Shapiro speaks: With McCown and Shannon on renovations, crossing the CBT threshold, the offseason, and much more!
Shapiro speaks: With McCown and Shannon on renovations, crossing the CBT threshold, the offseason, and much more!
But not on this week's Jays-related report from Toronto's Integrity Commissioner!
*MASSIVE NOTE*: Just before I was about to complete this post news broke that the Blue Jays have traded Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to the Arizona Diamondbacks for outfielder Daulton Varsho. Obviously I will be writing about that trade as soon as I hit send on this. But I was so close to the end of this at the time the deal hit Twitter that I’ve decided to complete it and send it out first. It’s actually quite interesting to look at Shapiro’s quotes in light of what must have clearly been going on in the background at the time he was speaking. There is plenty that’s still very relevant, too. Check it out!
Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro was the guest on Wednesday’s edition The Bob McCown Podcast, sitting down for a 45 minute conversation on a wide variety of Jays-related topics.
One topic conspicuous in its absence, however, was Tuesday's report from the Toronto Integrity Commissioner Jonathan Batty. In the report Mayor John Tory was cleared of breaking conflict of interest rules this summer for voting to end street closures related to ActiveTO despite the fact that Tory sits on the board of the family trust that controls Rogers, and that Shapiro had very publicly campaigned for the closures to end on behalf of the Rogers-owned Blue Jays.
Unfortunately for Shapiro, Tory escaping punishment is only one element of a story that the Jays' president and CEO is very much embroiled in, as the report also revealed that Shapiro's June 6th letter to council, urging them to vote against road closures on Lake Shore Blvd. West, had actually been written by Mark Grimes, the conservative then-councillor for Etobicoke-Lakeshore.
According to the report, Grimes — who progressives were delighted to see unseated in the most recent municipal election after what Progress Toronto characterized as two decades of awful votes, terrible attendance, and improper relationships — was the first person to even bring up the ActiveTO closures to Shapiro, which he did as part of what always struck me as a bad faith campaign in favour of drivers and against the entire program.
From the Toronto Star's Ben Spurr:
According to Batty’s report, Shapiro told the commissioner ActiveTO wasn’t on his radar until Grimes contacted him about it in early June, saying the program wasn’t in the Jays’ interests.
One June 2, Grimes sent Shapiro a draft letter criticizing ActiveTO, which the commissioner found Shapiro sent to the mayor on team letterhead after making some amendments. During public debates on the issue, neither Shapiro nor Grimes disclosed that the councillor was behind the letter. Tory told the commissioner he didn’t know Grimes had ghostwritten it.
A spokesperson for the Blue Jays declined to answer questions Tuesday. Grimes, who was defeated in the October municipal election, didn’t return a request for comment.
Truly incredible that something that was so stupid from the jump has managed to get stupider still, huh?
The letter argued that Jays fans' ability to get to games would "drastically" impacted by the closures.
“My conclusion could have been different,” Batty wrote, “if the evidence demonstrated the Blue Jays’ business operations had been materially affected by ActiveTO as Mr. Shapiro’s ghostwritten letter had initially suggested.”
Oof. Swing and a miss, Mark.
So what did Shapiro speak about with McCown and Shannon? You can see precisely that below — all of his remarks from the interview transcribed in full, and in order, with my notes on his comments as well.
Enjoy!
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On the Player Development Complex
The interview began with Shapiro mentioning that he has remained in Toronto since the season ended, but that he's travelling to Vancouver for the holidays and then will head down to Dunedin — partly so that his son can do some training down there. Noting that this seemed early to be getting into spring training, McCown asked if Shapiro intends to spend a lot of time at the PDC.
It's such a hub of activity now, we've got so many players there, John Schneider lives there, our farm director, our scouting director. So, I don't know whether I'm justifying me spending time down there, after all our stadium is a construction project right now, and kind of a war zone. But yeah, no, it's a little bit of that, and it's a little bit, again, as I mentioned, my son is a college baseball player in the U.S. and he's got a few weeks off and is going to train for his season.
Shapiro’s son, Caden, is set for his second season at Princeton, his father’s alma mater, in the spring, primarily playing as a right fielder, while also operating as a left-handed reliever. More importantly, it certainly sounds like everything is going to plan with the Jays and the PDC.
Jays players and staff living in and around Dunedin is nothing new, of course, but something tells me that they weren’t spending quite as much time dodging sprinkler heads at the old Mattick Complex. The Jays are getting buy-in from players, and one suspects that should continue to grow over time.
Shapiro and Atkins would never say it — or might say it then quickly correct themselves — but the PDC really is the heart of the organization. So much of what the team does comes out of what they’re doing down there. It will be fascinating to see how noticeable the benefits will be in the years ahead — if they’re noticeable at all. I mean, it’s not like their competitors are standing still. And it’s not like the Jays are lapping the field either.
So then the PDC investment is paying off, given that it's a hub of activity?
When we enter in a conversation with a free agent, or acquire a player — or talk to like, Don Mattingly as a staff guy — the reputation in the industry of that facility and what a great place it is to train and to recover and rehab and work, it's well known throughout the game. I feel like Rogers Centre's going to have the same reputation very soon, in a couple years.
Thanks, taxpayers of Pinellas County!
Was that a selling point for Kiermaier?
I think it is for Kiermaier, geographically, because he lives close by, right? So that's a huge plus. And he obviously, he's going from probably the worst spring training facility — they can't even play in it this year — to ours, so it will be a plus for him.
Shapiro has a good line on this later on. I won’t spoil it. But, as we all know, geography definitely plays a role in player movement, at least when the player has the ability to choose. For example, a section of Todd Zolecki’s 2020 book, Doc: The Life of Roy Halladay — excerpted here at MLB.com — details the frustrating time Alex Anthopoulos had dealing with Halladay’s no-trade clause and insistence on only going to the Yankees or Phillies, who both also train in the Tampa area.
Do you show off the facility to free agents and staff you're attempting to acquire?
Yeah, we've got a free agent video that we send out — a recruiting video. We have a version of it we use for (the) amateur draft as well, that's actually maybe a little more development focussed. But we've got a free agent video that has some of our players talking, some of our coaching staff, some of our front office. Talks about the city of Toronto and what it means to play for the Blue Jays and represent Canada. And then obviously spends a significant amount of time featuring (the facility).
