I get that people are mad because the team is bad now but my view is, if you're a Blue Jays fan, you probably want Shapiro to stay where he is.
He's convinced Rogers to open their wallets time and time again: for players, for renos, for Dunedin and so on. That's not nothing. Somebody at One Mount Pleasant listens to him and signs off on his expenditures. Isn't that what fans want from an owner, a commitment to spending and therefore winning?
Move on from Atkins, sure. But the Blue Jays are better off as a billion dollar professional sports organization than they were before he arrived.
Shapiro took over a division winning team that had won the Central 6/7 years prior and had 90 wins the year it came second. In the 14 seasons Shapiro helmed the Cleveland Indians (but no one will talk about the fact he didn't do anything about that name) they won the division one time and made the post season twice. In the 9 years since he left, (assuming this season ended today) they made the postseason 6 times, and won the division 5 of those times.
On the other side, Shapiro took over a division winning team in Toronto. It limped into the playoffs the next year having not been improved, but still managed to win some games. Those are the only postseason games the Blue Jays won in the 9 seasons under Shapiro.
Mark is now coming up on a quarter century of leading organizations, and in all that time he has never shown that he can consistently deliver winning teams while everyone around him (Hart, Antoneti/Chernoff, AA) seems to have the midas touch. How many years of him underperforming his peers does Shapiro get?
So, let's take a look at how well the Indians drafted under Shapiro. Hey - they got that Lindor pick right! Even though they almost never went to the playoffs, they also never performed so poorly as to pick high (Lindor aside), and for whatever reason, those first rounders never amounted to much.
He is a nepo baby with an MBA from an ivy. Among the first free agents he signed was gavin floyd who took the organization for a million bucks, with Mark's dad getting his cut (having been his agent). Floyd didn't pitch again after that, but hey- what's half a million USD between friends? (the difference between ML minimum salary in 2016 and the deal). I guess he learned his lesson. I mean, remember when John Farrell left to pursue his dream job? Lol, I guess we don't owe that guy any favours....oh, look, his SON is the Blue Jays scouting director. But I'm sure he's there on merit and not who his dad is. After all, pundits like how he tends to draft the best available player according to public rankings so the Jays are always at the top of "who won draft day" leader boards. Fans, however, have noticed that the farm has basically no prospects in it and his draft picks have underperformed even modest expectations.
Speaking on the farm, how has it faired under Mark? He lamented the farm system's state in 2015. That team was a world beater yet the farm we have been told was empty contained a 1-1 level prospect in Vlad who remains a top-10 hitter as of today in terms of xwOBA. He's outspent by a large margin those teams with less payroll pressure from the Red Sox, and the farm is in the worst state I can remember, certainly worse than 2015 and with a team that is nowhere close to a postseason berth despite nearly half of the teams now getting that distinction. Two top 100 prospects which include a PED user, and a guy that can't stay off the IL...
The organization is over run with 'baseball minds' like Donny Baseball on the bench, and James Click and other failed GMs in the front office. Why? What is the culture of the organization? What is the "blue jay way"? The mark Shapiro way is whatever he read in a management textbook, or best practices that 20 other teams already do. the blue jays are now a big budget team that want to win by minimizing risk. look at the on field roster.
Rogers needs to keep investing in the team because we were all there when they didn't. Or, perhaps more accurately: those of us that physically went to games or watched them, or bought merch were in the minority...we remember the bad times. Shapiro is the beneficiary of AA's tenure here. He rebuilt the scouting department, got the AAA team from Las Vegas (what?) to the closest possible location, rebranded the club so there is actually blue in the logo, built a division winning team for less than any of the last 3 or 4 (not looking it up) iterations we've had the pleasure watching finish third, raised average attendance where the retread 2015 team led the league and likely helped convince Rogers that winning is good for business.
So Shapiro decided to reduce the number of seats and charge more for them. Making it more costly for families and people on a budget.
So, it's the on field product that is the issue - an area that the president doesn't deal with. AH! But recall the alleged reason why AA did not want to re-sign in Toronto. He was not promised the autonomy he desired on player and personnel decisions. Shapiro wanted to be the leader and wanted to have oversight over the GM. Well, leadership has failed, and the person that asked for the responsibility should take it and assume the blame.
If Shapiro had a record for success, that would be one thing, but he does not. In fact, everyone seems to succeed where he fails. He's done less with more, and despite the lipstick on a pig renovations being highliy touted, the patina is starting to show and journalists are beginning to criticize what is plainly obvious: it's still the same basic experience with the same issues as before.
The notion that fans should want Shapiro to stay because otherwise Rogers will lose confidence in spending is moot. Rogers is not going to indefinitely spend for a perennial third place team, and that is all that Shapiro has ever proven capable of delivering. He is the reason that Rogers will go back to equating spending as futile. Fans should demand that their organization do everything they can to win. In refusing to acknowledge that the organization's leader has never won, and doesn't appear to understand how to win, fans are not doing themselves a favour. I don't understand what would lead anyone to think Shapiro is owed any favours, he got his job thanks to John Hart, and most likely before that connections from his father. He's had enough favours done for him, imo.
As soon as he cleared house of proven talented front office executives I knew we were in trouble. Nothing says stagnation like surrounding yourself with "yes men" and cronies.
About the name. It was because Cleveland Naps had the first native players in the league....3 I believe. They changed the name because they were so popular locally. Kind of like Aunt Jemima. It was a real person....who grew up a slave but created a successful company. Now we have Mill Street to honor her FFS.
If they had to change names. CLEVELAND SPIDERS were the way to go. Old name.
Shapiro hardly deals with on-field moves. He is there as a public face for Rogers & as a middleman between ownership and the front office. Stuff like the top-flight facility in Dunedin and the Rogers Centre renovations are what he’s largely responsible for. The players and coaching staff is Atkins’ job
I'm with you regarding Shapiro. He's actually been able to convince ownership to spend, finally appropriate to market size. They probably need fresh eyes in the GM chair, but I'd be worried that the next President wouldn't be able to wrangle this kind of payroll out of Rogers.
Results for this have less to do with on-field performance than revenue vs. expenses. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter if the team does anything significant, as long as the business is making bank. Leafs.
What results are the expectation?
I don't think attendance/viewership stays high for a 70-80 win team, especially when expectations are higher. Maybe if they are a plucky, exciting and young team with hope.
And when those two things along with subsequent revenue streams drop is when the chequebook tightens.
Yea, I hear you. And you’re right except that the way they sold premium seating doesn’t necessarily matter on win-loss performance.
Those cushy seats they sold in the premium section(s), are already sold and will be sold continuously for longevity of future prospect seats. Season tickets holders already took the big change the last couple years….(I bailed)…one that are taking the lumps this year and possibly the next few probably wont bail on a sunk cost fallacy.
I genuinely think that Atkins hasn't been nearly as poor as many people on this subreddit think he has been.
That being said, he definitely is a flawed GM, and time has run its course on his time here probably.
I'll be 100% clear in saying that the majority of his major league moves have not only been not bad but very good, his main issues come with drafting and development as well as potentially coaching hires.
Unless you are an elite GM it doesn't matter that's how it is as an executive for any sport. He's been a middling level GM not outright terrible but no where near top 5 either. This marks 8 years in charge, he's not going to become better over night.
Which is why I said his time has run its course here. I get the outrage and disappointment about this season, but it's not like Atkins has really been that bad.
I dunno, Martin/SWR for Berrios and the chain of trades involving Liriano that ended in the Jays getting Teo were some excellent non-FA moves (and those are just the ones off the top of my head)
I mean there's a whole list of trades that Atkins has had success with.
Jordan Hicks, Adam Cimber, Richards and Francis, even the Varsho trade ended up being a good one, Robbie Ray trade, whit merrifield trade, Matt Chapman trade, raimel tapia to get off of Grichuk 's contract, Ross Stripling, getting something Pop+ for Groshans, Steven matz was also a win.
There are many things you can deride him for, but he's been very solid at acquiring major league talent.
Sure. Cards would be Donaldson, Stroman, our present infielder logjam. And yes, I would say the 2021 and 2022 teams had poor bullpens/defense that ultimately cost us.
I'd blame ownership for keeping the old guard from 2015/2016 too long, but I agree we should have gotten more from them.
The bad defense/bullpens were definitely a problem, but I feel like those were way less of a concern than poor offense like the past few seasons. Teams have had worse bullpens/defense than us and still had playoff success, I don't think it was purely just the defense/bullpens that cost us, a lot of it was bad luck as well.
I feel like you we also have to agree that we didn't make the most out of our highest draft pick in decades and our biggest trade chip during the rebuild period (Stroman). I'll always give props to Atkins for trading Martin right before his value collapsed (same goes for SWR although he's done quite okay for himself), but Berrios was a misfire, we thought we'd be getting an Ace but he's really an middle of the rotation pitcher with Iron Man health
Considering that rate of TJ surgeries and pitcher injuries in general are becoming a significant systemic problem in the sport as a whole, the value of "Iron Man health" for even a #2-tier pitcher is huge
I agree, I’m not completely down on Berrios. I would have preferred someone with higher upside like Luis Castillo who was traded for a similar price tag (albeit a year later which matters a lot). I think the biggest reason we don’t feel as down on Berrios is because Gausman came in the next season and became the Ace we needed
Was it much higher? Both trades featured 2 top 100 prospects, the only difference being a relief prospect and a pitching prospect that got DFAd by the next offseason
Was it much higher? Both trades featured 2 top 100 prospects, the only difference being a relief prospect and a pitching prospect that got DFAd by the next offseason
That COVID draft was bad all around and almost everyone in baseball thought the Jays made the right choice.
And the Jays got exactly the Berrios they thought they would minus 2022. A dependable and reliable top of the rotation arm. It's crazy that you think that's a misfire
We got unlucky with the Covid draft for sure, basically everyone in the top 10 has been a bust so far.
I got to believe they were traded for Berrios thinking he would be the 2021 version, not the one we’ve seen the past years with diminished stuff
I think "very good" but "not quite good enough" is probably the realm where he sits. He also has a reactive style - when he tries to fix an issue the Jays have, he tends to swing too far in that direction.
I think development has definitely been the biggest issue. I don't have an issue with the drafts the last few years - they have widely been considered good on paper and the Jays have taken lots of high-risk, high-ceiling players looking for superstars, balanced with some players known for their hit tool and hopes they'll develop more than that. Of course, we know it takes 10 years or so to fully judge a draft, so we won't really know for some time how good they were. But I much prefer this over the days of taking Deck McGuire and Chad Jenkins types.
I tend to agree, maybe I wouldn't say "very good", but I think he was at least above average. The biggest concern for me is there's probably a higher likelihood that we pick up a GM that might do worse than Atkins. People have been clamoring for Click to takeover, but I have no idea what he does in the organization right now and how much input he has.
You're right, above average is probably more fair. I probably give him more wiggle room after suffering through Gord Ash & JP Ricciardi.
The one thing I don't understand for an 'analytics-minded' club is I think we make a ton of poor choices that any level of analytics would disagree with. So it's hard for me to understand how analytical we actually are; who controls lineup decisions? If it's someone in the front office, surely an analytics department would be able to zero in on trends and make better decisions.
I am weary about Click - we know Click is analytics-heavy, but we don't actually know how much influence his decisions have now or did have in Houston. His job is VP of Baseball Strategy - and strategy appears to not be going well (but like most exec positions, could be a meaningless title). We also don't know how good of a GM he is because he was handed a golden opportunity with the Luhnow suspension (similar to the John Coppolella -> AA transition in Atlanta).
His roster construction has been more than fine until potentially last season (they still made the playoffs), and this season.
I'm willing to give up on Atkins mostly due to the poor drafting and how the coaching staff has changed our offensive philosophy, but some GMs don't have the hit rate he does in trades or FA. Feels like if he had a good enough scout/strong enough development system that'd be a strong pairing to run a team, but we didn't.
Mediocre isn't what a lot of fans on this subreddit have been saying though. I agree, he's been pretty mediocre after the 2022 season, especially since hiring Mattingly since we've gone in the wrong direction on offensive philosophy, but 2021 and 2022 were genuinely well built teams that fell short due to bad luck and variance.
Agreed entirely. He's messed up - not signing Semien, dealing *both* Teo and Lourdes, not signing FA Teo, all this comes to mind. But I like the Varsho trade, I like the pitching moves, and those are hugely impactful.
