JAYS' SPRING COMPLEX LEAVES PLAYERS IN AWE
$100-million Florida facility designed to keep talent training there year-round
How shoddy were the Toronto Blue Jays facilities in Dunedin when Mark Shapiro first took stock of the assets after being hired as team president in 2015?
Bad enough that one of Shapiro's initial thoughts was to look into plans for his new team to leave town. A stadium, now known as TD Ballpark, was easily in the bottom three of Grapefruit League venues.
The Bobby Mattick training complex, some six kilometres across town, was even more embarrassing — a cramped, inadequate facility ill-equipped to develop today's professional athletes.
“Dunedin was a laughing stock of Major League Baseball, frankly,” Shapiro said recently. “When I was a competing executive with (Cleveland) and I had to drive in here, it was a laughing stock.
“It was one of the worst places to watch a game and no one even saw the training centre.”
The forward-thinking team president isn't wrong.
So, in addition to cleansing the roster of veterans such as Jose Bautista, Josh Donaldson and the rest of the aging gang, the team forged plans to change everything about its Dunedin home.
The result was an extensive, US$100 million project that included a facelift of the stadium — which was completed last season — and a much more ambitious project at what is being called the player development complex, which is designed to be the heartbeat and developmental hub for the franchise.
This spring, player after player has raved about the 115,000-square-foot facility that is now the showpiece of the Jays' draft and development mantra. The mammoth facility is a modernistic shrine loaded with amenities to maximize the potential of all in the organization. Over time, it could even double as a recruiting tool for free agents.
“It's very, very impressive,” said George Springer, the other nine-figure investment the Jays made by signing the centre-fielder to a six-year, US$150 million deal in January. “Obviously there's a ton of stuff here for guys to get better with.
“The weight room is unbelievable. The fields are unbelievable. The locker-room is awesome.
For guys to see the organization put their best foot forward with a facility like this is special.”
Special and spacious.
Most players we've spoken with rave about the weight room, in particular. The 22,500-squarefoot space sprawls over two levels and spills outside to a covered area. The Jays say it is equipped with more than 40,000 pounds of weight accessories and barbells.
Outside, there are multiple fields, including one with the same artificial turf as Rogers Centre and another covered infield that allows work to get done if the weather turns sour.
“It's crazy,” catcher Danny Jansen said. “The weight room is the size of the old building, maybe even bigger. The fields are amazing as well and lots of classrooms. Whatever you need, you get. We're definitely spoiled by it.”
Jansen is one of a number of players to realize immediate gains from the facilities. After getting married in the off-season, the catcher and his wife bought a home in the area and he was a regular at the complex throughout the winter. He figures he may be in the best shape of his professional life.
And Jansen wasn't alone in that winter plan.
Rowdy Tellez, Jordan Romano, Nate Pearson and Bo Bichette — to name a handful — were all regular inhabitants at the Dunedin complex for much of the off-season.
“It's not just about a player getting use out of the facility,” Shapiro said. “It's about creating a place where our minor-league players, our player development staff and our major-league players ... all have the desire to want to move and live and train here.”
Teams can't force players to attend off-season workouts and, unlike football, there are no Organized Team Activities.
But the Jays thought that if they created a place this impressive, it, along with the Florida weather, would be a magnet for players. Add in high-end training and dietary staff and the appeal is obvious.
“Development is a 12-month-ayear thing,” said Jays director of player development Gil Kim. “It's not something that we turn on and off like a light switch when the last game of the season is played.”
The Jays invested heavily in research before the complex was designed and built, visiting English Premier League facilities in Europe plus NFL and NCAA operations in North America. The intention was to end up with a facility that would appeal to all players — old school and new — and help elevate their view of training.
“The approach is holistic but it's also individualized,” Kim said. “The most important thing is how do we best reach the individual. Each individual is different. Nate Pearson (a noted high-tech disciple) is going to look at every possible thing we have here to help him be a better pitcher, while other players won't, and that's fine.”
Inside the complex, there are amenities to appeal to and assist players at all levels of the organization, all designed with incentives in mind.
Case in point is the three minor-league locker-rooms, with ascending amenities depending on the level, capped with the luxurious 3,750-square-foot major league clubhouse complete with eight-foot lockers.
“I think the simplest (way to describe it) is it's skipping a generation,” Shapiro said. “We're going from the last generation to next generation.”
For guys to see the organization put their best foot forward with a facility like this is special.