Shapiro Speaks!: The One Where Ross Is Fine

On the whole mess, and so much more!

One of the Toronto Blue Jays' leaders needed to step up, project some organizational unity, fall on their sword at least a little bit, and answer some questions about a season that fell well short of expectations without igniting the long-simmering rage that lately—and justifiably—has even found its way into some of the more rational corners of the fan base. And since GM Ross Atkins is evidently incapable of doing that, it was left to president and CEO Mark Shapiro to pick up the slack in his annual post-mortem press conference, which took place at Rogers Centre on Thursday morning.

How successful was Shapiro in calming the waters? Probably about as successful as he could have been, given the circumstances. Which doesn't really say very much.

But why take it from me? You can judge for yourself. Below is a full transcript of what Shapiro said, as it happened, with plenty of my thoughts in there for good measure. 

You know the drill. We all know what we're here for. So let's not belabour this with further preamble and get straight into it. This is Shapiro Speaks...

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Let me be honest with you for a second here, friends. This site keeps the lights on for me, but it isn’t a cash cow. And I could live a lot more comfortably than I do right now if I was willing to put some or all of my work behind a paywall and push a bunch readers who are on the fence into becoming paid subscribers. The thing is, I know that times are tough for a lot of people and I really don’t want to become inaccessible to anyone who enjoys reading and couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. So please, if you can afford it, and you value what I do and aren’t already a paid subscriber, I’d ask that you consider upgrading your free subscription to a paid one.

Thanks. — Stoeten

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The audio…

The opening remark...

It's hard for me to believe that it's only been a little over a week since the end of the season.

Says you, man. Without the daily pain of watching the 2023 Blue Jays struggle to get out of their own way, these last few days have been positively breezy!

Moving on...

It had certainly been a lot of time and energy spent reflecting, talking, considering. But where I keep ending up, and what I keep thinking about, is how much we let down the fans. I understand the frustration. The bitterness is palpable from me, and for the other leaders of the organization. They are among the best fans in all of major league baseball. Three million of them came to see us here, millions more watched us night in and night out, and it's not acceptable for us to have fallen short of expectations. While we've got a lot of great leaders throughout this organization doing great work, any time any of the efforts of this organization fall short—whether that's something in the renovation, on the business side, or whether it's anything in the on-field side of the operation—when we fall short of expectations, that responsibility and that accountability clearly lies with me.

We've got work to do. That work's already underway. It's going to be a painstaking process to dissect everything from this past season. To learn from it, and to lay out a strategy for the next offseason. And the ultimate goal maintains the same, which is we are committed to bringing world championships back to Canada. We're going to get better next year and move forward. So, with that, I turn it to questions to you...

OK, look, you’ll find out as we go that this isn’t a piece where I’m going to be overly adversarial with angry fans. People are understandably sick of the people running this team. I do get it. And if I'm going to stop and point out every time it occurs to me to address any of the multitude of criticisms I've seen over the past week that qualify as pet peeves of mine, I’ll still be writing this in April. But here you go, accountability people! He said the things. Did it matter? Did it change your perception of the organization? Are you renewing your season ticket package now?

I guess it’s nice that he’s acknowledging where people are at, and not being defensive about it. But, for me, shouting about accountability always comes off like someone wants to retain a veneer of intelligence while screaming “I’M MAD!” It’s one of those “please subject me to better spin” things that, in this case, distracts from some very real questions about communication within Jays organization. It's theatre. Bravo, everyone.

Will Atkins be back and what did you think of the job he did this year?

Yeah, Ross will be back as GM.

I was very amused that some folks thought Shapiro might actually announce his GM's firing as a surprise move at a press conference. Not sure these corporate types are that theatrical. Just, like, bringing out his head on a platter and lifting the cover with a flourish to unveil it after his opening remark. Lol. 

When Ross does lose his job—which every GM inevitably will—it's going to be with a press release thanking him for his work and a healthy amount of lead time to gauge the reaction and prepare for the inevitable questions. Come on, people.

But was Shapiro making the right move here? That's harder to say.

He continued…

First of all, I think in general, in sports organizations, stability and continuity are a competitive advantage. That's a general statement, that doesn't apply unequivocally. But when evaluating you're not evaluating on a series or even a season. And in Ross's case, the body of work, to me, is undeniable.

Over eight seasons, whether it's the last four, having the sixth best record in the American League, whether it's three of the last four years in the postseason, building out great resources, hiring a great leadership team that's been successful both internationally and domestically. 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.

I’m not sure that he does! And the fact that Shapiro’s first comment in defence of keeping him is about stability tells me that maybe he’s not sure either. That's a pretty tough thing to have your boss bring up first as a reason for your continuing employment.

But here's the thing: for the most part I think Shapiro is right here. I don't think Atkins falls nearly as far short, based purely on results, as a lot of people believe. Though he certainly has fallen short.

It's easy to miss, through all the frustration and the playoff failure, how good this 2023 team was, and how close it was to being incredibly good. A closer-to-expected year from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. changes a hell of a lot. Years closer to expectations from any one of Vlad, George Springer, Daulton Varsho, or Alejandro Kirk would have secured a playoff spot sooner and made a massive difference to how it felt to watch the season unfold day after day. The team also overcame the implosion of its Opening Day starter, went through a bizarre three-month stretch in which they drastically underperformed with runners in scoring position, and still managed to win 89 games.

I'm not making excuses, but things went better than it usually felt.