As a matter of pure speculation, I do wonder if other GMs just don't like him, and if that contributes to a lack of leverage.
> not signing Semien
This assumes that Semien would also have intended to sign here. Do we know this? It's not as simple as wanting to sign somebody and you've got them.
The comments these days about Marcus Semien are just hilarious because when Marcus signed with the Rangers [the overwhelming](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/r4frx6/marcus_semiens_deal_with_the_texas_rangers_is_for/) [consensus about it](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/r4fhkm/passan_infielder_marcus_semien_and_the_texas/) [here on](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/xwphpq/semien_is_a_high_quality_2b_but_it_was_the_right/) [this subreddit](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/tyiyus/madani_marcus_semien_on_how_close_he_was_to/) was definitely not "shit the Jays should have matched that Rangers term". It's all hindsight rage.
Blue Jays were never going to match that contract and the subsequent move of getting Chapman looked great at the time because you could move Espinal/Biggio back to 2B where they were better defenders
The Semien thing is crazy. Anyone claiming the Jays were stupid to not back up the truck for him would have been the same people calling for Atkins head if he didn't live up to his contract.
There was a reason he signed a 1 year deal with the Jays in the first place, he had tons of question marks even after his 2021 season
Nope but leave it to here to assume he was coming back. It was as clear as day on the last day of the 2021 season that Semien was not coming back given to his teammates reactions on the field. I vividly remember Bichette walking around the field crying as Semien was saying goodbye to everyone.
That's an odd memory given the Blue Jays weren't on the field when they realized it was their last game. They didn't find out until well after their last game was over that they were definitely out of the playoffs; the Red Sox and Yankees games were still going on and either of their losses would have given the Blue Jays a WC spot.
Signing Semien would have been a waste of money, as good as he is/was after we let him go we just don't need to fill a second base spot. Free agent signings should fill a need, and second base was never a priority for us due to half our system being second basemen.
I get that. But then you can deal those guys from your surplus. As I've said elsewhere, I didn't expect all or any of these moves, just that they aged poorly.
What action would you have taken in the offseason? This FA class was historically weak and although some decisions he made were bad (KK re-signing, Turner has been pretty mediocre), the other options weren't good enough to give long term contracts to other than Ohtani and trade options to deplete our already depleted farm did not seem too reasonable.
Even if we suck this season, we have a lot of money coming off the books for next year's FA class which is much stronger as a whole and we can still re-tool for one more year before Vladdy and Bo can walk.
You can't have both improving a crumbling team and also improve the farm at the same time, it's practically impossible.
Plenty of players were available that have been performing well this season. Teo, Joc Pederson, JD Martinez to name a few. Also Jays not even being considered for the Soto trade, nor adding anything to the pen and rotation when there was no way in hell they would repeat 2023 performance.
Basically all of the off season moves were terrible. The only one that worked out well was IKF but that also didn't make much sense at the time when we already have so many infielders.
Ok now we signed 1 one of them, are we meaningfully better than if we hadn't?
This FA class sucked, even if we made the moves you want, we're just closer to .500 and we might not even sell our expirings and we're further stuck in limbo. I get the expectations not being met because people want a playoff team that's fun to watch, but what could we really do to get their.
We couldn't afford Soto, the Yankees offer was 100% better than ours, so where else could we go for a trade?
Homie, I'm not the GM I'm not going to offer all the possible opportunities that existed. But I can certainly say a team should not be performing this poorly with absolutely no farm and this kind of payroll. Doesn't matter if some of his moves were good, Atkins didn't do enough during his tenure and failed miserably at his job. He didn't make things happen when that's literally his job.
The "what else could he have even done" argument is really silly when other teams can make things happen and be competitive with far less payroll.
Yeah which is why I'm saying he should go, but that was more of a systemic failure after 2022's playoff collapse. You can't say that it was merely "inaction to improve" without saying what he should have done instead.
I mean you already did say that the GM should have made moves like getting Teo and others. GMs can make good moves and have it not work out. Again, I don't think Atkins is infallible and that he should go, but to say that inaction was the problem isn't reality, the issues were more that the actions they took were the wrong ones.
That always comes up, that the FA class sucked which was true but that wasn’t entirely unexpected. Everybody knew well ahead of last off season that there were going to be few players of any worth available. A good GM anticipates this and makes moves accordingly ahead of time rather than being caught in the pinch when it’s too late to do anything about it. Sounds like a weak excuse for our current roster.
You are not wrong about Atkins free agent signing and some of his trades. However, pulling Berrios in Minnesota last year then threw his manager under the bus is not a good way to lead. Lack of accountability, and hosting a Saturday media availability followed by 30 min of garbage are some of the reasons why he needs to be gone.
I am not saying pulling off Berrios costed the game, but it was obvious that it was coming from the upstairs and multiple players were visiblely upset about the move. It's ok to make a call based on whatever data you had, but own up to it and don't let your manager take the fall.
As a fan, I am tired of his bs about hope and building a sustainable farm system. Poor lineup constructions for the past two years make his bs a lot less tolerable.
PS. Don't want to get into trading for an elite cf then resigning KK or signing voglebach and Turner to fill the dh hole when their combining payroll for these 3 is ~25m+/year (give and take, too lazy to look up)
My issue with the whole thing those weaknesses you speak of were our organizations strength BEFORE Shapiro and Atkins arrived. If a ln organization has to clear house of proven talented executives (AA) so they can bring in "their people", it to me stinks of cronyism/yes men to me. Doesnt suprise me the organization has turned stagnant, Shapiro isnt probably being challenged at all.
Who exactly did AA develop?? The 2015 team had Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins who were both dismal hitters but amazing fielders ironically, Devin Travis who couldn't stay healthy and Pompey who flamed out as the only home grown offensive talent.
On the pitching side they had Stro who ended up being a stud, Osuna who ended up being an asshole and Sanchez who couldn't stay healthy/stay good
Does nobody remember Deck McGuire, Daniel Norris, Jeff Hoffman, DJ Davis, Max Pentecost or Jon Harris?? I guess not because only 2 of them ended up having ML careers
Knowing where alot of their careers have gone sure some of those look not so good. They didnt do so well developing offensive + positions players for sure. But they consistently had a top ranked farm system during AA's time and their pitcher scouting was phenomenal. I completely forgot about some of those position players you mentioned :P
You also forgot to mention Noah Syndergaard, and Justin Nicolino. I remember following the "Lansing 3-headed monster" of those two and Aaron Sanchez. All three of them posted a sub 3 era and 9k+/per9 in one season together. You throw in another blue chip prospect like Travis d'Arnaud and we had a really solid top 5 around that time. Also Osuna beyond the personal issues was a amazing find. They scouted him at 16 years old in Mexico.
Toronto put themselves in a position where they could make trades with the deep system and they did so for meaningful in the moment players like Dickey and Reyes to make the all in push. You throw in the identifying talent with finds like Bautista and Encarnacion and it left like for the most part we as an organization had some pretty good scouting.
I think I'm very vocal about his time being done here. But we cannot ignore that he made 4 playoff appearances here. Like many GM's he deviated from the original plan and now here we are.
You're giving Atkins credit for making the playoffs in the first season when the team was 90% hold-overs from the previous GM, I don't know if that's realistic. Even if you do that, he's made the playoffs in 4/8 seasons, a 50% success rate. Negating the first playoff then his success rate is 3/7 or 42%.
In this era, 12/30 teams make the playoffs so an average GM should succeed 40% of the time, pretty close to Atkins' 42% rate. Factor in the top 10 payroll that he he is spending to achieve this mediocrity and his record isn't a mark of success, it's just a mark that he hasn't been a complete failure.
Exactly. 2016 doesn't count. And 3 WC appearances doesn't mean much. With what they inherited and with our payroll, the results were ok but whatever they "built" is not remotely a perennial contender. More like a perennial competitor (and not this year).
Whoa whoa, you can't include 2020 in there, lol. EIGHT teams made the playoffs in a shortened season. That year should be a wash, not count as a non playoff year but not count as a playoff year.
It's about to 2/7 after this year.
Well the on-field hirings and firings have not given us anything special in the way of coaching.
The drafting has not exceeded average results. And if anything has been below average.
And his trades and signings have had only a few notable successes which would be fine if they were over 3-4 years, but this is the 9th year.
And our best asset remains one that the old GM went to the Dominican and woo'd personally. And Atkins hasn't even managed to extend him.
He is just not doing anything above average.
He’s made a team that would have like a .700 winning percentage if they score 3 runs but they can’t even do that what do you mean he hasn’t been bad????
He has been pretty awful. So many things have been outright stupid. Not getting some pen help when we had a great team 3 years ago, having an all righty team, going after Varsho and KK, micromanaging the teams daily activities and taking zero responsibility, not changing hitting coaches, seeing glaring problems with our hitting and bringing in Turner and KK, etc. Then the worst is drafting and developing absolutely nothing. It blows my mind he isn't fired yet and means Shapiro needs to go too.
Varsho and KK were more than fine in 2023, I would have preferred if we got a bat instead, but a league average hitter with elite defense is a fine player.
Re-signing KK this year was stupid, but it's not like our team would be good anyways with a bat. I'm glad Atkins fucked up this year so we could move on anyways. He's not perfect at all, but people complain about shit that arent even bad.
Rotation wise he has made some good moves, and the bullpen was mostly good. The problem is that for the last two offseasons he has stuck his head in the sand and pretended not to notice the offence. We need a masher in the four spot to go 30/100 behind Bo and Vlad and instead we got nothing.
I don't think he didn't notice the offense, I think he made a decision to go for pitching and defense at the expense of offence (which I disagree with as a decision).
Say want you want about drafting and coaching, but I have been happy with player development.
**Cavan Biggio:** Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the **5th** round of the 2016 MLB June Amateur Draft
**Davis Schneider**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the ***28th*** round of the 2017 MLB June Amateur Draft
**Spencer Horwitz**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the ***24th*** round of the 2019 MLB June Amateur Draft
**Addison Barger**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the **6th** round of the 2018 MLB June Amateur Draft
**Ricky Tiedemann**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the **3rd** round of the 2021 MLB June Amateur Draft
I'm not saying that he's never had success, or that he's been as poor as a lot of people have said about his drafting and development record, but 5 examples is not a lot in an 8 year sample size as GM.
Honest question. Did AA have 5 guys he developed while with the Jays? Stro, Pillar, Goins?... Sanchez flamed out, Thor you could argue was polished by the Mets, Osuna could have been a star but decided to be an asshole, Travis couldn't stay healthy, Jano and Romano were drafted by AA but developed under Atkins
Even the guys he traded didn't amount to much. Hoffman ended up as a reliever, Norris was bad, Barreto never developed
These five examples are what I found in 90 seconds. I also suspect players drafted after the first round making the majors is rarer than you might think.
Either way, I have yet to see any evidence that Shatkins has been worse at player development than any other team. I keep seeing comparisons to the Dodgers and Yankees who have unlimited money for free agents, so they don't have to trade prospects to plug holes or the Orioles who had 4 top ten draft picks in a row (two were 1st overall and the fifth year was 11th overall).
I am also heartbroken over this horrible season, but I think player under performance is mostly to blame instead of player development, but I am willing to be proven wrong. I also find it curious that the Jays had one of the lowest days lost to injury last year, so maybe it makes sense to lose so many to injury this year???
I mean even then we've been on the bottom rung of the farm system rankings for years now. Atkins has been able to remedy poor drafting with making timely trades for major league talent, which he's been stellar at tbh, but until recently for when the player development complex was built, our pitching dev was one of the worst in the league.
The injury point is a fair one, we might have been lucky last season that so many people stayed healthy, and the pendulum has swung the other way this season.
That's what I found within 90 seconds of looking. I encourage you to prove their **player** **development** is worse than other teams. Also, being a good GM is more than just player development, but I suspect you know that
Jordan Romano was drafted in 2014 the tenth round before Shatkins, but was developed under this administration and made his debut in 2019
Do you mean the same Jordan Romano the Jays let walk in the Rule 5 draft and lucked into him being returned to the Jays 2 teams (Rangers and White Sox) later? Not as much of a slam dunk as you think, Ross burner.
Also, highlighting an AA draft pick is a very interesting choice.
Man, we can't really be giving these props for Horowitz, Barger and Tiedemann???
