12:58pm: Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star writes that the higher-ups at Rogers promised Shapiro final say in player-personnel decisions, so the new five-year offer to Anthopoulos removed the autonomy from his position. If that’s the case, I agree with Griffin’s assessment that it’s a stretch to suggest that Anthopoulos “rejected” an extension offer, as the core function of his job over the life of that five-year term wasn’t the same as in his previous role, despite the lack of a title change.
Griffin also writes that Anthopoulos was wary of something like this happening as early as last offseason, and that concern prompted him to push for extensions for his top lieutenants. As such, assistant GMs Tony LaCava and Andrew Tinnish, special assistant Dana Brown, director of pro scouting Perry Minasian and others were eventually given contract extensions that ran through the 2016 season as a means of offering each some security.
10:38am: Davidi has tweeted a link to Rogers Media chairman Edward Rogers’ full statement on Anthopoulos’ departure, which reveals that Anthopoulos turned down a five-year offer.
10:34am: The Blue Jays have announced that Anthopoulos will not return for the 2016 season. Outgoing president and CEO Paul Beeston has issued the following statement on Anthopoulos’ surprising decision:
“After an exciting 2015 season, Alex Anthopoulos has reluctantly and regrettably decided that he is not going to return to the Toronto Blue Jays Baseball Club for 2016. Alex has done an unbelievable job and positioned us well for the future. He can take great pride in his past and while we do not know where his future is taking him, we do know wherever he is going, he will be successful. On behalf of all the employees of the Toronto Blue Jays, players, front office, scouts and player development staff we wish him good luck in the future and thank him for a job extremely well done.”
7:05am: Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos has rejected an extension offer and will leave the team, reports Shi Davidi of Sportsnet. Davidi notes that while the specific reasons for the split aren’t 100 percent known, the shocking decision from Anthopoulos wasn’t due to financial reasons. The Blue Jays recently hired former Indians president Mark Shapiro to fill a similar role in Toronto, though the expectation was that Shapiro’s role would be be more business-oriented.
With no general manager openings left to fill around the game, it seems unlikely that Anthopoulos is leaving to fill the same role with another club. It’s possible that the Blue Jays told Anthopoulos that Shapiro would have a greater role in baseball operations than was originally anticipated, though that’s purely speculation. Perhaps Anthopoulos himself will land a greater role as president of baseball operations with another club, though there haven’t been any real indications that any teams are trying to hire anyone in that capacity.
Whatever the reason for the departure, the move is a shocking one. Anthopoulos’ decision to leave comes on the heels of the Blue Jays’ first postseason berth in 22 years — an emergence that was predicated largely on the trades made by the now-former GM over the past calendar year. Anthpoulos pulled off perhaps the most impactful trade in recent history last offseason, acquiring Josh Donaldson, one of the front-runners for the AL MVP, in exchange for Brett Lawrie and prospects Franklin Barreto, Sean Nolin and Kendall Graveman. No general manager was more active at the trade deadline, as Anthopoulos tirelessly worked to acquire Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, LaTroy Hawkins, Mark Lowe and Ben Revere to bolster his club’s roster as the team rode a blistering second half to the American League East Championship.
Of course, the Canadian-born Anthopoulos’ tenure as Jays GM wasn’t without questionable moves. (No GM’s time is.) The Blue Jays’ acquisition of R.A. Dickey in exchange for Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud looks like a misstep, assuming both young Mets continue the trajectory they’ve begun early in their careers. And the infamous blockbuster with the Marlins that offseason, in which Anthopoulos acquired Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson in exchange for Yunel Escobar, Henderson Alvarez, Justin Nicolino, Jake Marisnick, Anthony DeSclafani and Adeiny Hechavarria didn’t yield the immediate dividends he’d hoped (though Buehrle, like Dickey, has had three very solid seasons in Toronto’s rotation).
Like any general manager, Anthopoulos had his hits and misses, but the widespread expectation was that he’d quietly agree to an extension at some point after the season, as his recent hits far outweighed his recent misses. Toronto’s return to the postseason began with a victory over the Rangers in the ALDS and a loss at the hands of the Royals in the ALCS, and most were expecting Anthopoulos to lead Toronto’s front office this season as he looked to replenish the starting rotation and guide the Jays back to the postseason on the strength of its potent, unparalleled lineup.
