A little FJMing, as a treat

Oh, hello old friend.

Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen or thought about the image above—which, as far as I’ve been able to figure out, I made somewhere in around 2013. It might be older, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the only copy I could find online, seeing as my former blog has been largely disappeared from the internet, was a 2017 post back when I was writing at Blue Jays Nation. And it turns out that’s kind of perfect, because it’s a post that, having just now read it after already writing the bulk of what follows in this one, sounds hilariously familiar.

This is because the post was about a ridiculous piece by a ridiculous columnist who penned a similarly ridiculous one this week: the Toronto Sun's Steve Simmons.

Guffaw.

The original Simmons piece was a paper-thin anti-Mark Shapiro diatribe in which, among other things, he called the then-new Blue Jays front office “impersonal, obtuse, uninterested in the team’s history or culture, uninterested in promoting Canadians, and worst of all, losers.”

Simmons, it seemed to me at the time, was mad at the way Shapiro was dragging the Blue Jays organization into the modern baseball world—something that his pal and Shapiro’s predecessor, Paul Beeston, had famously ignored. He was mad that in the course of some organizational turnover—not at all different from the kind Beeston had overseen when he’d arrived back in 2009—a number of employees had been let go. He was mad that these cuts included P.R. staff well-liked by media types, among them—GASP!—Canadians. He was mad because… cronies!!!!!!

But more to the point, it at least seemed to me, he was mad because he saw an opportunity to crack a flagpole over Shapiro’s head for the sake of his pal’s legacy or whatever petty grudges he harboured himself. An opportunity, I wrote, to do “his damnedest to gin up a consumer confidence crisis for the club out of spite, legitimizing the worst, dumbest instincts of the worst, dumbest fans.”

And, hoo boy, he took it.

Today there’s no consumer confidence crisis to gin up when it comes to Shapiro—it very much exists, and understandably so. But Simmons is nevertheless very much at it again. Still. And while I’m certainly not going to go about this with quite the same zeal as I did back then—because, honestly, who really cares what this man says?—I think it’s a fun little idea to poke at some of the wreckage of yet another rambling anti-Shapiro screed.

Time is a flat circle, I guess. Hell, even the Manalyst is back in the game, currently managing the last place Lexington Legends in the independent Atlantic League.

Oh, and plus, after the way this season has gone, I may not have many more chances left to really dig in on one of these dumb things.

So let’s have at it! It’s time for some FJMing…

Please note that there is a lot of Simmons’ article that I haven’t quoted here. You can read the full thing at torontosun.com.

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Mark Shapiro will almost certainly push general manager Ross Atkins to another place in the Blue Jays organization at the end of the season. In essence, that will be Shapiro firing himself as GM.

Let the bad faith begin!

Put aside the bizarre thing about Atkins “almost certainly” being shuffled into a different role instead of fired for a second and let’s think about that second sentence.

Maybe I’m wrong on this, but the sense I get is that fans are much more at the end of their tether when it comes to Atkins than they are with Shapiro. Getting the Rogers Centre renovated, getting the Player Development Complex built in Dunedin, and getting Rogers to treat the Jays like a big market team are the three biggest big-picture wins for this franchise in a very long time, and they’re all justifiably viewed as Shapiro’s. He’s also the cool head who gets sent in when it’s necessary to put out one of Atkins’ too-many P.R. fires, which generally works. And no one is actually foolish enough to believe that Shapiro is doing all the boardroom and business stuff that’s on his plate while also micromanaging baseball operations.

Though there are definitely criticisms to be made regarding all of the things I’m calling Shapiro wins—the increasing cost of being a fan and the focus from the club on their most affluent clientele, the taking of tens of millions in taxpayer dollars to build spring facilities for a team owned by a company with a $27 billion market cap, and the fact that Rogers won’t put even more into payroll—he’s generally viewed as having done a good job on the business side while having provided Atkins and baseball ops the resources, both financial and in terms of facilities, to put together teams that should be real contenders. The major issues that fans have with this team—the way money has been allocated, the move to focus on defence, the lack of power, the lack of player development, some incoherent nonsense about the manager and coaches that they can’t possibly know, and the failure to lock up younger core players—seem to fall much more on Atkins.

Yeah, Shapiro has stuck with him, and so some of that falls to him. But only for one year longer than he arguably should have. I think his seat’s not particularly hot at all.

So… how does one get around all this when trying to write a hit piece on Shapiro? Simple! You just say that they’re the same. That Atkins is nothing but a puppet. And that Shapiro will “almost certainly” have the gall to not even fire him outright!

With two years left on his own deal, Atkins — his close friend and the GM he gave a rousing endorsement to at the end of the playoff mish-mash of a year ago — will likely be shuffled into another front office position with a fancy title and replaced by another general manager that Shapiro will have complete control over.

That’s how he operates.

Oh, for sure man.

