Having the Best Offence in Baseball Guarantees Nothing

The Blue Jays lead the majors with 468 runs scored at the All-Star break. They're 79 runs ahead of the second-place Yankees and 90 runs ahead of the third-place Colorado Rockies. The Yankees will need to average more than a run more per game better than the Jays over the rest of the season if they are to overtake them as the most potent offence in baseball—not an impossibility, but it will take a small miracle.

Speaking of small miracles, it also usually takes one for the team with the best offence in baseball to miss the playoffs, too—something that, at 4.5 games back in the American League East and four back of the second Wild Card spot, the Blue Jays are on pace for, as well.

Only three teams in the Wild Card era (since 1995) have missed the playoffs while leading the league in runs scored: the 1996 Mariners, the 2008 Rangers and the 2011 Red Sox.

You may recall that those 2011 Red Sox, the ones that went up in a burst of empty beer cans and fried chicken parts, were 83–52 on September 1 and practically assured a playoff spot, before winning just seven of 27 games in the season's final month. The 1996 Mariners badly missed ace Randy Johnson, who had won the first of his five Cy Young awards the year before, but only made eight starts due to a back injury. Yet they still finished just 2.5 games out of a Wild Card spot thanks to an offence powered by a fantastic rookie, Alex Rodriguez, who finished second in MVP voting, as well as peak performances from future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr., the great Edgar Martinez, and sluggers Jay Buhner (who was once traded for Ken Phelps!) and Paul Sorrento.

It's a testament to how difficult it is to build an entire roster capable of winning. With three of maybe the ten best players of the last 30 years or more, the Mariners were unable to bring a World Series back to Seattle, but they did make the playoffs in the seasons before and after their 1996 miss, and four times in a span of seven years. They were a good team, in other words, and likely playoff-capable if they'd gotten 20 more starts from their Cy Young winner.

Since the Red Sox were also quite good until the bitter end, it's really only the 2008 Rangers and these Blue Jays who stand as potential true mediocrities in an otherwise golden group—because as much lip service is commonly paid to the virtues of pitching and defence, you certainly can hit your way into the playoffs, too. But not, it seems, without a little help.

That Rangers club certainly didn't get enough help in the run prevention department to avoid that fate—a league-worst 5.37 ERA as a staff, with the withering husks of Vicente Padilla and Kevin Millwood taking the bulk of it, and 15 starting pitchers taking a spot in the club's rotation at some point. Scott Feldman and an injury-plagued Brandon McCarthy headline a list of mostly-forgotten names like Kason Gabbard, Luis Mendoza, Sidney Ponson, and Dustin Nippert, and rookies Matt Harrison, Tommy Hunter, Eric Hurley, Warner Madrigal, and Doug Mathis.

Those are just the guys who made starts! Future starter C.J. Wilson sported a 6.02 ERA as the club's closer that year.

Is that so unlike the mess that is the Blue Jays' current pitching staff? Well, it is an it isn't. The Jays have a future starter, Roberto Osuna, currently operating as their closer, but much more successfully so far than Wilson was. They also have two old mules soaking up innings at the nominal front of the rotation, though Mark Buehrle has been fantastic for the Jays so far in 2015, and R.A. Dickey has been better since the start of June.

With all due respect to some of the Jays' young pitchers, though, even fans would surely like to believe they have a higher pedigree than the Rangers' ones did at the time, the vast collection of young arms being thrown to the wolves—Harrison, Hurley, and Hunter, each age 22 or lower, combined to make 23 starts for Texas, while Mendoza, McCarthy, and Madrigal, all of them 24, made 17—ought to resonate with Jays fans, too, and not in a good way. It feels too much like following a recipe that doesn't work.

There are key differences between the two clubs, though, too. The 2008 Rangers were the second-worst defensive team in the majors. They also, quite unlike a Jays organization that ought to be a whole lot hungrier, had a new president in his first season at the helm, Nolan Ryan, who was principally concerned with building deliberately, and from within. We can see proof of that in the deals that Texas made in-season that year: a single trade, sending reliever Eddie Guardado to the Twins for Mark Hamburger.

The 2015 Jays haven't made an in-season deal, either, but they have two weeks left still to do so. They just need to help themselves. Part of that is winning some games to stay in a position where it still matters, but part of that—as Jays fans have known and heard about for what feels like months now—is going out and ensuring on the trade market that they don't become an even stranger, sadder footnote than these other teams with a league-best offence and nothing to show for it.

Toronto's fate is in its hands. The second half of the season begins Friday at home against the Rays before a daunting trip out west. We know the Blue Jays can hit home runs, but now they've got to do it when it counts.