That said, being close isn't good enough, and Atkins' front office isn't absolved because a bunch of unexpected things happened. Especially the ones they had a direct hand in. They chose to trade for Varsho. They chose to sacrifice offence for defence. They chose not to find one more right-handed hitting threat. They couldn't find a way to get the most out of their superstar. And, wherever it was coming from, it was on their watch that some of the most disappointing hitters—Varsho, Springer, Chapman—were afflicted by the same disease: pulling the ball less and hitting for less power.

There are plenty of other negatives here, too.

For one thing, though mistrust of modern “analytics” is ultimately about fearing one's own irrelevance—sad!—not all analytics departments are created equal. I think the all-fields approach thing, the belief in Varsho, the belief in Kirk, the José Berríos decision, and something Shapiro mentioned later on during the presser about being surprised that the reconfigured Rogers Centre outfield didn't play the way the team expected, create legitimate questions about whether the Jays' one is as much of a well-oiled machine as they insist.

Then, of course, there's communication. Atkins' lack of clarity regarding the decision to pull Berríos, and who bore responsibility for it, raised questions about internal information flow and the nature of his relationship with his manager. And while I tend to discount a lot of the dumb vitriol spewing from fans who seem to have very comfortably slipped back into where they were about this group in 2016, credibility with the fan base matters. Especially when that fan base hasn’t seen you produce enough results, is being asked to pay more and more each year to watch the team, has constantly felt miscommunicated to, is wondering what on earth happened between the club and Alek Manoah, and can still very clearly remember the whole humiliating Anthony Bass saga.

Getting buy-in, earning trust, making sure everyone feels like they're all pulling in the same direction—that's not only important for a leader of players and staff. It's important for someone who represents a very public brand, too.

Less important, I think. And certainly not static—ask once-reviled figures like John Gibbons, Alex Anthopoulos, or even Pat Gillick. But important.

Taking all that in, and simply thinking of the cost/benefit, and the tenor of fans’ response to Saturday’s debacle, I’m not sure I’d have made the same decision as Shapiro here. It’s very much a gamble. (Or, at least, it would be if he wasn’t thinking that—with the Rogers Centre renovation project almost over, and time running out to either extend or get something in return for Guerrero and Bo Bichette—it’s now or never anyway. And, perhaps, not especially fair to bring someone in who may have a new boss quite soon.)

What are you getting out of this guy that you couldn’t get out of former Astros GM James Click—who is right there—that’s worth soldiering on through all these legitimate concerns for? Because, other than stability, no one else can see it.

What are some of the areas that the front office can get better?

Well, I'm sure we're going to get into a lot of that today. Some of that needs to be worked through. Clearly we hit but didn't score runs. We need to do a better job of scoring runs. We need to be better on the base paths. And there needs to be a higher level of transparency in communication with our players in our game planning process. Which we'll talk about, I'm sure, as we get into “the decision” and those areas. But a lot of that, Keegan, is still being determined. It's not a quick—it's a deep dive into the season. It's kind of a deep look at each individual player, at the collective, at our process that we go through as a staff every day. You're looking for every opportunity to get incrementally better in a number of areas. So I think that will be something we get to and line out in the weeks ahead.

This is very much a “give them exactly what they want to hear” answer, so I'm not sure if it's telling us as much as it appears. But the fact that the issues Shapiro cites could either be big picture things or things specific to the way the team was bounced from the playoffs in Minnesota highlights something that I didn't touch on above, and goes straight back to the Berríos decision: the sense people have that the Jays are maybe a little too inflexible when it comes to deviating from their established plans.

Those takes are certainly out there. I'm not sure I fully buy them regarding the Berríos call, nor do I necessarily care about it specifically. It was not what I'd call a smart decision, but I don't think it was wholly indefensible, nor was it consequential enough to warrant all of the interminable discussion about it. But the inability to score runs, even after the RISP thing changed dramatically in the second half, and the struggles on the base paths (-12.4 BsR, 27th in MLB) were season-long issues. Waiting until after the season ends to fully examine their root causes seems like it's probably not responsive enough.

Is that an accurate description of what’s going on? I doubt it, though I obviously have no idea. Yet I'm reminded of something I brought up several times over the course of the year. Last year Matt Chapman had an 86 wRC+ after two months of the season, and a 38.5% pull rate. From June 1st onward his pull rate jumped to 52.0%, his ISO went from .152 to .227. His wRC+ over the season's final four months was 132.

This year, not only did he immediately go back to not pulling the ball, he didn't ever revert.

It was weird! And though I don't believe a guy in his walk year was going to just give himself—and millions of potential dollars—over to hitting coaches insisting he keep trying to replicate his big month of April long after it became clear it wasn't working, something doesn't seem right when you can't an idea get through to him simple enough that even I can see it.

(To be clear, I think this is a different issue than the “transparency in communication with our players in our game planning process” thing, which is just Shapiro addressing Whit Merrifield—and others—being cranky about the Berríos move. And probably some of the other whispers we've heard this year, as in Buck Martinez's "analytics" rant about pitchers bristling over being pulled from games earlier than they'd like—aka the thing pitchers have done since time immemorial!)

(Another way to have addressed the Whit thing specifically would have been by telling him to can it and pointing out that Jays pitchers threw the third most third-time-through innings in baseball this season, so the team was actually very trusting. But I digress.)

