Today in Blue Jays: A playoff win, and a couple of losses

Today in Bluebird Banter history:

Five Years Ago:

Blue Jays won game 2 of the ALDS over the Rangers, 5-3. We hit four home runs, Tulo, Pillar (apparently on a pitch that was head high), Ezequiel Carrera, and Edwin Encarnacion all homered.

J.A. Happ got the win, despite giving up ten base runners in 5 innings of work. Joe Biagini, Brett Cecil, Jason Grilli, and Roberto Osuna pitched in relief. Osuna got a 5-out save.

Six Years Ago:

I talked about the 22 years between playoff appearances. I wrote about many of the mistakes made over 22 years and managed to get it all described in under 1800 words. I hope I’m not writing a similar post in 20 years. But, I kind of like the post.

Seven Years Ago:

I wrote about Shi Davidi’s story on the Jays players having a “lack of trust” in Alex and the front office. To remind you, this was before our two playoff years. The players were unhappy that the front office didn’t add any players at the trade deadline and, for that matter, didn’t fix any of the glaring roster holes at any point.

Shi’s story talks about how Alex went to the players to get money to sign Ervin Santana. It was a sad moment in Jays’ history. The team badly needed another starter, but instead of going to Rogers for more money (or more likely after being told no by Rogers), Alex asked some players to take a pay cut to free up cash. That’s just bad business.

Also, some players were unhappy with Alex for not talking to them. Shi said:

Compounding matters was that Anthopoulos wasn’t with the team in Houston on deadline day, and didn’t address the non-activity with his players. When the team returned to Toronto on Aug. 5, a member of the team approached me, nodded his head in the direction of Anthopoulos and said, “Who’s that?”

“ You mean the GM?” I asked.

“ I don’t know,” he replied. “Haven’t seen him for a while.”

I finished the post saying that:

I think Alex is a smart enough guy to learn from his mistakes. When they look back at what went wrong, I hope that they consider what Shi has said here and learn from it.

I think Alex did learn from his mistakes.

Eight Years Ago:

Minor Leaguer took a look back at two playoff losses the Jays had on Oct. 7 in the distant past. One in the 1989 ALCS vs. the A’s. Mike Flanagan took the loss. Rickey Henderson homered twice, and Canseco hit one (ML includes a video that shows Canseco’s homer reached the fifth deck).

The other was ALCS Game 1, also against the A’s Jack Morris started for the good guys. Dennis Eckersley got the save in both games.

Take a look.

And we posted that hitting coach Chad Mottola and Dwayne Murphy were let go by the team. I was surprised about Mottola:

Mottola’s philosophy did seem like a giant switch from what the Blue Jays hitters had heard in the past, under Murphy and Cito, but I was sure he would still be here next year. Chad had been part of the Blue Jays system since 2007. He was thought to be a miracle worker with players sent to the minors.

Eleven Years Ago:

JohnnyG wrote about how conflicted Jays fans were over whether we should cheering for Roy Halladay, who had pitched a no-hitter for the Phillies in the playoffs two days before or not. I don’t remember being unsure, I cheered for him, but I understand why some might have mixed feelings.

Thirteen Years Ago:

Hugo did a report card on our starting pitching. Doc got an A+, A.J. Burnett B+, Dustin McGowan C+, Shaun Marcum A-, Jesse Litsch A- (man, I liked him, just a great guy), David Purcey C- and Scott Richmond B.