Josh Donaldson's Huge Year Is at the Heart of MLB's Best Offense

It makes sense that Don Cherry would like Josh Donaldson. It also makes sense that until recently, Josh Donaldson didn't know much about Don Cherry.

Cherry is a legend in Canada, but he's a hockey legend. Donaldson may well play baseball with what could be a hockey mentality, but he's from Alabama and understandably thinks of it as a football mentality.

None of this would matter much, except that last winter, when the Blue Jays were looking to add to their offense, their defense and their clubhouse, Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos was able to convince Billy Beane of the A's to part with Donaldson.

So here we are in the middle of June, with Donaldson playing a huge part in making the Blue Jays by far the highest-scoring team in the game, and playing his usual great defense at third base, and getting credit for helping create a winning atmosphere in the clubhouse—and making Don Cherry talk baseball in the middle of a Stanley Cup Final hockey game.

"Josh Donaldson, without a doubt, is the best third baseman in the world," Cherry said on CBC last week, during his Coach's Corner segment. Then Cherry held up a sign urging his fans to vote for Donaldson for the All-Star team.

Welcome to Canada, Josh.

"From everything I've heard, he's a legend," Donaldson said, after going on Twitter to thank Cherry.

If Donaldson can help end a Blue Jays playoff drought that has lasted 21 years, he may end up with a legendary status of his own. Already, he has a whole group of believers wearing Blue Jay uniforms.

"It's impossible to have a full appreciation unless you play with him," Jays pitcher R.A. Dickey said. "He is a very special player, a student of the game. He's changed our team, because he's an incredible weapon offensively and defensively."

Donaldson's 17 home runs and his 45 RBI have had him among the American League leaders, and his overall game is so good that he's been at or near the top in WAR, too. With Jose Reyes in front of him and Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion behind him, he's given the Blue Jays an offense that has scored 65 more runs than any other team in MLB.

At a time when offense is supposed to be down, the Jays scored more runs through 64 games than any team since the 2010 Yankees and more runs than all but two teams in Blue Jays history. And they just tied a franchise record with an 11-game winning streak.

Still, plenty aren't convinced.

"I'm not buying the Blue Jays," one AL executive said this week. "They won 11 in a row two years ago, too, and where did they finish? Last place."

That's true. It's also true that the Blue Jays' young-and-old rotation doesn't inspire much confidence, and their bullpen inspires less. It would seem that Anthopoulos will need to make at least one more trade and maybe two, and some rivals doubt the Jays have enough financial flexibility to bring in the pitchers they really need.

Still, in an American League East without a dominant team, the Blue Jays have to be taken seriously as contenders.

"We were lucky that when we were struggling, the whole division was struggling," Jays manager John Gibbons said. "We could have disappeared early on."

They were seven games under .500 in May, and again in early June, just before the winning streak began. They were awful in one-run games, losing 10 of their first 12 and 12 of their first 15, and there were plenty of doubters who wondered if anything had really changed up there in Toronto.

The Blue Jays insist that plenty has changed, and that Donaldson and Russell Martin have been a big part of it. Gibbons credited Donaldson with changing the team's clubhouse culture and said he saw it right from the first day of spring training.

Michael Dwyer/Associated Press

"There's something different," Gibbons said. "We'd heard it. These guys are winners. They're both kind of uniters."

Martin has been in the playoffs seven times in nine major league seasons. Except in 2007, when the Dodgers finished eight games out, he has never played in a game with his team already eliminated (he was hurt when the Dodgers missed the playoffs in 2010).

"Winning is fun," Martin said. "Now we're finding that out."

Donaldson likes to say he's played on winning teams all his life, and he's right. He was a regular with the A's for three years, and for three years he was in the playoffs.

Meanwhile, the Blue Jays have finished double-digit games out of first place every year for more than a decade. They haven't been in the playoffs since the back-to-back World Series wins in 1992 and 1993.

Maybe this is the year all that changes. Teams that lead the majors in runs almost always make the playoffs (all but two have in the last 16 years), and the Jays are so far ahead you've got to figure they'll lead the league all year.

Maybe they'll get to the playoffs. If they do, there's little doubt that Donaldson will have been a huge part of it.

If they do, when the NHL season starts up again in October, Don Cherry can start talking about Josh Donaldson again.

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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