Rogers proving they are bad baseball people
The way Blue Jays ownership handled the Anthopoulos, Beeston situations is puzzling
From Richard Griffin’s baseball blog:
He’s Canadian, he speaks French, his wife and two children love the city and he had become a cult figure among Blue Jays fans.
Alex Anthopoulos didn’t demand more money than any normal raise. His Jays team rushed down the stretch after he made major deadline moves for the best shortstop in the National League and one of the top starters in the AL that even shocked the Yankees. He didn’t want to leave his job, yet six days after his team made it within two wins of going to the World Series, Anthopoulos is on the outside looking in.
To say Anthopoulos rejected an extension is ridiculous. The new offer from ownership and incoming president Mark Shapiro would take away the final say on player personnel moves, handing them to the new guy who had discovered in his role as a business-only Indians president, that he missed his role as a trade/ free-agent power broker like an alcoholic misses Jaeger bombs. The insulting offer to Anthopoulos was akin to the man who built a business being asked to come back as an executive assistant. Loyalty with the Blue Jays is not a two-way street, it’s a cul-de-sac.
Baseball is such a copycat game in terms of trying to put together a team and even a front office, especially when your ownership’s expertise is in every other area but baseball. They looked at the Cubs hiring Theo Epstein as president, then handing the GM title to basically a figurehead assistant. They would look at the same thing with the Dodgers and president Andrew Friedman, former GM of the Tampa Bay Rays.
“Hey this is the way to go. Let’s copy that formula and replace Paul Bees- ton, because his contract is up on Oct. 31.”
Then when the Red Sox did the same thing with Dave Dombrowski, taking him from the Tigers after he traded David Price to the Jays, Rogers’ new-prez resolve was unbreakable.
The unfortunate thing for the Jays ownership image is that all the while they were planning a new direction, their own man, Anthopoulos, was learning his business – and very well.
If the Jays had made the new-president move in December, when their well-guarded intentions to harpoon Paul Beeston were first revealed, calling White Sox executive vicepresident Kenny Williams on his office phone and Orioles vice-president and GM Dan Duquette without going through MLB protocol, that could be construed as just awkward and clumsy. But in the ensuing 11 months since that time, as the ever-maturing Anthopoulos put together a post-season threat and made outrageous deals for third baseman Josh Donaldson and catcher Russell Martin, plus under-the-radar deals for pitcher Marco Estrada and second baseman Devon Travis, what had been awkward and clumsy by Rogers became just plain dumb.
Maybe the responsibility-bone they had to throw Shapiro to get him to defect from the Indians was final say on player personnel moves. But if that was it, then by the time the deal came to fruition at the end of August, Rogers should have just said no and amended the offer. They could already see what Anthopoulos had wrought by that time and they could see the difference and confidence he had gained in his management style in six years as GM — but one guesses they were too busy counting the out- rageous, unexpected profits that were pouring in because of the Jays’ August to October run.
This team will not fall apart under Shapiro. They may even repeat the run for a full season with all of the position bats coming back. Shapiro is a good baseball man. But Rogers is proving they are bad baseball people.
To explain the humanity Anthopoulos possesses, which has now being forced out, when he saw and sensed the approaching firestorm last December, the GM spent the next few months negotiating extensions for his own staff, his entourage of baseball men, Tony LaCava, Perry Minasian, Dana Brown, Andrew Tinnish and others, that was finally approved early in the season. His assistants are signed through 2016, while the boss is out of work.
At one time I thought I might apply for the GM position when Anthopoulos left, but now after Beeston and Double-A, and with John Gibbons squarely in the crosshairs, I’m not sure I trust them.