It’s very clear that the Jays impress on new players that it’s an important bit of marketing to talk about how much it means to be representing and playing for an entire country. But, speaking of leverage, what I find interesting about this bit is that I guess we’re not even trying to act like some draftees can essentially choose which teams they go to.
Which… actually, were we even pretending that? Clearly the fact that guys can get drafted out of high school and then re-enter after either a year of JuCo or three years in college gives them some leverage. The sham part, I suppose, is more the insistence that these kids don’t have agents negotiating on their behalf, just “advisors.”
Anyway, Shapiro continued…
You know, that's a differentiator for us. When you're recruiting someone clearly money is the biggest area they're looking for you to differentiate. But after money, if it's even, my mind's always been, if the money is even, you want to have done a lot of little things right (so) that players want to play there. I've said it before, I don't know if you've ever heard me say it, but I wake up every day thinking about how to make this the best place to play and the best place to work, and that facility is one of the things that signals to our players that this is the best place to play.
He’ll get more detailed later about just how important he feels this stuff to be. It involves Danny Ferry somehow!
On the renovations at Rogers Centre
Shapiro began this portion of the talk by outlining the basics of the timeline for the ongoing first phase of the project.
We started the day the season ended. We're on a tight timeframe. At one point it was a pretty anxious feeling — it was hard to imagine it would get put back together again — but as you've seen the images online or on social media, we're starting to really see tangible progress. You could see that they've poured the concrete for the pads of the elevated bullpens, and a lot of the new patio spaces/social spaces are built out — at least the infrastructure is built out. And I think after the new year things will come together. They're only going to break for about 48, 72 hours over the holidays.
When I look at it, Bob, I'm more thinking about next year. When we take out the lower bowl we have to demolish and disassemble the entire lower bowl, and then rebuild a different lower bowl — and everything underneath it. Because the point of the demolishing the lower bowl is to create more baseball-like angles, move the stadium to a ballpark, create premium spaces underneath, and new clubhouses — home and visiting — underneath. So, to think about that being done in four months is hard to conceive. But, again, we're dealing with people who, that's their expertise in their life.
McCown didn’t really even ask a question to prompt this, he simply mentioned that Shapiro had previously brought up the renovations and off he went. Clearly there’s a passion for it. And clearly there’s a stress factor regarding the timeline.
The Jays begin their season on March 30th in St. Louis, kicking off an 11-day, three-city road trip. They don’t open the home portion of their schedule until April 11th against the Tigers, so there’s at least a little bit of extra cushion there. I strongly suspect the schedule-makers will do something similar next year.
Is this a two-year project?
It's a two-year to two-and-a-half year project — make it bleed in. The areas underneath that are not player-focussed could bleed in to the '24 season if we don't finish in time. Obviously we have to have stands, we have to have the seats set. And there are things that, you know, when we walk through with the contractors and the designers and the architect, we're like, 'We can't begin 2024 without this being done, this is to be a guarantee.' And there are other things, like, 'Hey, if the premium club is not quite done, that's OK.' But we're aiming to have everything done for the start of (the) next year.
I believe this is the first time there has been a suggestion that the project could go on for quite so long, but obviously there were always going to have to be contingencies in place, obviously. Like, for example, if the Jays managed to play for more than 10 minutes in October. HEYO!
Hey, but at least he’s saying the right thing about prioritizing common seats over a big-money premium club lounge.
Were the renovation designs modelled after any existing facility? Is it comparable to the 2011-13 project to renovate Madison Square Garden?
I think that was probably more comprehensive than ours is. You know, ours is — it's a lot of money, it's over $300 million, which is quite a bit of money, but that probably doesn't allow us to attack every single thing. I think the place will feel completely different, it will feel transformed, it will feel closer to a ballpark than a stadium. You know, less generic, circular, concrete-filled. Have a lot more offerings for a lot of different types of fans, and certainly better player facilities as well. But I think, the question, did we model it or mirror? When you go into these projects you want to do a depth of research and understanding of what best in class is right now. But then you think about, 'OK, what will best in class be in five or ten years?' You don't want what you've built to be extinct or out of date.
That happened to Chicago, with the White Sox and Comiskey. You know, they built that new stadium and Camden Yards came online one year later, and it was a little bit outdated in design a year later.
Ah, yes, Comiskey Park. Definitely the facility that seemed instantly outdated after Camden Yards opened we were all thinking of.
He continued…
So I think you want to maintain flexibility, and then you want to understand that there are some things that are inherently Toronto, and you want to make sure you're not building the Miami stadium in Toronto. You've got to be cognizant of who you're building for and where you're building. All those things are similar things we've thought about, for a different purpose, in Dunedin, (and) when I was part of a renovation in Cleveland, albeit this is a much bigger scale than we did in Cleveland.
TTC-inspired tiles it is!
What will maximum attendance ultimately be?
We don't know for sure. We're still working through with the seating map. It will be down. If I had to guess, down about 10-15%, somewhere in that range. I think if we built it today, Bob, we'd probably make it down almost 20%. That's pretty much the standard for new stadiums.
You just, you want to have more demand. You don't want to have that feeling that you could walk up any night and just buy a ticket any time you want. That's not healthy for us, for creating people to buy in advance. And that's ultimately — in a sports entertainment business, the more people buy in advance the better off you are. Too many variables exist when someone makes a last-minute decision, including how nice it is to watch in John Shannon's man cave there — look at that place with the fire going!
Interesting candour regarding the economics of ticket-buying here, but that’s not what immediately jumped out at me.
This is maybe a dumb question, but if they would prefer to have capacity down an additional 5%, uh, couldn’t they have just made seats that are 5% wider?
I do sort of suspect that the new seats won’t be quite as narrow — 15% of the building’s 49,282 seat capacity is nearly 7,500, and based on the renderings we saw back in July (and some of the things Shapiro said later in the interview), my guess would be that the seating areas becoming patio spaces won’t account for the entirety of that reduction — but I assure you nobody would be complaining if they ended up with even more room.
What will fans notice when they first walk in the building?
