Shapiro is not the villain
The explanation for Alex Anthopoulos’ abdication of his role as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays could be found in what Mark Shapiro, the new president and chief executive of the club, did not say on the afternoon of his first day on the job.
Shapiro, late of the Cleveland Indians but brought to Toronto after a July- August romance from Blue Jays ownership, might have assured fans that his faith in Anthopoulos had been unwavering, that he would have allowed him to have full control of baseball decisions, that his job wouldn’t have changed one bit — and that the departing GM’s decision was thus one entirely of his own making.
Don’t make me the villain, in other words: I wanted the guy here.
But Shapiro could not say those things, because they aren’t true.
In his introductory news conference at the Rogers Centre, after expressing his disappointment that Anthopoulos won’t be back, and saying that it was his “sincere hope” that the two would have partnered to keep fielding a World Series- calibre team, Shapiro, 48, was asked the question that has driven the narrative since the GM turned down a contract extension last week: would Anthopoulos have been given autonomy over baseball decisions?
“I don’t know that,” Shapiro said. He said what was more important than who had what authority was a process that allowed the organization to arrive at the best decision. “It’s not about autonomy, it’s about collective success.”
Later, he was asked how involved he planned to be in the baseball operations of the club. “That’s a tough question to answer,” Shapiro said. In a good organization, a good culture, he explained, the president is “going to have some involvement.”
Interspersed in his comments were remarks about teamwork and leadership that could have been lifted from a Motivational Phrases Wall Calendar. “Energy spent on credit, energy spent on blame, that’s wasted energy,” Shapiro said. He said he didn’t believe in absolutes, he didn’t think of decisions in terms of black or white but in shades of grey, and that the organization, on his watch, would have an “obsessive focus on winning.”
It was earnest and reasonable. And it’s the kind of thing you couldn’t imagine Paul Beeston saying unless it was at the point of a bayonet. Beeston, the 70- year- old team president, now retired, by all accounts ran the team with a decidedly mom- andpop feel. And he let Anthopoulos do his job.
Shapiro, it seems fair to say now, would have done so, too, but only to a point. He would have retained final say on player-movement decisions. Asked if Anthopoulos would have had final call on, say, blockbuster trades, Shapiro responded that no GM in the league really has that call. They make their case, and someone above them signs off on it. Shapiro saw himself as very happy to work alongside Anthopoulos, but not at all in isolation from him.
And so Anthopoulos, having just completed his masterstroke 2015 season, must have realized that the result of that success would be a job in which his authority would be diminished. Not dramatically, perhaps, but diminished nonetheless. Shapiro might say, as he did Monday, that he didn’t understand all the fuss about autonomy, but the man who would have been his GM evidently did.
Shapiro, it should be noted, is not the villain here. He was approached about the president’s job when the Blue Jays were putting in another middling season, even if they had caught fire by the time the hiring was official at the end of August. He was an effective GM in his own right in Cleveland before becoming president there, and it would be unrealistic to assume that he could have arrived in Toronto and operated with some kind of church- and- state separation between the baseball and business parts of the organization. Was he to pretend he had never evaluated prospects before? Was he supposed to unlearn his experience making trades when asked to sign off on them?
( Why ownership insisted on pursuing a president with a baseball- ops background is another question entirely, and one that was doomed to compromise Anthopoulos from the start.) It’s all a footnote if the new guy can deliver on his promise to field a championship contender “each and every year.”
He said he was discarding Beeston’s policy against contracts longer than five years — there was that thing about no absolutes again — and said he wants to replenish the farm system, but noted that sometimes the reason to develop top prospects is to cash them in at the trade deadline. That sounds familiar. Anything short of an ALCS appearance in 2016, and the team will have regressed on his watch. It’s a hard first ask.