On a bitter ending, payroll growth, CBA negotiations, Semien, Springer, Dunedin and Buffalo, the bullpen, a new stadium, short term vs. long term, extension talk, minor league pay, and much more!
Great piece! We'll see how it goes with the current Rogers drama, but it does FEEL like Shapiro has managed to get Rogers on board in a way I'm not sure Beeston ever did. The idea of running record high payrolls (after 1.5 seasons hardly selling any tix), plus a new or renovated stadium maybe in the works would have seemed like a pipe dream a decade ago. If things keep going well on those fronts I really think we might look at two things as pivotal to the Jays: the way attendance soared from 15-17, proving that a playoff Jays team could be a behemoth with ratings/gate, and hiring a president who is able to navigate the team's corporate overlords.
"the carbon footprint of all the concrete they be turning to rubble when they knock the old building down"
This is a bigger issue than just a throw-away like at the end of the paragraph. It's morally indefensible to consider knocking down a perfectly good sports stadium and building a new one.
I think it's our job as fans and citizens (and especially sports writers) to make sure Jays management and our city councillors know that a new stadium is an absolute non-starter.
From an aesthetic standpoint, I'd be really surprised if a new stadium was even an improvement. Much as we'd all love a Comerica Park or Camden Yards of our own in July and August, any new stadium would have to be roofed to accommodate the early and late season, which basically precludes a nice, traditional park.
The recent roofed stadiums built are absolute travesties architecturally and aesthetically - much worse than what we have now. No reason to think a replacement for the Dome would be any better.
I guess I'd say that the operative word here is "perfectly good," which the Rogers Centre is not. At least not for the Jays' purposes as a business. It's a fine place to watch a game, but I definitely don't agree that a new one wouldn't be an improvement aesthetically, even though you're right that the airplane hangar style of some of the other ones is pretty terrible. I think they could find a way to do it really well.
Could they maybe repurpose as much as they could of what's already there and make a new facility as green as possible to mitigate some of the moral queasiness people would rightfully have about knocking the current one down? I don't know, but I'd hope so, because a new stadium honestly isn't a non-starter for me. I think that this battle needs to be fought at the governmental level and changes need to be massive in scale -- we can't rely on corporations to be nudged into doing the right thing. So I tend to think the bulk of that energy (no pun intended) would be better spent elsewhere (though I could be convinced otherwise, because I know there are people who have put a lot more thought into this than I have), even though I do try to make sure to raise this concern any time the issue comes up.
But you're right that a massive renovation of the Dome would be the much more responsible thing to do, I just also think that's probably even less tenable than the new stadium plan. A whole lot of the construction on that could at least be completed to the south of the building while games continued to be played. They couldn't possibly complete an enormous renovation of the current building in one offseason, so that path would likely be incredibly disruptive to the team for a very long time. Is that the biggest concern here? No, but that's going to be how it goes until we have the political will to actually take the coming catastrophe seriously -- and even then we'll probably be more focused on stuff like the fossil fuel industry anyway, right?
It's perfectly good in that it does exactly what it needs to - allows fans to enjoy ballgames in any weather condition. I don't see why the city should allow Rogers to destroy an iconic part of the skyline so they can extract more revenue per square foot or whatever.
Inevitably, the taxpayers would end up footing a major part of the $1.5-2Bn bill to tear down and redevelop the stadium we already lost our shirts on selling to them for nothing, just so that Rogers can enjoy more profit??
I fail to see any value proposition for fans or citizens. Shapiro has a lot of work to do to convince me, and hopefully city council, the mayor, and the province that tearing down the SkyDome is anything but madness.
Years of construction and billions of dollars to continue having the ability to watch a game downtown, when the alternative is doing nothing and spending nothing to continue having the ability to watch a game downtown... I just don't understand how that's not a non-starter.
I honestly don't even understand why a "massive renovation" is required, unless the building is actually unsound (which afaik is not the case). Maybe a topic for an slow offseason piece, because I for one am absolutely baffled that it's even a topic of conversation, let alone a serious plan.