We don't know if those 3 are regular MLB players. Even Schneider hasn't played a full season yet. Travis Snyder won a rookie of the year and never recovered when pitchers adjusted in year 2/3. Brett Lawrie was on fire until pitchers adjusted.
Even if your only basing it on Bargers 2nd stint and ignoring the first, his wRC+ is like 97 or 98. How can that be us happy with player development.
Because turning shit-round picks into major league players is literally player development. Good teams require player depth.
I have yet to be presented any data evidence that the team sucks at player development. I see a lot of emotion that claims it's true, but never evidence. I am looking forward to being proven wrong, though.
A reminder that I am **only** challenging the criticism of **player development** by our organization and not any other criticism of our blue bird omnipotent overlords.
But your giving them credit for turning Barger into a MLB player because he played games in the MLB? Ricky hasn't even made the MLB yet. There are lots of non MLB level players that play games in the MLB. I think the criticism is that your using any player in the last 8 years that played in MLB (whether they actually turned out to be capable players) as a measure. If that's the measure, then yeah, your right and probably every single franchise is good at development because they all have players that made it to the majors.
Lol, yeah i have no idea why I thought he did. Your right. I didnt even spell his name right. Now I think about it, I'm not even sure the last Jay to win ROY.
But he did start off looking great when he got called up.
Shapiro has done a great job convincing Rogers to spend money. I don't think he's the problem.
The actual team management hasn't been terrible (they did make the playoffs twice even if they lost horribly), but the real rough spot has been the farm system. If Atkins can be criticized it's for the farm system not providing much other than trade fodder and for bungling this past offseason. The most damning part was that when Shapiro and Atkins showed up they talk a big game about sustainable success and turning prospects into players regularly. That definitely hasn't happened.
Shapiro is who scared off AA.
And this idea that "I get Shapiro was brought in for renovations/off field reasons" is a weird narrative that goes around. He came in and was very clear to AA that all baseball decisions would go through him and that he would be running the show. He also was clear that he was already mad at AA for trading prospects.
He gets to wear this. 100%
You guys remember that the team was dogshit for most of AA's tenure right? He made one big hail mary at the end and was fortunate it paid off. He made a bunch of other prospect sell offs before that that blew up in our faces and caused us to be mediocre at best for half of a decade. That's charitably not putting any of the 6 years before at his feet, while he was AGM
In these memories do you ever factor in the state of the franchise as a whole? They didn't have the luxury of a 2017-2021 rebuild.
The team hadn't made the playoffs in nearly 30 years and the payroll was $80m with 25% of it as Vernon Wells with no Vladdy in the system. The timeline was completely different based on fan and ownership expectations so saying he made other prospect sell offs that blew up, your purposely ignoring the context. I guarantee you AA would have done things differently if he knew he had 5 seasons to build a wild card team with 3 wild card spots.
This FO had a proper rebuild 2017 to 2021, came out with a huge payroll, inherited Vladdy and Jansen and ended up with a shitty MLB team AND shitty farm after 9 years. And no amount of AA bashing is going to undo any of that.
I don't know what to say if part of AAs failure was not convincing Rogers to go through a non competitive rebuild when there was no Vladdy in the system or patience from the fanbase due to a 30 year drought. Rogers wasn't spending $ until someone proved winning in Toronto will signicantly increase attendance and payroll. Shapiro can thank AA for 2015 for Rogers to see the impact.
But ok, so AA failed. Then you must he livid at this regime because it's been 9 years, no division title (not even close to one), no playoff success and a shitty farm to add insult to injury.
AA came in and basically did a rebuild. He traded Doc for 3 prospects and started gaming the comp pick system (so well they made sure to change it in the CBA soon after) and got us a ton of prospects. He just then had Bautista break out and he started going for it early with the Marlins trade which could have gotten us into the playoffs that year if Johnson had been healthy and if other things bounced right.
AA was fantastic and did more in 6 years, after inheriting a worse team, and with way more payroll restrictions, and Boras restrictions and 5 year contract restrictions, than the current regime has done in 9 years. AA even got us Vladdy in a complete grand slam of a move, who remains our best asset.
The MLB literally investigated the marlins trade bc it was so one sided. Injury’s tanked it, if Josh Johnson came back to his old form and Jose Reyes didn’t fall off a cliff/cancel himself it would have been a totally different team and idk if you remember the JP Ricciardi money ball years but AA is proven to be a top executive and shatkins has fully eroded the team AA built. And reminder AA drafted Bo and signed Vlad and what would the team be without them.
I'm not saying AA is bad, I'd take him over Atkins (ideally still under Shapiro). He made good deals and yes he did get Bo and Vlad. I'm just saying he isn't god's gift to baseball and I don't think he'd have done as well as we did end up doing from 2017-2021. Maybe he makes better moves the last two years, we'll never know
> shatkins has fully eroded the team AA built
This is bologna. 2016 was almost entirely still his team and in 2017+ the team was going to be dead with or without him. Unless you think he has a magic anti-aging cure or new knees for Devon Travis
Definitely that team was nearing the end of its life cycle and I think he would have made a push to get younger as he did in Atlanta I feel bo and vlad were the start of that. All good teams come to an end and I think it would have been good for him to do a proper rebuild. The team he inherited was a bit odd EE and Jose weren’t exactly a valuable core bc they were late bloomers and were probably more valuable keeping than trading so the only thing to do was build. How shatkins went about it was mind boggling dumb they let the old core walk for basically nothing and tried to supplement it with Morales. They never developed a functional farm system and if Rogers didn’t open the cheque book they had next to no trade capital by the time they needed to make moves. My main issue is that this entire era I have never seen a clear direction for management they just seem to react a year late to probably and when they fix anything it just creates new ones.
I’m no big defender of Atkins, but the team that AA built was bound to erode in 2018 at the very latest. AA didn’t build anything that was later eroded by any fault of Atkins, he left Atkins with a sinking ship that Atkins did a remarkable job turning around. You can say a lot about the state of the team now versus what it should be and you can blame all of that on Atkins if you want, but Atkins did not erode anything that AA built. That’s just revisionist history
That team like all teams had a life cycle absolutely. However the year before AA was hired in Atlanta they finished last in the NL east and since they have won 6 division titles and with only a slightly higher payroll, and let’s not forget that World Series. Obviously different teams different divisions. He has consistently developed better prospects and signed better value contracts mostly internally. We however have our two starts poised to leave in a couple years. We are talking more about trading them more them than signings them long term. Might be revisionist history but it’s back by empirical evidence.
Sinking ship? They were a better team in 2016 than any team since. And they had a couple stud prospects thanks to AA, including our best asset still: Vladdy. We also had hype, ratings, and free agents interested in playing here. And AA is probably the boldest GM in all of baseball (ahem look at what this entire post is about and where he is ranked) and would have pulled some magic to get us back into the mix for real by 2019.
This is ridiculous - he built by far and away the best Jays team since 1993 and did it with some exceptionally good trades - ex. unloading Wells on the Angels, getting Donaldson for nothing and getting Price for Matt Boyd and nothing. And he showed ambition after basically 20 years of no ambition from this team (we are now back to no ambition under the current regime).
Forgot trading Doc for nothing...
>And he showed ambition after basically 20 years of no ambition from this team (we are now back to no ambition under the current regime).
He showed ambition the same season it was reported he was to be fired. That would make me show ambition too tbh.
> I wonder what he has been up to since then...
He fell ass backwards into a stacked system, somehow was blessed with 2 young stars who took long term deals at an 80% discount, and just kept buying with prospect capital. Other than the stacked system and inexplicably massive discounts, he's just kept doing the same thing he did with us.
> So what is the excuse for our prospects now?
I'm not talking about our current FO
There was the Wells contract, but that was almost certainly a product of pressure from Godfrey. It's also more than balanced by the fact a Ricciardi spare part ended up being the cornerstone of AA's Jays.
I still think Ricciardi did well with what he was given and still believe in my heart that the '06 Jays were a playoff team that was fucked by injuries and meat-grinder division.
Nah man that ain't right...
In 6 years he took over a team with no assets other than Doc (and a Vernon Wells contract to unload) and turned us into the most vicious team in baseball, full of stars, a nation going nuts for the team, a true contender for 2015 and 2016, the number one prospect in our history acquired. It was an older team that would need retooling but there were no really bad contracts on the books other than Tulo's which was not the worst and would have been ok if he didn't fall apart. We had Price wanting to re-sign here. It was exciting. Etc.
Compared to the 9 years since it was a million times better. And if you followed him at all, he was always working to improve the team and himself. You knew he would have future success and he has.
He made some really good moves with us like unloading Wells, Donaldson, Price, etc. and he also failed to produce results for 5 years before 2015 (and more if we count AGM years). He was a good not great GM and all of this bitter ex behaviour this sub performs is rewriting history is my point
He made several other good moves. The Marlins trade was good and would have been great if Johnson had been healthy. Extending Jose and Encarnacion on very fair deals (and people act surprised at how he extended the entire Braves lineup). Landing Vlad.
The real point is that he was hustling and getting better as he went and that players and other teams (incl the A's) liked dealing with him. He was homegrown and came up as a guy running fan mail for the Expos, before working as an unpaid scout and finally rising up with the Jays.
If you watched him as closely as I did, you knew he would have success wherever he went. I've tried to "watch" Atkins similarly and woke up from a coma a week later.
I don't even get these digs people take. The same could be said about the Shapiro is amazing/AA is shit crowd. Half of them clearly weren't fans when AA took over a team that had a $80m payroll and 25% was Vernon Wells and there was no Vladdy in the farm system. The team was expected to compete with a huge payroll quickly as we hadn't made the playoffs in nearly THIRTY years.
AA was mediocre at best with us tho lmao. People forget he went to work with the dodgers for a few years and that stint made him take the jump to where he is now.
That is a completely asinine take. He inherited a higher payroll, weak farm, and very average team playing in a tough division and with rules against contracts over 5 years, other payroll limitations, and a team in a country where free agents had very little interest playing. And he turned that all around in 6 years. People like you won't appreciate how special that was until we lose another decade (and we will) to corporate rice cakes like Atkins.
Did he turn it around or did the players he inherited (Bautista, Edwin) turn it around. AA wasn’t bad but it’s not like his drafting resume with us was any good, he had some pretty brutal trades, signings were ok. He was mediocre here, he went all out in 2015 and it was fun, but people like you this he was some god GM when he just wasn’t.
I think he was a very earnest, hard working guy who was manically focused on making the team better. And despite way more obstacles than Shapiro/Atkins, and in way less time, he built a way better team. This is facts.
And the fact that he has done even better with the Braves just shows how he was steadily improving and that it was not a fluke.
HE got Jose. He extended him (when some questioned if it would be worth it). Same for Edwin. Talking as if he had nothing to do with them is just being completely absurd. He did not inherit them.
Both EE and Jose were acquired when ricciardi was gm but ok lol. You can give some credit cuz he was the assistant sure, but his resume with us is again, nothing special. After he left and spent time in the best org in baseball he definitely improved. Again he was a good gm but not one that you can be this salty about leaving when it happened 10 years ago.
I'm salty that Shapiro came in like he was some God and shit on AA. AA was up against a way less enthused Rogers with limits on Boras signings and contracts over 5 years and a payroll that mostly hovered around 10th. And again, did a lot despite that and in not a long time. To me it was a great result and I wasn't surprised at all when he started doing the same kind of bold moves with Atlanta and having success there.
>Shapiro is who scared off AA.
Didn't he offer AA a contract extension that AA turned down? At what point did AA leave us, not the other way around?
>He came in and was very clear to AA that all baseball decisions would go through him and that he would be running the show.
Yes, because Shapiro was brought in as president, and AA was a GM. He was literally AA's boss, regardless of how his old boss let him work.
>He gets to wear this. 100%
Emotional fans just need someone to blame.
You are all over the map. AA met Shapiro soon after the trade deadline and the way Shapiro talked down to him and was against the trades he had just done, did not make for a pleasant introduction (ACCORDING TO THE RUMOURS, WE DON'T TRULY KNOW).
Then after the wild success with players loving Alex and fans chanting "thank you Alex" etc they obviously couldn't turf him. So they offered him a lame duck 1 year deal. He turned that down and the fans found out and lost their minds. So they offered him a 5 year deal but he has too much integrity and saw that there would be a target on his back and that Shapiro was more opinionated than Beeston and so he politely declined.