Instead, it’s not clear who will fill that role. Shapiro himself has plenty of experience as a general manager, but it remains possible that the Blue Jays will seek a new GM to step in and fill the void. That could be an internal option like Tony LaCava or Dana Brown, each of whom was a candidate for other GM openings this offseason. Or, the team could look outside the organization and embark on what would be the fifth GM search of the offseason. The Mariners, Angels, Phillies and Red Sox have all seen changes at that position since the season ended.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Well, I’ll admit I didn’t see that coming.
When it comes to Alex Anthopoulos, I don’t think we ever see anything coming.
I’m calling it now: AA is hired by the A’s to take on Farhan Zaidi’s old role.
I’d be surprised if this happens. The whole thing is that AA wants to have more control and I don’t see that happening with Billy still in Oakland.
Not really an AA fan; he’s made his fair share of bad and good moves but I think it looks bad for the organization to have one of the key persons responsible for re-energizing the fan base leave at the end of the season for reasons other than money.
What a shame, so disappointing, after this level of success.
Kinda surprised by this. It is either he thinks he can get a better job with another team as Head of Baseball Ops, or Shapiro has more power than anticipated (as the article states, I know). Otherwise, I don’t think he would’ve left. He is a very good GM, I’m just not sure if he is ready yet to have a larger role. Perhaps so.
That seems improbable as there are no openings. It seems obvious as you say that he has lost his autonomy which in his view must seem like a demotion. Another possibility is that he was told to dump Gibby and perhaps others in the baseball side. Based on this years results he may not have felt that to be fair. I admire his strength and loyalty. Life goes on.
wow.
This changes everything: my first reaction was remembering the poet’s first lines in the red wheelbarrow.
Who knows any thing about Shapiro? Does he want the well seasoned, costly players such as Dickey, Revere, Lowe, Price, Revere, Tulo ( who, btw, couldn’t get er done)?
What are we to expect this off-season?
I imagine it’ll be back to business: sign one or two starters, a few relievers and a bat or two. But trading with other GMs is definitely not going to be the same again. At least, not as creatively…
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Wow! Just blown away by this news. I can’t see this being popular with the fans, players or staff. From all indications he was very well liked across the board and by other GMs.
Maybe we’ll see some more indicators as to how this played out as the players make comments on his departure?
I find the report on Fox News about Shapiro and Anthopoulos butting heads in their first meeting rather interesting. Apparently, Shapiro used that initial meeting to aggressively criticize the staff for giving up all of the Jays talent to acquire now players and he was heavily in favour of removing Alex’ trading power.
If that is the case, then I can’t blame him in the slightest for leaving. Who would want to be a GM-lite?
Poor show to ditch on the guy responsible for assembling a contender for this and next year.
A year in MLB studios or latch on in an advisor role…
I have a feeling the leash on some major league GMs just got decidedly shorter.
I’m thinking he’ll land in a grooming role on a team with a so-so GM with the expectations of moving him into the role the season after they fail to perform.
Hot seat in 16 (premature?): Hahn, Duquette, Rizzo, Jocketty, anyone associated with Marlins, Preller maybe…
Oh where to begin. Did Shapiro try to take away some of his trade power? Good! A lot of people acting like AA was the best GM in the game. His scouting and drafting was excellent but his trades were bad easily biggest weak spot. He tried to give the jays 3 years of competitevness and gave them half a season. Jays were set to compete in a few years for a long time when he too over. Now? They competed for half to season need to spend like 100M on pitching this off season to compete again next year and have next to no prospects after the deadline. Would have liked him to stay but someone had to try to limit the damage he does in trades. Only real successful trade is the Donaldson one and even then the centerpiece for Oakland won’t be in MLB for a few years and if he’s the stud they project it’s not the fleecing everyone says it is
You know how much revenue the 1/2 season of competing generated? I’d gladly take a GM That’s not afraid to try
I’d rather have a GM worried about long term sustainable success than trying to generate revenue for half a season to save his job and sell out the next 10 years to do so. But that’s just me. I wanna win a championship not just make the playoffs that one time
In what universe did he sell out 10 seasons into the future? He came to the GM job at the end of the 2009 season and rebuilt the minor league stock twice since then. We can critique the trades that may or may not have worked out but they could not have been made without minor league pieces to trade. Also keep in mind that he got rid of the Vernon Wells contract in 2011. Without that money off the books the Marlins trade like it or not and many other things like below market extensions to Bautista and Encarnacion would not have happened.
