Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion were basically Blue Jays by accident.

Not in the sense that somebody made a clerical error landing them in Toronto, but in how they were both acquired as if by afterthought — added as a mid-season injury replacement in one case; included as an unwanted addition to a trade in the other — among the dozens of minor transactions teams make to get through a season.

They were not highly touted draft picks, marquee free agents or coveted trade targets. They had been cast off by their previous organizations — five previous organizations in Bautista’s case — and were, at the time they respectively joined the Jays, considered marginal additions to the roster’s fringe.

That’s what made their late-blooming ascent to franchise cornerstones so remarkable and what makes it worth reflecting upon today, as their expected departures near.

With the final out Wednesday of the World Series, Bautista and Encarnacion officially were no longer Blue Jays. On Tuesday,they are eligible to sign with another team, which, if they do, will mark the end of an era in Toronto baseball.

“It’s tough to sit here and imagine being in a clubhouse without either one of them,” a despondent Kevin Pillar, wearing an “Edwin” T-shirt while cleaning out his locker, said after the Jays were eliminated by Cleveland last month.

If this is in fact the end, Bautista and Encarnacion will make their exit as two of the three greatest power hitters in franchise history and among the team’s best offensive players of any stripe, ever.

They contributed in a multitude of ways, but home runs were their hallmark. Together they have hit nearly eight per cent of all the homers in Blue Jays’ history. Only Carlos Delgado has hit more. Among all major-league hitters since 2010, no duo has clubbed more dingers.

Looking at their combined body of work — they have together accounted for nearly 35 per cent of all Jays’ homers since 2010 — drives home just how integral Bautista and Encarnacion have been to the franchise.

But their impact goes beyond simple numbers. They were the reason former general manager Alex Anthopoulos made the deals he did — first with the Marlins and Mets as part of 2013’s overhyped flop; and again at the trade deadline in 2015 — to push the team towards contention. Anthopoulos knew what he had was rare and fleeting: two of the game’s elite power hitters, in their primes, making salaries roughly half their open-market value. So he built around them.

Surrounded by better teammates, Bautista and Encarnacion together helped end the Jays’ 21-year playoff drought and each hit a momentous, game-winning post-season homer to further cement their place as all-time greats in the fan base’s collective memory.

Today, Joe Carter’s World Series walk-off and Roberto Alomar’s game-tying homer off Dennis Eckersley are joined by Bautista’s bat flip and Encarnacion’s wild-card walk-off.

Given where they stand now, among the off-season’s top-flight free agents, it’s interesting to look back at how the Jays lucked into the two most important players of the last decade.

Scott Rolen, the veteran third baseman who was a Blue Jay for just a season-and-a-half, unwittingly played a pivotal role in both cases. When Rolen was injured in August of 2008, the Jays put in a waiver claim for Bautista, then serving in a part-time, pinch-hitting role for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Jays were looking for somebody who could fill in for Rolen at third, but also play multiple positions. Bautista seemed a good fit who could be had on the cheap.

“No one thought Bautista was even an everyday player, let alone a frontline player,” Anthopoulos said in a 2013 interview with the Star on the trade’s fifth anniversary.

So the Jays worked out a deal with Pittsburgh for a player to be named later, which eventually became minor-league catcher Robinzon Diaz, who played just 43 big-league games after the trade and spent last season in the Mexican league. Bautista, meanwhile, would become a six-time all-star who twice led the majors in home runs.

But that didn’t happen overnight. He struggled when he arrived in Toronto and had to fight for regular playing time, just like he had in Pittsburgh.

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“He was late all the time,” recalls Dwayne Murphy, the Jays’ former hitting coach.

Murphy, who retired in 2013, was speaking of Bautista’s bat speed, not his punctuality. When the swaggering slugger arrived in Toronto, there was an occasional glimpse of the impressive power for which he became known, but he lacked the timing to consistently reach it, in part because of his exaggerated leg kick, which he had yet to hone. He was being pounded inside by fastballs and couldn’t catch up.

“It was just about getting him to understand how early he had to be ready because of his leg kick,” Murphy says. “The guy already had a good swing. We worked on nothing but learning how to hit the inside pitch because that’s how everybody was getting him out.”

In September of 2009 it started to click for Bautista, who hit 10 homers in the season’s final 26 games. The following year he picked up where he left off, leading the majors with 54 home runs and setting a new franchise record in the process.

Encarnacion’s trajectory in Toronto was more erratic.

In 2009, less than a year after the Jays had acquired Bautista, they were looking to deal Rolen, who had asked for a trade. They found a suitor in the Cincinnati Reds, who were willing to part with two young pitchers — Zach Stewart and Josh Roenicke — as long as the Jays would also take Encarnacion off their hands. J.P. Ricciardi, the Jays’ GM at the time, didn’t even mention Encarnacion when commenting on the deal.

“We got two really good arms that we liked for a long time,” he said, adding: “We really, really like the arms we got.”

Stewart and Roenicke spent the next four seasons bouncing back and forth between the majors and minors, and neither has appeared in a big-league game since 2013. Encarnacion, meanwhile, endured his share of struggles as well. Occasionally derided by fans as “E5” for his misadventures at third base, he was demoted to the minors in 2010 and placed on waivers after the season. He was claimed by Oakland in November, but fortunately for the Jays, the A’s decided a month later that they didn’t want Encarnacion after all and the Jays were able to sign him back.

In the 2011 off-season he worked in the Dominican with hitting instructor Luis Mercedes, who adjusted his swing so that he kept both hands on the bat all the way through. That adjustment, as well as moving him across the diamond to first base (or off the field altogether as the designated hitter), played a major role in his 42-homer barrage in 2012.

Murphy admits he had no premonition of future stardom for either player. “No, no, no,” he says. “But you could just see them getting better and better.”

Where other hitting coaches had tried to get Bautista and Encarnacion to hit the ball up the middle and to the opposite field, Murphy let them pull the ball, which was their natural inclination. Ninety-one per cent of Bautista’s home runs with the Jays were hit to his pull side — left or left-centre field — while 86 per cent of Encarnacion’s were pulled.

“I still give the credit to those guys,” Murphy said. “Those guys had those swings.”

Bautista’s and Encarnacion’s respective fates, uncertain at the moment, will be settled relatively soon. Whatever happens next in their winding and unlikely careers, they will at some point return to Toronto and don their old uniforms whenever their names are added to the Level of Excellence — alongside Roberto Alomar, George Bell, Joe Carter, Carlos Delgado, Tony Fernandez and Dave Stieb — where they belong.

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