TORONTO — The final game Josh Donaldson played in a Blue Jays uniform in front of the Toronto faithful was May 24 of last year.
Four days later, he pulled up lame in Boston with another calf injury and the 2015 American League MVP wasn’t seen on a major-league field again until he was donning Cleveland Indians garb in mid-September.
Fifteen months after that late May game, an 8-1 loss to the Los Angeles Angels, and the eventual August trade to Ohio, Donaldson returned to Toronto seeking one thing: Closure.
“I’ve been kind of waiting for this day for a while now,” Donaldson said, mere moments after emerging from the third base visitors’ dugout sporting the Atlanta Braves ‘A’ on his hat.
It’s clear the way his tenure came to an end is something that’s been on his mind.
“What probably nags at me the most is kind of how my career finished here in Toronto,” Donaldson said, his trademark flow-hawk still intact. “Not being able to play at the time. Trying to fight as hard as I could to get back. It wasn’t working out. Kind of how everything transpired was something that … it’s tough. At the end of the day, you try to separate it as a business, but as a human being it can be tough.
“Even though things didn’t work out the way that I might necessarily have wanted it to, I’m glad to have been able to bounce back this year. I knew that I was capable of doing that. It was just a matter of me getting my body back underneath me.”
Donaldson bet on himself.
And he’s been proven right.
After appearing in just 36 games with the Blue Jays last season, and another 16 with the Indians, the 33-year-old third baseman is in the midst of a renaissance.
Overall, Donaldson came into the mini two-game series in Toronto with a .262/.377/.534 slash line with 32 home runs and a .910 OPS.
But in the 42 games since the all-star break, he’s been in a groove reminiscent of his heyday, one Blue Jays fans remember so, so well.
Since mid-July, the slash line is gaudy: .288/408/.614 with 14 bombs, 31 runs driven in, and 29 runs scored.
If it weren’t for a kid named Ronald Acuna Jr. one-upping him, Donaldson may have garnered some National League MVP votes when all is said and done for the NL East-leading Braves.
But Tuesday wasn’t about what Donaldson has done since being signed to a one-year, $23-million deal back in November by Alex Anthopoulos, the same man who engineered the trade that brought him from Oakland to Toronto on Nov. 28, 2014.
This night was about what he did for the Blue Jays as a franchise.
And make no mistake, Donaldson was everything.
Without his bat leading the way in 2015, there would have been no reason to go all-in and trade for Troy Tulowitzki and David Price, and a two-decade-plus postseason drought may very well still be a dark cloud hovering over the organization to this day.
“When I first got traded over here in 2014, in the off-season, I didn’t really know what to expect coming here,” a reflective Donaldson said as he stood a couple of feet away from the top step of the visitors’ dugout and surveyed the scene. “But I was excited being able to get into a lineup with Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. Once the season started, being in spring training, getting to know the guys, I felt like 2015 was a special year for me and this organization. I was told that this city would go on fire if you were able to get into the playoffs. Those people weren’t wrong that told me that. That was one of the most special years that I’ve been a part of. This city was on fire. It was electric. To be able to be a part of that is special. That’s things that you won’t ever forget.”
The city of Toronto would wholeheartedly agree.
Four years ago already feels like an eternity, and Justin Smoak is the only link to that team still on the roster.
Donaldson described his exit as leaving on a “sour note” but it’s not like he didn’t see it coming.
He knew, under a new regime, a teardown was imminent.
“In 2016, I pretty much had the sense of that when we didn’t re-sign Edwin Encarnacion and then we signed (Kendrys) Morales to a three-year deal,” Donaldson said. “I try to be as realistic as possible. There were no talks between any of our core guys about a contract. You could see what they were doing in free agency at the time, whoever they were signing was a one-year deal, three-year deal, so I had the hint that was probably going to play out the way that it has, and that’s what happened.”
Does he think that was wrong?
“I have no opinion — it’s not that I don’t have an opinion — but I have nothing to say about how the front office for the Toronto Blue Jays wants to run their team,” said Donaldson, clearly biting his tongue on the subject. “It’s their team. They can do whatever they want.”
Even from the beginning, the relationship between the Ross Atkins/Mark Shapiro front office and their star third baseman was rocky.
As the Jays were losing their grip on a playoff spot in September of 2016, there was even a clubhouse run-in between Donaldson and Atkins, centring around a perceived lack of response to the reigning MVP continually being pitched high and tight.
The Jays held on and went to the postseason for a second straight year — Donaldson provided one of the signature moments of that run, hustling home on a throwing error by public enemy No. 1 Rougned Odor to score and clinch the ALDS win over the hated Texas Rangers — but things really started to go off the rails in 2017.
Longtime head athletic trainer George Poulis was let go, replaced by current trainer Nikki Huffman and a new “high performance” way of doing things.
Donaldson doesn’t believe it’s a coincidence that he started to get hurt after four straight seasons of 155-plus games once he tried a new training method.
He lit into the system on the final weekend of the 2017 season at Yankee Stadium, and then his body continued to fail him last year.
The familiarity with the Braves training staff played a role in Donaldson signing with the Braves.
“Being back with George Poulis and Mike Frost, they knew me,” Donaldson said. “They kept me on the field for a long time. In 2015 and 2016, I played 155 games every year. Things started to change here in 2017 and ’18. It might work for some guys, and which I hope that it does. It didn’t work for me. Sometimes, you have to learn through mistakes. And I’m fortunate to have gotten through that and continue to go out here and now to help the Atlanta Braves win.”
Whether it was the pre-game video tribute Tuesday night or the standing ovation he received as he walked to the plate in the top of the first inning, the love from the city likely gave The Bringer of Rain the closure he was seeking.
It was a short stint in the grand scheme of things, but Donaldson was the driving force behind the baseball buzz finally returning to Toronto.
“I just remember this place being packed, and I remember all the good times that we’ve had,” Donaldson said. “I could go look at each and every spot, and there’s been something that was pretty exciting. We had some special teams here, and at the end we weren’t competing the way that we needed to and things changed. I’m just glad to be able to be back here, part of a winning team, and playing at a high level again to where when the fans come out today, they’ll be able to see that.”
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August 28, 2019 at 09:06AM
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