THE GREAT UNMOORING: JAYS BRASS OFFICIALY SPLITS FROM THE ALEX ANTHOPOULOS YEARS.
SIGNING OF PEARCE SUGGESTS ENCARNACION (AND BAUTISTA) WILL NOT BE PART OF REGIME’S PLANS
It turns out the Toronto Blue Jays moved on from Edwin Encarnacion before he could even decide to move on from them.
Ross Atkins, the Toronto general manager, said something in his year- end sit- down with reporters at the end of October that was a little lost amid the haze of talk about alternatives and opportunity costs, but it stands out in retrospect. Speaking of the Blue Jays’ team needs, he said they took solace in the fact it was a buyers’ market for things most likely to be on their list: power-hitting corner outfielders and first basemen.
Six weeks later, Atkins has added two of them to the Toronto roster: Kendrys Morales, late of the Kansas City Royals, for US $33million over three years, and Steve Pearce, the former Baltimore Oriole, for two years and US$ 12- million. The latter deal, announced on Monday morning, all but seals the end of Encarnacion’s time in Toronto, as there is no room in a Morales- Pearce- Justin Smoak platoon at first base and DH for someone who will carry a large free-agent ticket.
And if the rumours that the Blue Jays are closing in on Texas’s Mitch Moreland prove true, that would signal the end of Jose Bautista’s time with the team, too.
Say this for Atkins and his boss, team president Mark Shapiro: they haven’t chosen the route that would earn them laurels at home. This is their team now, and they are going to wear it.
It has been building to this since the end of the 2014 season, when executives at Rogers Communications, which owns the Jays, tried to replace Paul Beeston, then the team president, with all the grace of a baby giraffe on a slippery floor. That eventually led to the hiring of Shapiro, the departure of former GM Alex Anthopoulos, and the arrival of Atkins to take his place. Since the new guys began their jobs in earnest last off-season, though, they have been largely working with the team they inherited. They made some very good moves — J.A. Happ and Marco Estrada — and some much less so — Drew Storen and Jesse Chavez — but the Blue Jays team that made the playoffs in their first year looked a lot like the team that made the playoffs in the year when Shapiro and Atkins were still wearing Cleveland colours. They have avoided major roster remodelling and even brought back John Gibbons ( twice) to manage when it looked they might instead go in a new direction. There was a steady- as- she- goes vibe around it all.
This, though, is the great unmooring, the point at which the Shapiro/Atkins era officially barge- poles away from the Blue Jays teams that Anthopoulos built. In Encarnacion and, seemingly, Bautista, the Blue Jays are losing their three- four hitters for what has been their only run of real success since the World Series years in the early 1990s. The team could yet make a move this winter to bring in a big- name, big- dollar player to replace them in the middle of the lineup, but it is more likely that the fearsome Toronto offence of 2015 will not reappear soon. The reality is, that collection of mashers, with Encarnacion and Bautista nearing the end of their outrageously team- friendly contracts, was never going to last. Instead, the next version of the Blue Jays will be a little more flexible, a little more balanced and, most importantly for the people running the team, not carrying huge contracts for sluggers about to enter their declining years, beyond those already on the books for Russell Martin and Troy Tulowitzki.
It might even work. A year ago, there was an argument to be made that Bautista was a worthwhile gamble on a late- career megadeal, and this space even made it: he was durable, he was a fitness nut, his production was fantastic and he was a beacon of the franchise. But coming off the year he just had, Bautista is a much less attractive wager. Encarnacion, as good as he was in 2016, was also unusually injury- free, which is not a trend that one would expect to continue for someone who is 33 years old. With rare exceptions, the last big contract of a power hitter is one that becomes an albatross with remarkable speed. Not giving big money to their stars probably makes the Blue Jays’ offence worse in 2017, but it avoids contracts that they would deeply regret in 2019.
Even if moving on was the difficult and correct move, it’s still on Atkins and Shapiro to find ways to keep the Blue Jays in the playoff mix, which they have insisted all along is their goal. And it’s on ownership to allow them to spend like a big- market team, in a sport that offers distinct advantages to teams willing to use dollars to muscle around their opponents.
Back in his year- end chat, Atkins said he was still interested in keeping the two big bats, who in the last two post- seasons each provided a home run that joined those authored by Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar in Blue Jays’ lore. The GM said one of the attractive things about resigning Bautista and Encarnacion was they knew so much about what they would be getting. It was “knowns versus unknowns,” Atkins said.
It’s early December, and the Blue Jays are throwing their lot in with the unknowns.