Based on what he was able to do with the draft and prospects in the 2010-2015 timeline please explain how you see it taking 10 seasons to rebuild it now?
Because he got rid of every good prospect he drafted for short term success? He was great at drafting but then traded away all of his prospects. The team does not have a very good farm system and is built around players at the end of their primes or later. It’s not gonna be a quick build they have no farm and little youth
The team still has good prospects. Alford, Pentecost, Reid-Foley, Greene, Vladdy Jr., to name a few. And the great thing about the Blue Jays is that they have All Stars in the lineup right now, making it possible to get through the next couple years without needing many position players to graduate from the minors.
I’m glad AA returned postseason baseball to Toronto for the first time in 22 years. I was looking forward to his offseason moves and this news comes as a major disappointment.
That’s not really true at all. The team is set at catcher, DH, 2B, 3B, SS, RF,CF for the next few years.
EE 33 last year of contract 2B yes but hardly elite players Donaldson is what 30? And going into last year of arbitration no guarentee he’s here more than next season. SS aging Tulo on a long contract Bautista is 35 and in last year of contract CF has solid but not elite players like Pillar and Pompey. After next year all the star power could be gone or on the decline with burdensome contracts.
He got rid of the Wells contract but then traded Napoli’s prime for a season of Frank Francisco. He’s barely ok as a GM.
That’s not remotely true and no GM has a 100% record. Overall, he has done a lot more good than bad.
He had like 1 trade where he may have done good for the franchise overall. People are overstating what he’s done because of the run but it’s all come at a huge cost and left the Jays in a much tougher situation than people are willing to admit
He traded for long term success as well, this wasn’t some short sighted “all in now” job saving season.
Where’s the long term success? No rotation no bull pen and a lineup centered around guys in their mid 30s is far from long term let’s be real here
Players returning that are under contract Joey Bats, RA, EE, Martin and Tulo.
Club control: Donaldson, Travis, Goins, Smoak, Colabello, Revere, Saunders, Pillar, Pompey, Osuna, Stroman, Sanchez, Cecil, Loup, Hutchison, Carrera, Delabar, Thole.
Hindsight is always 20/20 would I prefer to have d’Arnaud and Sydergard over Dickey of course but at the time of the trade we were getting the NL CY award winner.
The prospect pool was weakened no doubt about that but I have faith if the Jays could continue to draft as they have in the past they could rebuild the farm rather quickly.
The Dickey trade was as terrible at the time as it looked now. Even then you could see that Syndergaard was special and Dickey was 38
That said, AA did not deserve to be usurped by Shapiro. The Jays could have theoretically continued to re tool the farm while surviving off the current core for a couple more seasons.
And the people whining about no rotation seem to be forgetting that the rotation was nothing special early in the year but the lineup picked up the slack. It’s a shame to see this happen after how energized the Jays’ fan base was
Most of the guys he brought in were for this year and the next few – Travis, Tulo, and Donaldson aren’t going anywhere. Price was the one big rental.
Exactly. Norris looks like he will be a stud (let’s pray that he recovers) but that is the price you must pay for an ace, no pun intended.
My biggest gripe is with Shapiro. What has Shapiro put together in Cleveland over the past decade that is worthy of usurping AA?
AA traded away Vernon Wells’ albatross contract, got Josh Donaldson for Lawrie and Tulo for Reyes. His trades have mostly been pretty amazing.