This year, it will be dramatic, because it's so visible looking out at the outfield. The entire outfield will look completely different. It will not look like you're in the same stadium. You will see the fans and the seats go right to the edge of the fence, something we've never had here. You can picture it in your mind — we've always had a gap. You'll see the bullpens raised instead of sunken down behind a fence. Fans on top of the bullpen, on top of the field. And then you'll see a lot unique decks and patio spaces and social and entertainment spaces that are overlooking bullpens, overlooking the outfield.
And then in the 500 Level, all new seats — that will be visible and obvious, the entire 500 Level. And in the 500 Level outfield, super vons(???), meaning we knocked out some seats to create open spaces and decks, and two of what we hope will be the coolest bar in all of Toronto in the right field outfield 500 Level, and then a more family focussed one in the left field outfield.
It's hard for me to do it justice describing it, but it will look dramatically different.
It could also have some unique angles in the outfield fence.
I have absolutely no idea what that word was after “super,” and am definitely afraid that I’m overlooking something completely simple that it must have been, but I think you get the gist without it.
Anyway, Shapiro’s description is definitely easier to visualize with the actual visual up there. He’s not wrong on that.
The field will no longer be symmetrical then?
Yeah, I mean, two cool things. When we're done next year the seats will actually — this will be a novel idea — the seats will actually look at the batter/pitcher instead of looking into the outfield. Again, because it was a multipurpose stadium, a lot of our seats are angled toward the outfield, you have to turn your head to watch the action. It's kind of crazy.
So we'll have more baseball-specific seats that are more focussed on the action on the infield, mostly on the pitcher-catcher. They'll be closer to the field, they won't be as far, because the circle creates the distance. If you create more of a V-shape or a diamond shape you'll move the seats closer to the field — less foul territory.
Getting the seats to stop facing the 55 yard line has always been at the top of my list of badly needed Rogers Centre fixes — or, at least since the real grass dream died — so this is obviously fantastic stuff, even if I wouldn’t call it breaking news. (You can see the new orientation of the 100 Level seats in the rendering above.)
What we can’t see above is just how close those 100 Level seats are going to be to the action, but everything being said here seems promising.
Shapiro continued…
And then the outfield, because we're limited to the infrastructure of the stadium, in order to build those bullpens and put them in the stands we have certain areas where the fence bumps in a little bit. It will be higher in those areas. We've modelled it with our baseball ops R&D staff, we think it's going to play neutral to what the stadium plays now — which is actually neutral, even though I think people think it's a hitter's stadium. That's largely due to the hitters we have and have had, not due to the stadium. It actually plays pretty neutral; I think it will remain neutral.
Ever since ballpark factors have been a thing it’s seemed odd that a cookie cutter stadium like Rogers Centre, with no other obvious reasons to play hitter-friendly, would come to be seen as exactly that. So I tend to believe Shapiro is probably right about the quality of the Jays’ hitters, past and present. But what really interests me here is what exactly they’re going to do to keep the park neutral if they’re intending on cutting down on foul territory.
Won’t that skew it a bit toward the hitter-friendly side?
How much of a sell was this with Edward Rogers and ownership's board of directors?
It's been a topic of conversation since the day I got here seven years ago. We went through one recommendation about five years ago and the timing wasn't right. Because it's an enormous amount of capital outlay, and because — unique to every other of the 30 major league markets — there's no public funding. This is all privately funded. So, that has to be planned out and thought about.
I think we reached a point where Edward and (Rogers CEO) Tony Staffieri were — they'd heard the conversations, they understood the business case. Which, there is a business case.
They understood the importance for us, from a competitiveness standpoint, in order to have both the revenue and the fans in the stadium. We needed to modernize our fan experience — just like we modernized our spring training facility, just like we've modernized a lot of our systems that Ross uses to make decisions — we needed to really enter into a more modern era of sports entertainment. It's such a competitive landscape now that you just can't have a stadium that only attracts people when you're winning.
More power to them on that last bit, though I wonder how much the stadium is actually going to be able to attract fans even when the team isn’t winning. Especially since, ideally, the next losing Blue Jays season likely won’t happen until long after the novelty of the renovations has worn off.
Shapiro has been pretty open — albeit not quite in these same words — about how much of this project is designed to extract more money from fans’ wallets. So I don’t want to roast him too much about leaning on the “modernization” thing here. I have no doubts that a whole lot of that was necessary coming out of the Beeston years. But it’s hard not to be cynical about this stuff. Like, we all know that gate receipts become a less and less important revenue stream for these teams each year. The Jays themselves demonstrated that by the way they’ve continued to spend despite having no fans in 2020 and being a bottom-five team in terms of attendance in 2021. So, did you need modernization? Or did you want extra money?
And, if I may continue to be cynical for just a minute more, while I can’t blame Mark for making sure to note that the renovations are being entirely privately financed, forgive me if I don’t rush to pat ownership on the back for… uh… [checks notes]… not attempting extortion.
Will the basic dimensions — 328 feet to the foul poles, 400 feet to centre, 375 to the power alleys — be changing?
The dimensions will change some. We're not going release those until January, but what I can say definitively is that we worked closely with our baseball ops staff. And when (the walls) come in, Bob, the fence heights will go up.
I think a cool thing will be, there's also going to be a couple angles in the fence, so you'll see some unique — you'll see a ball hit the fence and kind of carom in a unique way. I like that. It strikes me that every old ballpark (since) the inception of the game had its unique outfield that created some character to it. When it's complete circle there's not a lot of character. So, we're going to create some unique angles and aspects that don't exist now, but we were careful to not have it with defined ballpark attributes — meaning, not make it a right-handed hitter's park, or a left-handed hitter's park, or a pitcher's park. We were careful to try to keep it neutral.
In the abstract I definitely like the idea of weird angles and a unique fence line as well. Who doesn’t love a good, iconic feature? You know, just as long as none of it strays into Tal’s Hill territory.
Were there ballparks that you looked at and said, 'We want that feeling'? San Francisco being a great one, for example.
Well, San Francisco's one of the best in the game, without a doubt. I think no, because we're kind of the last, besides Oakland — that's clearly not going to exist much longer — of the circular multi-purpose stadium. Most of them — Cincinnati and Pittsburgh — most of them are gone. Yes, are there ones that we think reflect the true ballpark atmosphere. Boston and Chicago are the historic ones. Baltimore, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Pittsburgh are some of the more modern ones that have some of those unique, baseball-centric attributes. But, again, we need to do two things: work with what we have — we're not knocking it down — and then stay true to our market, to our city.