I mean, it’s not impossible that Shapiro is far more controlling of baseball ops than the club has ever let on, or than anyone but Steve-types ever seem to get the sense of, but I’m going to need some actual evidence before I believe that. Declaring “that’s how he operates” doesn’t cut it.

That’s especially so when said declaration is coming from someone also claiming that Shapiro gave a “rousing” endorsement of Atkins last fall, when the reality was that he began his remarks on the subject (audio included) with a downbeat, practically sighing, “Yeah, Ross will be back.” He then moved on to talking about the value of stability as though that was largely what the decision was about and, after listing several achievements from previous seasons, added: “We need to get better, Ross needs to get better, but he's done a good job, and put us in good position next year to be a very good team, and certainly deserves that opportunity to continue to lead the baseball organization.”

Rousing!

And with historically clueless corporate ownership, the Jays find themselves paddling in circles, not willing to admit or declare they have lost their way but desperately in need some kind of plan.

And as of Saturday, baseball people continue to tell me, the Jays have not declared themselves to be sellers in the market place with the trade deadline some 23 days away. Somehow, and this comes back to Shapiro and the one year left on his contract, they are not willing to admit that this season is over.

I’m taking the “historically clueless corporate ownership” line here as being a reference to the cluelessness shown in the past by Rogers and, specifically, the way that Beeston was clumsily ousted and—after attempts to hire Ken Williams and Dan Duquette failed—ultimately replaced by Shapiro. Because of course it is! And while Simmons is not wrong that this was a truly embarrassing episode, it’s also very funny to me that he can’t help but make it plain whose battle he’s really fighting here. Still. Hi Paul!

And speaking of embarrassing, are we seriously trying to rip the team for supposedly not declaring themselves sellers with more than three weeks to go until the trade deadline? Lmao. Oh no! Call the cops!

I mean, maybe if there had been a bunch of deals already made that they’ve missed out on? Or if it in any way made sense to give up the leverage you have in the threat of taking players off the table and keeping them? Or if the deadline had passed??? But since none of those things are the case, what are we doing here? An utterly limp attempt at a gotcha that is absolutely dripping with contempt for the audience—another Simmons staple.

Who is going to believe the bizarre implication that they may not sell at all? What moron is going to get outraged about this? What is the point?

This is Shapiro hanging on as long as he possibly can — and Atkins doing what he is told — while the Jays’ season, roster and future, goes nowhere.

Wow, sounds like in your fantasy the Jays had a terrible trade deadline three weeks from now!

They have George Springer under contract for $25 million a season for two more years. He is a diminishing asset. So is one-time ace Kevin Gausman, signed for two more years at $23 million per.

Yeah, man. That’s what happens when you go out and add veteran free agent talent to augment your playoff-bound team and attempt to win championships. Should they have not signed them?

He has spent $500 million of Rogers money — half a billion dollars — on upgrading the spring training home in Dunedin and upgrading Rogers Centre. He somehow made the home stadium more fun and way more expensive all at the same time. And in doing so, somehow he managed to brown off many longtime loyal Blue Jays customers whom he had zero regard for while making the prices unaffordable for too many.

The Rogers Centre renovations ended up with a $400 million price tag, and indeed the Dunedin project cost $102 million, but as I mentioned above, much of the latter was covered by taxes from Pinellas County, the city of Dunedin, and the State of Florida. The Blue Jays only paid $40 million.

As I also mentioned above, it’s completely valid to criticize the hard shift of focus toward premium seating and the team’s most affluent fans. But I have a difficult time holding Mark Shapiro personally responsible for the way the game is changing, the things teams need to do—or feel like they can get away with saying they need to do—in order to keep up, and just basically… uh… capitalism? Or, I should say, the especially vicious form of capitalism we’ve slowly become inured to over the last 40 years. Putting your hand in sports fans’ wallets in a world of increasing economic inequality is an ugly business, but it’s the business he’s in. And Beeston raised prices, too.

This was a luxury-tax team last year and will likely be again this season. And what are fans and ownership getting from that?

Very obviously not enough. But that they’ve even spent that much is a huge point in Shapiro’s favour that does a pretty good job undermining whatever argument is supposed to be getting made here. Shapiro himself was downplaying the idea of ever going over the CBT threshold as recently as October, 2021. That he was able to successfully make the case to go over, and make the case to genuinely go for Ohtani, is incredibly good, actually.

A team that would not have even qualified for the playoffs before an additional wild card entry was added in baseball in 2021.

OK, but guess what MLB did do?

Also, the additional playoff spot changes the calculation heading into the trade deadline and down the stretch. Yeah, under the old format they’d have have fallen one game short last year if the season had played out exactly the same as it ultimately did, but it wouldn’t have. And it’s worth noting as well that they won just one fewer game than the team that won the World Series and five more than the one that represented the NL.

A team that has not won a single playoff game — his team and Atkins’ team, not the one he inherited in 2016 — in Shapiro’s near-decade in Toronto.

