Waiting game
Why Jays haven’t signed GM to new deal.
With Dave Dombrowski moving to Boston to become president of baseball operations for the Red Sox, it doesn’t necessarily mean the Blue Jays lost out on hiring him and are in a worse position today than they were yesterday.
The team did its due diligence in even speaking to him about the position in Toronto. Then he made up his mind to choose Boston. Yes, he would have been a good choice to replace Paul Beeston as president, when the current president leaves, but certainly he’s not the only choice.
The bigger question for the Jays is whether they will they decide to step up and reward GM Alex Anthopoulos with an extension and a pay raise, and, if they do that before they hire a new president, if it would make it less necessary for them to target a baseball-first president.
It would seem early in the process for team owner Rogers to annouce that Anthopoulos will be their man now and for the foreseeable future. Yes, the moves to acquire Troy Tulowitzki, David Price, Ben Revere, LaTroy Hawkins and Mark Lowe for Jose Reyes and 11 minor-league pitchers seem right now like a stroke of genius.
But what if the road trip to Anaheim and Texas turns into a won-lost disaster? What if the Jays play under .500 from the quarter-pole in and fail to secure even a wild-card berth? What if that on-field disaster strikes and they suddenly realize they have already re-upped the GM?
The solution is to wait until some time in September, when the finish line is within sight and then, if the Jays are on the verge of clinching a spot in the 2015 playoffs, reward their man with an extension. Anthopoulos’s current contract, we believe, expires at the end of October.
Oh, and that’s another thing. Anthopoulos believes that his salary and years under contract are not important for fans and media to know about. He sees himself like any other employee in the front office. The club never announced any terms when he was promoted to GM back in 2009. It’s likely that if they did give him a new contract, he would prefer the same closemouthed approach be utilized again. But that would be wrong. Anthopoulos is becoming a star. For the Jays to compete for future free agents, players and agents need to know they are dealing with one of the big boys.
Anthopoulos’s biggest asset is his tenacity with other GMs. He talked to the Rockies about Troy Tulowitzki in the spring, and though he was rebuffed at the time, never gave up asking. As for Price, he let Dombrowski and the Tigers know that if ever they planned to move their pending free agent lefty, to call him and allow him the opportunity to compete. The Tigers GM gave Anthopoulos a late afternoon call two days before the deadline, and 10 hours later Price was a Jay.
The same sense of purpose occurred in the Tulowitzki talks. The talks had been ongoing, but the big holdup was that the Jays’ GM did not want to include prized righthander Jeff Hoffman as one of three prospects going to Colorado. Finally he changed his mind; Hoffman was in, the deal was done.
There has been speculation that since Ben Cherington stepped down as the Red Sox GM when Dombrowski was named president, and that since Dombrowski insists that he will still be looking to hire a new GM in Boston and not run the show himself, that if Anthopoulos waits and becomes a free agent at the end of the year, that he could become the next GM in Boston. Highly unlikely.
The misconception is that Anthopoulos and Dombrowski worked together with the Expos. In fact, the one time they met in Montreal was when Anthopoulos, a young fan at the time, shyly went over to say hello to Dombrowski as he attended a game at Olympic Stadium as GM of the Marlins.
That was the only connection prior to Anthopoulos attending GM meetings when he was an assistant GM for J.P. Ricciardi. Besides, it’s hard to see the Red Sox and a reunion with John Farrell being Anthopoulos’s dream job.
In fact, the awkward, borderline tampering, chase by ownership last December of a new baseball-first president with a recognizable name, like Ken Williams of the White Sox or Dan Duquette of the Orioles, was hatched when Anthopoulos’s star was at a low point in the baseball sky.
The plan was that an experienced former or current GM would have been brought in above Anthopoulos as president to straighten out the perceived mess he had made. Rogers surely regretted the disastrous 2013 season with the oft-criticized trades by Anthopoulos with the Marlins and Mets producing nothing on the field, despite being winter-long World Series favourites.
But after that botched search by Rogers, Anthopoulos stepped up, bringing in Josh Donaldson, Russell Martin, Marco Estrada and the five men at the deadline and are the sporting talk of an entire country.
The need for star-power at the top has disappeared.
The stars are aligned.