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And, this year, as mentioned: better. Donaldson is already at 5.5 WAR, which is considered All-Star calibre over a full season. So, if Donaldson sat out Toronto’s remaining 71 games, he would still have given them an All-Star season’s worth of performance. This seems unlikely, but still.

In the American League, Donaldson’s WAR is second only to Mike Trout of the Angels (5.7), which is fitting because Trout was the only AL player with a higher WAR than Donaldson last season (9.4). There is no shame in being second to Trout, because Mike Trout is possibly an advanced being. He’s had the highest position-player WAR in the American League in each of his four full seasons and he is only 24 years old. (Donaldson didn’t debut in the majors until he was 24.) When you are running second to the modern-day Mickey Mantle, you are doing OK.

Donaldson’s performance over the past month, in which he hit nine home runs, scored 31 runs, and slugged a ridiculous .814 — those are Barry Bonds in his large-head phase numbers — has helped Toronto’s offence regain last year’s form: the Jays have scored more than six runs per game since mid-June after averaging just over four runs per game over the first two months of 2016. They averaged 5.5 runs per game in their record-setting 2015.

And with less than three weeks until the non-waiver trade deadline, and Toronto fans wondering what the new management will do to bolster the team’s playoff prospects, Donaldson could yet be the biggest legacy of the former GM, which is saying something for a guy who got the team back to the post-season after a 22-year absence. One wonders how often Alex Anthopoulos works that trade into random conversations: “I’ll have the steak, medium rare, I traded for Josh Donaldson, and a glass of Shiraz, please.”

Given what Donaldson has done so far, you couldn’t blame the guy for bragging a little.

sstinson@postmedia.com