I've been away on holiday and just catching up with a lot of this stuff - so no-one will probably see this comment, but my main question is this: Ross Atkins is an intelligent person so he must have known - surely - that his comments would be perceived as throwing Schneider under the bus. The question is why? Why was he so blatant about doing that? Is he so opaque that he couldn't see the stir it would create?
I also wonder if the Blair and Barker grumblings about player dissatisfaction with the front office etc. existed in 2020 and 2021 when the dugout had a party atmosphere?
I also feel very sorry for John Schneider. Sure, Berrios was pitching great, but he's also homer prone. What if the next batter after the walk or someone else that inning hit a 2-run homer? Or even a few runs in the next inning. Would we be complaining that he should have taken Berrios out sooner? The poor guy (Schneider) was always going to be damned no matter what he did - especially when you don't score any runs.
I thought Shapiro did well, or as well as he could in the circumstances. Ross, still, seems to struggle with the public facing role, which is too bad, because those brief moments of personality and honesty I've seen here and there, would serve him well.
By and large, I think we're really well served with the beat writers who regularly cover the Jays. Don't always agree with all their takes, but they're fair and tend to see the forest for the trees, which made an interloper like Rosie all the more obvious during the Shapiro newswer. I get it, Moreno is doing well, while Varsho scuffled at the plate. Re-litigating the deal seems kind of pointless, though. It was done in the context of having not just Kirk, but Janssen, here. If, a year ago, the team had a journeyman 30-something and Moreno as their catching depth, that trade doesn't happen.
But going back to the beat writers for a moment, it was something else to see virtually EVERYONE pan the Atkins' newswer. It wasn't just the usual awkwardness, many came out and said they didn't believe he was telling them the truth. Add that to what appears to be a fractured communications issue with the roster, and Ross feels closer to the firing line than I would have thought possible a week ago. I had felt for awhile that Shapiro firing Atkins would be akin to Masai firing Bobby Webster (as in, who are we kidding here) but it feels as if Atkins did enough damage to his credibility to given Shapiro the room to fire him if need be.
I think the comment about the people making the decisions during the season essentially marking their own work is on the money. If nothing else, bringing in some new people gives you a chance to really frankly evaluate past decisions.
I do think Ross has put together a good roster for the most part. I also think that given the underperformance across the lineup, there has to be some idea that the analytics, coaching, front office in general are to blame. A couple guys underperform, a couple guys overperform, that's life, but this lineup just wasn't that good. Looking up at the jumbotron and seeing the OPS figures next to our lineup was uniformly depressing. The GM's job isn't just roster construction, if it was, I would give Atkins an A, maybe even an A+. This was a good roster, and looked to seriously contend for the division and to go deep. But the rest of it matters too, as we have seen, and that brings him down to at best a soft B-, maybe a C.
And not to go another round on the Berios decision, but I find it weird that Atkins and Shapiro think that the concern is that they're either a) dictating before the game what to do or b) literally calling him during the game and telling him what to do. I don't think anyone thinks that. The way it would go down is by just "providing information" and "collaborating on strategy" and just subtle pressure - "Yeah so we've gamed it out, and it looks like if we're in situation X, move Y gives us the best outcomes for reason Z." Once it's been laid out like that, everyone's bought in to the plan, it's difficult to change it - you're in the heat of the moment, and you're seeing one thing, but the plan is something else, and gaaa a decision needs to be made in three seconds and bam you go with what was gamed out. And that Atkins and Shapiro don't acknowledge that makes me think that either they don't understand that (seems unlikely for two huge leadership/management geeks), or they know that's exactly what's happening and don't want to talk about it, which is interesting.
I've been away on holiday and just catching up with a lot of this stuff - so no-one will probably see this comment, but my main question is this: Ross Atkins is an intelligent person so he must have known - surely - that his comments would be perceived as throwing Schneider under the bus. The question is why? Why was he so blatant about doing that? Is he so opaque that he couldn't see the stir it would create?
I also wonder if the Blair and Barker grumblings about player dissatisfaction with the front office etc. existed in 2020 and 2021 when the dugout had a party atmosphere?
I also feel very sorry for John Schneider. Sure, Berrios was pitching great, but he's also homer prone. What if the next batter after the walk or someone else that inning hit a 2-run homer? Or even a few runs in the next inning. Would we be complaining that he should have taken Berrios out sooner? The poor guy (Schneider) was always going to be damned no matter what he did - especially when you don't score any runs.
I thought Shapiro did well, or as well as he could in the circumstances. Ross, still, seems to struggle with the public facing role, which is too bad, because those brief moments of personality and honesty I've seen here and there, would serve him well.
By and large, I think we're really well served with the beat writers who regularly cover the Jays. Don't always agree with all their takes, but they're fair and tend to see the forest for the trees, which made an interloper like Rosie all the more obvious during the Shapiro newswer. I get it, Moreno is doing well, while Varsho scuffled at the plate. Re-litigating the deal seems kind of pointless, though. It was done in the context of having not just Kirk, but Janssen, here. If, a year ago, the team had a journeyman 30-something and Moreno as their catching depth, that trade doesn't happen.
But going back to the beat writers for a moment, it was something else to see virtually EVERYONE pan the Atkins' newswer. It wasn't just the usual awkwardness, many came out and said they didn't believe he was telling them the truth. Add that to what appears to be a fractured communications issue with the roster, and Ross feels closer to the firing line than I would have thought possible a week ago. I had felt for awhile that Shapiro firing Atkins would be akin to Masai firing Bobby Webster (as in, who are we kidding here) but it feels as if Atkins did enough damage to his credibility to given Shapiro the room to fire him if need be.
I think the comment about the people making the decisions during the season essentially marking their own work is on the money. If nothing else, bringing in some new people gives you a chance to really frankly evaluate past decisions.
I do think Ross has put together a good roster for the most part. I also think that given the underperformance across the lineup, there has to be some idea that the analytics, coaching, front office in general are to blame. A couple guys underperform, a couple guys overperform, that's life, but this lineup just wasn't that good. Looking up at the jumbotron and seeing the OPS figures next to our lineup was uniformly depressing. The GM's job isn't just roster construction, if it was, I would give Atkins an A, maybe even an A+. This was a good roster, and looked to seriously contend for the division and to go deep. But the rest of it matters too, as we have seen, and that brings him down to at best a soft B-, maybe a C.
And not to go another round on the Berios decision, but I find it weird that Atkins and Shapiro think that the concern is that they're either a) dictating before the game what to do or b) literally calling him during the game and telling him what to do. I don't think anyone thinks that. The way it would go down is by just "providing information" and "collaborating on strategy" and just subtle pressure - "Yeah so we've gamed it out, and it looks like if we're in situation X, move Y gives us the best outcomes for reason Z." Once it's been laid out like that, everyone's bought in to the plan, it's difficult to change it - you're in the heat of the moment, and you're seeing one thing, but the plan is something else, and gaaa a decision needs to be made in three seconds and bam you go with what was gamed out. And that Atkins and Shapiro don't acknowledge that makes me think that either they don't understand that (seems unlikely for two huge leadership/management geeks), or they know that's exactly what's happening and don't want to talk about it, which is interesting.