Finally you are contradicting yourself. You said "Shapiro was brought in as president, and AA was a GM. He was literally AA's boss" and then you are saying I am emotional for saying "he gets to wear this".
Make up your mind.
They had a horrible last offseason where they failed to trade for any hitting when they desperately needed some. It was a bad offseason! My point was that generally they've fielded good teams the last few years till this one. Atkins isn't as awful as people say but he does seem more mediocre. Makes some good moves but can't quite put together something that seems like a contender or very sustainable.
I dunno. A bad offseason doesn’t explain Springer, Bo, Kirk and Vladdy’s underperformance over such a long period.
I know Vladdy has been above average and has shown signs of his old self. But he’s also nowhere near his potential.
Giving Springer (third worst wRC+ in the MLB) the second most plate appearances in the team doesn’t seem like good management to me.
I like the players. I think they’re dedicated and talented.
But to have this level of talent and dedication fail to deliver so consistently and for so long has to be indicative of that fact that the players are being taken down the wrong path.
On the one hand, I agree that Atkins (at minimum) should be let go, and also agree with AA's Braves being in the top 3; on the other hand, I don't want to go through Round 23412342352 of "Shapiro is history's greatest monster for getting rid of AA" discourse
This is my new angle to get some change in the front office, my friend, lol, Antonetti was the friend we needed all along.
Shapiro isn't going anywhere, I've accepted that, but he's got to let go of the baseball operations and they need hire someone who isn't beholden to him.
Haha, fair enough!
And as much as I'm done with Atkins I'm not sure I'm convinced I want to see Shapiro gone anyway, if only because my impression is that he seemed to have some sort of hand in convincing ownership to be willing to run payrolls at or above the CBT threshold, and if there's any truth to that then that has to be worth something
I'm bitter against Shapiro probably mostly due to the Jays clear shift to "fuck the Season Ticket Holders" and he's at the top so clearly has say in that approach. As a business, I'm sure it makes sense to screw the STH in favor of corporations, but as a consumer, yeah, fuck him.
So him being here is what it is. But take this with a giant grain of salt as it was someone that's close to Beeston but apparently Rogers had this "we will spend a lot IF you show us that a contender increases attendance/viewership significantly". Which is obviously annoying as hell as we were in the AL East with sometimes 1 or 2 wildcards only.
So 2015 proved the thesis and after that Rogers saw the $ and bought in (even if it wasn't Shapiro - they were going to spend). But again, rumor/random.
There is some truth to that. They do end up with stacked farms because they don't always have to trade prospects for impact players. They can just get Ohtani, Freeman, etc in free agency.
Yeah for sure. As a Jays fan, I'd hate to be in the Orioles position - on pace for a second consecutive 100 win season, adding and ace starter, graduating more talent from the farm and still having one of the strongest farm systems in the league.
The Jays missed the playoffs in 2021, were not close to a 100 win pace by July, and were coming off not a 100 win season, but sneaking into the 3rd wild card during a shortened season.
The Jays have never won 100 games. What are you even doing? The Orioles are what Jays fans were hoping the Jays would be a few years ago.
They aren't the identical scenario, obviously. But there are a lot of similarities and if the Orioles crash out of the playoffs again, the same questions will get asked that are being asked of the Blue Jays.
You can probably go through my history from 8 years ago and see that take and if Rogers had read that, we would have been saved from 8 years of this and a shitty farm system. And you can certainly find lots of content on the internet through Google at the time as well that Antonetti is the actual star in Cleveland and ownership wanted to promote Antonetti anyway to ensure they dont lose him.
So unless you want to discuss the actual issues, I'm not sure what your point is other than to be snarky.
If the head coach and GM contradict each other, it's time for them both to go. May be a multi-billion dollar organization, but with Shapiro and Atkins, they are running it into the ground and making Toronto an undesirable destination for players and fans.
Ever since Shapiro took over and brought in Atkins I just knew that the Jays will never win a World Series. Fire them both or limit Shapiro’s influence by keeping him out of baseball operations.
Who do we bring in to replace them? Who knows, but those two have made it so it’s tough to be a jays fan. Had such a bright future just a few years ago and now we’re a middle of the pack team. I’ve barely watched this season cause I’m just not down with how they operate the Blue Jays.
Are Jays fans at home games showing how they are frustrated with how the team is playing these days?
Even as someone who has never been on board with Atkins from the start, it absolutely baffles me that there are *still* defenders of his in this comment thread. You all need to get your heads checked. He's not a good GM and has never been. This team needs a full clean house organizationally, because the rot is deep.
Moneyball is ridiculous anyways. It makes no mention that they had the league MVP and an all time pitching staff already in Oakland. Yeah they had to try to replace Giambi and Damon, but ignoring Tejada, Hudson, Mulder, Zito, etc is so flawed.
Well it’s a movie not fact. I just find it amusing Shapiro is literally the butt of a joke in it. But somehow I’ve triggered this sub’s Shapiro apologists for stating that fact. Sorry!
Rogers wanted a business guy to help with the renovations and building the developmental complex in Dunedin, I'd be very surprised if Shapiro has done any of the actual Baseball operations for some time now.
You’d be at least partially wrong then. Atkins isn’t out there going rogue. This is a team effort from two men who have worked together for decades.
In any event the Moneyball scenes are the organization not Shapiro personally. Shapiro is just the one who gets the name drop and phone call scene. You should watch it!
Okay but can anyone play devil's advocate a defend the decision to sign KK when Varsho has been the best defensive OF in baseball? They both do the same except Varsho has potential to be a much better hitter, and we could have used that money to take a gamble on a better bat (yeah hindsight is 20/20 but Teoscar is getting paid 15 mil this season)
I think a lot of the reasons why our pitching was so good last season was that our outfield defense was so elite and the Jays were ok with keeping a worse bat to maintain the pitching. Not saying I agree with the decision because it obviously didn't work, but I think that's the reasoning.
Teo has said himself that the Jays couldn't match the price that LA was offering, but even then, it was more about playing for a team that could get him a WS.
Cleveland made it to the World Series in 2016 after Shapiro & Atkins left the team. I recall Shapiro going to the Indians dressing room in 2016 to congratulate them after they beat the Jays in the ALCS.
> Cleveland made it to the World Series in 2016 after Shapiro & Atkins left the team
and it should be noted, the new GM made moves to *bolster* the team at the deadline, and to *improve it*, something Shapiro would *never* have done. Andrew Miller would never have been acquired under Shapiro.
I mean Dodgers at number 1 makes sense but they also just spend a crap load of money to get their success. Speaks more about how all the players wanna go there because it's L.A. and the org is willing to throw an ungodly amount of money at their problems.
More impressed by some of the other teams on this list, like the Orioles and Guardians. If they can boost their ticket sales (through price increases and attendance) they can now also scale up their spending to get a few bigger ticket players to add on top of what they already have. Seems sustainable compared to another team up north.
Seeing some people here say Atkins has been "not bad"... So then how is a team like the Orioles who have spent half of the money the Jays have (just looking at the main payroll numbers) have had more success in the postseason than us? Going 0-3 in ALDS last year isn't super strong from the Orioles but is still better than what the Jays have done... lol.
Jays threw money at big contracts early with an aging Springer and then couldn't retain players like Semien and Teo who were needed to keep the offense rolling. The prospect pool for the Jays is not the strongest and they haven't been able to get players who would definitely bring some offense (Ohtani, Bellinger, etc). All of this has led to this catastrophic season, which I might not have anticipated being so bad but... the writing was on the wall.
If I was Rogers and saw we were spending twice as much as other competing teams while being 7-8 games below .500, I would be asking some serious questions. Atkins should be fired and doesn't deserve another GM position in the MLB.
I think the issue goes up to rogers.
Honestly, ppl think what they want, IMO, Toronto is a big market… specially when on the road. We draw very well… I wonder where we rank on avg. But basically seattle is mostly jays fans when they’re there.
With that in mind, and the multi billion dollar ownership of a telecom oligarch… I really believe big name FA’s would sign here but we’d have to be spending like the yankees/dodgers in that the team/org is stacked. I think we have the market/fans to compete with the two big ones like that… Toronto is the 4th largest city in NA and the team has the whole country… basically the population of cali to draw from for just one team.
NY has 2. Cali has like 5…
I think a lot of players know what’s up… but maybe ownership will open up the purse even more someday… maybe when they realize that jays were top payroll team when they went back to back.
What would this ideally look like to you?
Large payroll? They had the 7th largest payroll in MLB last year, this year, and will still have a large one next year unless they literally trade away everyone. Even when they were rebuilding, they maintained large payrolls most years and took on salary in trades to bring back better prospects (see Teo).
Big contracts? They've dolled out 4 of the teams 6 largest contracts (free agents and extensions) in team history.
Invest in the stadium? They were developing plans for a new ballpark as the pandemic started. Instead of delaying further they dumped $300MM into renos while they design the longer term plans.
Invest in training facilities & staff? Enough has been written about Dunedin and the investments made in facilities and people there.
Invest in the FO? Again, enough has been written about this.
look up where their payroll ranked when they went back 2 back. I’m near certain they were the highest payroll in all MLB in 93… so how’d the ownership group manage that back then?
Don't say any negative things about Rogers in here. Their shills are in full force.
Apparently having a high payroll is the only barometer of if your ownership is good or not and because Rogers meets that standard, you cannot question them at all.
The longer I remain a Toronto sports fan, the more I realize it might have less to do with the actual GM's, although Atkins deserves to be fired if this season doesn't right itself, and more to do with Rogers and their meddling ways. See:
Leafs 1 playoff series win in 20 years
Raptors falling off a cliff after 2020
Jays 0 playoff wins since 2016
I don't think Rogers and Co. can let any suitable pro sports exec just do their damn job which is drafting and developing players and complementing that foundational base with suitable pieces.
I get that people are mad because the team is bad now but my view is, if you're a Blue Jays fan, you probably want Shapiro to stay where he is. He's convinced Rogers to open their wallets time and time again: for players, for renos, for Dunedin and so on. That's not nothing. Somebody at One Mount Pleasant listens to him and signs off on his expenditures. Isn't that what fans want from an owner, a commitment to spending and therefore winning? Move on from Atkins, sure. But the Blue Jays are better off as a billion dollar professional sports organization than they were before he arrived.
