CLEVELAND - Team chemistry is probably the most overrated component of professional sport.
If you have it, fine and good, and if you don’t but have a winning club, nobody complains.
Right now the Blue Jays are having a pretty good time as they bob along on the flotsam and jetsam of the 2010 season.
They are receiving far better starting pitching than expected and are hammering the ball out of the yard, two aspects of the game that always loosens up a team and makes it feel good about itself. Quality starts galore, high fives in the dugout after circling the bases. What’s not to like?
These Jays are getting along like ham and eggs, the young guns such as Tuesday’s starter Ricky Romero and the guy before him, Monday’s hero Brett Cecil, are spreading their wings and revelling in the moment of success.
It’s a club that also has its veterans producing at an unexpected clip as witnessed by the production and numbers posted by centre fielder Vernon Wells and shortstop Alex Gonzalez.
Happiness, along with a third-place standing and a 15-13 record, after Tuesday’s 8-5 victory, abounds.
For the first time this season, Romero didn’t dominate and was almost done in by a four-run Cleveland third, all the runs and five hits plus a walk occurring after he got the first two outs. It’s the first time this season — his sixth start — that he has allowed more than three runs.
But thanks to the offence he gutted out a win despite giving up nine hits.
Wells, the veteran on the team in terms of years of service, believes this group is the most close knit he has been around.
“It’s a different group, a completely different dynamic of players,” Wells said. “There’s guys that are trying to prove themselves at this level, establish themselves at this level and some guys that are out to prove that they still belong at the level that they’ve been playing at. It’s a unique group in the fact that everybody’s trying to get better each and every day.”
A less selfish team, one of fewer cliques?
“I think the names that have been around this team, names that have come through here in the last eight to 10 years, the names don’t jump out at you,” Wells said after a lengthy pause. “I think that’s something that guys can come in here, be relaxed and learn how to play this game at the big league level. There’s going to be some growing pains that come along with that but it’s a great clubhouse to be in because good or bad everybody’s going to be the same toward you.”
Just what does he mean about the names not jumping out?
“I think of the guys that I got to play with through the years and guys that have come in at different times, now we’re a bunch of guys that are almost in the same boat, just a group of guys where everybody gets along.”
Does that say volumes or what?
Special guys such as Romero, who has shown so much growth from one year to the next.
“I think for him (the biggest change) it’s being able to get a grasp on how truly gifted he is when he gets on that mound, to know that he can throw any pitch in any count,” Wells said of the young lefty. “I tell him: ‘Don’t ever forget how nasty your stuff is.’ I talk to opposing hitters after they face him and they tell me how nasty his stuff is and how much his ball moves and stuff like that. I just remind him: ‘You’re really good and remember that each and every time you get on the mound.’ ”
This game maybe he needed another reminder.
