If Ross only had a brain...
Quick thoughts on a debacle
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Q: What’s Ross Atkins’ brain made out of?
A: Myles of Straw!
On Friday the Blue Jays predictably missed out on acquiring Roki Sasaki, but not before the ready-made Japanese ace narrowed his selection down to just them and one other club. Ultimately, and very understandably, Sasaki chose the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Under normal circumstances this would have been a tough blow with a silver lining. Once again the Jays didn’t get their man, but clearly they gave an incredibly strong account of themselves and their vision going forward, and did a better job than 28 other teams at selling themselves to a truly unique free agent whose cost was so low that there was zero excuse for any team not to be in on him. They’ve had a number of high profile misses on the free agent market over the last couple of years, for a variety of reasons, but the seriousness with which Sasaki took the organization spoke very, very highly of it.
Unfortunately for them, that’s not going to be anybody’s main takeaway here.
After news of the Dodgers’ win broke, we then learned that L.A. had added to their international bonus pool by trading a minor league outfielder to the Phillies for additional space. They later sent a second minor league outfielder to the Reds for even more bonus pool money.
Those were smart moves for Andrew Friedman and company to have had in their back pocket, ready to execute as soon as they received word that theirs was the winning bid on Sasaki.
Less smart—like, astronomically less smart—was what the Jays had done earlier in the day, adding $2 million in bonus pool space from Cleveland in an abysmally failed attempt to lure Sasaki by taking on $11 million of the $14.75 million still guaranteed over the next two seasons to no-hit, all-glove outfielder Myles Straw.
The 30-year-old Straw is an excellent baserunner whose glove work in centre field consistently grades out well above average. He's also produced just a 67 wRC+ (.229/.295/.284) over his last three seasons combined. That span covers just 1,118 plate appearances in the big leagues—a number that's as low as it is because he spent almost all of 2024 in the minors, where he managed a wRC+ of just 72.
He'll be a nice enough fill-in for Daulton Varsho early on, as the Jays' primary centre fielder recovers from shoulder surgery, but on the whole probably no better than Joey Loperfido, Jonatan Clase, or whoever else they might have run out there that they aren't wasting $11 million on for literally no reason whatsoever.
He sucks. He is Expensive Bradley Zimmer. And he is, unfortunately, about to become a vector for all of the well-earned ire Jays fans have for the people running the team.
Ross Atkins has been a lot better at his job than a lot of fans would like to admit, but he’s not been nearly good enough to come out of this looking like anything but a complete and total embarrassment. Swinging and missing on free agents is fine, and god love ‘em for trying, but this ranks up there with the Anthony Bass fiasco as far as Atkins’ unbelievably unnecessary self-owns go. And here it is wrapped up in another of the free agent silver medals that already are driving fans nuts.
Love the desperation, man. Maybe do something with it that isn’t blindingly stupid?
And the worst thing about the whole ordeal on Friday was that it was entirely predictable—entirely obvious that this regime has such a ridiculous hard-on for believing themselves so shrewd and efficient with their dollars because they’ve discovered that it’s easier to accumulate WAR on the defensive side of the ball that they might actually galaxy brain themselves into this kind of a dumb move.
I try to be fair with these guys, because I think a lot of the shit they get is way beyond undeserved, but when you happily take on a salary dump in exchange for international bonus pool money on the day you’re one of two finalists for the biggest international free agent prize since Ohtani in 2018, and your fans can’t even let themselves get excited because they’ve been down this road so many times before, and because they recognize it’s entirely plausible that you just might be the only front office on the planet that actually fucking likes Myles Straw and would be happy enough to end up with him regardless of the Sasaki outcome, and they’re totally fucking right? That’s a problem! People thinking “maybe they don’t actually have Sasaki locked down and just really like Myles Straw” being exactly correct is a massive problem!
Somehow turning the incredibly predictable outcome of Sasaki signing with the Dodgers into a more embarrassing day for your organization than when Ohtani was not on the plane is a problem!
I don’t know how you come back from that.
Two of Bregman, Santander, or Alonso, and a Vlad extension would be a good start—and yes, even though Friday was bad all those things are still entirely possible. Showing that the Straw money is inconsequential by spending a ton from here on out would help. Flipping Straw immediately or poaching one of the Dodgers’ in-limbo prospects with the bonus pool money would be something, I guess. But an even better start would have been not validating the dumbest and most exhaustingly negative subset of your fan base by once again wandering gormlessly straight into yet another unforced error.
Ugh.
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I hate to admit it but: yeah, Sasaki managed to break me harder than Ohtani did, and reading this piece I've realized that the Straw trade is specifically why.
Before that trade I spent the whole time insisting to myself that Sasaki was going to be a Dodger because of course it's the most predictable outcome. Then we see the trade happen, getting them the bonus pool space but also pushing them over the CBT line, and that's when I think "holy fuck, we're actually getting him. Because nobody could be so stupid as to do that without knowing they're actually getting him."
Turns out, at least one baseball executive sure as hell was.
I think this front office is extremely bad at reading the tea leaves. Or they are just over confident. Or just dumb. So much time and money wasted pursuing impossible dreams.