Scraping the bucket for positives to the Blue Jays season

It doesn’t matter if you consider yourself an optimist, pessimist, or somewhere in between, the first 12 weeks of the 2018 Blue Jays season have likely left your baseball soul half empty.

Oh, where to begin. The club entered the campaign with a one-foot-in and one-foot-out attitude and, despite getting off to a respectable start, the results so far have reflected that reluctant strategy. Many were calling for a rebuild last off-season — hoping Toronto would accept its current state and standing in the AL east and sell some of its assets high in preparation for a couple of bridge years before the Large Adult Sons burst onto the scene sometime around 2020.

Betting that a potentially lights-out starting rotation would come into it’s own and that a few of the team under-performers from 2017 would turn the corner, the Blue Jays brass decided to play it meek and see how the start of the season shaped up before making any drastic decisions.

Well, shit has gone completely sideways, to say the least, as the Jays sit at 34-39 (.466) — a whopping 16 games back of the Red Sox for first in the AL East, 14 back of the Yankees for the first Wild Card and 11.5 back of the second Wild Card, while having to deal with a lot of health and legal issues away from the field, too.

It’s been a rough one to say the least, but there’s also been a surprising amount of positives to come out of this season — you just have to scrape the barrel a little bit to find them.

J.A Happ. Without a doubt, Happ has been Toronto’s best pitcher and one of the top in the American League this season and will surely bring a nice return from a contending team at or ahead of the trade deadline. He’ll be one of the few chips the Blue Jays can yield any major return with, and there’s a good chance he could return to the city as a free agent this summer.

Gibby still being Gibby. No matter how frustrating and downright shitty this season has been for the Blue Jays skipper, John Gibbons is still having a damn time — and it’s inspirational. With every strut to the mound and every classic post-game quip, we’re reminded what a treasure Gibby is and how much we’ll miss the man when he’s gone.

You’ll have no problem getting tickets. Attendance is down by a shit-ton, but hey, that means there’s always lots of available seats for you to get an up-close and personal view of this masterful 2018 Blue Jays squad.

We live in a simulation and nothing is real. Always a good thing to remember when you start feeling sad and depressed about something as trivial (and fun!) as baseball.

The Yankees and Sox are too good, anyways. A good 2018 season would have been lost regardless, as the Yanks and Sox are once again the savages of the American League. A 90-plus win campaign, hell even 100 W’s, wouldn’t have gotten Toronto a division title or first Wild Card spot this season, so what’s the point. Right? … RIGHT?

Josh Donaldson’s had a down year. Why is this a positive thing, you ask? Because now the organization will avoid the mistake of grossly overpaying an ailing, 32-year-old third baseman. Sure, his trade value has slipped a little bit as the deadline slowly approaches, but any contending team with a chance to add a former MVP to its lineup is going to pay the necessary price to bring JD to town regardless.

Jose Bautista is still kickin’. The fucking legend is still doing his thing, now with the New York Mets after wetting his whistle briefly with the Atlanta Braves. It’s hard not to get spine-tingling chills every time Jose’s beautiful Dominican mug pops up on the television set because no matter where he’s at, the dude will always be the Mayor Of Toronto. And there should be an opportunity to catch a live glimpse of Bautista in a couple weeks when the Mets are in town for a two-game set July 3 and 4.

We’re always close to the sweet release of death. I guess, if you’re a really dark type, there’s some solace in the fact that death is always breathing over your shoulder, waiting to attack. Happy Thursday!

The kids, of course. The New Hampshire Fisher Cats have given us life this year, and we’d have nothing in this cruel world if not for our ability to dream of Vlady swatting dingers into the 500 section at The Dome accompanied by visions of Bo Bichette, Cavan Biggio and Co., joining Guerrero Jr. to form the greatest future infield in Major League history.

Alcohol is a thing. Good news, folks: a thing called sweet, sweet booze exists and it’s fucking delicious. Why not take this dreadful season as a chance to wet your whistle quite a bit more often than you usually would. So grab that bottle of rye or gin, unscrew the cap, poor that shit down your throat and think about the good times — it makes this whole dumpster fire of a season a lot easier to swallow.