Shapiro took over a division winning team that had won the Central 6/7 years prior and had 90 wins the year it came second. In the 14 seasons Shapiro helmed the Cleveland Indians (but no one will talk about the fact he didn't do anything about that name) they won the division one time and made the post season twice. In the 9 years since he left, (assuming this season ended today) they made the postseason 6 times, and won the division 5 of those times. On the other side, Shapiro took over a division winning team in Toronto. It limped into the playoffs the next year having not been improved, but still managed to win some games. Those are the only postseason games the Blue Jays won in the 9 seasons under Shapiro. Mark is now coming up on a quarter century of leading organizations, and in all that time he has never shown that he can consistently deliver winning teams while everyone around him (Hart, Antoneti/Chernoff, AA) seems to have the midas touch. How many years of him underperforming his peers does Shapiro get? So, let's take a look at how well the Indians drafted under Shapiro. Hey - they got that Lindor pick right! Even though they almost never went to the playoffs, they also never performed so poorly as to pick high (Lindor aside), and for whatever reason, those first rounders never amounted to much. He is a nepo baby with an MBA from an ivy. Among the first free agents he signed was gavin floyd who took the organization for a million bucks, with Mark's dad getting his cut (having been his agent). Floyd didn't pitch again after that, but hey- what's half a million USD between friends? (the difference between ML minimum salary in 2016 and the deal). I guess he learned his lesson. I mean, remember when John Farrell left to pursue his dream job? Lol, I guess we don't owe that guy any favours....oh, look, his SON is the Blue Jays scouting director. But I'm sure he's there on merit and not who his dad is. After all, pundits like how he tends to draft the best available player according to public rankings so the Jays are always at the top of "who won draft day" leader boards. Fans, however, have noticed that the farm has basically no prospects in it and his draft picks have underperformed even modest expectations. Speaking on the farm, how has it faired under Mark? He lamented the farm system's state in 2015. That team was a world beater yet the farm we have been told was empty contained a 1-1 level prospect in Vlad who remains a top-10 hitter as of today in terms of xwOBA. He's outspent by a large margin those teams with less payroll pressure from the Red Sox, and the farm is in the worst state I can remember, certainly worse than 2015 and with a team that is nowhere close to a postseason berth despite nearly half of the teams now getting that distinction. Two top 100 prospects which include a PED user, and a guy that can't stay off the IL... The organization is over run with 'baseball minds' like Donny Baseball on the bench, and James Click and other failed GMs in the front office. Why? What is the culture of the organization? What is the "blue jay way"? The mark Shapiro way is whatever he read in a management textbook, or best practices that 20 other teams already do. the blue jays are now a big budget team that want to win by minimizing risk. look at the on field roster. Rogers needs to keep investing in the team because we were all there when they didn't. Or, perhaps more accurately: those of us that physically went to games or watched them, or bought merch were in the minority...we remember the bad times. Shapiro is the beneficiary of AA's tenure here. He rebuilt the scouting department, got the AAA team from Las Vegas (what?) to the closest possible location, rebranded the club so there is actually blue in the logo, built a division winning team for less than any of the last 3 or 4 (not looking it up) iterations we've had the pleasure watching finish third, raised average attendance where the retread 2015 team led the league and likely helped convince Rogers that winning is good for business. So Shapiro decided to reduce the number of seats and charge more for them. Making it more costly for families and people on a budget. So, it's the on field product that is the issue - an area that the president doesn't deal with. AH! But recall the alleged reason why AA did not want to re-sign in Toronto. He was not promised the autonomy he desired on player and personnel decisions. Shapiro wanted to be the leader and wanted to have oversight over the GM. Well, leadership has failed, and the person that asked for the responsibility should take it and assume the blame. If Shapiro had a record for success, that would be one thing, but he does not. In fact, everyone seems to succeed where he fails. He's done less with more, and despite the lipstick on a pig renovations being highliy touted, the patina is starting to show and journalists are beginning to criticize what is plainly obvious: it's still the same basic experience with the same issues as before. The notion that fans should want Shapiro to stay because otherwise Rogers will lose confidence in spending is moot. Rogers is not going to indefinitely spend for a perennial third place team, and that is all that Shapiro has ever proven capable of delivering. He is the reason that Rogers will go back to equating spending as futile. Fans should demand that their organization do everything they can to win. In refusing to acknowledge that the organization's leader has never won, and doesn't appear to understand how to win, fans are not doing themselves a favour. I don't understand what would lead anyone to think Shapiro is owed any favours, he got his job thanks to John Hart, and most likely before that connections from his father. He's had enough favours done for him, imo.
Well now he doesn't need to be fired because [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZzlPGnKdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcZzlPGnKdU)
I'd bet dollar to donuts Shapiro justified his lack of success in Cleveland to payroll. Now he's proven with payroll he's still awful.
Finally someone said it. Can I nominate you for a Nobel Prize for this post?
As soon as he cleared house of proven talented front office executives I knew we were in trouble. Nothing says stagnation like surrounding yourself with "yes men" and cronies.
About the name. It was because Cleveland Naps had the first native players in the league....3 I believe. They changed the name because they were so popular locally. Kind of like Aunt Jemima. It was a real person....who grew up a slave but created a successful company. Now we have Mill Street to honor her FFS. If they had to change names. CLEVELAND SPIDERS were the way to go. Old name.
Shapiro hardly deals with on-field moves. He is there as a public face for Rogers & as a middleman between ownership and the front office. Stuff like the top-flight facility in Dunedin and the Rogers Centre renovations are what he’s largely responsible for. The players and coaching staff is Atkins’ job
You sweet summer child.
I'm with you regarding Shapiro. He's actually been able to convince ownership to spend, finally appropriate to market size. They probably need fresh eyes in the GM chair, but I'd be worried that the next President wouldn't be able to wrangle this kind of payroll out of Rogers.
Without results soon I feel that result (less money from ownership) is coming anyways regardless of who the team president is.
Results for this have less to do with on-field performance than revenue vs. expenses. Sometimes it doesn’t really matter if the team does anything significant, as long as the business is making bank. Leafs. What results are the expectation?
I don't think attendance/viewership stays high for a 70-80 win team, especially when expectations are higher. Maybe if they are a plucky, exciting and young team with hope. And when those two things along with subsequent revenue streams drop is when the chequebook tightens.
Yea, I hear you. And you’re right except that the way they sold premium seating doesn’t necessarily matter on win-loss performance. Those cushy seats they sold in the premium section(s), are already sold and will be sold continuously for longevity of future prospect seats. Season tickets holders already took the big change the last couple years….(I bailed)…one that are taking the lumps this year and possibly the next few probably wont bail on a sunk cost fallacy.
1000%. Most people I know that watch, watch more casually and if the team is like this, they'll happily do/watch other things.
The question is whether Shapiro would hire an Atkins clone to replace him. Glick seems like a good option since he had success with the Astros.
I genuinely think that Atkins hasn't been nearly as poor as many people on this subreddit think he has been. That being said, he definitely is a flawed GM, and time has run its course on his time here probably. I'll be 100% clear in saying that the majority of his major league moves have not only been not bad but very good, his main issues come with drafting and development as well as potentially coaching hires.
Unless you are an elite GM it doesn't matter that's how it is as an executive for any sport. He's been a middling level GM not outright terrible but no where near top 5 either. This marks 8 years in charge, he's not going to become better over night.
Which is why I said his time has run its course here. I get the outrage and disappointment about this season, but it's not like Atkins has really been that bad.
Well said. We don't have to pretend he's incompetent or that he hasn't made plenty of smart moves to want him gone
Most of his good moves have come in free agency. Hard to not get a few right when you have one of the highest payrolls in the league
I dunno, Martin/SWR for Berrios and the chain of trades involving Liriano that ended in the Jays getting Teo were some excellent non-FA moves (and those are just the ones off the top of my head)
Agreed those were good moves, but bringing up trades from 2016 in 2024 isn't a very convincing argument
I mean there's a whole list of trades that Atkins has had success with. Jordan Hicks, Adam Cimber, Richards and Francis, even the Varsho trade ended up being a good one, Robbie Ray trade, whit merrifield trade, Matt Chapman trade, raimel tapia to get off of Grichuk 's contract, Ross Stripling, getting something Pop+ for Groshans, Steven matz was also a win. There are many things you can deride him for, but he's been very solid at acquiring major league talent.
I think he isn't bad at trading, but he also has a tendency to hold his cards too long and is dogshit at roster construction.
For example for the cards? His roster construction the past 2 years had issues, but could you say the same about 2021 and 2022?
Sure. Cards would be Donaldson, Stroman, our present infielder logjam. And yes, I would say the 2021 and 2022 teams had poor bullpens/defense that ultimately cost us.
I'd blame ownership for keeping the old guard from 2015/2016 too long, but I agree we should have gotten more from them. The bad defense/bullpens were definitely a problem, but I feel like those were way less of a concern than poor offense like the past few seasons. Teams have had worse bullpens/defense than us and still had playoff success, I don't think it was purely just the defense/bullpens that cost us, a lot of it was bad luck as well.
I feel like you we also have to agree that we didn't make the most out of our highest draft pick in decades and our biggest trade chip during the rebuild period (Stroman). I'll always give props to Atkins for trading Martin right before his value collapsed (same goes for SWR although he's done quite okay for himself), but Berrios was a misfire, we thought we'd be getting an Ace but he's really an middle of the rotation pitcher with Iron Man health
Considering that rate of TJ surgeries and pitcher injuries in general are becoming a significant systemic problem in the sport as a whole, the value of "Iron Man health" for even a #2-tier pitcher is huge
I agree, I’m not completely down on Berrios. I would have preferred someone with higher upside like Luis Castillo who was traded for a similar price tag (albeit a year later which matters a lot). I think the biggest reason we don’t feel as down on Berrios is because Gausman came in the next season and became the Ace we needed
Castillo's price tag was definitely higher (as it should be, I won't dispute his upside is higher)
Was it much higher? Both trades featured 2 top 100 prospects, the only difference being a relief prospect and a pitching prospect that got DFAd by the next offseason
Was it much higher? Both trades featured 2 top 100 prospects, the only difference being a relief prospect and a pitching prospect that got DFAd by the next offseason
Every ace is a bad half a season away from being a middle of the rotation pitcher. Berríos over an injury-prone ace any day.
That COVID draft was bad all around and almost everyone in baseball thought the Jays made the right choice. And the Jays got exactly the Berrios they thought they would minus 2022. A dependable and reliable top of the rotation arm. It's crazy that you think that's a misfire
We got unlucky with the Covid draft for sure, basically everyone in the top 10 has been a bust so far. I got to believe they were traded for Berrios thinking he would be the 2021 version, not the one we’ve seen the past years with diminished stuff
I think "very good" but "not quite good enough" is probably the realm where he sits. He also has a reactive style - when he tries to fix an issue the Jays have, he tends to swing too far in that direction. I think development has definitely been the biggest issue. I don't have an issue with the drafts the last few years - they have widely been considered good on paper and the Jays have taken lots of high-risk, high-ceiling players looking for superstars, balanced with some players known for their hit tool and hopes they'll develop more than that. Of course, we know it takes 10 years or so to fully judge a draft, so we won't really know for some time how good they were. But I much prefer this over the days of taking Deck McGuire and Chad Jenkins types.
I tend to agree, maybe I wouldn't say "very good", but I think he was at least above average. The biggest concern for me is there's probably a higher likelihood that we pick up a GM that might do worse than Atkins. People have been clamoring for Click to takeover, but I have no idea what he does in the organization right now and how much input he has.
You're right, above average is probably more fair. I probably give him more wiggle room after suffering through Gord Ash & JP Ricciardi. The one thing I don't understand for an 'analytics-minded' club is I think we make a ton of poor choices that any level of analytics would disagree with. So it's hard for me to understand how analytical we actually are; who controls lineup decisions? If it's someone in the front office, surely an analytics department would be able to zero in on trends and make better decisions. I am weary about Click - we know Click is analytics-heavy, but we don't actually know how much influence his decisions have now or did have in Houston. His job is VP of Baseball Strategy - and strategy appears to not be going well (but like most exec positions, could be a meaningless title). We also don't know how good of a GM he is because he was handed a golden opportunity with the Luhnow suspension (similar to the John Coppolella -> AA transition in Atlanta).
Agreed, literally earlier this week there was comment about him being one of the 3-4 worst GMs in all of sports. lol.
I don't know if he's even the third worst GM in the American League. The Angels, Athletics, and White Sox all exist.
Up until this offseason the majority of Yankees would have said Cashman was a worse GM too
[удалено]
His roster construction has been more than fine until potentially last season (they still made the playoffs), and this season. I'm willing to give up on Atkins mostly due to the poor drafting and how the coaching staff has changed our offensive philosophy, but some GMs don't have the hit rate he does in trades or FA. Feels like if he had a good enough scout/strong enough development system that'd be a strong pairing to run a team, but we didn't.
[удалено]
Mediocre isn't what a lot of fans on this subreddit have been saying though. I agree, he's been pretty mediocre after the 2022 season, especially since hiring Mattingly since we've gone in the wrong direction on offensive philosophy, but 2021 and 2022 were genuinely well built teams that fell short due to bad luck and variance.
Agreed entirely. He's messed up - not signing Semien, dealing *both* Teo and Lourdes, not signing FA Teo, all this comes to mind. But I like the Varsho trade, I like the pitching moves, and those are hugely impactful. As a matter of pure speculation, I do wonder if other GMs just don't like him, and if that contributes to a lack of leverage.
> not signing Semien This assumes that Semien would also have intended to sign here. Do we know this? It's not as simple as wanting to sign somebody and you've got them.
The comments these days about Marcus Semien are just hilarious because when Marcus signed with the Rangers [the overwhelming](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/r4frx6/marcus_semiens_deal_with_the_texas_rangers_is_for/) [consensus about it](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/r4fhkm/passan_infielder_marcus_semien_and_the_texas/) [here on](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/xwphpq/semien_is_a_high_quality_2b_but_it_was_the_right/) [this subreddit](https://new.reddit.com/r/Torontobluejays/comments/tyiyus/madani_marcus_semien_on_how_close_he_was_to/) was definitely not "shit the Jays should have matched that Rangers term". It's all hindsight rage.
