Blue Jays Show They Might Be Close at Finish

The Toronto Blue Jays were carried out of Anaheim on Thursday night, decked by the Angels, 17-1, but the Blue Jays have made an April impression after their strong finish of last year and should be a wild-card factor in the American League, possibly vying with the Western Division runner-up.

“If I didn’t think this was a pretty good club, I would not have taken the job,” Manager Jim Fregosi said in Anaheim. “We have so many young arms and legs that we should be strong late in the season.”

No one is predicting that the Blue Jays can beat the New York Yankees in the East, but Toronto’s nucleus of young pitchers and position players is among baseball’s best.

Carlos Delgado, Shawn Green, Shannon Stewart, Alex Gonzalez and Jose Cruz Jr. represent an impressive lineup core, while Chris Carpenter, Roy Halladay, Kelvim Escobar and Tom Davey can light it up off the mound, with more on the way. Billy Koch, a first-round pick in 1996, has a high-90s arm.

“In today’s business world of baseball, $40 million can’t get you everything,” Fregosi said of the Blue Jays’ payroll.

“All you can do is put your 25 best players out there. We’re fortunate to have 15 home-grown players on this team, and that’s unheard of today. When it comes time to keep them together, we ain’t going to be at $40 million.”

Fregosi, once an 18-year-old Angel shortstop who returned to Anaheim last week at 57, his No. 11 having been retired by the Angels last year, was scouting for the San Francisco Giants when offered the opportunity to replace Tim Johnson this spring. Toronto management had decided that Johnson’s lies regarding his Vietnam experiences weren’t going to be quickly forgotten.

For Fregosi, who piloted the Angels to their first division title in 1979 and won a National League pennant with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1993, cleaning up behind Johnson wasn’t a primary objective. He can only do the job his way.

“I’ve managed four different places and about 2,000 major league games,” he said. “All of a sudden I’m going to be a great manager? All of a sudden I’m going to be a bad manager? Those things aren’t important.

“My job is to take the pressure off and put the players in position to succeed. My job is to give the players credit when we win and take the heat off when we lose.”

In the kind of disruptive move that has haunted the Angels, Fregosi was fired little more than a year after his ’79 triumph. He was asked why the Angels, who have not been to the playoffs since winning their third division title in 1986, have never been able to take the next step, as he did with the pennant-winning Phillies in 1993?

“They’ve had a lot of bad luck,” he said. “They’ve also focused more on fan-identity players, whereas the good teams go forward with an emphasis on pitching. Pitching is the toughest thing to draft and develop. It takes the longest. The Angels have done a hell of a job putting together a lineup of home-grown players, but you win with pitching. [The Blue Jays] have as a mind set drafting pitchers.”

Are the Angels concerned about that $10.2-million investment in Tim Belcher? The answer is found in a 9.13 earned-run average and four of five starts in which he has failed to go beyond 4 2/3 innings, giving up 40 hits and 24 runs in 23 2/3 innings overall. Belcher, 37, is coming off three consecutive seasons of 213 or more innings and a total of almost 2,300 big-league innings.

No one is more dogged, but willpower can never replace firepower--if that is what it is down to.