Just absolutely giving away the game with pure garbage here. Shapiro has been in the job eight-and-a-half years. Oh, but we can’t count anything good that happened in the first of those! So really we’re talking about seven-and-a-half years, two of which were spent with everyone fully understanding they were not even trying to win. Some “near-decade.”

And, naturally, we also have the “not won a single playoff game” nonsense.

The Jays’ playoff record has been abysmal in the last few years, of course. But if they had lost any of those series 2-1 it wouldn’t have changed a single thing among the outraged set. People just phrase it this way because it sounds worse—a better justification for their spittle flecked keyboards and bug-eyed rage. And I guess my thinking is: why so afraid of actually being a little bit fair about it?

Making the playoffs is an accomplishment. Winning in the playoffs has a ton to do with luck. We can acknowledge this while still questioning the job being done by the people running a team with a high payroll and high expectations that’s been either squeaking into the playoffs or missing altogether for the last few seasons.

He was going to build a team that could sustain itself year after year. He was going to build a draft-and-develop team. But their farm system is paper thin and their draft record beyond suspect. Shapiro had grand visions for the Blue Jays and all kinds of money to spend. But really, what has he developed?

Yeah, it’s not great. These are valid criticisms, things that go hand-in-hand, and the answers—if there are any beyond “sometimes things don’t work out the way you hope”—are “almost certainly” messy. They are questions very much worth discussing in any serious analysis of the Blue Jays’ situation. Yet here they’re just buried as bullet points in a bunch of red meat for angry fans.

And surely Simmons isn’t saying here that he actually believed everything Shapiro was…—I hesitate to use the word “promising,” but I guess promising. Surely he knows what every one of these guys says when they get these jobs, no matter which sport. And pretending that he doesn’t just to get a cheap rise out of people who are already mad sucks.

Peddling pure outrage, especially while posturing like an authority, does your readership nothing but disservice. It leaves them less equipped to understand—less equipped to accept—the way the industry actually thinks. Less prepared for José Berríos getting pulled early in a playoff game, less prepared for Ross Atkins not getting fired last fall (and maybe not even getting fired after this season—though I read somewhere that’s “almost certain”). Less able to process things that don’t fit with the torrent of pure dumbfuck id they’ve been slurping up. It’s disrespectful. And, Steve, these are Sun readers. They can’t begin to grasp any of this!

I joke, of course. And I get that some people do just fundamentally want to be outraged. Hell, I’m in the middle of spending way too much time with a goddamn Steve Simmons article. But… well… I guess that’s why I called these pieces “Dumbing Down the Discourse” in the first place. The job should be to elevate it while also making stupid wisecracks and posting screenshots from the Simpsons.

So, where do they do they go from here? Baseball people shake their heads when asked that question. How do you fix the Jays?

Yeah, that’s the job. Teams are faced with big questions all the time. This team has faced big questions every winter. A good first step would be to maybe not look at the situation in the the most negative way possible.

An even better first step would be to give the vague “baseball people”—who just so happen to agree with all your petty grievances—thing a rest.

Anyway, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or that these guys should be the ones to make the moves, but replacing Robbie Ray and Marcus Semien wasn’t easy. Getting Matt Chapman or Steven Matz for nothing of consequence wasn’t easy. Outbidding the market for José Berríos and then getting him to sign an extension he said he wouldn’t sign in Minnesota isn’t easy. Transforming the team into a more serious group with a greater defensive focus and a lineup that wasn’t as internally similar as Springer-Semien-Vlad-Bo-Teo-Lourdes, or whatever the Chapman iteration was, wasn’t easy.

I mean, it wasn’t smart. But it also wasn’t easy!

And maybe it’s not easy to see the path forward here. That’s fair. The bones don’t feel as strong as in previous years and the recent piece from Shi Davidi and Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet that looked forward to 2025 and 2026 didn’t paint a great picture of the future unless the club really hits on some things, or at the very least gets Vlad locked up. And I’m not attempting to make any kind of “rousing endorsement” of the front office here. But as much as people will throw the idea of the farm system being barren around, we’re already seeing some successes from there. The upcoming trade deadline offers a chance to fill in some gaps in the pipeline. There’s money coming off the books. The playoffs are easier to make than ever. And ownership has been genuinely committed to win until this point.

I’m not saying it’s a great situation, or that I’d be surprised or upset if there was a full-on house cleaning this winter. Some new sets of eyes definitely couldn’t hurt. But I don’t think you have to disingenuously make the case that it’s a catastrophe to justify such a move. I also don’t think the argument for a full-on rebuild is invalid. But nothing is ever as good or as bad as it seems in this sport, and all options should be on the table if you want to actually be a grown-up when thinking about it. Maybe that doesn’t sell newspapers to rubes, I don’t know.

Why, knowing all of of this, would Rogers consider re-upping Shapiro?

One reason might be that they think differently of the situation than a piss-pantsing loyalist for the previous president of the club, who they hated. You know, just a thought. Call me crazy.

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