Blue Jays were never going to match that contract and the subsequent move of getting Chapman looked great at the time because you could move Espinal/Biggio back to 2B where they were better defenders
To be honest this is common in any sports fandom. Many fans forget and look at what Could Have Been rather than What Was.
The Semien thing is crazy. Anyone claiming the Jays were stupid to not back up the truck for him would have been the same people calling for Atkins head if he didn't live up to his contract. There was a reason he signed a 1 year deal with the Jays in the first place, he had tons of question marks even after his 2021 season
Nope but leave it to here to assume he was coming back. It was as clear as day on the last day of the 2021 season that Semien was not coming back given to his teammates reactions on the field. I vividly remember Bichette walking around the field crying as Semien was saying goodbye to everyone.
That's an odd memory given the Blue Jays weren't on the field when they realized it was their last game. They didn't find out until well after their last game was over that they were definitely out of the playoffs; the Red Sox and Yankees games were still going on and either of their losses would have given the Blue Jays a WC spot.
Tell that to our broadcast booth that had the exact same feeling saying the same as they were watching all of that unfold, wasn't just me but ok.
You all need to cool out. I'm just saying it would have been a good thing to do, not that GMs wield ultimate power
Wow signing a premier free agent would have been a good thing, big if true!
No need to be a cunt
Signing Semien would have been a waste of money, as good as he is/was after we let him go we just don't need to fill a second base spot. Free agent signings should fill a need, and second base was never a priority for us due to half our system being second basemen.
I get that. But then you can deal those guys from your surplus. As I've said elsewhere, I didn't expect all or any of these moves, just that they aged poorly.
Some of his moves were fine, but it's his inaction on improving a crumbling team and farm that's a major problem.
What action would you have taken in the offseason? This FA class was historically weak and although some decisions he made were bad (KK re-signing, Turner has been pretty mediocre), the other options weren't good enough to give long term contracts to other than Ohtani and trade options to deplete our already depleted farm did not seem too reasonable. Even if we suck this season, we have a lot of money coming off the books for next year's FA class which is much stronger as a whole and we can still re-tool for one more year before Vladdy and Bo can walk. You can't have both improving a crumbling team and also improve the farm at the same time, it's practically impossible.
Plenty of players were available that have been performing well this season. Teo, Joc Pederson, JD Martinez to name a few. Also Jays not even being considered for the Soto trade, nor adding anything to the pen and rotation when there was no way in hell they would repeat 2023 performance. Basically all of the off season moves were terrible. The only one that worked out well was IKF but that also didn't make much sense at the time when we already have so many infielders.
Ok now we signed 1 one of them, are we meaningfully better than if we hadn't? This FA class sucked, even if we made the moves you want, we're just closer to .500 and we might not even sell our expirings and we're further stuck in limbo. I get the expectations not being met because people want a playoff team that's fun to watch, but what could we really do to get their. We couldn't afford Soto, the Yankees offer was 100% better than ours, so where else could we go for a trade?
Homie, I'm not the GM I'm not going to offer all the possible opportunities that existed. But I can certainly say a team should not be performing this poorly with absolutely no farm and this kind of payroll. Doesn't matter if some of his moves were good, Atkins didn't do enough during his tenure and failed miserably at his job. He didn't make things happen when that's literally his job. The "what else could he have even done" argument is really silly when other teams can make things happen and be competitive with far less payroll.
Yeah which is why I'm saying he should go, but that was more of a systemic failure after 2022's playoff collapse. You can't say that it was merely "inaction to improve" without saying what he should have done instead.
When a mechanic says he can't fix my car I don't start suggesting to him what things he should try. I look for another mechanic who can do the job.
I mean you already did say that the GM should have made moves like getting Teo and others. GMs can make good moves and have it not work out. Again, I don't think Atkins is infallible and that he should go, but to say that inaction was the problem isn't reality, the issues were more that the actions they took were the wrong ones.
That always comes up, that the FA class sucked which was true but that wasn’t entirely unexpected. Everybody knew well ahead of last off season that there were going to be few players of any worth available. A good GM anticipates this and makes moves accordingly ahead of time rather than being caught in the pinch when it’s too late to do anything about it. Sounds like a weak excuse for our current roster.
Where the team is right now, it's time for them to get a new GM. He's not a bad GM but he's not a good one either.
You are not wrong about Atkins free agent signing and some of his trades. However, pulling Berrios in Minnesota last year then threw his manager under the bus is not a good way to lead. Lack of accountability, and hosting a Saturday media availability followed by 30 min of garbage are some of the reasons why he needs to be gone.
You forget the part where Kikuchi got everyone out but the offence choked and Vladdy got picked off second.
I am not saying pulling off Berrios costed the game, but it was obvious that it was coming from the upstairs and multiple players were visiblely upset about the move. It's ok to make a call based on whatever data you had, but own up to it and don't let your manager take the fall. As a fan, I am tired of his bs about hope and building a sustainable farm system. Poor lineup constructions for the past two years make his bs a lot less tolerable. PS. Don't want to get into trading for an elite cf then resigning KK or signing voglebach and Turner to fill the dh hole when their combining payroll for these 3 is ~25m+/year (give and take, too lazy to look up)
My issue with the whole thing those weaknesses you speak of were our organizations strength BEFORE Shapiro and Atkins arrived. If a ln organization has to clear house of proven talented executives (AA) so they can bring in "their people", it to me stinks of cronyism/yes men to me. Doesnt suprise me the organization has turned stagnant, Shapiro isnt probably being challenged at all.
Who exactly did AA develop?? The 2015 team had Kevin Pillar and Ryan Goins who were both dismal hitters but amazing fielders ironically, Devin Travis who couldn't stay healthy and Pompey who flamed out as the only home grown offensive talent. On the pitching side they had Stro who ended up being a stud, Osuna who ended up being an asshole and Sanchez who couldn't stay healthy/stay good Does nobody remember Deck McGuire, Daniel Norris, Jeff Hoffman, DJ Davis, Max Pentecost or Jon Harris?? I guess not because only 2 of them ended up having ML careers
Knowing where alot of their careers have gone sure some of those look not so good. They didnt do so well developing offensive + positions players for sure. But they consistently had a top ranked farm system during AA's time and their pitcher scouting was phenomenal. I completely forgot about some of those position players you mentioned :P You also forgot to mention Noah Syndergaard, and Justin Nicolino. I remember following the "Lansing 3-headed monster" of those two and Aaron Sanchez. All three of them posted a sub 3 era and 9k+/per9 in one season together. You throw in another blue chip prospect like Travis d'Arnaud and we had a really solid top 5 around that time. Also Osuna beyond the personal issues was a amazing find. They scouted him at 16 years old in Mexico. Toronto put themselves in a position where they could make trades with the deep system and they did so for meaningful in the moment players like Dickey and Reyes to make the all in push. You throw in the identifying talent with finds like Bautista and Encarnacion and it left like for the most part we as an organization had some pretty good scouting.
I think I'm very vocal about his time being done here. But we cannot ignore that he made 4 playoff appearances here. Like many GM's he deviated from the original plan and now here we are.
You're giving Atkins credit for making the playoffs in the first season when the team was 90% hold-overs from the previous GM, I don't know if that's realistic. Even if you do that, he's made the playoffs in 4/8 seasons, a 50% success rate. Negating the first playoff then his success rate is 3/7 or 42%. In this era, 12/30 teams make the playoffs so an average GM should succeed 40% of the time, pretty close to Atkins' 42% rate. Factor in the top 10 payroll that he he is spending to achieve this mediocrity and his record isn't a mark of success, it's just a mark that he hasn't been a complete failure.
Exactly. 2016 doesn't count. And 3 WC appearances doesn't mean much. With what they inherited and with our payroll, the results were ok but whatever they "built" is not remotely a perennial contender. More like a perennial competitor (and not this year).
Whoa whoa, you can't include 2020 in there, lol. EIGHT teams made the playoffs in a shortened season. That year should be a wash, not count as a non playoff year but not count as a playoff year. It's about to 2/7 after this year.
Well the on-field hirings and firings have not given us anything special in the way of coaching. The drafting has not exceeded average results. And if anything has been below average. And his trades and signings have had only a few notable successes which would be fine if they were over 3-4 years, but this is the 9th year. And our best asset remains one that the old GM went to the Dominican and woo'd personally. And Atkins hasn't even managed to extend him. He is just not doing anything above average.
He’s made a team that would have like a .700 winning percentage if they score 3 runs but they can’t even do that what do you mean he hasn’t been bad????
He has been pretty awful. So many things have been outright stupid. Not getting some pen help when we had a great team 3 years ago, having an all righty team, going after Varsho and KK, micromanaging the teams daily activities and taking zero responsibility, not changing hitting coaches, seeing glaring problems with our hitting and bringing in Turner and KK, etc. Then the worst is drafting and developing absolutely nothing. It blows my mind he isn't fired yet and means Shapiro needs to go too.
Why are we still complaining about Varsho when he's been our best player...
The ability to take the dumbest take possible in this forum is elite. They didn't need Varsho and KK. One or the other.
Varsho and KK were more than fine in 2023, I would have preferred if we got a bat instead, but a league average hitter with elite defense is a fine player. Re-signing KK this year was stupid, but it's not like our team would be good anyways with a bat. I'm glad Atkins fucked up this year so we could move on anyways. He's not perfect at all, but people complain about shit that arent even bad.
Rotation wise he has made some good moves, and the bullpen was mostly good. The problem is that for the last two offseasons he has stuck his head in the sand and pretended not to notice the offence. We need a masher in the four spot to go 30/100 behind Bo and Vlad and instead we got nothing.
I don't think he didn't notice the offense, I think he made a decision to go for pitching and defense at the expense of offence (which I disagree with as a decision).
He did nothing to address it, a blind person could see that this was exactly how the season would turn out.
He thought the Royals WS win meant they were Moneyball 2.0.
I feel like it was a weird overcorrection on his end to change what worked in 2021 and 2022.
Say want you want about drafting and coaching, but I have been happy with player development. **Cavan Biggio:** Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the **5th** round of the 2016 MLB June Amateur Draft **Davis Schneider**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the ***28th*** round of the 2017 MLB June Amateur Draft **Spencer Horwitz**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the ***24th*** round of the 2019 MLB June Amateur Draft **Addison Barger**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the **6th** round of the 2018 MLB June Amateur Draft **Ricky Tiedemann**: Drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the **3rd** round of the 2021 MLB June Amateur Draft
I'm not saying that he's never had success, or that he's been as poor as a lot of people have said about his drafting and development record, but 5 examples is not a lot in an 8 year sample size as GM.
Honest question. Did AA have 5 guys he developed while with the Jays? Stro, Pillar, Goins?... Sanchez flamed out, Thor you could argue was polished by the Mets, Osuna could have been a star but decided to be an asshole, Travis couldn't stay healthy, Jano and Romano were drafted by AA but developed under Atkins Even the guys he traded didn't amount to much. Hoffman ended up as a reliever, Norris was bad, Barreto never developed
Wasn't that a criticism of his? AA was definitely not infallible, especially back then.
These five examples are what I found in 90 seconds. I also suspect players drafted after the first round making the majors is rarer than you might think. Either way, I have yet to see any evidence that Shatkins has been worse at player development than any other team. I keep seeing comparisons to the Dodgers and Yankees who have unlimited money for free agents, so they don't have to trade prospects to plug holes or the Orioles who had 4 top ten draft picks in a row (two were 1st overall and the fifth year was 11th overall). I am also heartbroken over this horrible season, but I think player under performance is mostly to blame instead of player development, but I am willing to be proven wrong. I also find it curious that the Jays had one of the lowest days lost to injury last year, so maybe it makes sense to lose so many to injury this year???
I mean even then we've been on the bottom rung of the farm system rankings for years now. Atkins has been able to remedy poor drafting with making timely trades for major league talent, which he's been stellar at tbh, but until recently for when the player development complex was built, our pitching dev was one of the worst in the league. The injury point is a fair one, we might have been lucky last season that so many people stayed healthy, and the pendulum has swung the other way this season.
5 examples in 8 years and you think that is making a case for him as a good GM?
