No flash, no dash in Jays
GM Atkins trying to build his ball club with the long term in mind at all times
DUNEDIN, FLA.— What made you decide … “… to not be flashy?” Ross Atkins jumps into that inquisitorial — and, let’s be honest, accusatory — hole like Troy Tulowitzki turning a double play. If not necessarily the Troy Tulowitzki of most recent vintage. These days he’s not doing any jumping at all, yet.
“Well, it depends on how you define flash,” the Blue Jays general manager suggests.
As per the Oxford Dictionary: To make aconspicuous display of something so as to impress or attract attention.
(Also, to show one’s breasts or genitals in public, but we can set that aside for purposes of this discussion.)
“Ultimately we have a set amount of resources and we feel we’ve done everything we can to optimize what our resources are — payroll and player values.”
The player salaries, rounded off, are at about $155 million, ninth in Major League Baseball, according to FanGraphs. The freewheeling Red Sox are up top with about $235 million.
It might be a prudent budget but it is without any glittery off-season acquisitions, like the Yankees landing, gulp, Giancarlo Stanton and the Red Sox countering with J.D. Martinez.
It made sense, Atkins posits, for New York to go big given last season’s dramatic upthrust and the state of their minor- league assets. Similarly, Boston’s development over the past five to seven years, has provided “a certain amount of projected wins, subjectively and objectively,” to go for the free-agent splash.
The Jays haven’t been flashy and they weren’t splashy. Their moves were depth-complementing, as Atkins describes it.
“Operationally, we feel very good about aunit of people pulling in one direction,” says the GM, who has a tendency for corporate-speak but getting better. “Ultimately, I feel that we have very, quoteunquote, flashy opportunities, given where we are right now. Ultimately, whether they’re perceived to be flashy, or flashy enough, is for people to, sure, judge and question. For us, it’s about finding those incremental opportunities to improve our environment. I have all the respect in the world for the impact of a Josh Donaldson, the impact of a Marcus Stroman and Aaron Sanchez coming back into form, what that could mean for our organization. We feel like we’re putting a contending team on the field.”
Yet not a team vividly upgraded from the club that finished one game out of the cellar in the American League East. Not a team that, crucially, came to a contract agreement with Donaldson, a pending free agent and a generational player around whom the Jays could coalesce with a long-term deal. The 2015 MVP third baseman avoided salary arbitration by inking a one-year, $23-million contract for 2013 but shut down further negotiations last month.
The perception, at least, is that the Jays bungled it again, as they did with Edwin Encarnacion in late 2016. The perception is that they didn’t really have the stomach to lock in Donaldson for the long haul — he has made no secret of his interest in re-signing with Toronto — and they will lose their exclusive bargaining rights when he becomes a free agent at the end of the season, if not traded earlier, depending on how the on-field year unfolds. A key takeaway, presumably, is that the Jays won’t make a take- it-or-leave-it offer this time. Donaldson will be urged to check back in before he signs elsewhere.
Fans may have accepted the vagaries of 2017, all those ruinous injuries, but they might not forgive the franchise if 2018 goes pear-shaped in a hurry. Ticket sales have been sluggish, with not even opening day against the Yankees sold out. The magic of 2015, 2016, has been dispelled.
Re Donaldson: “We’re not going to talk about the subtleties and nuances of negotiation and we’re not closing any doors,” says Atkins, emphasizing that the Jays do not have a corporate policy, as in the Paul Beeston era, of five-year maximum contracts.
“I think it’s mutual that we could revisit (negotiation) and re-open it at any time. We just agreed that the best chance to get something done is to keep it private.”
Jays president Mark Shapiro has made it pretty clear that his objective is a sustainable longterm model, elevating the product from the minor-league system on up. No gambles that involve parting with young marquee assets for a hear-and-now risk. Atkins drinks the same Kool-Aid, obviously. “We are focused on bringing a sustainable, winning-calibre organization that will win championships for years. We’re not focused on just one year. We’re focused on the impact of our system and what that could mean, and the opportunity to capitalize on it in the long run. We’re extremely confident that there’s a lot of very good things happening here that will end very well for us and the fans. Because ultimately this game is for the fans.” Oh yeah? Because ultimately this is an old team. That core group of Tulowitzki and Russell Martin and a left-field platoon of Curtis Granderson and Steve Pearce is health-sketchy.
In what has frankly been the most boring Jays off-season in memory, the brain trust addressed blatant needs with analytics-weighed gambits, incremental moves that lean heavily on bounce-back performances by acquired infielders and outfielders, the likes of Granderson, Aledmys Diaz, Randal Grichuk and, for the starting rotation, Jaime Garcia. At modest expenditure. And putting an awful lot of faith in its rotation moundsmen, whereas the crux problem last season was a shockingly lame offence and the inability to bring home runners in scoring position.
There’s potential pop in Toronto’s youthful brigade but little enthusiasm for supplanting veterans. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette are still well down on the stairway to bigleague heaven. Anthony Alford, among the most impressive of apprentices at spring training, is out of the roster hunt with a Grade 2 hamstring strain, three to six weeks on the DL. Teoscar Hernandez, with his gaudy spring training numbers, is stuck behind an outfield jam.
Atkins looks at the prospects and see controllable minor- league players, quality call-ups in the event of injuries, where the team failed spectacularly last year.
“In the event we do have guys who have either performance setbacks or health setbacks, we’re in a better position to recoup that. If you look at our Triple-A team, it’s all young, controllable, relatively upside players. First time we’ve had that in the last few years.” We could see the yummy studs early, we might see them in August, or maybe not see them — Bichette and Guerrero, particularly — for a couple of years. None of it is carved in stone.
“If they’re the better players, we’ll make room. But track record means something too.”
See, it’s not about an openingday crowd. It’s about May and the dog days of summer, and significant baseball in September.
They don’t understand this yet, the executive carpetbaggers from Cleveland: how quickly, in Toronto, passion dissolves into disinterest. Rogers, hand-over-fist profiteers, should know better.
“We agreed the best chance to get something done is to keep it private.” ROSS ATKINS ON THE DONALDSON TALKS