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Blue Jays say players-only meeting beneficial
- Updated: September 10, 2016
TORONTO — The merits of players-only meetings often are a hotly debated topic across baseball. Whether there’s a tangible benefit or it’s just an easy narrative is hard to measure, but count Blue Jays left-hander J.A. Happ among those who believe it made a big difference.
Toronto held a closed-door meeting before Saturday afternoon’s 3-2 victory over the Red Sox and after the game Happ believed the Blue Jays had “better energy” than they’ve had in quite some time. Did that have anything to do with the meeting?
“I would say so, yeah,” Happ said when asked whether the change in mentality was a result of the meeting. “I was part of it. It was overwhelmingly positive. I feel like it ended on a good note. I feel like that translated into the game.”
The meeting came the morning after Toronto saw its losing streak extended to four games. The club had dropped six of its last seven to fall two games back of first-place Boston in the AL East. With two games remaining in this series, there was a serious risk of falling completely out of the race for the division crown.
The good news for Toronto is that the potential disaster was averted. The Blue Jays will finish this series no more than two games back of first place and they have Aaron Sanchez …
