There is a certain irony to a Canadian-based baseball franchise showing its American counterparts how to build a competitive Major League Baseball franchise from scratch, but that is exactly what the Blue Jays did from the moment Toronto was awarded a team for the 1977 season.
The Blue Jays debuted in frigid Exhibition Stadium on April 7, 1977, where between the snow flakes, they defeated the Chicago White Sox 9-5. Having stocked their Major and Minor League rosters with prospects rather than veterans, the Jays lost one-hundred seven and one-hundred two games in their first two American League East campaigns, but after that, their improvement was steady and noticeable.
With the dawning of the 1980's, pitching prospects such as Dave Stieb and Jim Clancy blossomed into top-flight starters, Damaso Garcia and Alfredo Griffin became a dynamic double play combination and Lloyd Moseby, Willie Upshaw and Jesse Barfield brought some punch to the lineup. The steady improvement led to the Blue Jays enjoying their first winning season in 1983.
In 1984, they managed to finish second under manager Bobby Cox while debuting a fleet footed shortstop named Tony Fernandez and adding a big bat to the lineup in the person of George Bell.
These additions made the Jays American League East Champions in 1985 with ninety-nine wins. Their climb to the top had been done mostly with home grown prospects and a few well-timed trades. One of those trades was for veteran Doyle Alexander who contributed seventeen wins while Stieb and Jimmy Key won fourteen each and the pitching staff led the league with a 3.29 ERA. The offense was comfortably balanced; while no one drove in one-hundred runs, no one had less than fifty-one. In their first post-season appearance, the Jays went up three games to one against the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series, but could not close the deal, losing three in a row.
Rather than building on their success, the Jays went into upheavals the next year, with Cox leaving and Jimy Williams becoming manager. Injuries and trades decimated the pitching staff and the Jays finished fourth, although Barfield whacked forty home runs.
Toronto continued to be heard from in the ensuing years with Bell winning the 1987 Most Valuable Player Award (forty-seven home runs, one-hundred thirty-four runs batted in, .308) and Stieb going 16-8 in 1988, a season in which he lost two no-hitters with two outs in the ninth inning.
The Jays fired Jimy Williams in early 1989 when the team got off to a 12-24 start. Hitting coach Clarence "Cito" Gaston took over the reins and would lead Toronto to its greatest run of success. Under Gaston, the team went 77-49 over the rest of 1989 and won the Division Title with Stieb winning seventeen and Key thirteen. The lineup now featured bruiser Fred McGriff (thirty-six home runs, ninety-two runs batted in, .269) to complement Bell (eighteen home runs, one-hundred four runs batted in, .297). The Jays were beaten in the American League Championship Series again, this time by Oakland in five games.
It was during this season, that the club moved into the Skydome where sellouts would be commonplace and the team would record unprecedented attendance figures through the next few seasons. After a second-place finish in 1990, the Jays won three straight Eastern Division Titles (1991-92-93). The 1991 team lost the American League Championship Series to Minnesota, but became the first team ever to draw four-million fans in one season.
The 1992-93 teams won back-to-back World Championships. Key ingredients in the championship run were Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter, both acquired in a trade with San Diego. Carter was the big gun, hitting a hundred home runs and driving in three-hundred forty-eight runs over these three years. It was his walk-off homer hit against Philadelphia's Mitch Williams in Game Six that clinched the 1993 Championship. John Olerud and Paul Molitor also drove in over one-hundred runs in 1993, and Olerud, Molitor and Alomar finished 1-2-3 in the league batting race.
It should also be noted that when the Jays defeated former manager Bobby Cox and the Atlanta Braves in the 1992 World Series, they became the first non-U.S. based team to win a World Championship. The next four seasons saw Toronto fall from contention. Their last place finish in 1997 cost Gaston his job. There were some pitching feats of note during this time. Pat Hentgen won the Cy Young Award (20-10, 3.22) in 1996, and Roger Clemens, signed as a free agent, won the pitching triple crown and Cy Young Awards in back-to-back seasons (21-7, 2.05, two-hundred ninety-two strikeouts in 1997 and 20-6; 2.65 and two-hundred seventy-one strikeouts in 1998).
The Jays traded Clemens in 1999 and Hentgen was hit with a variety of injuries, debilitating the pitching staff. The offense did what it could to keep the Jays in the race, especially in 2000 when young slugger Carlos Delgado (forty-four home runs, one-hundred thirty-seven runs batted in, .344) came into his own. Six of Delgado's teammates hit thirty or more home runs that season.
The team has developed other excellent prospects in the past few seasons including Vernon Wells in the outfield and Roy Halliday on the mound, but injuries, lack of pitching depth and the defection of Delgado after the 2004 season has prevented Toronto from jelling into a true contender.
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Blue Jays History
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