Odd that he didn’t mention the ridiculous new sterile airplane hangar in an industrial park halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Oh. Wait. No, it isn’t.
How will the renovations impact on the acquisition of players?
This year doesn't that much, except for our bullpens are going to go from probably the worst bullpens to maybe the best bullpens in the game. They're going to be big, they're going to allow players to warm up properly, they're going to have space underneath that — on the home side — is incredibly remarkable.
The visiting bullpen is going to be another story, Bob. They're going to have fans right on top of it — I mean right on top of it. Which I'm quite interested to see what that results in, but I'm sure it will be a little bit of a home field advantage for us.
But besides a couple things, I guess — the new bullpens, our weight room. Because we're going to use both sides of the concourse due to limits of the stadium, we are going to finish some of the clubhouse this year, including a new weight room that's 6,500 square feet, so it's three times our existing weight room. We already have new batting cages, you might remember. So it's going to be right next to the batting cages.
Next year we will finish the entire clubhouse. New locker rooms, new training room, new recovery areas, new kitchen, new lounges, and new staff areas. So that will bring that whole thing together. We're selling that now already, because not many guys are signing one-year deals. We're showing them what we're going to be doing, which is really bringing our baseball facility for training, recovery, rehabilitation, in line with what we have in Dunedin, on a smaller scale and designed more like Toronto.
The other piece of it would be more fans. We're hoping to get more fans there. I think that's a plus for any player. And then the final piece will be, because we're creating some premium spaces that we don't have almost any in the whole stadium right now, hopefully more revenue, that will allow us to grow our payroll. So that's a fact as well, that's not something we're running from. We have the least amount of premium spaces in all of Major League Baseball — we'll have a lot more that will be in the stands, instead of suite level, when we're finished in '24.
The changes to the bullpens are probably the most fun thing aspect of these renovations — not to mention turning what is a bit of a no-man’s land out beyond the outfield fences into a brighter area that’s much more in the action and connected to the rest of the building. Not sure they’ll be able to get away with having just one usher for every two sections anymore, particularly considering visiting relievers’ proximity to the frothing masses, but that seems like a fair trade-off.
Maybe the best in the game? Sure. Sounds cool.
And the rest of it? I mean, I don’t think anybody should have expected that the 7,000-odd seats disappearing were going to be the expensive ones. More expensive seats, more scarcity among cheaper tickets — that would seem to be the right business move. You know, if you’re not concerned about pricing out even more people from seeing your product in person and becoming lifelong fans of the game.
How much does this stuff matter to free agent players?
I alluded to it quickly before, I think these things can make a big difference when everything else is relatively equal or close. I don't think a player says, you know, 'Listen, I need to come there for that locker room. I need to come there for those batting cages.' But I do think you can earn a reputation that this is a great place to play. You know, that this front office cares deeply. They have good food, they are thinking about our families — because one of the things we're doing is to build a new family area that's going to be state of the art. Best in Major League Baseball. Two storeys, segmented by ages, a separate area for partners or spouses that don't have kids.
That sounds like something like, 'Why are you doing that? Why are you spending money on that?' When I talk about all the little things that can matter, it's a very small network of major league baseball players — and their wives, by the way. And their families. And so, there is a little bit, for some of them — not all of them — ‘Wow, that's daunting to think about the border, to think about different currency, to think about everything being different.’ Those are the things that, like, 'You don't understand, the child care there is the best child care. The staff they have thinking about supporting us are the best in the game.' Those are the little things. Their room is phenomenal, our kids are dying to go to the ballpark every day. That allows the player to back off and think about his game, not worry about his family.
When I was a young, I think assistant GM or GM in Cleveland, Danny Ferry, who was an NBA player, was a close friend of mine — he's still a close friend of mine, but he was literally my closest friend in Cleveland. Just a terrific person. He left Cleveland to go play in San Antonio, and I remember asking him, 'What is it about the Spurs, besides (Greg) Pop(ovich)? What is it about the Spurs? Why do guys—'
He goes, 'The number one thing, besides the chance to win, is that these guys are obsessively focussed on the families. Everything about it. I don't ever have to worry. They are thinking all the time about how to make this a better place for our families.' And I always took that away and said, 'OK, I'm talking to a player, this is something that's factoring into his decision.'
It's not that hard to control that, by the way. You know, if you're not doing that, you're just overlooking it. It's lazy to me. Right?
I'm a big believer that you control the controllable and that all the little things add up. So, to circle back to your question, how much they add up? I can't tell you. But I do believe, and I've seen it over a career, that when things get close and you have that reputation of being a great place to play, that's a factor.
“I need to come there for those batting cages” was definitely the line that I was referring to earlier, regarding just how much of a selling point facilities can really be on their own. Which is to say: not very!
But all of this stuff — the attention to detail, the genuine desire to make this as good a place to play as possible — is clearly something Shapiro thinks about a lot, and has thought about a lot. More and more, he put his money where his mouth is, too. And we can see that in Marcus Semien calling Toronto “a baseball paradise,” and talking up those very batting cages, while lauding Shapiro’s commitment to making it a great place to play. Or in David Singh’s July profile of the Jays’ “secret weapon,” Shannon Curley, for Sportsnet.
Singh’s piece also called Curley “the driving force behind the Blue Jays’ internal focus on family,” adding that “it’s not hyperbole to say she’s among the most influential people in the organization.”
Incidentally, according to the Wayback Machine, Curley was listed as “Senior Manager, Player Relations and Community Marketing” on the Blue Jays’ front office directory as recently as November 18th. Her name no longer appears there. Former Toronto Sun reporter Bob Elliott noticed earlier this month that she appears to no longer be with the club, according to her email autoreply message.
Did Sportsnet’s article lead to her getting poached by another organization? Because that would be objectively funny.
UPDATE: Apparently it didn’t.
Also objectively funny? Shapiro and Danny Ferry just hangin’ out, bein’ dudes. Or, at least, it is if you’re me, and old enough to have hated Duke before Christian Laettner. I guess we now know how the Jays’ visit with the San Antonio Spurs back in the early Shapiro-Atkins days — which produced the “get better every day” mantra we still hear players and staff espousing in interviews — came about, huh?
Will ticket prices go up as a result?