On credibility and Atkins' handling of questions on Bass, Manoah, and now Berríos

Those are all very different circumstances, and I'm not sure you can tie a common communication strategy or intent behind those. I will say, I've always felt that one of the most challenging aspects of communicating about players is that you often can't be transparent. You don't have the ability to honestly say what's behind the circumstance or you'd be undermining that player—you'd be doing damage to that player. We just can't do that. So, we often have to speak in generalities.

It's frustrating, because you want more specifics, and you just can't provide it. I'd like to be able to tell you the clarity—it's funny, I can remember earlier in my career being criticized over not being specific about an issue in a clubhouse and my son telling me, ‘Why don't you just tell him that guy's a jerk? He treats people terribly.’

I'm like, ‘I'm never going to be able to do that, Caden. I just can't do that. I'm going to have to take it, that's the reality, or be very vague about it.’

That's the reality. Sometimes we can't be specific about circumstances and are going to not be able to give you a satisfactory answer. Again, each of those situations is individual and different.

First of all, I’m thinking back to Shapiro's Cleveland teams and, uh... Albert Belle? Milton Bradley? Manny? Some all-time candidates!

Second of all, nothing Shapiro is saying here really applies to the Berríos thing. Clearly the answer is mostly just an attempt to sidestep the subtext of the question: your GM really does seem to put his ass in his mouth a lot, doesn't he?

On confusion following the Berríos call among players

The reporter with the previous question, the Star's Gregor Chisholm, then followed-up with a great one that I think deserves to be written out in full:

GREGOR: With the Berríos situation in particular, in the clubhouse after the game. I mean, some players were on the record, some players were off the record, (but) there seemed to be quite a lot of people in that clubhouse who were either upset, confused, didn't understand. Do you guys need to repair relationships with some of the players in the clubhouse? Or what's that process going to look like in the weeks and months ahead?

SHAPIRO: Yeah, I think the relationships, in general, are pretty strong. But what has been clear, in talking to Ross over the last week, and him doing some reflection and talking to a lot of our players, is that we probably made some assumption that there was a clarity to the people, to the planning and preparation that goes into our games—not just for that game, Gregor, but for every single one of our games.

In fact, I was in Schneids’ office the day after we got eliminated, when we flew home, with Don Mattingly, with Scheids, and with Ross, and Don Mattingly said—he was kind of miffed at, you know, the reaction to the game planning and the preparation. He said, ‘Our planning and preparation was identical for that game as it was for the 162 games during the season, the process wasn't any different.’

But I think that what has come to light is, both from the information and the planning—by the way, which was designed by and led by John Schneider—that we have to be more clear with our players, more transparent, do a better job of communicating what that process is. And then, most importantly, there's a line of demarcation when it comes into the game, that the decisions lie with our staff and with John.

OK, a little mealy-mouthed here, but plenty to chew on.

Gregor is specifically talking about confusion after game two in Minnesota, but anyone who heard Buck's aforementioned "analytics" rant already knows that there has been some consternation among players about the front office—the "khakis," as Kevin Barker likes to call them—all season long. And speaking of Barker, he and Jeff Blair spoke earlier this week about this very issue. 

“I have never covered a team in my life where there was as much whispering about dissatisfaction with the general manger, dissatisfaction with the information, dissatisfaction with some of the coaches,” Blair said. “Dead serious.”

Barker noted: “Every time I'd go to the field, I'd have conversations with players, and they'd be very dramatic about communication between parties.”

It's hard to know how pervasive this stuff is, but clearly it doesn't sound great.

For the Blue Jays to be as successful as they need to, it will require having people with the credibility to get buy-in, and clear information to help create it. Whether Schneider and/or Atkins are the right people for those jobs is obviously the question here, and I suppose the answer is that Shapiro is going to give them another chance to show that they can be. (Mattingly... I don't know. Whatever. I saw folks getting mad about his quote in Shapiro's anecdote, as though it meant that they took the game lightly or he was talking about the amount of prep work, rather than the type of it, and... well... everybody's mad, so it doesn't matter, but I don't think that's what that meant at all.)

But another thing about this is that they also need a group of players that are going to actually be receptive to this stuff.

Some theorizing: 

• Players who have come up through the organization are probably more comfortable with the Jays' way of doing things.

• Players who make less money, or have less clubhouse stature, are less likely to speak up about this stuff.

• The players most likely to have stronger off-the-record relationships with anglophone reporters are guys comfortable with English.

When I think about who those kinds of guys on the Blue Jays are, I think about the players who have arrived as part of the change in identity this club has undergone in the last year or two. If so—and, to be clear, other than Merrifield I have no idea—it leads me to a couple of additional front office criticisms that might be worth examining: 

One, is part of the reason the Jays are having communication issues related to the fact that they haven't produced enough big league talent from their own system? 

Two, did they think through last year's clubhouse makeover as thoroughly as they should have?

On the second point, something else sticks in my head: their love of “collaboration.”

It's said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee, and that may be an apt metaphor for the 2023 Blue Jays' roster.

I mean, there’s really no turning back from this now—at least until there’s a new regime—but the “collaborative process” thing sure has added a lot of cooks to that kitchen. It has also made it easy for this organization to pass the buck sometimes, or to elide criticism and—dare I say it—accountability.

Believe me, I’m not calling for them to strip it down and become the Rockies, but more isn’t always necessarily better, the committee approach isn’t always the right one, and the way this criticism intersects with some of the other ones is at the very least interesting.

