NO WAY, JOSE
Jays GM confirms the team won’t pick up the option of outfielder Bautista after disappointing year,
The goodbyes were already said but Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins confirmed Tuesday that Jose Bautista has likely played his last season with the club.
Toronto will not pick up their end of the mutual option the 36-year-old right fielder signed before what Atkins called a “massively disappointing” 2017 season. While the GM was moved by the outpouring of love Bautista received during his final home game a little more than a week ago — and while he looks forward to celebrating the Blue Jays’ faithful servant at some point in the future — Atkins said, based on Toronto’s current roster, “we feel it’s unlikely that he’s a part of the solution moving forward.”
Atkins believes the legendary outfielder is still capable of being a major-league player despite finishing the season with a .203 batting average and a franchise-record 170 strikeouts. But time is working against Bautista, as it did the Blue Jays this year.
“We’re not getting any younger if we add him to our fold and guarantee him our right-field spot,” Atkins said.
Age was a hot topic in the GM’s end-of-season news conference as he discussed what to do with the oldest starting lineup in baseball to avoid another painful premature ending in 2018.
Health was a hindrance, Atkins made plain. Blue Jays players missed more than 1,400 games to injury.
“We were not able to (survive) the injuries this year,” he said. “Our players that had to come in and step in, across the entire organization, were not enough.”
So was a lack of consistent fundamental play, an issue star third baseman Josh Donaldson pointed out during Toronto’s final series against the New York Yankees over the weekend.
Atkins said better execution starts with spring training and regular drills sometimes not asked of veterans.
“It often time happens in professional sports where the more veteran your organization, the more veteran your roster becomes, the more individualized the work becomes because of routines,” he said. “That’s what we need to dig into.”
Depth across the organization was another sticking point for Atkins, who identified both second base and shortstop as positions where Toronto especially needs back up after 50and 66-game seasons from Devon Travis (knee) and Troy Tulowitzki (ankle) respectively.
Atkins said he hopes next season will bring better communication between himself, the Blue Jays medical staff and injured players such as Travis and pitcher Aaron Sanchez, who made only eight starts due to a blister problem.
“I feel like I let them down,” Atkins said. “There aren’t decisions, as we look back, that we can find that we said, ‘We would have absolutely done that differently given the information we had at that time.’ Having said that, there were times in the season that I was frustrated, our players were frustrated because of the inefficiency of some of our communication.”
All of the off-season work begins with a look inward. Atkins was pleased with this year’s pitching, is happy to see talent being built up in the Blue Jays’ farm system, and still has faith in a talented veteran core. That, he said, is what makes him believe the team can contend in 2018.
As for who will be around at that point, Atkins said he wants to add an impact pitcher and an impact position player “for sure.”
Among other thoughts from the GM:
He would “absolutely” be open to Donaldson, who becomes a free agent in 2018, staying in Toronto long term, though he wouldn’t elaborate how that might come to fruition.
He feels strongly that John Gibbons is part of Toronto’s solution. The manager and the entire Blue Jays coaching staff will be back next year.
Teoscar Hernandez did enough to be considered for a starting outfield position next season. The 24-yearold September call-up had eight homers and 20 RBIs in the final month.
The club is optimistic Sanchez will return to being a starting pitcher despite working only 36 innings due to those blister problems.
Atkins is confident all-star Justin Smoak, who managed a career-high 38 homers this season, can put in a similar performance in 2018. He attributed the first basemen’s September lull, in which he hit just two dingers, in part to contusions on his toe and lower leg.