Not this year. Well, this year if they go up it will be completely unrelated, it will just be a normal year. But next year they won't necessarily go up, but we will have new premium spaces that didn't exist. Those spaces will be more, because that's the whole point. That's the point to drive revenues. But with that will come an experience that we don't have right now. Restaurants, clubs, the different tiers underneath with the best seats in the ballpark.
Translation: Yeah, ultimately they’re going to go up.
Of course, ticket prices are always going to go up. And they aren’t exactly hiding the fact that driving revenue is the entire point of the whole $300 million project. So… yeah. It is what it is, folks. They’d be perfectly happy to be more like the Maple Leafs, I assure you.
Will you be in the $1,000 per seat per game range?
No. I don't think so, but we haven't finalized that.
The next questions came after McCown and Shannon paused for an ad break, and circled back on some of the stuff that had been discussed with Shapiro in the first segment of the show, before — finally! — moving on to a discussion of the offseason.
We’re halfway home…
Can you really stay away from the office at Rogers Centre for as long as you're planning to be in Dunedin?
Whether it's being in contact with Ross — I've had free agent conversations on Christmas Day before. Literally be on the phone on Christmas Day. So whether it's trade, free agents, or monitoring the construction, the chances of — I mean, it's not a business anymore where you say, 'Hey listen, I'm going away for a few weeks, I'll get back online'— someone asked me that yesterday, 'Will you be offline?' I'm like, 'Listen, I haven't been offline in 31 years. I don't know what that means.' I was online before there was any definition of being online. It didn't exist. There was no such thing as being online, it was not a term.
But these jobs aren't jobs where — and I don't feel that as a burden. I love it. I wake up thinking about it, and I'm interested in it. I think what is important during this time for people that work in businesses like ours, and that's you too, is we pull back to spend time with our families, who really sacrifice so much as a result of how consuming these roles and jobs are. And we put them first, because so much of the year they are not first. But, we don't get the luxury of just saying, 'I'm taking a two week break.' Every employer I've ever had has won the vacation day with me. I've never taken — I don't know what that means to turn in vacation days.
The demands that the industry of baseball places on lower level employees are massive — which Shapiro acknowledged even more later on in the interview — and, as with any workplace, it’s hard to maintain a healthy work/life balance when the people at the top are setting expectations like this by example. Ask anyone who has tried to simply work only the hours they’re paid for in a job with a culture driven by workaholics about how it feels to be the last to arrive and/or first to leave the office every day!
I don’t know about the Jays’ current office culture to speak on this subject beyond generalities, and anyone I’ve ever spoke to about it always says they’ve loved working in a Shapiro-led office, but there was definitely a time before he got here where my sense was that people weren’t getting compensated well enough for the enormous demands of jobs they did. Hopefully that’s changed.
Have you ever gone through a home renovation yourself?
Minor scale. I built a home in Cleveland from the ground up. That was enormous, a big undertaking. And then when I moved to Toronto I underwent a minor renovation. Still took about six months, but it felt relatively common around here.
Are you keeping constant tabs on the Dome renovations like you would a renovation at home?
Yeah, I think I've learned, like, if you're looking at it every day it can be painful, because you don't see the same progress you want to see. There are seminal moments, so what I do is I rely on the leads of our business, Marnie (Starkman) and Anuk (Karuaratne), to kind of tell me, now would be a good time for me to take a walk. And then I get a weekly update that has green, yellow, red — like we're on track, we're in a good spot, we need to monitor this closely, this is a concern — of every single aspect of the renovation, including budget. So all that is very regular for me. That's a regular cadence. And that always has some photographs with it.
The renovation is so big, it's not a situation where I can just walk out and walk in. If I do that I've got to have a hard hat, a vest, you know, lug-toed boots, and I've got to have someone with me that works for the construction company. You're not allowed to head out. It's a construction zone.
The Blue Jays love colour coding! Can’t enough of it!
On the offseason
Speaking of renovations, are you happy with the renovations to your team's roster so far?
Well, one thing that has been a little bit overlooked — I think Ross has said it privately, but maybe not as much publicly — is that we started the offseason with what our objective — our R&D — said was the best returning core in all of Major League Baseball. So, by WAR, by an objective statistic, just based on what was coming back without any additions, we started in a good place. We didn't need to overhaul our team, we didn't need to fill enormous gaps. We obviously needed to fill Ross Stripling's gap — either sign him back or fill that gap.
Lots going on in this answer already! First of all, interesting that Shapiro is admitting to picking up the ball where he seems to have think Atkins dropped it a little bit. Though I can completely understand why Ross may not have been eager to emphasize the notion that the 92-win team with Mitch White and Yusei Kikuchi as their number four and five starters had “the best returning core” in the sport — a notion that may have been technically been true because teams like the Mets and Yankees had their own free agents to re-sign or replace (which they obviously did), and may have actually become less true after the Jays traded Teoscar Hernández for a reliever.
Also, interestingly, around the same time that Shapiro was saying this on Wednesday, we were learning about how the Jays ended up missing on Stripling — and how the club’s signing of Chris Bassitt to replace him didn’t necessarily rule out a return.
“Probably spilling the tea a little bit too much,” Stripling told Mike Wilner of the Toronto Star, “but the Blue Jays — my timeline could be a little off — but they should have known that I was off the board when they signed Bassitt. But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t looking to do both at the same time.”
Stripling also tells Wilner that his free agent decision "came down to Toronto or San Francisco," and later adds that the opt-out the Giants gave him was really the key difference. "Other teams were taking away from the (dollars in their) offer if (an opt-out) was to be included and the Giants kept their offer the same," he says.
Not tough to see what happened there! And it makes me wonder if Michael Conforto, who it was reported on Thursday morning has signed with those same Giants on a two-year, $36 million deal with an opt-out after year one — spurning the Jays, among others — may have had a similar issue with how the Jays dealt with the opt-out requirement.
Then again, the Giants have also just taken the best left-handed reliever, Taylor Rogers, off the market, so maybe they’re just in a big hurry to spend all that money they were going to give to Carlos Correa.
Shapiro continued…
We had goals of wanting to thicken out, or improve the rotation. We wanted to add some swing-and-miss to the bullpen. And we hoped to add some balance to the lineup. So, we've added some swing-and-miss to the bullpen, we still could do more of that. We've certainly added a meaningful piece to our rotation that I think has a good track record and has competed in the largest market on one of the biggest stages in all of MLB and done well. And there's a lot of offseason left.