Angus - I'm not quite sure why you view the possibility of a new stadium so negatively. A) There's no real reason to suggest it won't be an improvement aesthetically. I guess it's a personal preference, but the other MLB ballparks I've been to have blown the Skydome out of the water aesthetics wise. B) So far, this has been reported to be a project financed by Rogers, not the taxpayers. As far as I'm concerned, if Rogers wants to tear down the ballpark that they own, and replace it with a newer ballpark that they are going to pay for - have at it! If it's. not your money, why are you worried about it? It's not like they're tearing down St. Lawrence Market or Massey Hall and putting in condos. It's replacing a 35 year old park (that I think most would say is one of the worst in the league at this point) and replacing it with a newer one. Now - if the story changes and it turns out public money is required, different story entirely. But that's not what we've been told to this point. C) you may not think it needs a renovation, but clearly Rogers does. And really, if Rogers has determined that a new or renovated stadium is what's needed to bring in bigger revenues, then they're going to do it whether we think it needs to be done or not. Personally - I think a new stadium would be awesome and (assuming public funding isn't involved) I hope it happens.
Thanks for the transcription and your thoughts, Stoeten. Interesting stuff.
But I had a more optimistic read of what Shapiro said about payroll and the CBT. Not currently having the revenue sources to support going over isn’t ruling out going up to the CBT limit. Still leaves the possibility of them having a CBT level payroll if their revenue projections from existing sources pan out. Which would be the “unprecedented” level of spending he mentioned.
I also remember from a little while back in an Atkins presser you transcribed, positive mention of a $200M payroll. Or that could be my rose coloured glasses playing tricks on my memory.
Of course, Shapiro’s “unprecedented” could also just mean more than $167M and well below whatever the CBT will be in the new CBA. But that’s still pretty good, so for fucks sake extend Vladd, Bo, Teo and Berrios!
I think you're right about Atkins and $200M, but I think it was more that he hoped it could go there. And as for Shapiro, he said that absent "proactive deficit spending" they'd need other revenue sources they haven't tapped into, so it sounded to me like they don't think, even maximizing what they currently have, it's going to happen. But hopefully you're right, or some new source of revenue comes along (that isn't, y'know, grotesque, or doesn't require putting huge ads on the players' uniforms or something -- though as a soccer fan I'm actually pretty unbothered by that, it would sure be weird in MLB though).
How do you transcribe all this stuff? You really called out the elephant in the room: the lack of decent pitching coming out of the minors (starters or relievers). Manoah is a win. Who knows about Pearson, but what else is there to show for 5 years of drafting? I can't believe more people aren't talking about this.
Well, there's a whole ton of position player prospects, including the main one they used to get Berríos, so we should factor that in, too. And lets not forget that Mayza and Romano are homegrown, too. I just didn't really count established guys there because it was more about what the minor league system specifically provided. Borucki and Hatch were great last year also. So it hasn't been a total wasteland, especially with Manoah and (eventually) Pearson factored in. But they're definitely not in the place where they need to be I don't think. Some interesting arms still bubbling up, too. But this year wasn't good!
They definitely had a plan to focus on drafting/developing positional players (particularly infielders) and I think that's been acknowledged over the years. They haven't ignored pitching, it just hasn't developed as many contributors as hoped (yet). But Shapiro and Atkins had a pretty good track record of developing starters from their Cleveland days. They might have to fork out some extra $$$ to shore up the bullpen during the off season and hope they don't end up with another Brad Hand.
There is talk of this for sure. Many people asking about how if P Diddy Walker is a pitching whisperer then why aren't we bringing up young stars straight from our pitching prospects? Manoah is a great success story. Pearson will be. We coughed up Syndergaard early a few years back, whoops! I thought Saucedo did well and I'm not sure why they didn't like Payamps. It seemed like his performance numbers were good.
Here's hoping guys like Hobie, Francis, and Logue are an asset to our team next year.
Payamps was a weird one. The strikeout rate didn't match the results, and overall he was pretty meh, but just kind of kept getting guys out and wasn't a disaster with the Royals either. I remember that he was hurt a bit and wasn't able to pitch all that often, or requiring more time between outings than they would have liked, so he might have just got caught up in a numbers game when they were scrambling for warm bodies (though I'd have to go look up the actual circumstances).
As for Walker, I've got all the time in the world for him, but I think his reputation is definitely a little larger than it probably should be sometimes. But I guess that happens when you take a guy walking seven batters per nine and help turn him into a Cy Young winner. There have been lots of good stories, which get focused on, and lack of success elsewhere that doesn't get talked about very much -- basically the reverse of what happens with Charlie.