Of course, again, like five more home runs each from Vlad (26), Springer (21), Bichette (20), Varsho (20), and Chapman (17)—a completely reasonable ask!—and none of this stuff matters or is even a question.

On Atkins’ “body of mistakes”

“How many mistakes is a GM entitled to,” asks good ol' Rosie DiManno of the Star, “before he has to pay the consequences?”

What? Did Steve Simmons have his mouth full or something?

Yeah, we all make mistakes. No leader is expected to be perfect here. I want people to feel like they've got the freedom to make mistakes, as long as they learn from those mistakes. I think mistakes are an opportunity to grow, to learn, to develop, and to get better for all of us in life.

I'm not sure, contextually, what you're asking. I think if you look at, again, the results are pretty darn good over that eight year period. Certainly turning around a team, from '16 to '20, in three years is pretty impressive. That's a quick turnaround for a major league team. And, again, the success—three out of four years in the playoffs—is good. We need to get better. Not satisfied with where we are. Ross isn't satisfied with where we are. But we need to get better.

The exchange continued:

ROSIE: Specifically the trades he's made going into this year. I mean, I'm sure you're watching Marino in the postseason, for example.

SHAPIRO: Watching??

ROSIE: Gabe. Marino.

Lmao. If you're going to do the attention-seeking here's a “gotcha” question so raging morons will applaud my guts thing—aka “the Simmons”—you might want to learn how to pronounce the name of the players you're trying to dunk on someone with.

Shapiro responded:

Oh. Yeah. Over the season, I still feel like that was a good trade. You can't evaluate a trade in the short-term. You've got to give it four or five years to understand whether a trade was effective or not.

People hate hate hate this stuff. Hate it! But he's right.

And, I mean, yes, clearly this was not the day where anybody is going to look at that deal favourably, after Moreno hit his third playoff homer, helping to power the Diamondbacks to a sweep of the Dodgers and into the NLCS. Obviously the fears of trying to get to the postseason with a catcher as young and as unfamiliar with your pitching staff as Moreno were unfounded, and the belief in Alejandro Kirk and Daulton Varsho looks misplaced. Throwing in Lourdes Gurriel Jr., in my view as a culture-changing salary dump, also looks like a mistake. But I don't think the process here was necessarily awful, nor is it anywhere near settled that the trade was some kind of catastrophe.

Not exactly glowing terms there, I know. But that's only because it might be a catastrophe. And the deal looks terrible right now! Moreno has established himself very quickly, Gurriel has been important to a team still playing, and Varsho was a huge disappointment.

Still, there is plenty of time for this to go the other way.

Varsho has three seasons left before free agency, and this year he was worth 2.1 WAR by FanGraphs and 3.9 by Baseball Reference. Moreno had a 1.7 fWAR and a 4.3 rWAR. For Gurriel those numbers are 2.1 fWAR and 3.0 rWAR.

So, yeah, the Jays are down about two wins by one metric and three by the other. Factor in that they also saved some money, which like allowed them to go a little harder on someone like Brandon Belt or Chad Green, and that's… still not good! Especially when the presumption was always that the Jays would come out ahead in year one, and that Moreno would close the gap as he got up to speed in the big leagues.

But if Varsho keeps his gains against left-handed pitching into next year, goes back to hitting right-handers like he did in 2022 (or better), and gets moved over to centre field and still grades out incredibly well—possibilities!—the gap could close yet.

I don't think that's going to sell anyone on this trade having been the one that the Jays needed to make for 2023, but they can’t all be home runs. Or even wins.

But don't also forget that they really did need to move one of their catchers, because it made zero sense to roster all three, and other teams were smart enough to know that.

Anyway! Shapiro continued...

But I would say this, that I look at—you can be specific about the decisions made and the players acquired, just on last year's team alone, whether it was Kiermaier, Belt, Chris Bassitt. The guys that he has put together, in the context of people signing as free agents and trading for players, I would argue that the players we added to last year's team, he did a very good job doing so.

Every single GM makes mistakes. Again. To criticize without context of saying, ‘I'm going to go and look at all 30 GMs and all the series of decisions they made’? There is no GM that's perfect in decision-making. That's just the reality of making decisions about human beings. You look at the portfolio of work and, again, I think the results show he's done a good job.

Take a seat! (Also, thank you for telegraphing the tone of your column so I don’t have to read it.)

I mean, I think you can certainly quibble with the idea that the results say he’s done a good job, but there have been home runs. Gausman, Bassitt, Belt, in previous years Semien, Ray, etc. etc.

Do you improve run-scoring by changing philosophy or personnel?

I think that's what the next few weeks need to uncover, and you need to determine. Watching it, you can talk about approach, you can talk about in-game execution, or you can talk about players.

Certainly there were players that fell short. That probably led to one of the biggest challenges in watching us night-in and night-out, which you did. We had three or four players that fell significantly short of what we projected, and that's what made the year—among the many things—it made it frustrating. That was what was frustrating.

But we need to take a deeper dive—it's not just my opinion, that's not my area that I'm dealing with day to day—and see what the work tells us, and then build a strategy off of that. I think that will be for Ross to talk about in the next couple of months. 

Among the many things! Lol.

No, it was honestly, really pretty much just that. One extra home run per month from those key guys would have changed the narrative, the feel, and the results significantly!

Is there a need for fence-mending with players who seemed frustrated and angry at the end?