I know people panic. For as long as I've been doing it, winning the offseason game often does not result in winning the in-season. The teams that win November and December are often not the teams winning in August and September. So, I think we're in a good spot, there is a lot of offseason left. I would expect us to make more moves. Whether that's trades or free agents, I'd expect us to add some players. We still have flexibility, and what we'll be looking to do is probably — probably — bullpen-focussed and lineup balance focussed.
I think that expressing the notion that fans shouldn’t panic is a good idea here. Less so for the stuff downplaying the idea of winning the offseason — even if it might be correct. Like, I understand that getting worked up too much over November/December buzz is a bit silly, but is the goal not to make moves so that the roster looks as good as possible on paper? I’m the last guy to want to push the panic button — and obviously with the Varsho trade we can put much of this conversation to rest — but you couldn’t not notice that the list of impactful fits here had been thinning out.
Anyway, what’s most interesting here is that Shapiro seems to be stressing further improvements to the bullpen a bit more than Ross Atkins generally has this winter — or specifically did when he addressed reporters last week.
You won’t hear any complaints from me on that. Nor will you hear them from most fans, I think. I’m not huge on the idea of spending massively on relievers, but it would be kind of nice to watch a true lockdown bullpen for once, wouldn’t it?
Is starting pitching as important as it was in the days of more innings and complete games? Do you spend more time now thinking about the bullpen?
We start this one with a brief digression on cinema before Mark veers into his answer to this, the most boomer-ish of questions…
SHAPIRO: It's a great question. Have you seen the Nolan Ryan documentary, by the way?
McCOWN: I have.
SHAPIRO: It's a great one isn't it?
McCOWN: It's fantastic. It gives you an idea.
SHAPIRO: I give that as a plug for anyone that's looking for something to watch over the holidays, it's a great one to watch.
I guess what I'd say is we still think that the starting rotation is essential, because the bullpen cannot maintain effectiveness if you don't have starters that are getting you at least to a certain point in the game. They're going to be overworked. If they're overworked it's going to undermine their effectiveness and their health both. So, for a bullpen to perform at the level that you expect, or plan, you need to get — now what has changed is, (a start) doesn't need to be quite as deep as it was before. And that's not based on someone's opinion, Bob, that's based on objective analysis that says these guys are not as effective deeper into the game. And if you choose to be the one team that thinks you're going to figure that out, do it.
Now, there are beasts out there that — there's only a few of them — that go deeper into games. Gerrit Cole, though the Yankees have stopped doing it with him to some extent. Certainly Justin Verlander at his best, Jacob deGrom at his best, but I'm talking about, it's a rare — it's like five to ten guys that are like that. And we did it with Alek Manoah occasionally. We let him go a little bit deeper than other guys did.
Anyway, that's the best answer I can give you today.
I can’t say I’ve looked to deeply into Cole’s usage, but otherwise this seems just about correct. The free agent market provides a pretty handy reflection of how teams value certain roles in comparison to others!
You mentioned Manoah. Is there a chance you let him go deeper a little bit more now?
I think that will be something that will be part John Schneider's feel. It's not going to be something planned out, it will be a little bit his feel — watching him, how he's attacking lineups — it's going to be somewhat dependent on Alek's development of his third pitch. I love the fact that he continues to work on it, he's not just relying on sinker/slider, he continues to work on his changeup. Even last year, when it got hit, he would come back and throw it. Most young guys, when it gets hit they stop throwing it. So, if that pitch becomes a weapon for him, I think that changes the way he can go through a lineup.
A better version of Alek Manoah? Sign me up!
Are you as concerned as the fans are on Berríos?
Not really. I'm bolstered by two things: His resolve — Ross just met with him last week and José is determined, he is focussed, he's always been among the hardest workers that we know in the game. He's angry. Embarrassed. Whatever you want to call it. And he's determined to be better. Secondly, he posted, and his stuff, objectively, didn't have any drop-off.
So, we think there are subtle things he can do to be more effective. We're certain that he was also a little bit unlucky — that's, again, a fact, if you look at the objective analysis out there. It wasn't just that he was hit hard. So, reducing the number of homers, being a little more lucky, and maintaining his stuff and health, I think he's a good bet to have a better year.
I don’t want to read too much into this — though I suppose that’s sort of exactly what we’re here to do — but this strikes me as a somewhat tepid defence of Berríos.
I think it would be pretty much impossible for him to not be better in 2023, but luck? Yikes.
Also, though Berríos hasn't been great at suppressing hard contact since 2019 — something I must admit I was a little too eager to elide in my excitement for both the trade and contract extension — he fell off a pretty decent sized cliff in that regard in 2022. And it doesn’t exactly sound here like the expectation is for that to change very much. Just the outcomes.
Again, I’m probably reading a bit too much into some fairly innocuous comments. And obviously no one from the Jays needs to publicly double down on their belief in Berríos, or put any undue pressure on him, because the contract they signed him to essentially does that for them. It’s just, “I think he’s a good bet to have a better year” isn’t a very inspiring statement when we’re talking about a guy who was a half win below replacement according to Baseball Reference (1.1 wins above by FanGraphs) in year one of a seven-year, $131 million deal.
Could adding another pitch help him?
I don't think that's the key for him, I think locating the pitches and using them effectively, that he has, are more than enough.
Now this is more like it, because I do think that Berríos’s ability to command his pitches was an issue. Which is to say: Eno told me this and he’s a pretty smart guy when it comes to this stuff!
What's up with the lack of guys throwing triple-digits coming out of Jays' bullpen as compared with other top teams?
Well, Romano throws that hard when he's at his best. He's hit 98, 99. We've got a lot of mid-90s guys. I mean, our philosophy is we want guys to get people out. There are guys that throw 100 and get tracked pretty well, and there are guys that don't. So, our bullpen was upper third in MLB. Not one of the best five. Could be better, and I think the lesson being — you've got to be careful to design a club for postseason, but I think swing-and-miss in the bullpen in postseason is meaningful. Our bullpen was good over the season, it'd be good to trying to add a little more swing-and-miss to the bullpen. I've already addressed that. I've already said that was one of Ross's goals coming into the offseason.
