2009 MLB season in review: Toronto Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays are tough to figure out, sometimes the look like a team on paper that should be far better than they are, and then sometimes they look like a team that is far behind their division mates like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays. In April of the past year, the Jays looked like a team that could compete for the American League Wild Card, and then the lost 70 of their final 118 games, and got their General Manager fired. There are rumors that the team does not like their old school manager Cito Gaston, and of course their are the attendance issues.

Their final record was 75-7. They finished fourth in the American league east 28 games behind the Yankees who easily won the division. That record does not accurately represent how good this team started off. They got through April with a 15-9 record, and were above .500 until a July 11th loss to the Baltimore Orioles. They ended up six games under .500 for the season. This is a team that spent 47 days in first place, and even had a 3.5 game lead in late May.

This is a good baseball team that was able to score 798 runs. As a team they hit .266, and as a team hit 209 home runs good enough for fourth in the AL. However their starting nine only featured two players who hit better than .300. Their Pitching staff was excellent; they gave up just 771 runs, while their staff had a combined ERA of 4.47. Two of their starting pitchers scored double digit victories, and two more won nine games each. As a staff they struck out 1,181 batters which was good enough for third in their league.

In all 1,876,129 fans came to see the Blue Jays play at the Rogers Centre. For their 81 home games they averaged 23,162 fans. Of course that did include the smallest crowd in Rogers Center history when 11,159 fans came out for a September 9th match up with the Minnesota Twins. In all they were only able to sell 45.9% of their 2009 ticket inventory.