Your talking about the worst pieces he gave up in the trades and ignoring the center points. The trades aren’t as good when you take the prospects into account definitely short of amazing
Time will tell on both, but Donaldson was a clear win and one of the most one sided trades of the past ten years. Donaldson is likely the AL MVP. AA won that trade.
Donaldson’s not a clear win at all, Barreto is a borderline top 10 in all of MLB prospect as of now and if Nolin, Graveman and Lawrie have a couple of 3 WAR seasons between them its a total wash. Matter of fact if Barreto is part of this new wave of incredible shortstops like his ceiling says and he throws up 5-6 WAR seasons, A’s will in fact win the deal.
Way to early to tell but its looking likely that the Donaldson trade was a win for the Jays. Its also way early to talk about a guy who has not made mlb start as a six war player.
Toronto didn’t have much of a fanbase. Now it has an energized fanbase with some swagger. That is a huge deal moving forward.
Clearly Shapiro wasnt going to give him the autonomy on decision making he wanted and probably deserved after what hes done in Toronto.
Anthopolous will be in big demand, he’ll have no issues finding a nice role somewhere else.
Wow crazy move at this juncture. Real big mistake by ownership who weren’t pleased that taking on all that salary in the Marlins trade never turned into increased revenue. Hire Shapiro to run bball ops, AA taxes everyone and makes a run that will be remembered for a long time, now Rogers has poop on their face as always. Large corporation don’t make good owners. They aren’t fans, they are managing p
I’m just going to say that the Marlins will go hard after him. Remember that their GM was told to stay home till his role was figured out. So there could be an opening after all. Mattingly and AA would be a good start to the off season for the Fish
Followed by a move to Montreal.
The may well go hard after him, but I can’t imagine he’ll sign there. He just quit a job due to a lack of autonomy; his next career move being to go work under Loria would be the most hypocritical and counterproductive thing I can think of.
The Reds needs a GM but they are broke. He would be a good fit in Cincinnati bc he knows drafting good players.
Yeah I wish. I would love if we picked up AA but of course it won’t happen.
No one should be surprised by this. It was reported more than once by the Indians beat writer that Shapiro retained final decision authority on all business and baseball activities the entire time he was Indians President. The only exceptions were when the owners stepped in on occasion. I doubt he would have taken the Toronto job without the same authority.
Just wondering what Shapiro ever did with the Indians to garner such a status, if anything they should have promoted AA to the Pres. position and give Shapiro the GM job if he would have taken it. And in another universe of the bizarre … Beane got promoted this year.
Shapiro is in Toronto to redecorate the stadium and make money for ownership. Unfortunately, he wants to run the team too. I expect him to dump lots of payroll.
What has AA done in Toronto? One playoff appearance in 6 seasons gets you fired from 90% of sports teams, you want to promote him.
Shapiro’s record is arguably worse.
That’s a hot take if I’ve seen one. He competed against the Yankees, Orioles, Rays, and Red Sox, and eventually beat all 4.
When you take big risk you are going to have some mistakes. AA was an aggressive GM and I would much rather have him than the dumpster diving DD of the Orioles. The Donaldson trade may be one of the best in baseball of all time (not to mention in the trade he bested the “guru”). He is going to go to a team that hasn’t seen a real GM in a long time and do some good things.
The Donaldson trade certainly seems lopsided in Toronto’s favor, but given that it’s only been a year, and Franklin Barreto hasn’t even come close to playing in Oakland yet, it’s way too early to rank it as one of the best trades of all-time
He didn’t “best the guru”. You can’t judge a trade that was centered around prospects until those prospects have had a chance to mature. Let’s judge that trade in a couple of years once the prospects have a chance to get to the show. I am not all that sure he is a better baseball mind than DD. Last season DD was recruited and would have gotten the Blue Jays president position had the Orioles let him go. AA had a really good deadline this year but previous to that it was rumored that he was on the hot seat. It took him trading the farm to finally get back to the post season. Had Cashman gone after the same players and offered Dombrowski anyone in his farm like AA did for Price it would have been the Yankees getting to the ALCS. It can’t be called a masterful trade when you go to the opposing GM and tell him to pick who he wants. Getting the Rockies to take Reyes was definitely a fleecing though. I thought they were stuck with his contract for sure
You can actually judge the trade in its first year. Lawrie stinks and Barreto is still in the minors. Meanwhile Donaldson is the AL MVP. I don’t know why everybody thinks Barreto is such a sure thing. Every single GM makes that trade then and still makes it today. That’s called lopsided.
