Tulowitzki: 'It’s tough for me now to trust anybody'
Sitting in the visitor's clubhouse at Kauffman Stadium, his whirlwind season over following a 4-3 loss to the Kansas City Royals in Game 6 of the ALCS, Troy Tulowitzki just couldn't hold it in anymore.
Uprooted from his home in Colorado in July when the Rockies - the only organization he'd ever known - unexpectedly shipped him to Toronto, the 30-year-old shortstop admitted Friday that the past few months have shaken his trust in the baseball industry.
"You know what, and this is just being completely honest, it’s tough for me now to trust anybody in this game after what happened," Tulowitzki told Sportsnet's Arden Zwelling. "I’m sure these guys (in the Blue Jays front office) are great here. But at the same time, with what happened, it’s really tough."
A franchise icon in Colorado who, in 2010, signed an extension that was expected to keep him in a Rockies uniform until at least 2020, Tulowitzki said he was told he'd be kept in the loop if the front office had plan to move him. They didn't: On July 27, he was unexpectedly removed from his team's contest against the Chicago Cubs in the ninth inning. Two days later, he went 3-for-5 with a home run and two doubles in his Blue Jays debut.
"They had a shortstop. So it wasn’t even a place that you’d ever imagine going to. That was definitely a shock," Tulowitzki said. "I just didn’t know what to expect. It was a much bigger city than I originally thought. I really was excited when we started to win - how the country got behind us. That was fun, to go to a packed house every single night. But I didn’t even know they were capable of that - even if we won."
Tulowitzki, though, struggled after his auspicious debut, hitting just .220/.306/.327 with four homers and 40 strikeouts in 38 games before cracking his scapula in an outfield collision with Kevin Pillar on Sept. 12. A three-week stint on the disabled list followed, but he returned just in time for the final weekend of the regular season and proved to be a huge part of Toronto's postseason success.
Despite going just 2-for-23 (.095) in the division series, Tulowitzki's three-run homer in Game 3 against the Texas Rangers was a pivotal moment in the best-of-five showdown. Tulowitzki then exploded in the ALCS, going 7-for-23 (.304) with one homer and two doubles while driving in seven runs, establishing a new franchise record for RBIs in a league championship series - all of that while he continued to recover from his injury.
"I was pretty honest. Some days I felt good, some days I wasn’t too good," Tulowitzki said. "It’s not like I’m going to come out and announce now that I had a torn something. It’s not like that. But these last couple days, honestly, I’ve felt a lot better than the previous week or two."