ATKINS unplugged
Blue Jays GM sat down for a wide-ranging, one-on-one chat on everything from the club’s outlook to the big free-agent names still unsigned to the question on everyone’s minds: When will Vladimir Guerrero Jr. play?
DUNEDIN, Fla. — Finally,
Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins can say this is his team.
His manager of choice. His players. His spring training without all that much inherited.
The old, expensive, pushedout veteran stars and leaders are gone. The biggest Blue
Jays moves of the winter were paying for Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki to play in Los Angeles and New York.
Now the question that won’t go away — today or tomorrow and every day until there is an answer — is when, exactly, will Vladimir Guerrero Jr. arrive in Toronto?
Will it be April or June, depending on which business dates mean more to the Blue Jays? The wait is overdue for fans, but general manager Atkins is sticking to his story, conveniently leaving the contractual possibilities out of the equation, claiming Guerrero will be a Blue Jay when he’s deemed ready.
Which is, of course, nonsense. This is all business.
The Guerrero question aside, the Blue Jays began their official spring workouts on Thursday.
The Sun took the time to sit down with the Jays’ fourth-year general manager to discuss the upcoming season and several big-picture issues facing Major League Baseball.
This is a new beginning for you and your management group. Heading into camp, what do you like best about this Blue Jays team?
“It’s an exciting young group. We’ve been talking at length about the talent in our system and the possibilities of it. Over the course of the season, the roster will likely change a lot from a young 25-man to an even younger 25-man roster. We’re hopeful to have a lot of difficult decisions ahead of us.
“We’re focused on continuing to build on our depth. But as we have our young players transitioning in, we also realize we have to be patient with them. We have some really exciting young players in double-A and triple-A. Projecting when players are going to be ready is a difficult thing to do, but we’re excited about having the opportunity todothat.Iwouldsayour position-player talent is as good as anyone’s. Now our focus is on complementing that with pitcher talent and pitcher depth.”
What do you think you are lacking the most?
“We’ve acquired 13 pitchers in recent years and subtracted only the expiring contracts. Obviously, we’re still looking at pitching situations and how we can best deal with them. We’re still exploring free agency that way. The more prospects you have, the more opportunities you’ll have. We have an exciting young group but we’re deeper in position players than we are (in pitching) and we need to address that.”
Great teams have stars. Mookie Betts in Boston. Aaron Judge in New York. You had Josh Donaldson and Jose Bautista in Toronto. Outside of Vladdy, is there a certain future star with the Jays?
“It’s so hard to put that moniker on a player, I really don’t like to do that. Any executive you talk to knows that we can project and we can talk about potential and there’s a lot of young players we feel we’re going to get some great stories from, but how do I feel about that? I don’t like to label players.
“Jose Ramirez and Corey Kluber were not projected to be the stars they are today when they were in double-A. That’s just one or two examples.
Aaron Judge wasn’t projected to be the star he is. Mookie Betts wasn’t projected to be this kind of star when he was in double-A.
“So we have a group, Bo Bichette, Nate Pearson, Cavan Biggio, Kevin Smith and more, from Reese McGuire, Danny Jansen and Sean Reid-Foley and Ryan Borucki, and I’m not comfortable saying this will or won’t happen.”
This has been a confusing winter for free agency in baseball. Manny Machado still hasn’t signed. Bryce Harper hasn’t signed. A lot of very good free agents remain unsigned. How seriously did you look at Machado and Harper?
“We’ve monitored the freeagent market on a daily basis. We still feel there are opportunities. We talked about Harper, we talked about Machado. We talked about everyone. We spend countless hours on every free agent that’s available and how they would fit in — not just for this year, but in the future. And that’s not limited to those big names. It’s a lot of others as well.”
(Atkins did sign shortstop Freddy Galvis, and pitchers Matt Shoemaker and David Phelps as free agents)
Why, then, have the big names gone unsigned?
“I saw a quote from an agent saying this the most disciplined he’d ever seen the owners behave. There are more and more expanded front offices in baseball. And it’s not just about analytics. The level of sophistication and education in baseball has affected decision-making. There is more information available than ever before in determining player worth.”
Sothereisless emotion in signing players?
“The emotion will never be gone.
We’re human beings. There is always emotion involved. Players will continue to make lots and lots of money, and they are still. There seems to be some pause in the escalation of salaries, but at the same time, the amount of money being spent isn’t falling off a cliff.”
How do you feel about the $36-or-so million paid out so Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki could be moved elsewhere?
“I don’t think about it as lost dollars. I think about the players we have here and how do we make this team better. How do we improve the people and players that are here? The two situations with Russell and Tulo, they’re different. In the case of Russ, there was an opportunity to acquire talent in return, opportunity for some salary relief for us, and provide more playing time for players on expiring contracts.
“In the case of Troy, it’s different. It was time for him to have an opportunity and we projected where our defence would be. He didn’t fit what we wanted. We didn’t want to deal with the unknown of what he would look like. We thought, with the acquisition of Freddy Galvis, we found somebody who can give us 160 days in the field. He provides some protection for us that way.”
The word around baseball is too many teams aren’t aggressively trying to win. Is the product watered-down?
“If you go back to ’16 and we were aggressive and aggressive again in ’17. Last off-season, we added. We have created more roster flexibility. We feel we have an exciting young team and we know there will be some bumps along the way. It’s hard to say what this team’s going to look like in September, but look back to last season. There was the story of the Rays and Oakland last year. For every story about tanking, there’s a Rays story from last year and an Oakland story. It’s the beauty of the game almost every year. Teams that aren’t supposed to compete wind up competing. To think, that could be us this year. We’re focused on winning each day with the group we know.”
Do you like all the shifting in baseball? There are fewer balls in play than ever before. Is this good for the game?
“I like innovation. I think squelching it would be less than ideal. I think you’re already seeing a large number of hitters trying to adjust. What the game looks like today may not be where it is 10 years from now. I think that constant adjusting in baseball is an exciting aspect of the game.”
What are your thoughts on growing into the general manager’s job?
“I’ve always been comfortable talking baseball, and being in baseball is really the only job I’ve ever had. So talking about baseball, working in baseball, that’s been my life. As the roles have changed throughout my career, the challenges have changed and the responsibilities have changed.
“Now there’s roughly 500 people working in baseball operations for the Blue Jays. I could not be more excited about the people I’m working with. And one of the most exciting challenges for me is the magnitude of representing an entire nation. It’s not one team or one city. It’s an entire country.”
And, finally, an entire country wants to know: When will Vladdy Guerrero Jr. be a Blue Jay?
“There’s no firm timeline. Spring training is a piece of his development. The Arizona Fall League was a piece of his development. He’s 19 years old and he’s handled all the expectations so far. We don’t have a philosophy (on him). We focus on development and what’s next for the Blue Jays. We’re just going to focus on how we put the best team together and how we help Vladdy by doing so.”
(Guerrero will be called up in either April or June, depending on the Jays’ business view on eventual free agency and arbitration years.)