Toronto at Los Angeles Dodgers, July 24-26

Time for us to leave the scenic northwest and head south to those Hollywood hills.

Our destination is 1000 Vin Scully Avenue.  Dodger Stadium is now 60 years old, making it  the third oldest park in the majors. It doesn't feel old, at least not the way that Fenway and Wrigley do. Those even older parks, built a full half century before Dodger Stadium, really do feel old - they're cramped and quaint (and sometimes damp.) But Dodger Stadium seems to stand almost out of time, immune to the changing fashions in stadium design that have come and gone since it opened back in 1962. It is a beautiful, perfect  baseball stadium. A classic. They did it right when they built this one. They also displaced, by means both fair and foul (very foul), a whole community of poor brown people in order to get it built, of course. It may have been 60 years ago, but that memory lingers as well.

The basic theory of the 2023 Blue Jays -  a theory I subscribed to - was that the final two months of the season would probably be better than the first four months, and that it would almost surely need to be better than the first four months. This was formulated as soon as we all took a good luck at the schedule. So here we are, 100 games in. It's a nice round number, and we're close enough to the final two months.

The best Blue Jays team at this point in the season - surprise, surprise - was the team that holds the franchise record for most wins in a season, the only Jays team ever to play a season of .600 ball. The 1985 team, for they were the ones, was 63-37 after their first 100 games. Next best were the 1987 and 1992 teams, both 59-41 at this point. 

It is, of course, a little easier to play .600 ball over 62 games than it is over 100, and six Jays teams have done just that over the final 62. No one will be surprised to learn that the 2015 team had the best closing kick of any Jays team, going 43-19 (.694) down the stretch. It's a three way tie for the next spot - the Jays went 39-23 (.629) to finish the season in 1989, 1993, and 2021. 

 I was also interested in the difference between performance over the first 100 games as opposed to performance over the final 62. One wants to know what sort of improvement is likely, is feasible. And necessary.  And no team improved as much as the 2015 team - they were just a .500 team through 100 games, 6.5 games off the division lead. They were a .694 team the rest of the way. That's a winning percentage improvement of .194 and don't expect to see anything like that again. Not anytime soon. Things that happen once in more than 40 years should not be expected or counted upon. Similarly, the 1989 team was 50-50, 4.5 games off the lead, at this point in the season. They had been required to play almost .600 ball for two months just to get back to .500 after their awful start, and then they went 39-23 (.629) the rest of the way.

This year's team starts from a better position, in terms of win-loss record, than either of those teams. The 1989 team also benefited from catching the AL East in a weak year, when 89 games was good enough for a first place finish. That's not happening in 2023. 

Now you may recall that the 2022 Blue Jays had this same 55-45 record that this year's team has after 100 games. Last year's team went 37-25 the rest of the way. That's .597 ball, and that's good baseball - and it was enough to get into the post-season party. And I would think that's the bare minimum of what will be necessary this time as well. I don't think the 2023 team needs to match the 2015 team the rest of the way, and I would be amazed if they did. But I do think they need to play at the next best pace, and win 38 or 39 of their remaining games. If the Blue Jays continue to play .550 ball, they'll finish with 89 wins and that almost certainly won't be good enough. They need to be better over the final 62.

Incidentally (in the interest in completeness!) - the worst Jays team at this juncture was Roy Hartsfield's last team in 1979, who were a ghastly 30-70 at this point. Go on, try to find that entertaining.

The worst closing kick... well, it's hard to know what to do about the the depressed veterans of the 92-93 champs, lost in the grim death march of the 1995 season. They were bad enough (42-58) through the first 100, and they were quite a bit worse (14-30) the rest of the way. Yeah, it was a 144 game season. If we look at that team's final 62 games, it's just as ugly - they went 21-41 which would also be the worst season finish in franchise history.

But that 1995 squad was a bad team from Day One. So I want to single out the 2012 team, who had a better record (51-49) after 100 games than either the 1989 or the 2015 division winners. But over the last two months of the John Farrell era, the Jays went 22-40. Their winning percentage down the stretch was .155 worse than it had been over the first 100 games, and that's easily the biggest negative slip in franchise history.

On with the business. Of the 29 other teams in the majors, no team has been harder for the Jays to defeat than the Dodgers. The Jays have won just 7 of the 21 games between the two teams. That's both their fewest wins against any MLB opponent and their worst (.333) winning percentage. And naturally this year's Dodgers are really good, and what did you actually expect anyway? They're the Los Angeles Dodgers. They've played .613 ball over the last 10 years. They've won at least 91 games in every one of those ten seasons - except the season of just 60 games (they went 43-17, .717 and won the World Series that year.) 

This is Dave Roberts' tenth season as the manager. His Dodgers have a .628 winning percentage and people might want to stand up and pay some attention. Come on, folks. No manager in the history of the game who has managed at least 1,000 games has a better winning percentage than Dave Roberts. He's actually ahead of Joe McCarthy himself (.615) - that's right, Freaking Joe McCarthy, the most successful manager who ever lived. 

I hasten to add that  Marse Joe did this for 24 seasons and for three different teams. And he also won seven World Series championships. Roberts, who turned 51 a few months ago, is just getting started.And yeah, he's had great players. Of course he's had great players. How the hell else are you going to play .600 ball every year? So did Joe McCarthy, so did Earl Weaver.  That's how their teams played .600 ball every year. People should be more impressed when they actually do it, year after year after year. There are so many ways to screw it all up.