Now comes the tough part of rebirth
Front office deserves credit for past five years, but next few weeks will define success
Five years into Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins’ tenure with the Blue Jays, the lengthy rebuild is almost complete, but the last steps of this journey will be the hardest ones to make. The heaviest lifting of all is yet to come.
There’s an old saying that has been used across baseball for decades. The words vary depending on who is telling it, but the premise is always the same: Improving from 70 wins to 80 is easy; it’s moving from 80 to the 90 or so it takes to make the post-season that is much more daunting. Lots of teams make it to the cusp of contention; only a select few get there.
The steps Shapiro, Atkins and company take in the ensuing weeks and months will determine whether their stint with the Jays becomes a success. A brief appearance in the wildcard series against the Rays was nice and all, but it won’t mean much unless meaningful September baseball becomes a regular occurrence, instead of an occasional outlier.
Still, it must be said that Shapiro and Atkins did well to get the Jays to this point. The minor-league system has been overhauled, the organization has a promising young core in the majors and there appears to be all kinds of financial flexibility at a time when most teams are trying to cut costs.
This organization is still under construction, but the foundation has been set.
Shapiro, through no wrongdoing of his own, arrived in Toronto as the villain. It wasn’t his fault Edward Rogers botched the search for a new president so badly that he allegedly called Jerry Reinsdorf seeking advice when the White Sox owner was good friends with Paul Beeston, the Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer who had yet to be informed he was about to be replaced.
It’s also not Shapiro’s fault he was hired after selling Rogers on rebuilding the organization from the ground up, only to see the ball club derail those plans by making an improbable run to the American League East Division title. The best moments this franchise experienced over the past 25-plus years took place after Shapiro was hired and before he officially took over. That’s not something he, nor anyone else, envisioned when Toronto was toiling around .500.
Shapiro was brought in to do a very specific task, and by the time day one rolled around the job description had changed. He was no longer supposed to tear everything down, at least not in plain sight. Instead the front office was charged with extending the window of opportunity at the big-league level while simultaneously rebuilding the minors — two items that are often at odds with one another.
As a result, the Jays kept the team assembled by former general manager Alex Anthopoulos mostly intact. They made the playoffs again in 2016 before another half-hearted and ill-fated attempt at contending in 2017. The rebuild never began in earnest until midway through that season, almost two years after Shapiro intended to get started.
Shapiro took a lot of heat for the way he arrived, and some of the snafus were his own doing. The reported curt conversation he had with Anthopoulos about trading away prospects came off as tone deaf considering it was David Price, Troy Tulowitzki and others who finally helped make baseball relevant in these parts after a drought of more than two decades. Praising former manager John Farrell, the man everyone loves to hate in this city, in his introductory news conference appeared to show a lack of understanding about the market.
Some of the other complaints seemed petty. Of course, Shapiro wanted to bring in his own people for what was eventually dubbed Cleveland North by critics. That’s what every new executive does. Heck, it’s what Anthopoulos did a few years later when he joined the Atlanta Braves. Obviously, Shapiro wanted his staff to spend as much time, if not more, on the minors as the majors. That was part of his initial pitch to ownership, a constant flow of prospects leading to sustained success.
The beef most people seem to have with Shapiro isn’t really about the native of Massachusetts. It’s more related to his corporate backer. Rogers recruited Shapiro. The board was sold on his vision and gave him the freedom to execute it. As much as this personnel change was made out to be a rift between Shapiro and Anthopoulos, the drama was more related to the awkward timing for such a big shift in direction from ownership. Rogers created this mess, not anyone under the employ of the Blue Jays, past or present.
Shapiro has completed the initial steps of everything he was brought here to do save for one big exception, a new ballpark or renovated Rogers Centre.
Those plans are still in the works, but the magnitude of the project means it’s no longer under his portfolio and instead being handled by representatives at Rogers. Almost everything else that was promised has been done.
That doesn’t mean Shapiro’s work is close to complete. Far from it. The Jays have a majorleague roster filled with young talent and a minor-league system that ranks among the best in the game. That’s a good start, but it doesn’t guarantee anything. Many teams have been down this road before and have nothing to show for it. The same thing could still happen here.
The Jays made one major addition last winter by signing lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu to a fouryear, $80-million (U.S.) deal. More moves like that are expected this winter and how they spend the big bucks will dictate whether the organization takes another step forward to rival the Yankees and Rays or the progress stalls and ultimately ends in failure.
Shapiro and Atkins have done better work than most people give them credit for. However, the final grade is still incomplete.
As difficult as these past few years have been for those inside the organization, these next couple of months will be even more trying, just in a much different way.
It’s a lot more fun being a buyer instead of a seller. It’s also the more difficult path to take and one that puts even the most seasoned executives on the hot seat.
The Blue Jays have done well to get here, but on the five-year anniversary of Atkins’ arrival, the biggest challenge still lies ahead.