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OT: The Toronto Blue Jays

MindzEye said:
The gaslighting is amazing. We're supposed to just forget that they wasted 10's of millions of dollars on trash ball players trying to replace the good players they practiced terrible asset management with, because something something rebuild.

They attempted to continue competing and failed at it as soon as decisions regarding what they were gifted came due. They let assets rot away rather than successfully compete with them, or if that wasn't the goal, successfully tear down.

Also, this concept of "rebuilding" isn't really a MLB concept. There's negligible future competitive advantage to being terrible in MLB. This isn't the NHL or NBA. If you suck, you probably fucked up or are cheap....or both. Any MLB organization can completely "rebuild" their minor league system with 2-3 years of good drafting.
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Except that they did successfully continue competing because they made the fucking playoffs the next year. At that point, Jose was starting to break down and Edwin's contract was up. I distinctly remember being torn on what to do, because it seemed pretty clear a rebuild would be needed soon, but it's idiotic to dismantle a team that just made the playoffs 2 years in a row.

They did not want to give 4/5 years to Edwin because they were planning to rebuild, but decided to stay the course for the next year. Start off the season with mostly the same club, but no trading youth or huge contracts for vets. Brought Jose back on a 1 year deal, Kendrys on a shorter, cheaper deal, Granderson, etc. You can disagree with this if you want, but it made total sense to me. They could have traded Josh in the off-season, but as mentioned, let's see how things go for the first couple of months and if we're contending we can add at the deadline, if no we can trade assets away. They sucked, and Josh barely played, so weren't able to get much for him at the deadline. Not sure if Tulo ever played again.

Okay, we have Vlad but he's a couple of years away. Let's tear it down and rebuild, hopefully have some good young pieces to surround him with once he gets to the show.

As for your last point, c'mon man. That is a laughable argument. HALF OF MLB is tanking these days. You forget that both the Astros and Cubs were historically awful during rebuilds and then won World Series. Guess what every bottom feeder is doing now .......
 
leafman101 said:
Shatkins has proven they can build a 3rd place team. We knew they could do that. The question remains can they take the next step.

Siemens and Ray are already big losses. Can they repeat that, or were they lucky? Still big questions for them, even though they have made some good moves the last 2 years.
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Have they? 3rd in the 2020 COVID season. 4th every other year.
 
manny said:
"Impressive accomplishment" = Shapiro and Atkins turning the division winning team they took over into a wildcard team, then a bottom-5 team, while getting nothing in return for any of the assets they inherited. Sorry, "nothing in return" is actually a bit too generous. Drury and McKinney put up a combined -1.4 WAR in Toronto. They would have been better off to just release Happ (the best SP on the market) at the deadline in 2018. (A propos of nothing, I guess, the Rays traded Chris Archer that very same day for Meadows, Glasnow and Baz. And they've been in the playoffs every year since.)

"Not impressive" = Anthopoulos taking over a last place team, winning the division every year, and a world series.

Got it.
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I don't know where you got that last part, I haven't said anything here about Alex Anthopoulos. I think he's great, wish he didn't leave, and think he's done a great job in Atlanta. That team was a couple of years ahead of the Jays, so they were successful a couple of years ahead of the Jays.

It's not rocket surgery.
 
You think Anthopoulos left the Jays in need of a rebuild, and that building a solid 4th place team 6 years later is a good result.
 
And Happ was not pitching well leading up to the trade deadline. Several teams wanted to add him no doubt, but considering his age, I'm not sure teams were willing to give up any great young assets. So you likely get a 19-year old in A ball.


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manny said:
You think Anthopoulos left the Jays in need of a rebuild, and that building a solid 4th place team 6 years later is a good result.
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Stop being disingenuous, those 6 years include a playoff appearance at the start with a very old team, a few years of rebuilding, and ending with one of the most exciting young teams in baseball.
 
Not really understanding this. Wasn't the shatkins made criticism that they were entirely mediocre with everything they did and never really built a winner? And for 5-6 years that continued with Toronto? They never really made any great moves and even if you think they weren't a disaster maybe is it not true that they weren't great either?

And now in the last 12 months or so they've done uncharacteristically bold and good things so the folks who criticized him in the past are now complimenting him? So they're calling it like they see it? Where's the disconnect here?
 
Preston said:
Not really understanding this. Wasn't the shatkins made criticism that they were entirely mediocre with everything they did and never really built a winner? And for 5-6 years that continued with Toronto? They never really made any great moves and even if you think they weren't a disaster maybe is it not true that they weren't great either?