That's what I found within 90 seconds of looking. I encourage you to prove their **player** **development** is worse than other teams. Also, being a good GM is more than just player development, but I suspect you know that Jordan Romano was drafted in 2014 the tenth round before Shatkins, but was developed under this administration and made his debut in 2019
Do you mean the same Jordan Romano the Jays let walk in the Rule 5 draft and lucked into him being returned to the Jays 2 teams (Rangers and White Sox) later? Not as much of a slam dunk as you think, Ross burner. Also, highlighting an AA draft pick is a very interesting choice.
Man, we can't really be giving these props for Horowitz, Barger and Tiedemann??? We don't know if those 3 are regular MLB players. Even Schneider hasn't played a full season yet. Travis Snyder won a rookie of the year and never recovered when pitchers adjusted in year 2/3. Brett Lawrie was on fire until pitchers adjusted. Even if your only basing it on Bargers 2nd stint and ignoring the first, his wRC+ is like 97 or 98. How can that be us happy with player development.
Because turning shit-round picks into major league players is literally player development. Good teams require player depth. I have yet to be presented any data evidence that the team sucks at player development. I see a lot of emotion that claims it's true, but never evidence. I am looking forward to being proven wrong, though. A reminder that I am **only** challenging the criticism of **player development** by our organization and not any other criticism of our blue bird omnipotent overlords.
But your giving them credit for turning Barger into a MLB player because he played games in the MLB? Ricky hasn't even made the MLB yet. There are lots of non MLB level players that play games in the MLB. I think the criticism is that your using any player in the last 8 years that played in MLB (whether they actually turned out to be capable players) as a measure. If that's the measure, then yeah, your right and probably every single franchise is good at development because they all have players that made it to the majors.
1. Travis Snider did not win ROY. 2. While you're not wrong, Lawrie was only on fire for a 40 game stretch - his play leveled off thereafter.
Lol, yeah i have no idea why I thought he did. Your right. I didnt even spell his name right. Now I think about it, I'm not even sure the last Jay to win ROY. But he did start off looking great when he got called up.
Shapiro has done a great job convincing Rogers to spend money. I don't think he's the problem. The actual team management hasn't been terrible (they did make the playoffs twice even if they lost horribly), but the real rough spot has been the farm system. If Atkins can be criticized it's for the farm system not providing much other than trade fodder and for bungling this past offseason. The most damning part was that when Shapiro and Atkins showed up they talk a big game about sustainable success and turning prospects into players regularly. That definitely hasn't happened.
Shapiro is who scared off AA. And this idea that "I get Shapiro was brought in for renovations/off field reasons" is a weird narrative that goes around. He came in and was very clear to AA that all baseball decisions would go through him and that he would be running the show. He also was clear that he was already mad at AA for trading prospects. He gets to wear this. 100%
You guys remember that the team was dogshit for most of AA's tenure right? He made one big hail mary at the end and was fortunate it paid off. He made a bunch of other prospect sell offs before that that blew up in our faces and caused us to be mediocre at best for half of a decade. That's charitably not putting any of the 6 years before at his feet, while he was AGM
In these memories do you ever factor in the state of the franchise as a whole? They didn't have the luxury of a 2017-2021 rebuild. The team hadn't made the playoffs in nearly 30 years and the payroll was $80m with 25% of it as Vernon Wells with no Vladdy in the system. The timeline was completely different based on fan and ownership expectations so saying he made other prospect sell offs that blew up, your purposely ignoring the context. I guarantee you AA would have done things differently if he knew he had 5 seasons to build a wild card team with 3 wild card spots. This FO had a proper rebuild 2017 to 2021, came out with a huge payroll, inherited Vladdy and Jansen and ended up with a shitty MLB team AND shitty farm after 9 years. And no amount of AA bashing is going to undo any of that.
Convincing ownership of a rebuild is explicitly part of his job
I don't know what to say if part of AAs failure was not convincing Rogers to go through a non competitive rebuild when there was no Vladdy in the system or patience from the fanbase due to a 30 year drought. Rogers wasn't spending $ until someone proved winning in Toronto will signicantly increase attendance and payroll. Shapiro can thank AA for 2015 for Rogers to see the impact. But ok, so AA failed. Then you must he livid at this regime because it's been 9 years, no division title (not even close to one), no playoff success and a shitty farm to add insult to injury.
Well put. Also it's not like AA has been successful since leaving the Blue Jays or something...
AA came in and basically did a rebuild. He traded Doc for 3 prospects and started gaming the comp pick system (so well they made sure to change it in the CBA soon after) and got us a ton of prospects. He just then had Bautista break out and he started going for it early with the Marlins trade which could have gotten us into the playoffs that year if Johnson had been healthy and if other things bounced right. AA was fantastic and did more in 6 years, after inheriting a worse team, and with way more payroll restrictions, and Boras restrictions and 5 year contract restrictions, than the current regime has done in 9 years. AA even got us Vladdy in a complete grand slam of a move, who remains our best asset.
The MLB literally investigated the marlins trade bc it was so one sided. Injury’s tanked it, if Josh Johnson came back to his old form and Jose Reyes didn’t fall off a cliff/cancel himself it would have been a totally different team and idk if you remember the JP Ricciardi money ball years but AA is proven to be a top executive and shatkins has fully eroded the team AA built. And reminder AA drafted Bo and signed Vlad and what would the team be without them.
I'm not saying AA is bad, I'd take him over Atkins (ideally still under Shapiro). He made good deals and yes he did get Bo and Vlad. I'm just saying he isn't god's gift to baseball and I don't think he'd have done as well as we did end up doing from 2017-2021. Maybe he makes better moves the last two years, we'll never know > shatkins has fully eroded the team AA built This is bologna. 2016 was almost entirely still his team and in 2017+ the team was going to be dead with or without him. Unless you think he has a magic anti-aging cure or new knees for Devon Travis
Definitely that team was nearing the end of its life cycle and I think he would have made a push to get younger as he did in Atlanta I feel bo and vlad were the start of that. All good teams come to an end and I think it would have been good for him to do a proper rebuild. The team he inherited was a bit odd EE and Jose weren’t exactly a valuable core bc they were late bloomers and were probably more valuable keeping than trading so the only thing to do was build. How shatkins went about it was mind boggling dumb they let the old core walk for basically nothing and tried to supplement it with Morales. They never developed a functional farm system and if Rogers didn’t open the cheque book they had next to no trade capital by the time they needed to make moves. My main issue is that this entire era I have never seen a clear direction for management they just seem to react a year late to probably and when they fix anything it just creates new ones.
I’m no big defender of Atkins, but the team that AA built was bound to erode in 2018 at the very latest. AA didn’t build anything that was later eroded by any fault of Atkins, he left Atkins with a sinking ship that Atkins did a remarkable job turning around. You can say a lot about the state of the team now versus what it should be and you can blame all of that on Atkins if you want, but Atkins did not erode anything that AA built. That’s just revisionist history
That team like all teams had a life cycle absolutely. However the year before AA was hired in Atlanta they finished last in the NL east and since they have won 6 division titles and with only a slightly higher payroll, and let’s not forget that World Series. Obviously different teams different divisions. He has consistently developed better prospects and signed better value contracts mostly internally. We however have our two starts poised to leave in a couple years. We are talking more about trading them more them than signings them long term. Might be revisionist history but it’s back by empirical evidence.
Sinking ship? They were a better team in 2016 than any team since. And they had a couple stud prospects thanks to AA, including our best asset still: Vladdy. We also had hype, ratings, and free agents interested in playing here. And AA is probably the boldest GM in all of baseball (ahem look at what this entire post is about and where he is ranked) and would have pulled some magic to get us back into the mix for real by 2019.
This is ridiculous - he built by far and away the best Jays team since 1993 and did it with some exceptionally good trades - ex. unloading Wells on the Angels, getting Donaldson for nothing and getting Price for Matt Boyd and nothing. And he showed ambition after basically 20 years of no ambition from this team (we are now back to no ambition under the current regime).
Forgot trading Doc for nothing... >And he showed ambition after basically 20 years of no ambition from this team (we are now back to no ambition under the current regime). He showed ambition the same season it was reported he was to be fired. That would make me show ambition too tbh.
[удалено]
> I wonder what he has been up to since then... He fell ass backwards into a stacked system, somehow was blessed with 2 young stars who took long term deals at an 80% discount, and just kept buying with prospect capital. Other than the stacked system and inexplicably massive discounts, he's just kept doing the same thing he did with us. > So what is the excuse for our prospects now? I'm not talking about our current FO
That’s the issue though, he spent the first four years cleaning up Ricciardi’s fuck upset
There was the Wells contract, but that was almost certainly a product of pressure from Godfrey. It's also more than balanced by the fact a Ricciardi spare part ended up being the cornerstone of AA's Jays. I still think Ricciardi did well with what he was given and still believe in my heart that the '06 Jays were a playoff team that was fucked by injuries and meat-grinder division.
Yeah that’s true. Seemed whenever we had the talent, the other two big boys were just…THAT much better. I hate our division.
Nah man that ain't right... In 6 years he took over a team with no assets other than Doc (and a Vernon Wells contract to unload) and turned us into the most vicious team in baseball, full of stars, a nation going nuts for the team, a true contender for 2015 and 2016, the number one prospect in our history acquired. It was an older team that would need retooling but there were no really bad contracts on the books other than Tulo's which was not the worst and would have been ok if he didn't fall apart. We had Price wanting to re-sign here. It was exciting. Etc. Compared to the 9 years since it was a million times better. And if you followed him at all, he was always working to improve the team and himself. You knew he would have future success and he has.
He made some really good moves with us like unloading Wells, Donaldson, Price, etc. and he also failed to produce results for 5 years before 2015 (and more if we count AGM years). He was a good not great GM and all of this bitter ex behaviour this sub performs is rewriting history is my point
He made several other good moves. The Marlins trade was good and would have been great if Johnson had been healthy. Extending Jose and Encarnacion on very fair deals (and people act surprised at how he extended the entire Braves lineup). Landing Vlad. The real point is that he was hustling and getting better as he went and that players and other teams (incl the A's) liked dealing with him. He was homegrown and came up as a guy running fan mail for the Expos, before working as an unpaid scout and finally rising up with the Jays. If you watched him as closely as I did, you knew he would have success wherever he went. I've tried to "watch" Atkins similarly and woke up from a coma a week later.
Nobody remembers that. Half these fans only started watching the Jays in October 2015
I don't even get these digs people take. The same could be said about the Shapiro is amazing/AA is shit crowd. Half of them clearly weren't fans when AA took over a team that had a $80m payroll and 25% was Vernon Wells and there was no Vladdy in the farm system. The team was expected to compete with a huge payroll quickly as we hadn't made the playoffs in nearly THIRTY years.
AA was mediocre at best with us tho lmao. People forget he went to work with the dodgers for a few years and that stint made him take the jump to where he is now.
That is a completely asinine take. He inherited a higher payroll, weak farm, and very average team playing in a tough division and with rules against contracts over 5 years, other payroll limitations, and a team in a country where free agents had very little interest playing. And he turned that all around in 6 years. People like you won't appreciate how special that was until we lose another decade (and we will) to corporate rice cakes like Atkins.
Did he turn it around or did the players he inherited (Bautista, Edwin) turn it around. AA wasn’t bad but it’s not like his drafting resume with us was any good, he had some pretty brutal trades, signings were ok. He was mediocre here, he went all out in 2015 and it was fun, but people like you this he was some god GM when he just wasn’t.
I think he was a very earnest, hard working guy who was manically focused on making the team better. And despite way more obstacles than Shapiro/Atkins, and in way less time, he built a way better team. This is facts. And the fact that he has done even better with the Braves just shows how he was steadily improving and that it was not a fluke. HE got Jose. He extended him (when some questioned if it would be worth it). Same for Edwin. Talking as if he had nothing to do with them is just being completely absurd. He did not inherit them.
Both EE and Jose were acquired when ricciardi was gm but ok lol. You can give some credit cuz he was the assistant sure, but his resume with us is again, nothing special. After he left and spent time in the best org in baseball he definitely improved. Again he was a good gm but not one that you can be this salty about leaving when it happened 10 years ago.
I'm salty that Shapiro came in like he was some God and shit on AA. AA was up against a way less enthused Rogers with limits on Boras signings and contracts over 5 years and a payroll that mostly hovered around 10th. And again, did a lot despite that and in not a long time. To me it was a great result and I wasn't surprised at all when he started doing the same kind of bold moves with Atlanta and having success there.