Hey some advice: dont let 1 season decide a trade. Beane’s still the guru and Barreto could be better than Donaldson ever was.
Lets not forget how many home runs Donaldson hit when he was 25: 0. Lawrie had 16 this year when he was 25, and he’s still a huge work in progress who’s prime is still a year or so away. Donaldson’s career OPS in Oakland is .780, in Toronto its 1.021 so its very clear how and why Donaldsons numbers went the way they did.
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I’ll take the advice under consideration. I along with every single GM must be wrong cause their is not one in the world that would give up Donaldson for Barreto and Lawrie right now. Barreto is a prospect, Donaldson is an actual MVP, not a could be in a few years.
I’m not from Toronto, so I personally can’t speak on what his moves meant to the city, although as an outsider, it certainly seems as though he’s re-energized that fan base. However, he’s parted ways with a huge crop of talented young players, and their window may be closing after 2016, so I’m mixed on his tenure. But in terms of actual results, to this point, I’m not sure he’s done enough to earn as much praise as he often gets.
This is exactly how I feel. He’s built a great offense for next season but there’s some work to do with the pitching. Then after 2016, Toronto’s future looks murky, at best.
Even with this stacked lineup, if they don’t sign at least one of the big SP names – and quite honestly they really need 2 and a bullpen – they are barely a .500 team next year. Did everyone forget theyre in the same div as the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays? Those 3 teams have a recent history of not being down for long.
The Blue Jays will still score a ton of runs even with some regression, enough to pick up the slack for sub par pitching. With Dickey on board they would be well served to go after a tier one starter but you must remember that the market is flush with pitching. Some of these guys are going to end up singing some contracts below market value due to the sheer volume of the market. The Jays would be well served to wait it out and I’m sure they will be able to add more than a couple serviceable pieces
Completely gut the farm system and leave, well that is one way to go.
I was not a fan of AA as he traded some of the next generation of Toronto’s starting pitchers(Boyd and Norris) for a rental pitcher. Now the Blue Jays will have to put up a lot of cash to keep David Price, risk losing top draft picks to sign top pitchers or trade some hitters for starting pitching and bullpen depth. The RA Dickey trade and the Marlins trades were one sided against the Jays. The aggressive GM’s have been removed from office.
Toronto fans……
Welcome to the ‘Mark Shapiro Never Ending Rebuild’!
Expect your scouts to be canned for guys that look at stats, not players. Expect awful drafting. Expect your player development group not to develop many players skills. Expect your batters to hit gobs of foul balls to run up pitch counts, and expect them to stop putting the ball in play or getting many clutch hits. Expect defense, baserunning and fundamentals to be non-existent. Expect long games that are incredibly boring to watch. And in 5 years, expect to have 2-3 very good ballplayers, 4-5 decent players, and the rest of the roster filled out with one-dimensional journeymen.
Toronto fans – you now are on your way to being a very poor moneyball team. Meanwhile, the world-class schmoozer will have the national media writing how “progressive” and “cutting edge” your team is, as it will only have good years when 2-4 teams in your division go into a rebuild status and/or have major injuries. And above all else – when things go wrong, never expect anyone in the organization to own up to it.
My two cents. I have never thought of him in terms of a great GM.
The Jays record under him is under .500, which includes this yr.
Like all GM’s he has hits and misses. This year was his only good
year. It also helps when the Jays payroll went from 70 million per yr
to 120-130 million a few years ago.
First get your facts straight: he has a cumulative record over .500.
Second: he’s has plenty of great years. not all seasons are strictly measured by W/L record.
Third: You cite the jump in payroll. Toronto’s payroll *SHOULD* be at the $120m mark. They’re the 2nd largest market in all of baseball, only behind New York.
Awesome, cumulative record over .500. I stand corrected. Hang your hat on that. So not all seasons are strictly measured by W/L record.
