JAYS PLAN TO CONTEND
MLB season draws near
It will be a younger and cheaper Toronto Blue Jays team that takes the field to start the season in two weeks from Thursday. And it will be a team whose brighter days are assuredly somewhere in the future.
But a rebuilding team? That’s not the way team president/ceo Mark Shapiro sees it.
“We’ve never talked about ‘we’re going to tank’ or ‘we’re not going to commit,’ ” Shapiro told a group of reporters Tuesday in a board room at Dunedin Stadium, the team’s spring training home. “We are committing to competing.”
Doing it their way. Taking a circuitous route.
The Philadelphia Phillies instantly built themselves a World Series contender in the off-season by trading for catcher J.T. Realmuto and shortstop Jean Segura, while signing free-agent closer David Robertson and outfielders Bryce Harper and Andrew Mccutchen.
“It started with developing their own core of players first,” Shapiro said of the Phillies way, adding that Philadelphia has “the largest cable deal” in baseball, as well as a “very big media and regional market,” and “extreme resources” that rank among the top six or seven in the game. “So I think we are doing the same thing, they’re just two or three years ahead of us.
“I think we will be signing freeagent players as well, hopefully upper-level ones, when we can clearly identify exactly where we have the needs and have a young core of players who have transitioned and developed like they have.”
The Jays movement is anything but subtle.
Gone from the team that started last season are the likes of Josh Donaldson (33), Russell Martin (36), J.A. Happ (36), Marcus Estrada (35), Tyler Clippard (34), Jaime Garcia (32) and Yangervis Solarte (31). They have brought in some veteran pitchers, like Matt Shoemaker (32), Clay Buchholz (34) and Clayton Richard (35), but positionally their average age has dropped significantly, with 23-year old Danny Jansen replacing Martin and 26-yearold Brandon Drury manning Donaldson’s old spot at the hot corner.
They’ve also shed themselves of 34-year-old Troy Tulowitzki, while 29-year-old Freddy Galvis takes over at shortstop until he’s pushed out by 21-year-old Bo Bichette.
The Jays will pay US$16.4 million of Martin’s $20-million contract, while Toronto is on the hook for the $34 million Tulowitzki is owed over the next two years of his deal, plus the additional $4 million buyout for 2021.
With the retained salaries, the Jays’ payroll for 2019 (according to spotrac.com) is $106,098,571. Last year, their total payroll was $150,946,147.
“There is a multi-year plan in place and there’s an understanding and commitment from our ownership group of where we are now and where we’re going to go,” said Shapiro. “At some point, when (GM) Ross (Atkins) and (manager) Charlie (Montoyo) and our baseball leadership group kind of say ‘we’re on the brink of contention, like, we’re very close right now, we need to supplement’ … we all have an understanding of where that need lies, that at some point payroll will outpace our revenues. That point will come.
“Frankly, we have payroll left to spend now. It’s just a question of where and when do those opportunities present themselves and, if we do bring in veteran players, how does that offset our ability to foster and develop the younger core talent on the team?”
So when, exactly, should the Jays be expected to throw a serious challenge at the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees? Or, for that matter, the quicker developing Tampa Bay Rays?
“I’ve got a range of timelines in my head … because in this game, you don’t know,” said Shapiro. “The beauty of the game is it’s being played by human beings. And there’s just no certainty as to how fast … there’s no limit to how quickly it can happen, but there’s also no certainty to how fast it will happen. That’s why it’s important to not stake it on two or three players. You’ve got to have a lot of players and a lot of players coming. That’s why you can’t set specific timelines. If you do, you paint yourself into a corner.
“I would stress that every single person be thinking, from whatever her or his job is, how do we accelerate that time frame, what can we do, where we’re not trying to force the un-forceable, which is the human nature of things ... can we do everything humanly possible to speed that up? And I think collectively, as an organization, we’re focused on those things.”