. The six perfect bullpens all over the common season belong to 6 of the 8 groups left dancing in the Division Series at this time. When the calendar turns to October, it is Emmanuel Clase and Kenley Jansen that turn into the MVPs.
Another lesson from Toronto’s 2022 playoff go out is the significance of successful the department. The Yankees completed the common season 35-35 of their ultimate 70 video games, sliding into October as one among the coldest groups in the playoff image. The Jays completed 43-27, in the end discovering their stride down the stretch. But on account of New York’s scorching get started, and the AL East crown it earned, it is the Yankees nonetheless preventing for the World Series whilst the Blue Jays are at house. That distinction—reducing out as many October hindrances as imaginable—removes the small pattern that overwhelmed Toronto’s 2022 possibilities, and might be the distinction between a identical lead to ’23.
Atkins perspectives punching a price ticket to the playoffs as “the hardest thing to do,” he stated, and the group has lengthy noticed a possibility in the postseason as the purpose of the common season. But as this core ages, and the playoff possibilities turn into increasingly more pressing, the AL East must be the purpose.
The courses from 2021 have been obtrusive, with bullpen intensity and the significance of each and every recreation thrust into the highlight via Toronto’s Game 162 heartbreak. The 2022 Jays took the ones courses and grew to become them into yet another common season win and a postseason spot—function development. It’s on the Jays to take the courses from ’22 and do the similar subsequent yr.