The Blue Jays have announced the hiring of Ben Cherington as vice president of baseball operations, as Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.ca first reported. Cherington was speaking with other organizations about other roles before deciding to head to Toronto, per the report.
Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro has been hard at work revamping his team’s front office, and he’s now set to hire a familiar face. Cherington is best known for his time as the Red Sox general manager, but got his start in baseball under Shapiro when the latter was in charge of the Indians.
Ross Atkins is already in place as the Toronto GM — he’s also an executive VP — and he won’t be supplanted. Instead, Cherington will “work closely” with player development director Gil Kim and report to Atkins, the team says. The “emphasis” will be on the player development side, Davidi writes.
There were both successes and failures for Cherington during his time at the helm of the powerful Boston organization. He helped deliver a World Series after taking over for Theo Epstein before the 2012 campaign, but also oversaw some disappointing seasons. Cherington decided to leave the organization after it hired Dave Dombrowski as president of baseball operations in the middle of 2015 and has not worked for another team since — instead serving as an “executive in residence” at Columbia University.
Cherington still commands broad respect around the game, making him an intriguing addition for the Jays. It doesn’t hurt that some of the seemingly poor moves he made with the Red Sox look better at this point than they have in the past. More important, though, are the deals he didn’t make. Players like Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Jackie Bradley Jr. were often mentioned as trade candidates in years past, but they are now providing immense value to the Sox. Cherington’s ability to assess and develop young talent will no doubt provide an asset to his new club.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
The Twins better shoop in and sign him.
Beane should offer him Barreto and Graveman for Donaldson just for s’s and giggles.
It would actually be a way better deal now than then. Donaldson with two fewer years of control, Barretto with the same.
Really wish he would have stayed in Boston as a sidekick with Dombrowski now that he’s been vindicated with many of his moves. As a talent evaluator, he’s near the top, probably exactly why Toronto would love to grab him up.
Baltimore is where I see the perfect match.. Duquette with his superb scrounging abilities and Cherrington’s ability to find amateur talent would be the best 1-2 in the game.
Except Cherington would have still been GM in Boston. So not a sidekick, more like an underling.
Definitely a good point. They’d make for a great 1-2.
But honestly Duquette’s problem is simply rotation issues. It shouldn’t be hard to find pitchers who can provide 5-6 quality innings per start and yet Duquette truly cannot find those pitchers.
Damn, the AL East just turned into a grudge match
I have to like the front office right now. Shapiro brings in Atkins, who worked with him in Cleveland, who is an excellent talent evaluater. And now gets Cherington who is also an excellent evaluater. The front office is starting to get pretty loaded with great baseball minds, and that also includes Tony LaCava who was here with AA the last few years. The Jays should be able to start revamping that prospect pool quite quickly with significant talent at this rate.
Start? The system is already clearly in the top half of baseball. What they need to do is keep the major league team in contention as those players mature. Then they will have their ideal Cardinals/Giants type of consistent winner.
Who had them in the top half? Just curious, as I’ve seen some rankings that have them more in the 25 range.
Nobody will update their lists until the offseason, but huge strides were made in terms of the farm system this year. Tellez and Reid-Foley took big strides, McGuire and Ramirez were added, they had an excellent draft, and Guerrero Jr. and Bichette had huge breakout years.
Ya it was a nice year. Harris really did great, Reid-foley did great, Greene struggled a bit, but will still be a top 100 prospect probably. Getting to top 10 prospects from a team with a strong farm system like Pittsburgh really helped, for a AAAA pitcher who looks like jake Arrieta one day and then Alfredo Simon for the next 5 starts. We seem to always be able to build a nice farm, it’s just AA gutted it twice.
Your Arrieta to Simon comp is spot on. Hutchison completely shut the Yankees down on opening day last year. He looked terrific. He looked nowhere near as good the next few times I saw him. Difference was night and day.
Damn I would have loved for my Braves to have taken him on in such a smallish role! Really loved a lot of the moves he made in Boston and I don’t think they gave him enough time or credit.
Charrington is too timid to be a great GM good move for Toronto for the future great move for everybody else now