I think it really was regarding one area, and that's our game planning and preparation. It's not an underlying problem.

I think that, whether it's Matt Chapman's comments, or Chris Bassitt's comments, or Kevin Kiermaier's comments about how much they feel cared for, and taken care of, and what we've done in the environment here. Overwhelmingly the players feel like they're being given among the best environments in baseball. They recognize how much we care about them.

Like I said earlier, I think we do need to do a better job of being transparent, communicate more effectively, and explain the process in our game planning specifically.

Day one in Dunedin next spring there's going to be a class explaining the third-time-through-the-order penalty. And, ideally, why random nerds are in all the meetings.

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On Steve Simmons making some look-at-me-statement

Ahh! Here’s ol’ Simmer!

SIMMONS: In the thirty-some years I've been around the ballclub, I've never seen as much anger and disappointment among fans, and as much frustration among fans, that I've seen this year. It was far before the playoff series started. It seemed to just culminate with that Minnesota second game. You're sitting with Ross in the stands. Ross sat in that chair and said he did not know that Berríos was coming out. I don't believe that for a second.

What did you think when you saw Berríos coming out?

SHAPIRO: What's the first part of the question? Was the first part just your statement?

Do we honestly not remember the pitching changes in 2020? Have we never paid attention to how plenty of other teams manage their do-or-die games these days? This Berríos stuff is so tiresome.

Anyway! The exchange continued:

SIMMONS: Yes. Prefacing, I presume everybody in this room has received the same kind of emails that I've received.

SHAPIRO: Yeah, no, the first part I would say this season was a grind. It was not ever easy, it was extremely frustrating, and it was challenging. I'm not sure why. We still won 89 games, but I guess, like you Steve, I've been in the game 32 years, and I can't remember a season that felt like it was more of an effort.

Now, I take away a little bit of a positive from that, because there were six or seven other teams that had high expectations, and high payrolls, that didn't even make the postseason. That didn't win 89 games. Some of the biggest markets in all of North America that went home. And our guys, our players and our staff, found a way to persevere. So I find some positive within that, but it was tough. It was frustrating. So that's a comment on your statement.

Incredible inflection from Shapiro on "statement" there. And, like, yeah man. This was a frustrating team, a frustrating year, and people had been ready a long, long time to really unload on them without that little voice in their head telling them there was still hope. I didn't like it when that stuff erupted while they were still on the way toward making the playoffs, but you kinda have to let people have this and maybe not think about it too much beyond that. We'll see whether it actually lasts or not.

Shapiro continued...

And then an answer to your question. I found—I mean, I knew the game plan. The purpose behind it, I was aware of it, and knew that the goal was to bring Kikuchi in to turn over the lineup and get some of their left-handed hitters out of the lineup for better matchups later in the game—which actually worked. But I didn't know when it would happen. So, I found out at the same moment in time, when John walked to the mound.

I dunno, seems reasonable. Ross couldn't have said it better himself. HEYO!

With the new renovations—and attendant ticket price hikes—can fans be assured a 90-win team every year is the goal?

I'm hesitant to give numbers. The goal is to get better, so I guess better than 89 is certainly, you know, 90 or better. The goal is to play deeper into October. I think at one point playing meaningful games in September was probably enough. That's not enough anymore. We need to get deeper into October, for sure. Ultimately we're never going to be satisfied until we win the last game played in the major league season.

But to set specific number of win goals? I don't think anybody in baseball does that, Griff. And it's not something I'm going to fall into a trap. I do think we need to be better, which I guess that put us in the 90 wins.

Does that mean, in the short-term, you will never go into a rebuild mode?

The situation will dictate that. I know we're not going into a rebuild mode next year.

You can't say it's not an honest answer. But I hate it. There is a pretty clear potential pivot point coming at the end of next year.

Where do you assign blame for the numerous down years among key hitters?

Scott, that's the work that we're going through. We tried tirelessly to figure it out during the season (this) year, and I don't think there is anything that—I would early offer that I don't think it's something that applies uniformly to the same—individuals have different reasons for having the seasons they have had. But I don't want to comment specifically on that today for two reasons. One, that's more micro than I should probably comment on. Ross should probably comment on the specific players. And two, that work's just begun in the past five, six days. And it's going to be exhaustive, and a deep dive. So at some point that will form our plans for the offseason, for next year.

I think it will be something Ross talks about about at the GM's meetings, or the winter meetings, specifically.

More of the same really, but I'll note here that I put “this” in parentheses in the second sentence because Shapiro actually said "last" season. I'm sure he didn't mean to imply it wasn't worked on during 2023. In his opening remark he referred to "the next offseason," by which he clearly meant this winter. It just seems to me like, with his team's season done but other teams still playing, he was caught in between a couple times as to whether it is currently “this” season or “next” season. If that makes sense.

On whether the new outfield was a factor in the team's power outage

It certainly feels like it did, but it's illogical to assume that. So, I think drawing any defined ballpark factor after one season is probably too soon. We need to probably go through two or three seasons before we can make a definitive statement that this is how the park played. One season can be too impacted by personnel, or other things that go into it. So I want to wait before we determine what the ultimate impact of the ballpark changes are. Certainly not what we sat in this room and thought they were going to be when we talked at the end of the offseason last year. We were decreeing it to be a bandbox and a hitter's ballpark. So, you never know, I guess, until you play. 