And now in the last 12 months or so they've done uncharacteristically bold and good things so the folks who criticized him in the past are now complimenting him? So they're calling it like they see it? Where's the disconnect here?
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To some extent, we're all in agreement that they made some mistakes and are not necessarily great (I'd say in the 10-20 range of MLB management teams), whether they're 12th or 18th isn't really the point so much as they're not the best and I am definitely arguing that they're far from the worst. The biggest disconnect seems to be that some people don't understand what rebuilding is, or are pretending that the Jays didn't rebuild aside from the fact that they went from one of the oldest teams in MLB to one of the youngest.
 
axlsalinger said:
To some extent, we're all in agreement that they made some mistakes and are not necessarily great (I'd say in the 10-20 range of MLB management teams), whether they're 12th or 18th isn't really the point so much as they're not the best and I am definitely arguing that they're far from the worst. The biggest disconnect seems to be that some people don't understand what rebuilding is, or are pretending that the Jays didn't rebuild aside from the fact that they went from one of the oldest teams in MLB to one of the youngest.
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Fair enough. If I followed baseball and my favorite team had management in the middle of the pack I'd probably be whiny about them too. Average is the most frustrating of all because a lot of the time average means you keep your job. I prefer tire fires or Masai level management.
 
It seems like the anti shatkins brigade are the only ones who are open minded and shifting their opinions as the shatkins portfolio increases and progresses. Looking back it's probably wise to say some of the pro shatkins brigade were a little too soft on them, no? Now that we're finally seeing solid decisions being made maybe we can now look back and say "hey maybe these guys were right to criticize trade A or signing B."
 
Preston said:
Fair enough. If I followed baseball and my favorite team had management in the middle of the pack I'd probably be whiny about them too. Average is the most frustrating of all because a lot of the time average means you keep your job. I prefer tire fires or Masai level management.
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Imagine if the Raptors had fired Masai after 2018 and hired the old New York Knicks front office instead. No 2019 championship, sorry, it was an old roster anyway. Fast forward to 2024 and the team starts to look decent again.

Do you celebrate this process? Or lament it? That’s the thread.
 
Preston said:
It seems like the anti shatkins brigade are the only ones who are open minded and shifting their opinions as the shatkins portfolio increases and progresses. Looking back it's probably wise to say some of the pro shatkins brigade were a little too soft on them, no? Now that we're finally seeing solid decisions being made maybe we can now look back and say "hey maybe these guys were right to criticize trade A or signing B."
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Well as you can see from this discussion, the groupthink opinion was that they were total shit and fucked up a contending team from the start. Some of us think this is silly, because they made the playoffs again, and the core was getting old.

If you're going to rebuild, it doesn't make much sense to pay $80 million to a 34-year old first baseman in free agency. But it doesn't make much sense to dismantle a playoff team either.

So they tried to split the difference, we're going to rebuild soon but let's give the Josh and Jose core one more year but not trade more prospects or sign long-term deals, which makes sense to me and is what I would have done. Some people think they should have gone all-in. That team sucked so obviously they didn't do a great job, but Jose was done and Donaldson and Tulo hardly played due to injuries.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of people here were upset AA left, and blamed Shapiro for this even though it was Rogers' fault and he told AA he could stay on as GM, but he turned it down. So Shapiro was hated before he even got started, and has always been viewed through that lens.
 
axlsalinger said:
Well as you can see from this discussion, the groupthink opinion was that they were total shit and fucked up a contending team from the start. Some of us think this is silly, because they made the playoffs again, and the core was getting old.

If you're going to rebuild, it doesn't make much sense to pay $80 million to a 34-year old first baseman in free agency. But it doesn't make much sense to dismantle a playoff team either.

So they tried to split the difference, we're going to rebuild soon but let's give the Josh and Jose core one more year but not trade more prospects or sign long-term deals, which makes sense to me and is what I would have done. Some people think they should have gone all-in. That team sucked so obviously they didn't do a great job, but Jose was done and Donaldson and Tulo hardly played due to injuries.

I think the biggest problem is that a lot of people here were upset AA left, and blamed Shapiro for this even though it was Rogers' fault and he told AA he could stay on as GM, but he turned it down. So Shapiro was hated before he even got started, and has always been viewed through that lens.
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My big problem with them the first few seasons was the dithering. We all knew we were a team on the brink - give us a little more, and we can make a legit run. Or if you don't, then tear down and start fresh. Like, if they pushed a little harder, maybe they could have made a better run in 2016, and then you don't worry about the cupboards being bare.

But they didn't make that push, so 2016 was disappointing in the end, and then after that, they kind of continued to dither. They didn't tear down, but they did basically trim down and cheap out, and that obviously led to some tough years. Especially after AA making the big moves for Price and Tulo, we all just hoped for more moves like that, but Shatkins were too "safe" in playing things and seemed afraid to take risks.

Now, have the last couple years been enough to change their reputation? I don't know. I mean, a little bit, at least in that my brain is not in a "gah, I can't bring myself to care about this year until Shatkins are fired" mood. They've made some nice moves the last couple years. Yeah, some bad ones too, but pobody's nerfect. Especially with this move now in Berrios, it was bold to trade for him without a guarantee at a deal, and sonafagun, they got the deal done. They've made the big FA moves the last couple years. All that's really left is for Rogers to open the doors a little with payroll, and I'm really interested in seeing what this team can do.
 
mbow30 said:
While Rogers had a hand in it… and AA was a bit of a diva … the whole “he could have stayed on as GM” was bs. Shapiro chased him out.
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Yes. I believe the reports about that meeting between Shapiro and AA. Enough have stated it was true. Shapiro was going on about all those shitty prospects AA traded to build a contender.
 
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