So what is- the third place finishes ,the fourth place or maybe finishing last. Sorry I don’t see “plenty of great years” other than this
year. You are right they should be at that mark. A higher payroll
makes the GM job a little easier. That was my point. The last two years have been two of his most successful. After the payroll went
up.
3 of his last years were above .500 in the most difficult division in the league. For multiple seasons he assembled squads that others predicted to be competitive. The payroll is high compared to Oakland, but it’s barely competitive compared to Boston and New York.
As a Braves fan, I’m glad PHI already philled their GM position. I can’t imagine the stress involved with AA having all those resources.
These “President of Baseball Operations” and similar positions are so vague that I don’t even know what to think about them. It’s kind of seeming to me that the GM isn’t really the top baseball guy anymore. He’s a mega-AGM.
Beeston was a “traditional” team president. He was a businessman. Shapiro didn’t just move into his desk, he moved into a new post-Beeston role. I think they ended up usurping some of AA’s authority to run the ball club and put that in Shapiro’s purview, to the point where AA felt like he wasn’t being offered an extension to be the actual GM anymore.
These nebulous president positions confuse me, though. What exactly is Billy Beane doing now with his “promotion” that he wasn’t doing before? Do we actually think Beane isn’t in on trades and drafting and all that now?
I think it’s primarily a way to keep talented front-office/AGM types by giving them a “promotion” to GM. I agree that the dynamics probably don’t change much.
In a good President-GM relationship though, they focus on different things. The GM is typically judged on major-league success. Much like with standardized tests, if you’re judged on one thing that’s what you focus on to the possible detriment of other considerations. That’s where the president should come in: Of course he wants to help make the major-league team better, but he should have his eye on sustained future success. Between the two of them you should have a nice balance.
He looked at his gutted farm and half the team gone this offseason and next and thought it was probably best to leave while the goings good. He’s leaving them in very poor circumstances.
I highly doubt the farm system (which didn’t lose Sanchez, Osuna, Pompey, Reid-Foley, Pentecost, Vlad Jr.) caused Anthopoulos to flee from overseeing a lineup that would trot out Josh Donaldson, Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Troy Tulowitzki, Russell Martin and Devon Travis in six of its nine spots.
1. Bautista and E5 are gone after next season. Also perhaps you’ve heard of this thing called pitching? The Jays rented it because they didnt have it.
2. You listed 3 MLBers in your “farm system” group.
3. The other 3 you listed are a 19 year pitcher with bad numbers, a catcher who missed 2015 and a guy who hasnt played pro ball and youre saying your farm is still good? LOL
I’m saying a large reason for the farm taking a hit is that Sanchez, Osuna and, to a lesser extent, Pompey, graduated to the Majors. For a team that “doesn’t have pitching,” the prospect of Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez and Roberto Osuna as rotation cogs in the future isn’t really a bad start, especially if Hutchison rebounds to his 2014 form.
Part of the reason the Blue Jays didn’t have that pitching was because the guys they traded away hadn’t cut it in the Majors. I’m not down on Daniel Norris — I think he’s going to be a good Major League pitcher, in fact — but Matt Boyd is a far more fringe-y prospect and Jairo Labourt is a minimum of two years away from the Majors. Jeff Hoffman is more upside than results at this point as he hasn’t found a way to miss any bats despite throwing in the upper 90s. Toronto gave up very little for Mark Lowe and Ben Revere. The secondary prospects in the Tulo trade were solid, not spectacular, and the immediate return they got from Donaldson (plus the remaining three years of control) more than offsets the fact that Franklin Barreto *might* one day be close to as valuable as Donaldson was in 2015.
I doubt it’s a coincidence that the decision to pull the trigger on parting with so much pitching coincided with the deepest class of free agent pitchers we’ve seen in recent memory as well as an offseason when, even after arb projections, the Blue Jays 2016 Opening Day payroll currently projects to come in some $30MM south of what they’ve averaged in the past two offseasons.