I mean, as I noted before, someone was paid—probably too little!—to model how the changes were likely to play, and that it was so far off is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the analytics department this organization has so much riding on.

I'm still thinking about the humidor and how players were talking about noticeable changes to how the ball carried between 2019 and when the team came back at the tail end of 2021 and in 2022—which I wrote about in late September.

But maybe it's something to do with the wind? Or maybe it's nothing, I suppose.

However, it's definitely odd that when on the road the team would rank fifth in MLB by wRC+ (111), 10th in home runs (103), and seventh in runs scored (404), but at home they'd rank 17th (102 wRC+), 21st (85 HR), and 23rd (342 R).

You completely changed your ballpark and didn't build a roster to suit it! Ho ho ho, gee whiz. Whoopsie!

KINDA MAJOR, BRO.

He continued...

The only thing I'd say about power is there are multiple ways to score. I don't want to pin that just to power. We need to score more. That's the fact. We hit, but we didn't score. It was an odd dynamic, and I think that's—when Ross referred to he kept thinking that it would change, that's because logically, statistically, if you're impacting the baseball hard, if you're getting hits, sooner or later you think you will score. That's what the game kind of tells you historically. But it didn't happen.

So, we need to spend the time to figure out why. Why didn't that happen? Is there something we need to think about doing differently in our game preparation individually with the players? Is there something personnel-wise? Those are the questions that will need to be addressed over the coming weeks.

A great way to break up that we're-hitting-but-we're-not-scoring dynamic is to hit the ball over the fence every once in a while!

Should Atkins have owned the Berríos decision more as an organizational one, and did that create awkwardness with Schneider?

I know there's no awkwardness between the two, because I've been involved in enough conversations with them over the last couple days. I think Ross was giving an in-depth window into the process, and then also clarifying that there's also a clear line of demarcation when it comes to in-game decision-making.

But, I would say this: when it comes to accountability, and it comes to results and outcomes that are disappointing, a) we're not ever looking to assign blame, just like we're not looking to take credit for something that's individually successful. It's not one person.

If the renovation is a smashing success, no matter how great Marnie Starkman, and Anouk Karunaratne are, they're not going to be running around patting themselves on the back and high-fiving at doing and incredible job at the outfield district this year. It was dozens of people, hundreds of people who were involved in helping us pull that off and having resounding success in the outfield district.

And when something goes wrong, accountability lies at the top. It lies with me. Responsibility.

But we're not looking to say that John Schneider made a mistake, or Ross made a mistake, or who made the mistake. We made a mistake, it didn't work. And we'll need to learn and get better from it. But, you know, we need to be OK making mistakes. I'm more than confident in John Schneider's ability to manage a major league baseball game, and as I replied to Rosie, I'm more than confident in Ross's ability to run a baseball operation. Now, that doesn't mean we don't need to get better, that doesn't mean we didn't make mistakes.

I mean, you could have just said that Ross Atkins is no Ros Atkins...

I still can’t believe that’s a real book. Lmao.

As for the "mistake" thing here, I've seen some people treating this as some kind of dumb "gotcha," like—Aha! So you admitted it was a mistake! First of all, I think he's speaking more in generalities, or intending to (even though it doesn't always sound like it). Second of all, get a life!

And the "clear line of demarcation"? He'll address that later on.

On planning and preparation issues...

Here's another great one, this time from Shi Davidi of Sportsnet, where I think it's best to transcribe the question in full.

SHI: Mark, you mentioned the planning and preparation as a key piece. I've heard questions around this from people in the organization back to Charlie's days, so it's not just a current problem, even if John designed the current system. What's your sense of how deep-rooted these issues are, and based on your career in baseball, what's your perception of how that should work effectively? What elements need to be in place for that to work effectively?

SHAPIRO: My understanding is—again, this is based on five or six days of kind of learning some things that we were probably not aware of, and should have been aware of—is that we need to be more open, we need to be more transparent about who the people are that are in the room, what the purpose for them being in the room is, and the information that is provided to our staff and John before each game. 

Like I said to you, the information that he gets, the information that Pete gets, is directly what John's asked for. 

I'm trying to parse a messy and intentionally opaque answer here, but if I had to guess I'd say that the issue was "khakis" being in pre-game meetings with players, perhaps even conducting meetings or the relevant parts of them, which led players to feel like the front office is dictating things—and probably not necessarily orthodox things.

And, whether that's exactly true or not, Shapiro is saying that the organization now feels it has to do better at letting the team—and us—know that this isn't the case, and that the manager and his coaching staff run things.

He continued…

And the voices and the people have been asked multiple times, “Are you sure you want—these are the people I want to hear it from.”

But I do think that there is—it's a reality of the world we live in, it's extremely tough for people to understand what that information is, how that affects decisions. And there's still a human element that will always come down—it's the beauty of the game—to executing on that information. And that's where you balance your experience, your gut, your feelings, with the information. But you need to be informed, and you need to have all of the data before you make a decision. So you want to make an informed decision that factors in your personal experiences as well. But you want to have all the information. That's what we have sought to provide our staff. But it's ultimately their responsibility to deploy that in a game. 

It's a complicated thing. Just how much authority, or what kind of authority, the manager really has is not very clear, but what seems clear is that the front office doesn't want to undermine him. It turns out that a lot of people—fans and players alike—get very weird about the idea that baseball decisions might be made be a guy in a polo shirt holding a spreadsheet instead of a leathery man with pine tar on his cock. Just the way of the world, I guess.