Swing-and-miss doesn't necessarily mean velocity, though.
I don’t doubt what Shapiro is saying here, but I sure am curious to know what sort of metrics he is using. Measuring a bullpen’s effectiveness isn’t as simple as looking at only one of ERA, WAR, WPA, shutdowns versus meltdowns, or whatever. And I must say, I’m having a hard time finding the 2022 Jays in the top third by any number that seems especially meaningful — though their rankings across the board did improve in the second half.
Either way, it’s certainly been a bit discouraging to watch other teams’ bullpens look so much more dominant that the Jays’, even with the understanding that it’s a bit of a grass is always greener situation. Or, perhaps, a bit of a psychological one. You just don’t feel other team’s bullpen failures as viscerally as you do your own, and the fear you feel when your team is facing an opponents’ is often replaced with trepidation when it’s your team trying to close out a win.
What I guess I’m saying here is that it wasn’t awful. It wasn’t the ol’ Chatwood-and-Dolis days of mid-2021. But yeah, continuing to look for improvements here is a good idea.
Is your number five starter already on the roster/in the system, are will you try to look elsewhere to round out the rotation?
Again, I think that a little bit of it will depend upon where the opportunities are to get better as the offseason goes along. So, we've got options in White and Kikuchi, and even some young guys that we're excited about. But if the opportunities to impact the lineup aren't out there and we can make the rotation a lot better, then we can pivot to that.
Though I’d have preferred Shapiro to be a little more bullish on Berríos, I’m completely comfortable with his, and his team’s, reluctance to hand anything to White or Kikuchi. Because… well… because we all saw exactly why in 2022.
Do you have a sense of the catching market?
This is what I'll say. It's a fair question, and if you're a fan it's a fair — 'I want to know what's going on' — but I always say this. Think about this for one second, just logically. People don't think about, from a fan's lens, logically, right? We've got 30-40 guys and women working 60 to 80 hours a week, thinking of ideas and how to make our team better. The bulk of the ideas you see come across Twitter and Instagram and blogs and call-in to radio shows — the bulk of those have been explored. There's rarely an idea out there that's not preposterous that has not been explored.
And there's a lot of offseason left. We're halfway through it. We're a little more than halfway through the offseason. So don't panic. Assume that we've got an understanding of the market to get better — that means, could be trade, could be free agency. And assume that we're still going to make moves. That's the best answer I can give.
Note: I’m just going to keep this answer as I wrote it before news of the Varsho trade broke. Because lol.
I’d say “10/10, no notes,” or something like that here — especially for “assume that we’re still going to make moves” — but when you say “that could be trade, could be free agency,” I’m pretty sure fans are going to notice that one of those avenues is not nearly as full of opportunities as it was a few weeks ago.
Fans also are surely noticing that the trade market isn’t exactly setting the world on fire right now.
The latter will almost certainly heat up somewhat as the winter goes along, but I don’t think it’s unfair to wonder if the changes unforeseen consequences for the trade market will arise from the league’s new CBA, just as they have seemed to with free agency. For example, Ken Rosenthal wrote earlier this week at Athletic that “three heads of baseball operations in recent days attributed the slow trade market to the number of clubs shunning veteran-for-prospect deals as they try to build rosters capable of contention.”
That doesn’t mean that market won’t eventually change, nor does it mean that the Jays’ approach won’t change. Clearly they’re in the group that doesn’t want to make those veteran-for-prospect deals, preferring instead to hang on to prospects and deal from their surplus of big league talent, but if they could trade a catcher for a few pieces including a pitcher that Pittsburgh really liked, then flip that guy and Orelvis Martinez for Bryan Reynolds, why couldn’t that work?
And before you say, “because Shapiro says they already thought of that and it won’t work,” I’d like to remind you that ideas that “have been explored” are not necessarily ones that won’t work. I have to believe that there are deals they could do that they already have in their back pocket for once other dominos start to fall. That’s sort of how this all always goes.
That doesn’t mean the Jays can’t be out here making missteps. And the fact that it’s a different world under the new CBA makes teams being caught off guard even more likely than usual. I just don’t think that mean anyone should be convincing themselves — or, worse yet, trying to convince anyone else — that they are making missteps.
As for Reynolds, Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had some interesting thoughts on that in a chat with readers on Wednesday.
“There's no chance in this coming back together based on what I know. It's just a matter of when he's dealt, which I do think will be before the 2023 season ends,” he wrote. “And a lot make sense, honestly. Anybody willing to deal multiple top-100 guys. Or someone with the capital to go, say, top-50 with some other quality pieces around it. Dodgers, Blue Jays, Yankees, Padres, Rangers. They could all get it done.”
Thinking out loud about a potential deal here and, uh, wouldn’t Nate Pearson be a great secondary piece for the Pirates to land? Health is obviously a major concern, but he would clearly be of more value to the Pirates than he is to the Jays right now. His pedigree is as good as it gets, and they could actually try to stretch him out to be a starter. Pearson has spent so much time on the big league IL that he’s already accumulated two years and 61 days of big league service, but he’s also got two minor league options left, meaning that Pittsburgh could send him to the minors for long enough to push his first pass through arbitration back to the winter between ‘24 and ‘25, and his free agency back to after the 2027 season.
I have no idea how the industry views Pearson at this stage, but would a package centred around him and Orelvis get it done? I’d like to hope so, because if I’m the Jays I’m not trading Ricky Tiedemann for three years of anybody.
Note: Would still make this trade even after Varsho. Also, maybe we should be talking more about Pearson getting dealt.
How do you communicate with your catchers about this stuff, given how loud some of the rumblings have been?
Yeah, I think that's got to be — that is more an individual basis. Some of them don't need it, they understand it's part of the game and they've been through it. Other guys it impacts and effects. It's up to us, and it's up to our coaching staff, our front office — I mean Ross is, I think, an elite communicator with our players — but it's up to them to have a feel for which guys need the conversations and need to be communicated with and which guys don't. That is a challenge.
