Jays’ brass focus on 2018
At one point in his pregame media scrum inside the manager’s office, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Gibbons joked that he was hearing voices.
It turned out that it was Rogers broadcaster Pat Tabler outside in the hallway saying hello to a couple of the Jays’ staff. Then again, it could have been GM Ross Atkins rehearsing what he was going to say to the media.
After a road trip where the Jays lost seven of 10 and sit 10 games out of first in the AL East ( heading into Monday night’s game), Atkins decided to give an impromptu state of the union address, with the message being that after the team’s recent troubles, the front office is now — finally — shifting focus away from the 2017 season to 2018.
Before Atkins spoke, Gibbons proclaimed: “We might just shock the world!” when asked if it was still possible to do something this season. But the manager was largely joking. If you read between his carefully crafted lines, Atkins is finally admitting that 2017 is a wash in terms of contending for the playoffs.
“A month ago we were talking about the need for the team to play well and then get hot. We haven’t done that. Now we’re in a position where it’s a lot more difficult to add to a team like this objectively ( and) subjectively,” said Atkins “The scale of deciding whether we add or subtract as definitely changed.”
And while he came close to saying 2017 is finished from a playoff standpoint, Atkins is clinging to the party line that the Jays can rebuild and still stay competitive in 2018.
“It’s really about young, controllable talent and any way you can do that, we’ ll look to do that,” said Atkins. “We feel like we’ve underperformed and underachieved, offensive ly and defensively. Our relief pitching has been pretty strong, our starting pitching was OK until the last couple of weeks. So it’s not position-specific right now. It’s more about controllable talent.
“There’s a lot of different ways to make the 2018 team better,” Atkins continued. “And some of it just may be in form of depth and some of it could be in the form of controllable assets. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that we acquire a major league starting pitcher for the 2018 team. Our ideal is something in the form of control and ( players who can) slide right onto the 2018 team. But that’s a hard thing for another team to give up.”
Atkins wouldn’t get into specifics ( i. e. wouldn’t say if the front office has asked Jose Bautista whether he would waive his no- trade clause), but he does expect something to go down this week in the face of next week’s trade deadline.
Monday night at Rogers Centre the Jays were 4-2 winners over the Oakland Athletics. Russell Martin hit a home run for Toronto, Francisco Liriano went five innings to pick up the win and raise his record to 6- 5, and Roberto Osuna got his 25th save.