Great piece! We'll see how it goes with the current Rogers drama, but it does FEEL like Shapiro has managed to get Rogers on board in a way I'm not sure Beeston ever did. The idea of running record high payrolls (after 1.5 seasons hardly selling any tix), plus a new or renovated stadium maybe in the works would have seemed like a pipe dream a decade ago. If things keep going well on those fronts I really think we might look at two things as pivotal to the Jays: the way attendance soared from 15-17, proving that a playoff Jays team could be a behemoth with ratings/gate, and hiring a president who is able to navigate the team's corporate overlords.
"the carbon footprint of all the concrete they be turning to rubble when they knock the old building down"
This is a bigger issue than just a throw-away like at the end of the paragraph. It's morally indefensible to consider knocking down a perfectly good sports stadium and building a new one.
I think it's our job as fans and citizens (and especially sports writers) to make sure Jays management and our city councillors know that a new stadium is an absolute non-starter.
From an aesthetic standpoint, I'd be really surprised if a new stadium was even an improvement. Much as we'd all love a Comerica Park or Camden Yards of our own in July and August, any new stadium would have to be roofed to accommodate the early and late season, which basically precludes a nice, traditional park.
The recent roofed stadiums built are absolute travesties architecturally and aesthetically - much worse than what we have now. No reason to think a replacement for the Dome would be any better.
I guess I'd say that the operative word here is "perfectly good," which the Rogers Centre is not. At least not for the Jays' purposes as a business. It's a fine place to watch a game, but I definitely don't agree that a new one wouldn't be an improvement aesthetically, even though you're right that the airplane hangar style of some of the other ones is pretty terrible. I think they could find a way to do it really well.
Could they maybe repurpose as much as they could of what's already there and make a new facility as green as possible to mitigate some of the moral queasiness people would rightfully have about knocking the current one down? I don't know, but I'd hope so, because a new stadium honestly isn't a non-starter for me. I think that this battle needs to be fought at the governmental level and changes need to be massive in scale -- we can't rely on corporations to be nudged into doing the right thing. So I tend to think the bulk of that energy (no pun intended) would be better spent elsewhere (though I could be convinced otherwise, because I know there are people who have put a lot more thought into this than I have), even though I do try to make sure to raise this concern any time the issue comes up.
But you're right that a massive renovation of the Dome would be the much more responsible thing to do, I just also think that's probably even less tenable than the new stadium plan. A whole lot of the construction on that could at least be completed to the south of the building while games continued to be played. They couldn't possibly complete an enormous renovation of the current building in one offseason, so that path would likely be incredibly disruptive to the team for a very long time. Is that the biggest concern here? No, but that's going to be how it goes until we have the political will to actually take the coming catastrophe seriously -- and even then we'll probably be more focused on stuff like the fossil fuel industry anyway, right?
It's perfectly good in that it does exactly what it needs to - allows fans to enjoy ballgames in any weather condition. I don't see why the city should allow Rogers to destroy an iconic part of the skyline so they can extract more revenue per square foot or whatever.
Inevitably, the taxpayers would end up footing a major part of the $1.5-2Bn bill to tear down and redevelop the stadium we already lost our shirts on selling to them for nothing, just so that Rogers can enjoy more profit??
I fail to see any value proposition for fans or citizens. Shapiro has a lot of work to do to convince me, and hopefully city council, the mayor, and the province that tearing down the SkyDome is anything but madness.
Years of construction and billions of dollars to continue having the ability to watch a game downtown, when the alternative is doing nothing and spending nothing to continue having the ability to watch a game downtown... I just don't understand how that's not a non-starter.
I honestly don't even understand why a "massive renovation" is required, unless the building is actually unsound (which afaik is not the case). Maybe a topic for an slow offseason piece, because I for one am absolutely baffled that it's even a topic of conversation, let alone a serious plan.