Personally, I want the team to be making as informed decisions as possible. Incorporating as much good information into your decisions and planning as you can is a necessity.

But I emphasize good because I think players who were getting carved up and embarrassed by sub-par pitchers on a regular basis have every right to wonder whether the analysts and advanced scouting staff were giving them the right information.

I think Shapiro makes a good point about learning and growing from mistakes, and I think it's worth remembering that Alex Anthopoulos had plenty of mistakes to learn from, even after his six seasons in charge here. But if this is how it's going to be, you've got to be better at it than this. Especially after eight years.

Clock's ticking, boys.

The exchange continued:

SHI: What element does player feedback play into that, and is that a potential blind spot that you might have identified? That player input, or player reaction, maybe wasn't considered enough within this process?

SHAPIRO: I'm not sure that player input or feedback into—you know, it's more just ensuring they understand and know the information being used, and how it's used.

Third-time-through penalty. Day one.

On September attendance...

It was across all of baseball, it wasn't just with us. If you go and look, all the attendance numbers were down after kids went back to school.

But I think what we're dealing with—and we still have to unpack, this is a little bit anecdotal—is that we had an issue in weekday games all year long. And then, again, it was muted during the season, because you're talking about going down from 42,000 to 38,000, and those midweek games maybe down from 36 to 28 or 29. Still great compared to some of the markets that were in playoff stretches that had less than that. But we still are dealing with some reality of the downtown dynamic shifting. Not every office is still back to work in person, some are in a hybrid. Some are just working from home.

It hasn't impacted, a) the people watching and paying attention. It hasn't impacted people coming on weekends, so they're clearly making plans and coming in on weekends. But there is some dynamic, Mike, that we're fighting to understand and working to try to solve, if possible, that has to do with midweek games. And that Texas series was obviously a Monday through Thursday.

I mean, yeah. Fair enough. But it was also—as Shapiro previously acknowledged— a painful product to watch. Other than the playoffs, the Texas series was the culmination of that pain, and it just kind of snowballed. Monday’s game didn’t make anybody excited for Tuesday’s, nor Tuesday’s for Wednesday’s, etc.

For me, it's kind of hard to believe that, all else being the same except the team playing like its 2021 self instead of its 2023 self, it wouldn't have been better.

Why should fans be paying for that?

On winning back fans

I'm not interested in winning over anyone to me, or to Ross. I just want to do what makes the fans happy, which is win, and ultimately win a world championship. It's not about me, it never has been. It's about our team, and about our players, and about our ability to bring a world championship to Canada. I think that is ultimately what will make them happy.

He's said this many times before, and I think he's right. But, regardless, he's all-in on this concept now. There doesn't feel like there's much left in this relationship—certainly not with Ross, at least, though Shapiro may have more cachet—except to win or end it. (Or win the division, or at least make significant strides in October).

Racing out ahead of the pack in the first couple months of 2024 would go a long way. Please try that!

What's your level of confidence in the hitting systems and coaches in place?

I mean, I'm confident in the work being done, I'm confident in the energy and effort expended. But I'd like to get the feedback and the analysis from our baseball operations group, who are spending the time, rather than rely on my own.

I ask you, who better to solve the problems with the hitting systems than the people creating the problems?

He continued…

The one thing I know is that when someone is not intricately involved in the day-to-day, which I'm not, it can be damaging and dangerous for me to intermittently get involved. So, I'll wait to read everything that they produce at the end of the season—which will be an in-depth analysis of both the work and the process, as well as the outcomes and the results, along with the recommendations for an offseason plan—and then I'll give you my input. Or give them my input and let Ross comment on it.

But I am very careful not to just react to my own emotional reactions of watching. I'll ask question, stay engaged, stay involved, try to be a resource, but the most dangerous thing is to kind of get intermittently involved with impacting those areas.

Ahh, go ahead and fire the strategist. It's all good. We’ve got your back. Please also forward me that report when you get it!

On payroll going forward

Those are the conversations I'm having right now with ownership. I expect to get that solidified in the next couple of weeks. As always, I'm not going to comment and give you an exact number, but I do think it's important to say, even in the preliminary conversations, I don't expect a dramatic philosophical shift in payroll next year. I expect us to stay in the same area. We can support that for now.

Next year. For now. Home Plate Club tickets now on sale!

I mean, normally this is the kind of stuff we wait breathlessly for in these end-of-season events, but this year it feels wholly secondary. The reaction—or at least my own reaction—is more along the lines of: “I don’t care. Figure it out. Show us something.”

That probably says as much about where this fan base is at as anything.

Were you satisfied with how the organization handled the Anthony Bass situation?

Yes, I'm satisfied, and that's all I can say about that for now.

Some context here: Earlier this week Gregory Strong of the Canadian Press—the same reporter who asked this question of Shapiro—got Bass to comment on record for the first time since he was let go by the Jays in June. The reliever explained that he doesn't feel like the club's decision to do so was a baseball move, and that he was fired for his personal beliefs.

He told the CP that he was unable to file a grievance over this because he was guaranteed the remainder of his salary for the season—the final year of a two-year, $5 million deal he'd signed with the Marlins in 2021. But he added that “if this causes future issues, I think there is a strong case to be had.”

I suspect Bass’s case would be stronger if he hadn't also embarrassed his boss in the media after Atkins had gone to bat for him by insisting that he felt his apology and commitment to using the club's “resources” was sincere. And also if he hadn't sucked.

