Blue Jays need to turn the page on a tumultuous 2018

Scott Mitchell

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TORONTO ­– Turning the page on 2018 will not be difficult for the entire Toronto Blue Jays organization.

From start to finish over the past calendar year, things did not go well — on or off the field.

It started with the desire last winter to continue to be relevant and go toe-to-toe with the heavyweights in a top-heavy American League.

Needing everything to go right and then some, the Jays were knocked to the canvas in early May and never got up.

As the club was falling in the standings, things also started to go haywire all over the organization.

It was an ominous sign of things to come when Marcus Stroman took to Twitter on the second day of spring training with some strong thoughts on losing his arbitration case.

“Lost arbitration,” Stroman wrote. “It is what it is. Looking forward to going out and dealing again. The negative things that were said against me, by my own team, will never leave my mind. I’m thick-skinned so it will only fuel the fire. Can’t wait for this year!”

Not only was it a lost arbitration case for the Stro Show, it also ended up being a lost season, as early shoulder woes turned into late blister troubles and he finished with a career-worst 5.54 ERA.

We also watched as Troy Tulowitzki’s February “setback” morphed into a missed season and a ghost-like presence all the way up to his release in early December.

That late-2018 transaction will have $38 million in ramifications over the next two years.

Where things really started to snowball for the Jays was back in early May, at a time when they entered the month four games over .500 and generally looked like a club that could keep its head above water if things broke right.

Instead, they just broke.

A week into the month, closer Roberto Osuna was arrested in Toronto for assault. He wouldn’t throw another pitch in a Blue Jays uniform, eventually traded to the Houston Astros at the end of July for a package of arms and public relations future considerations.

In June, rumours once again started to swirl that manager John Gibbons was on borrowed time, leading to an uncomfortable dance between the 56-year-old manager and a front office that was clearly going to move in a different direction by the end of the season.

But instead of moving on immediately, Atkins and Gibbons forged on through the dog days of summer before finally announcing the awkward divorce with four games to go in the season.

Through all of this, the saving grace of the Jays failing in their bid to contend was supposed to be the fact that falling out of contention would allow them to market and then cash in numerous trade chips.

Even that did not go as planned.

When the smoke cleared in July, J.A. Happ was the only noteworthy trade chip left standing.

Josh Donaldson was missing in action, down in Dunedin trying to work his way back from another nagging calf injury, while veteran starters Marco Estrada and Jaime Garcia were barely hanging onto jobs in the Jays rotation, let alone being viewed as trade chips that could help a contender.

Eventually, the drama-filled Donaldson saga came to an end, and 27-year-old Tommy John survivor Julian Merryweather is all the Jays have to show for the 2015 AL MVP.

Even the positives came with an opposite-side-of-the-coin narrative for the Jays in 2018. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was so good in Double-A and Triple-A that it unearthed an underlying service time storyline that’s sure to be a hot topic into early April when the soon-to-be 20-year-old top prospect is kept down in order to gain an extra year of contractual control.

When asked about the year that was, Atkins, who will head to Dunedin for three days of meetings with his new coaching staff starting Jan. 7, claimed to always take a glass-half-full approach.

If that’s the case, he’s needed a few refills.

“I try to focus on 1) the positives and 2) the things we can control, but we’re absolutely not going to ignore where we failed and where we need to improve and where things need to get better,” Atkins said.