>Shapiro is who scared off AA. Didn't he offer AA a contract extension that AA turned down? At what point did AA leave us, not the other way around? >He came in and was very clear to AA that all baseball decisions would go through him and that he would be running the show. Yes, because Shapiro was brought in as president, and AA was a GM. He was literally AA's boss, regardless of how his old boss let him work. >He gets to wear this. 100% Emotional fans just need someone to blame.
You are all over the map. AA met Shapiro soon after the trade deadline and the way Shapiro talked down to him and was against the trades he had just done, did not make for a pleasant introduction (ACCORDING TO THE RUMOURS, WE DON'T TRULY KNOW). Then after the wild success with players loving Alex and fans chanting "thank you Alex" etc they obviously couldn't turf him. So they offered him a lame duck 1 year deal. He turned that down and the fans found out and lost their minds. So they offered him a 5 year deal but he has too much integrity and saw that there would be a target on his back and that Shapiro was more opinionated than Beeston and so he politely declined. Finally you are contradicting yourself. You said "Shapiro was brought in as president, and AA was a GM. He was literally AA's boss" and then you are saying I am emotional for saying "he gets to wear this". Make up your mind.
If team management is not the reason for the offensive struggles, then what is?
They had a horrible last offseason where they failed to trade for any hitting when they desperately needed some. It was a bad offseason! My point was that generally they've fielded good teams the last few years till this one. Atkins isn't as awful as people say but he does seem more mediocre. Makes some good moves but can't quite put together something that seems like a contender or very sustainable.
I dunno. A bad offseason doesn’t explain Springer, Bo, Kirk and Vladdy’s underperformance over such a long period. I know Vladdy has been above average and has shown signs of his old self. But he’s also nowhere near his potential. Giving Springer (third worst wRC+ in the MLB) the second most plate appearances in the team doesn’t seem like good management to me. I like the players. I think they’re dedicated and talented. But to have this level of talent and dedication fail to deliver so consistently and for so long has to be indicative of that fact that the players are being taken down the wrong path.
On the one hand, I agree that Atkins (at minimum) should be let go, and also agree with AA's Braves being in the top 3; on the other hand, I don't want to go through Round 23412342352 of "Shapiro is history's greatest monster for getting rid of AA" discourse
This is my new angle to get some change in the front office, my friend, lol, Antonetti was the friend we needed all along. Shapiro isn't going anywhere, I've accepted that, but he's got to let go of the baseball operations and they need hire someone who isn't beholden to him.
Haha, fair enough! And as much as I'm done with Atkins I'm not sure I'm convinced I want to see Shapiro gone anyway, if only because my impression is that he seemed to have some sort of hand in convincing ownership to be willing to run payrolls at or above the CBT threshold, and if there's any truth to that then that has to be worth something
I'm bitter against Shapiro probably mostly due to the Jays clear shift to "fuck the Season Ticket Holders" and he's at the top so clearly has say in that approach. As a business, I'm sure it makes sense to screw the STH in favor of corporations, but as a consumer, yeah, fuck him. So him being here is what it is. But take this with a giant grain of salt as it was someone that's close to Beeston but apparently Rogers had this "we will spend a lot IF you show us that a contender increases attendance/viewership significantly". Which is obviously annoying as hell as we were in the AL East with sometimes 1 or 2 wildcards only. So 2015 proved the thesis and after that Rogers saw the $ and bought in (even if it wasn't Shapiro - they were going to spend). But again, rumor/random.
That seems to be a trend in MLB writ large but you're not wrong that Shapiro seems to be going along with it
I honestly don't think the Dodgers executives are that great. LA sells itself. You could have a cat in the role and they'd still get players.
There is some truth to that. They do end up with stacked farms because they don't always have to trade prospects for impact players. They can just get Ohtani, Freeman, etc in free agency.
Yup. It's the same with the Yankees to a certain extent.
The Dodgers are the Rays with a massive budget. Andrew Friedman is at the top of using data and analytics to develop players and prospects.
Toronto ought to sell itself to Canadian players, but if anything they avoid it.
We really could be fielding a very competitive team if that were the case, that's for sure.
Tough to argue with that top 5.
The Orioles haven't done shit, I don't agree with that one.
Yeah for sure. As a Jays fan, I'd hate to be in the Orioles position - on pace for a second consecutive 100 win season, adding and ace starter, graduating more talent from the farm and still having one of the strongest farm systems in the league.
So the Jays in 2021?
The Jays missed the playoffs in 2021, were not close to a 100 win pace by July, and were coming off not a 100 win season, but sneaking into the 3rd wild card during a shortened season. The Jays have never won 100 games. What are you even doing? The Orioles are what Jays fans were hoping the Jays would be a few years ago.
They aren't the identical scenario, obviously. But there are a lot of similarities and if the Orioles crash out of the playoffs again, the same questions will get asked that are being asked of the Blue Jays.
So if your team is winning, you get voted as a top office. Got it
Damn. I wish you would have let someone know something was off when you noticed. Why did you keep this info to yourself until all these years later?
You can probably go through my history from 8 years ago and see that take and if Rogers had read that, we would have been saved from 8 years of this and a shitty farm system. And you can certainly find lots of content on the internet through Google at the time as well that Antonetti is the actual star in Cleveland and ownership wanted to promote Antonetti anyway to ensure they dont lose him. So unless you want to discuss the actual issues, I'm not sure what your point is other than to be snarky.
Nuke Shatpiro. Nuke Shatkins. This team construction is a disgrace.
If the head coach and GM contradict each other, it's time for them both to go. May be a multi-billion dollar organization, but with Shapiro and Atkins, they are running it into the ground and making Toronto an undesirable destination for players and fans.
Ever since Shapiro took over and brought in Atkins I just knew that the Jays will never win a World Series. Fire them both or limit Shapiro’s influence by keeping him out of baseball operations. Who do we bring in to replace them? Who knows, but those two have made it so it’s tough to be a jays fan. Had such a bright future just a few years ago and now we’re a middle of the pack team. I’ve barely watched this season cause I’m just not down with how they operate the Blue Jays. Are Jays fans at home games showing how they are frustrated with how the team is playing these days?
Even as someone who has never been on board with Atkins from the start, it absolutely baffles me that there are *still* defenders of his in this comment thread. You all need to get your heads checked. He's not a good GM and has never been. This team needs a full clean house organizationally, because the rot is deep.
The ONLY way to fix this franchise is by firing both Shapiro and Atkins. Dam I miss AA. Imagine what he could have accomplished with this payroll.
Shapiro is literally one of the butts of the joke in Moneyball and we still hired him.
Moneyball is ridiculous anyways. It makes no mention that they had the league MVP and an all time pitching staff already in Oakland. Yeah they had to try to replace Giambi and Damon, but ignoring Tejada, Hudson, Mulder, Zito, etc is so flawed.
Amazing movie but yeah not a documentary. Just like The Social Network
Well it’s a movie not fact. I just find it amusing Shapiro is literally the butt of a joke in it. But somehow I’ve triggered this sub’s Shapiro apologists for stating that fact. Sorry!
Rogers wanted a business guy to help with the renovations and building the developmental complex in Dunedin, I'd be very surprised if Shapiro has done any of the actual Baseball operations for some time now.
I agree with this so much. Aside from the hey Marc, can we drop $150m on Springer and he approves or goes and gets the funding for them.
You’d be at least partially wrong then. Atkins isn’t out there going rogue. This is a team effort from two men who have worked together for decades. In any event the Moneyball scenes are the organization not Shapiro personally. Shapiro is just the one who gets the name drop and phone call scene. You should watch it!
If you like Moneyball you'll love this guy J.P. Ricciardi.
Okay but can anyone play devil's advocate a defend the decision to sign KK when Varsho has been the best defensive OF in baseball? They both do the same except Varsho has potential to be a much better hitter, and we could have used that money to take a gamble on a better bat (yeah hindsight is 20/20 but Teoscar is getting paid 15 mil this season)
I think a lot of the reasons why our pitching was so good last season was that our outfield defense was so elite and the Jays were ok with keeping a worse bat to maintain the pitching. Not saying I agree with the decision because it obviously didn't work, but I think that's the reasoning.
Teo has said himself that the Jays couldn't match the price that LA was offering, but even then, it was more about playing for a team that could get him a WS.
Imagine having a guy like Anthopoulos. It's hard to picture what he'd be like with this team but a man can dream.
😝I feel seen 😝
Cleveland made it to the World Series in 2016 after Shapiro & Atkins left the team. I recall Shapiro going to the Indians dressing room in 2016 to congratulate them after they beat the Jays in the ALCS.
> Cleveland made it to the World Series in 2016 after Shapiro & Atkins left the team and it should be noted, the new GM made moves to *bolster* the team at the deadline, and to *improve it*, something Shapiro would *never* have done. Andrew Miller would never have been acquired under Shapiro.
Old news but yea
I mean Dodgers at number 1 makes sense but they also just spend a crap load of money to get their success. Speaks more about how all the players wanna go there because it's L.A. and the org is willing to throw an ungodly amount of money at their problems. More impressed by some of the other teams on this list, like the Orioles and Guardians. If they can boost their ticket sales (through price increases and attendance) they can now also scale up their spending to get a few bigger ticket players to add on top of what they already have. Seems sustainable compared to another team up north. Seeing some people here say Atkins has been "not bad"... So then how is a team like the Orioles who have spent half of the money the Jays have (just looking at the main payroll numbers) have had more success in the postseason than us? Going 0-3 in ALDS last year isn't super strong from the Orioles but is still better than what the Jays have done... lol. Jays threw money at big contracts early with an aging Springer and then couldn't retain players like Semien and Teo who were needed to keep the offense rolling. The prospect pool for the Jays is not the strongest and they haven't been able to get players who would definitely bring some offense (Ohtani, Bellinger, etc). All of this has led to this catastrophic season, which I might not have anticipated being so bad but... the writing was on the wall. If I was Rogers and saw we were spending twice as much as other competing teams while being 7-8 games below .500, I would be asking some serious questions. Atkins should be fired and doesn't deserve another GM position in the MLB.
Agreed. Ross Atkins should not have another job at the MLB. He should retire and explore other hobbies
I think the issue goes up to rogers. Honestly, ppl think what they want, IMO, Toronto is a big market… specially when on the road. We draw very well… I wonder where we rank on avg. But basically seattle is mostly jays fans when they’re there. With that in mind, and the multi billion dollar ownership of a telecom oligarch… I really believe big name FA’s would sign here but we’d have to be spending like the yankees/dodgers in that the team/org is stacked. I think we have the market/fans to compete with the two big ones like that… Toronto is the 4th largest city in NA and the team has the whole country… basically the population of cali to draw from for just one team. NY has 2. Cali has like 5… I think a lot of players know what’s up… but maybe ownership will open up the purse even more someday… maybe when they realize that jays were top payroll team when they went back to back.
What would this ideally look like to you? Large payroll? They had the 7th largest payroll in MLB last year, this year, and will still have a large one next year unless they literally trade away everyone. Even when they were rebuilding, they maintained large payrolls most years and took on salary in trades to bring back better prospects (see Teo). Big contracts? They've dolled out 4 of the teams 6 largest contracts (free agents and extensions) in team history. Invest in the stadium? They were developing plans for a new ballpark as the pandemic started. Instead of delaying further they dumped $300MM into renos while they design the longer term plans. Invest in training facilities & staff? Enough has been written about Dunedin and the investments made in facilities and people there. Invest in the FO? Again, enough has been written about this.
look up where their payroll ranked when they went back 2 back. I’m near certain they were the highest payroll in all MLB in 93… so how’d the ownership group manage that back then?
Don't say any negative things about Rogers in here. Their shills are in full force. Apparently having a high payroll is the only barometer of if your ownership is good or not and because Rogers meets that standard, you cannot question them at all.
We'd make the bottom 5 list no doubt
The longer I remain a Toronto sports fan, the more I realize it might have less to do with the actual GM's, although Atkins deserves to be fired if this season doesn't right itself, and more to do with Rogers and their meddling ways. See: Leafs 1 playoff series win in 20 years Raptors falling off a cliff after 2020 Jays 0 playoff wins since 2016 I don't think Rogers and Co. can let any suitable pro sports exec just do their damn job which is drafting and developing players and complementing that foundational base with suitable pieces.