National Post (National Edition)
Jays’ brass shifts focus to 2018
‘We feel we’ve under-performed, under-achieved’
At one point during his pre-game media scrum inside the manager’s office, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons joked that he was hearing voices.
It turned out that it was Rogers broadcaster Pat Tabler outside in the hallway saying hello to a couple of the Jays’ staff. Then again, it could have been GM Ross Atkins rehearsing what he was going to say to the media.
After a road trip where the Jays lost seven of 10 and sit 10 games out of first in the AL East (heading into Monday night’s games), Atkins decided to give an impromptu state of the union address, with the message being that after the team’s recent troubles, the front office is now — finally — shifting focus away from the 2017 season to 2018.
Before Atkins spoke, Gibbons proclaimed: “We might just shock the world!” when asked if it was still possible to do something this season. But the manager was largely joking. If you read between his carefully crafted lines, Atkins is finally admitting that 2017 is a wash in terms of contending for the playoffs.
“A month ago we were talking about the need for the team to play well and then get hot. We haven’t done that. Now we’re in a position where it’s a lot more difficult to add to a team like this objectively (and) subjectively,” said Atkins “The scale of deciding whether we add or subtract as definitely changed.”
And while he came close to saying 2017 is finished from a playoff standpoint, Atkins is clinging to the party line that the Jays can rebuild and still stay competitive in 2018.
“It’s really about young, controllable talent and any way you can do that, we’ll look to do that,” said Atkins. “We feel like we’ve underperformed and underachieved, offensively and defensively. Our relief pitching has been pretty strong, our starting pitching was OK until the last couple of weeks. So it’s not positionspecific right now. It’s more about controllable talent.
“There’s a lot of different ways to make the 2018 team better,” Atkins continued. “And some of it just may be in form of depth and some of it could be in the form of controllable assets. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that we acquire a major league starting pitcher for the 2018 team. Our ideal is something in the form of control and (players who can) slide right onto the 2018 team. But that’s a hard thing for another team to give up.”
Atkins wouldn’t get into specifics (i.e. wouldn’t say if the front office has asked Jose Bautista whether he would waive his no-trade clause), but he does expect something to go down this week in the face of next week’s trade deadline.
“We have a very good feel for what’s available to us,” said Atkins. “We’ve worked extremely hard to be prepared for either direction (buy or sell). And we’ve also worked very hard to understand the needs of other teams and where they match up and where we can align to make our organization better.
“We still feel like we have a great team in 2018 that we’ll need to add to,” he continued. “There’s a way to do that. That could mean subtraction from this team. It might not. We would hope to and like to for this team to be relevant and a contending team potentially (this year).”
And Santa Claus may hitch the reindeer early this year.
In a subtle way, Atkins wanted to assure the increasingly skeptical Blue Jays fanbase that, yes, the front office actually has a plan in place for the Jays to rebuild and still contend next year. He said it’s about addressing every aspect of what it take to have a successful team and not just based on wishful thinking.
“You certainly don’t want to just say that, ‘(we’ll contend) next year because it didn’t happen (this year) and now our luck has changed,’” he said. “It won’t be about luck, it’s going to be about opportunities. It’s going to be about how we’re using information, whether that’s in the advance (scouting), whether that’s in health, whether that’s in durability. It’s every facet. It’s also how you complement certain pieces. So we now have more information about this group and we’ll have to think about how the pieces that will be here can improve and get better.”
One positive Atkins will have in his favour is that roughly $60 million in salaries will come off the books next year, meaning that the Jays can be active in the free agent market, unless, of course Rogers gets miserly.