Shapiro, obviously, would not be smart to comment if there's a potential grievance coming.

Why are you one of only two clubs not to send radio broadcast crews on the road and will that change?

That's not in the portfolio of my decision-making, and I don't have any input into that. And wouldn't want to conjecture about someone else's job, because enough people are doing that for me in my job.

I, however, can conjecture that whoever is making this decision is a clown!

On the "mistake" thing earlier—do you consider the Berríos call a mistake?

I actually don't. It didn't work as perfectly as it could have. Two ground balls, you know? A lot of plays could have been made, but they just—couple inches here or there. If you had said to me we're going to hold the Twins to two runs in that game before the game—didn't say anything about the way transpired, but said we're going to hold them to two runs—I would have thought we were going to win the game.

I think that's fair, but also... a lot of people would not have thought that! Did you watch this offence??

So, that's not why we lost. We lost because we didn't hit, because we made a baserunning mistake. Those are the reasons we lost.

Correct.

Why is the “line of demarcation” so important?

I mean, it's not necessarily important, and it's probably just a general leadership tenet. We've talked a lot about collaboration. We want to pool all of the experiences, all of the intellect, all of the information, all of the perspectives, to get the best possible planning and preparation possible. But, whether it's anyone in this organization, leaders have to be empowered to make a decision in the moment. They can't wait for somebody else to come in and tell them what to do.

That probably applies more materially within a game than any other moment in time. However, it's throughout the organization.

So, to me it's just a general leadership premise. ‘Hey, don't rely on your own opinion only, get all the information, tap into every resource.’ Our job is to relentlessly look for the best resources out there that we can possibly provide. But when it comes to a game, I've never seen a front office pick up a phone and call down and make a pitching change or make a substitution within the game. That person needs to have the strength and power and confidence to make those decisions. Which John does. And so that's the line I was talking about.

This one is a bit weird to me, to be honest. Former Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen got into some hot water back in 2019 when it was reported that he'd been calling down to then-manager Mickey Callaway—hey, there's a name neither Shapiro nor Atkins was probably going to bring up voluntarily *COUGH*—to dictate in-game moves.

He vociferously denied this, and just about any article I can find that was written about it suggests that had he actually been doing so he would have been in violation of MLB rules. However, none I've come across states the specific rule.

We do know that from Rob Manfred's 2020 decision to discipline the Boston Red Sox for electronic sign stealing that, as of 2017, a section of the Major League Baseball Regulations includes text from a 2000 memorandum sent by former MLB Executive Vice President for Baseball Operation, Sandy Alderson, that reads:

“The use of electronic equipment during a game is restricted. No Club shall use electronic equipment, including but not limited to walkie-talkies, cellular telephones, laptop computers or tablets, to communicate to or with any on-field personnel, including those in the dugout, bullpen, field and, during the game, the clubhouse.”

The next sentence specifically discusses sign stealing, but to me that appears pretty cut-and-dried. However, Van Wagenen also admitted to reporters at the time that “we do communicate with the training staff and the training room when there is a player that suffers an injury,” so... I don't know. Seems to be a grey area.

Clearly Shapiro doesn't think that dictating moves to a manager would be prohibited, despite what those reports from 2019 suggested. But more importantly, rule or not, no executive is going to ever admit to this!

Shapiro can't put it that way without sounding like the Jays are actually doing it, but especially in a post-Astros world where in-game communication is so heavily scrutinized, this just seems like common sense to me. Expecting Atkins to have said the decision was anyone's but Schneider's was profoundly ridiculous.

Will you need to get under the luxury tax threshold?

If anything to take away from last year—and, again, I haven't had those precise conversations—is that that will not influence the decision. What will influence it is where we are competitively, and where our revenues are.

Ride or die, baby! (Until 2025)

How much of a priority is it to lock up guys like Vlad and Bo?

I think the priority is just to sustain the opportunity to win. As it pertains to where individuals fit into that, I'll leave that to Ross to discuss. But we've got to do everything humanly possible to keep that window open.

Because it's closing!

I kid, I kid, but seriously, keep the damn window open.

And lastly, on John Schneider and what it takes to become a great manager...

That is a great question. I see so many positives within him as a foundation. The fact that he is obviously smart, has honed his skills in the minor leagues—which, you know, doesn't simulate the accountability and the challenges of managing in a high-pressure major league environment. But I guess what I'd just say, Keegan, is ultimately we all get better with reps. And going through the cycle. Going through the situation. Sitting in this room, sitting at this table. Considering the personalities and people within a major league clubhouse, and understanding the dynamics there—the insecurities, the anxieties, that come with being a major league player. The pressures that come with that.

He's aware of all those things, but the depth of experiences, the number of situations and circumstances that he manages—it's probably the most appropriate job title on the planet—are just going to continue to get better.

And because he is so committed to learning—which he is—he'll get better.

So I just think experience will make him better. Where the threshold and the tipping point is that he'll be a finished product—I'd like to think no one's a finished product. I'd like to think as long as he's doing it, he'll get better. I look at myself and I always tell my kids, the only thing I'm sure of now is that I'm less sure now of everything than I was before. I think you need to continue to question, to ensure you don't think you have it all figured out. The day you do you stop learning and stop getting better. It's a dangerous place to be.

And that’s why we fired Charlie. GOOD NIGHT SEATTLE, WE LOVE YOU!

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