The Blue Jays officially introduced Ross Atkins as the team’s new general manager in a press conference yesterday. Here are some of the most noteworthy items from that presser, as per the National Post’s John Lott, Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi and Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith…
- Atkins will slowly ease into the job over the offseason, a transition necessitated by the late timing of his hiring and the fact that interim GM Tony LaCava has already completed many of the club’s big winter plans. LaCava will “work us through the Winter Meetings and through this offseason as the leader of our decision-making. I’ll support and complement any way that I can,” Atkins said.
- Atkins, LaCava, Royals assistant GM Rene Francisco and a mystery candidate were the four finalists for the job. While Atkins was cited as a potential favorite from the moment the Jays’ GM job became available, team president/CEO Mark Shapiro consulted with an executive recruitment firm to make sure he wasn’t showing any bias towards his long-time former charge from the Indians front office.
- While Atkins thinks the rotation is already strong enough to contend, he said the Jays will look to add starting depth. With Marcus Stroman, R.A. Dickey, J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada already locked into rotation jobs, Shapiro expects “three or four” pitchers to battle for the fifth spot in Spring Training, one of whom will be the newly-acquired Jesse Chavez.
- The Jays aren’t at their payroll limit, Shapiro said, though he didn’t elaborate on any specific dollar amount. When asked if he’d requested a payroll increase from ownership in the wake of the Blue Jays’ big attendance increase during their late-season pennant drive, Shapiro said “Yes, and that’s obviously happened.”
- Though Toronto has already addressed its biggest need in the form of rebuilding the pitching staff, that doesn’t necessarily mean the team is done for the winter. “Because we have filled the largest holes, we are open to being very creative the rest of the offseason. So we have the ability to examine a lot of scenarios,” Shapiro said.
- David Price left the Jays to join the division rival Red Sox on a record seven-year, $217MM contract. Toronto was never considered to be a major contender to re-sign Price since the bidding was expected to be too high, though the team had a natural interest in bringing the ace southpaw back. “It’s never a question of do you want David Price,” Shapiro said. “That’s silly. Of course, yes, we want David Price. It’s a question of how do you build a championship team within the parameters you’re given. It’s as simple as that. We have all the resources necessary to build a championship team, but they’re not unlimited.”
- Former Indians manager Eric Wedge has been in talks to join the organization in some capacity, though Shapiro said no hiring was imminent and that Wedge wouldn’t be taking a job currently filled by another employee.
- Several front office areas will be addressed, with the hiring of a new director of Latin American operations being a “top of the list” priority for Atkins. The Blue Jays will also look to bulk up their analytics department, as well as their training and conditioning departments.
Without Price, the Blue Jays should go hard after relief pitching to make up for their lack of an ace.
Consider that most of their early struggles last year were due to the pen’s inability to finish games, and a good pen is absolutely essential to what they want to do this year. It wasn’t until the addition of Hawkins and Lowe that the bullpen started to get the job done. With the absence of Mark Buehrle, the pen is likely going to have to pick up a few more innings, so they will have to be not only good, but deep.
This is absolutely disgusting. Ownership is a joke.
Shapiro has never accomplished anything substantial business-wise or on the field. Why hire him? Now you allow him to bring in Atkins and Wedge who were part of the do-nothing Indians under Shapiro’s watch.
Shapiro said there were “no bad choices….” in selecting from Atkins and LaCava. Then why not choose the guy with more experience in a GM capacity and is already familiar with the team. Obviously, Shapiro is looking to run all aspects of the team and Atkins is his yes-man.
I realize his first season with the Jays hasn’t even started yet but Shapiro is already rubbing me the wrong way. He comes off as a sleazy used-car salesman to me. I was willing to give him a chance, but him repeating was done in Cleveland is flat-out idiotic. It wasn’t successful. TRY SOMETHING NEW SHAPIRO.
Shapiro thinks he’s smarter than anyone. However, he will try to copy things that successful teams have done. The problem is, he doesn’t understand how other teams build foundations for certain things to work within the overall strategy. He’s not a strategist. He reacts. In all the years he was in Cleveland, he never presented a clear plan of how he wanted to build a winning team.
Wedge now too? This gets more disconcerting by the day..
“Depth”, HA! Having a large number of bad pitchers isn’t depth. The Blue Jays have a poor rotation with the potential for awful depending on whether a kid of less than a full year of big league experience can step into a #1 role and a career mediocre pitcher can replicate a career season. The rest of the rotation is absolute garbage. Stroman, Estrada and pray for rain for three days doesn’t work when you play in a dome (and that’s the best case scenario.
Agreed. The Jays rotation is “already strong enough to contend”? What is this guy, a comedian? Outside of Stroman, that rotation doesn’t even have potential. Dickey has one foot out of the door, Happ is a back-end starter, and it’s unlikely that Estrada repeats his career year. Not to mention, the high upside pitching in the minors was moved last year. I can’t see how the Jays don’t try Sanchez in the rotation.
No potential is the most ludicrous thing you could say when Happ has possibly the highest potential upside over expected performance in baseball. He showed for a couple of months last season that he could pitch like a true ace even though he has spent his whole career demonstrating himself to be a below average pitcher. That is the definition of upside.
Have a look at Happ’s career. He has done his best when he had a good team behind him, as with the old Phillies, and the Pirates. Astros, Mariners, and old Jays, not so much. This year, he will have the best scoring lineup in baseball, and one of the best defenses behind him. Look for a good year.
Chaqvez has one of the best caught looking rates in baseball, mainly because of a very good slider. He put up those numbers last year in spite of pitching to one of the worst pitch framing catchers in baseball. Expect that to continue at a greater clip this year pitching to Martin, who is one of the best pitch framers.
Two pitchers have made mechanical adjustments as well. Estrada’s success last year was due to adding a 2 seamer, and Happ made adjustments to his body angle, etc., that accounted for his success at Pittsburgh. These physical improvements won’t go away, so we should expect them to carry through to this year.
Hutchison is a good pitcher who had a bad year. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t pitching through some nagging injuries. We don’t know what he will be like this year, but I have to give him at least a 50-50 chance of turning it around.
Dickey and Happ are absolute garbage? Exaggerate much? They’re perfectly serviceable mid-to-back end starters, and you can pretty much pencil in Dickey for 200 innings, which has value as well. The rotation is nothing special, but it will be no worse than last year’s, and when you have the best offense in baseball, that’s good enough.
The first mistake they made was not promoting AA to President.
Very interesting that Shapiro is taking the lead in discussing baseball matters. In the past, Beeston let AA do most of the talking, except a couple of times a year. We will have to watch and see what happens as the new front office settles in.
On an aside, I wonder if AA will show up at the Winter Meetings?
Shapiro, Adkins and now possibly Wedge?? I feel……SICK..the 2016 season is already a failure…