Anthopoulos is far from a perfect GM — I’ve disagreed with plenty of moves he’s made, and the Syndergaard/d’Arnaud loss is sizable — but the arrogance conveyed in your black-and-white assessment of this (and, really, many other topics you comment on at MLBTR) is unbecoming, while the notion that the organization is somehow in shambles is just kind of bizarre. It’s odd to me that you’ll routinely caution against grading the Donaldson for Oakland but are ready to immediately jump down Anthopoulos’ throat on other deals he’s made.
Thank you very much for getting out to him exactly what needed to be said exactly how it needed to be said.
“Also perhaps you’ve heard of this thing called pitching?”
Why are you constantly rude to everyone on this board? It’s like you take every minor disagreement with you personally. Chill out.
If leaving a team with a core of Donaldson, Tulo, Bautista, Stroman, Sanchez, Osuna, and EE is poor circumstances I’d love to see what good circumstances were.
MLB rosters are 25 players, not 7.
In my books, a good core is probably around 7 good players. Not the whole roster.
You know nothing. He didn’t choose to leave them. He had his job responsibilities stripped so he elected not to ‘re-sign.
I’d echo what’s already been touched on by many. I don’t see AA as a saviour as many fans contend. Sure he put more buts in the seats and secured an AL East title, but at what cost? In my opinion he appears to have mortgaged the future of this team in a vain attempt to save his job. While some prospects have been retained there were a number of high quality players which were squandered in very questionable deals. I believe that in time, AA and his “ingenious ” moves will be judged very harshly.
Take Kenny Williams please
Who will be the Jays new GM?
I don’t understand all the hate AA is getting. Did he have his struggles? Sure, but every GM at some point does. People here are putting way too much into the prospects he gave away. Is there a chance they could be superstars or even solid players? Of course, but there is also a chance they could be busts and then everyone would be complaining that they should’ve been traded when they had value. His moves from previous years were questionable, but he put his team into a good position to win this year, with the only real team in the AL posing a threat from getting to the WS being the Royals, this was the year to go for it. If he hadn’t made any of those trades, particularly the ones for Price, Revere and Tulo, then people would be complaining he wasn’t agressive enough to give his team a chance to win. If the jays had somehow won the WS we would be looking at his moves as genius. Just remember that hindsight is 20/20.
I imagine, much like Dombrowski, that AA wont be on the market long if he wants to jump on somewhere else
Drafting and player development were strong points, but most trades where suspect. D’Arnaud, Syndergard, Gomes, Alvarez, Nicolino ,Hechavarria, DeSclafani, Hoffman, Norris, Castro, The Jays will be left with Dickey for 1 more year and Tulo for 4 years. I do not think that AA will be that big a loss when you look at other teams that have a strong base of talent (Boston, Cubs, LA,) and resist trading players with lots of potential to win now.
To the people who keep saying, “He gutted the farm; the Jays have no future.”
Do you realize that the Jays will probably have the best line up going into 2016 with several plus-WAR players to spare? (i.e Michael Saunders, Ben Revere, Dioner Navarro, Ryan Goins)
The rotation is an issue, but hardly a disaster.
Marcus Stroman, R.A Dickey, Drew Hutchison, Aaron Sanchez,
The farm is not as great as it used to be, but it’s hardly the doomsday scenario that some people are depicting. Any trade involving one of the big bats would net us multiple prospects.
The payroll is in great shape going forward. The only problems will be the final years of Tulo and Martin – both of whom far cries from the likes of Vernon Wells or Barry Zito.
As an organization, we’ve never looked better on paper. Those who think a random GM can come in and do a significantly better job than AA is delusional.
The fans are complaining that ‘the farm is gutted’ because it was so strong before the trade deadline, whereas now it’s merely average. However, that’s a very ignorant way of looking at things.
At least with Anthopoulos, he always made it a point to ensure that the farm was at least average (or better), whereas when Riccardi was in power, the Blue Jays farm was always a disaster…
That’s the problem though. The farm was considered average BEFORE the deadline. It is very below now. The top Jays prospects everyone keeps bringing up are mediocre league wide. Middle of the pack guys are now the best the Jays system has to offer
Next Red Sox bullpen coach?