Angus - I'm not quite sure why you view the possibility of a new stadium so negatively. A) There's no real reason to suggest it won't be an improvement aesthetically. I guess it's a personal preference, but the other MLB ballparks I've been to have blown the Skydome out of the water aesthetics wise. B) So far, this has been reported to be a project financed by Rogers, not the taxpayers. As far as I'm concerned, if Rogers wants to tear down the ballpark that they own, and replace it with a newer ballpark that they are going to pay for - have at it! If it's. not your money, why are you worried about it? It's not like they're tearing down St. Lawrence Market or Massey Hall and putting in condos. It's replacing a 35 year old park (that I think most would say is one of the worst in the league at this point) and replacing it with a newer one. Now - if the story changes and it turns out public money is required, different story entirely. But that's not what we've been told to this point. C) you may not think it needs a renovation, but clearly Rogers does. And really, if Rogers has determined that a new or renovated stadium is what's needed to bring in bigger revenues, then they're going to do it whether we think it needs to be done or not. Personally - I think a new stadium would be awesome and (assuming public funding isn't involved) I hope it happens.
Build a World Championship Team! Whoooo!!
Thanks for the transcription and your thoughts, Stoeten. Interesting stuff.
But I had a more optimistic read of what Shapiro said about payroll and the CBT. Not currently having the revenue sources to support going over isn’t ruling out going up to the CBT limit. Still leaves the possibility of them having a CBT level payroll if their revenue projections from existing sources pan out. Which would be the “unprecedented” level of spending he mentioned.
I also remember from a little while back in an Atkins presser you transcribed, positive mention of a $200M payroll. Or that could be my rose coloured glasses playing tricks on my memory.
Of course, Shapiro’s “unprecedented” could also just mean more than $167M and well below whatever the CBT will be in the new CBA. But that’s still pretty good, so for fucks sake extend Vladd, Bo, Teo and Berrios!
I think you're right about Atkins and $200M, but I think it was more that he hoped it could go there. And as for Shapiro, he said that absent "proactive deficit spending" they'd need other revenue sources they haven't tapped into, so it sounded to me like they don't think, even maximizing what they currently have, it's going to happen. But hopefully you're right, or some new source of revenue comes along (that isn't, y'know, grotesque, or doesn't require putting huge ads on the players' uniforms or something -- though as a soccer fan I'm actually pretty unbothered by that, it would sure be weird in MLB though).
No sleep til Pig Pile!!!
LOL
How do you transcribe all this stuff? You really called out the elephant in the room: the lack of decent pitching coming out of the minors (starters or relievers). Manoah is a win. Who knows about Pearson, but what else is there to show for 5 years of drafting? I can't believe more people aren't talking about this.
Well, there's a whole ton of position player prospects, including the main one they used to get Berríos, so we should factor that in, too. And lets not forget that Mayza and Romano are homegrown, too. I just didn't really count established guys there because it was more about what the minor league system specifically provided. Borucki and Hatch were great last year also. So it hasn't been a total wasteland, especially with Manoah and (eventually) Pearson factored in. But they're definitely not in the place where they need to be I don't think. Some interesting arms still bubbling up, too. But this year wasn't good!
They definitely had a plan to focus on drafting/developing positional players (particularly infielders) and I think that's been acknowledged over the years. They haven't ignored pitching, it just hasn't developed as many contributors as hoped (yet). But Shapiro and Atkins had a pretty good track record of developing starters from their Cleveland days. They might have to fork out some extra $$$ to shore up the bullpen during the off season and hope they don't end up with another Brad Hand.
There is talk of this for sure. Many people asking about how if P Diddy Walker is a pitching whisperer then why aren't we bringing up young stars straight from our pitching prospects? Manoah is a great success story. Pearson will be. We coughed up Syndergaard early a few years back, whoops! I thought Saucedo did well and I'm not sure why they didn't like Payamps. It seemed like his performance numbers were good.
Here's hoping guys like Hobie, Francis, and Logue are an asset to our team next year.
Payamps was a weird one. The strikeout rate didn't match the results, and overall he was pretty meh, but just kind of kept getting guys out and wasn't a disaster with the Royals either. I remember that he was hurt a bit and wasn't able to pitch all that often, or requiring more time between outings than they would have liked, so he might have just got caught up in a numbers game when they were scrambling for warm bodies (though I'd have to go look up the actual circumstances).
As for Walker, I've got all the time in the world for him, but I think his reputation is definitely a little larger than it probably should be sometimes. But I guess that happens when you take a guy walking seven batters per nine and help turn him into a Cy Young winner. There have been lots of good stories, which get focused on, and lack of success elsewhere that doesn't get talked about very much -- basically the reverse of what happens with Charlie.