Pausing here because I feel the need to say how glad I am that Shaprio added “with our players” there about Atkins’ communication — which I thought for a split second he wasn’t going to do. Because… well… you know…
Shapiro continued…
It's one that — I spent some time with Victor Martinez, who was a former catcher in the big leagues and I had, as a minor league player. Signed him as an amateur, and went on to have an incredible career. And I had to trade — because were were a small market and he got too expensive and we had Carlos Santana, who's still playing — unfortunately we all know him well from last year — and we needed to clear Victor to get a starting pitcher. Which we did. And a bullpen guy. But there are good baseball moves that are still tough, personally, if you care about your players, and you care deeply and love your players. And you'd better love your players. But there's just a business reality to the job. And I think it's balancing what is the right thing for the team to win with valuing people and communicating and ensuring that they don't ever feel that they're assets, or chips. That they're still human beings and pieces, and that's just in communication and how you treat people.
Didn’t need the reminder of Santana’s existence! Hell, I can hardly listen to Oye Como Vas since October. But otherwise, sure, fair enough.
Explain how the Don Mattingly addition came about, and the decision to re-up John Schneider...
Ross might be better, but certainly (decisions) that he and I were talking about. The Schneider decision was that you don't make a decision off one game. You know?
Just me or is this kind of a tacit admission that Schneider’s work in that one particular game was not good?
Anyway, he continued…
The body of work was really good. What he did from the time he took over the team was outstanding. The depth of relationships he has in the Blue Jay organization are unprecedented — I mean, it's very rare a guy gets drafted, plays in the minor leagues, immediately becomes a coach, manager, works his way up through the minor leagues, and never changes uniform. The depth of relationships that he's got throughout the Blue Jay organization from Dunedin to Vancouver to Toronto to our entire organization are incredibly deep and meaningful. And I think allow him to have the connections and people that cares deeply about, and enable him to be the best fit for our team. Including players, but also beyond players, throughout the organization.
Which is why we decided to make him our manager for next season back in 2018. HEYO!
Mattingly, of course, is presented as another perfect fit…
When it came to thinking about how to complement him and how to best support our players — articulated from our players, and from Schneids himself, was that that level of experience would be meaningful. And that opportunity to add professionalism, experience, perspective, managerial experience, playing experience, along with a human being who's as fine a person as you'll meet in the game. Really. Honestly. As fine a person as you'll meet. And then who wants to be here, is excited by our team, and wants to be a part of it? It felt like a natural fit.
I mean, what else are they going to say?
But it’s actually pretty interesting how little big league experience was on the Jays’ coaching staff prior to this.
On the pitching side, of course, Pete Walker spent parts of eight seasons in the bigs, and Matt Buschmann got 4 1/3 innings with the Diamondbacks in 2016. On the position player side, Luis Rivera played 781 games for five big league organizations between 1986 and 1998. Dave Hudgens got seven plate appearances over six games for the A's in 1983. And Mark Budzinski got seven PA over four games for the 2003 Reds.
Mattingly is a six-time All-Star and former MVP whose 14-year big league experience as a player is more than double the rest of the staff combined, and who has also spent 12 years as a manager in the majors.
It really is quite the resumé!
Does the Kiermaier acquisition change your ability to use Gabriel Moreno in more of a utility role if you keep all three catchers?
Again, I think that's just an incomplete picture. He also has an option, so he could go to the minor leagues.
Sure is! Literally was about to write this when news of the Varsho trade broke.
Moving on! Probably going to be a little more brief from here on out!
Do you want him to spend a year there?
Not a year, I'm just saying that is an option that exists. But again, I think, Bob, when we're done — which, we're not done — and we look at the body of players that are there, we'll piece together — and his flexibility and where he plays is one of the alternatives that exists — but when we're done and the picture is complete, then we will look at where we play guys to put the best team on the field. But it won't be about any one individual player, it will be about putting the best team on the field that gives us the best chance to win.
They were not done.
Have you had extension talks with Vlad and Bo?
It's safe to say that we've engaged at multiple junctures with every arbitration-eligible player who with think is a core player.
If a player is a core player, and he's arbitration-eligible, or even before, we take certain junctures in time — usually the spring. And, again, we will never report on negotiations, those are private. But, just like I said you can guess that most trades that people come up with, those ideas have been explored if they're not preposterous, we've also explored (this).
The challenge with multi-year contracts for young players is that they are all about sharing risk, and you look for the sweet spot where the player is comfortable giving up the upside of free agency, or the upside of arbitration, and the club is comfortable with the risk in performance or injury. And you look for — can you find that sweet spot where both parties feel good about giving up something. That's what we continue to do, and will continue to do.
We all know that the risk is likely different for guys who came from families as wealthy as Vlad and Bo did, so that’s going to remain a fascinating question hanging all over this. Hopefully it gets all cleared up in the spring, though!
Leading from that, have you been surprised with some of the money that's been thrown around this winter?
Yeah, the free agent market has exceeded our expectation. There's been inflation at every level of it, probably about 20% at least. And then with some contracts just being outliers. But, again, every team has its own dynamic, every team has its own priorities — what ownership is thinking about. I think one thing that doesn't get pointed out enough here is, especially over Covid, we lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and kept operating normal. We never were run like a business, despite being owned by a corporation. The people that ran this organization said, 'Sure, lose a couple hundred million dollars, but stay on plan. We know you have no revenue, we know your situation is different.'
Our revenues are still lagging our expenses now, so while we don't have Steve Cohen out there getting a $400 million payroll, we're going to spend over the luxury tax this year, which is the first time in the history of the franchise. I think every year we keep setting franchise records for the amount of our payroll. The desire here is to win. That's what Edward Rogers says every single time he talks to me. 'Are we close to winning a world championship? What do we need? Where are we?' So, yes, we do have a budget like every business in the world has, but this place has been pretty good too, and we're going to be in a good spot. There's no reason we shouldn't have enough to win.
With apologies to the benevolent billionaire, the interesting thing here is very obviously, “We’re going to spend over the luxury tax this year.” Especially because it’s not entirely clear whether they’re quite over it yet or not. More to come perhaps?
It would make sense to add another bat still, with Gurriel now gone as well.
Which is the bigger economic concern to you, the spike in salaries or the length of some of the deals being signed?
Probably the long-term. I mean, again, no concern. We don't have to do anything. I think when you look at player where you're paying him over eight or nine years, you're probably accepting the fact that the bulk of the value of that contract is in the first two, three, four years. You might hope to break even in the middle years, and you're going to be overpaying for a declining talent in the end of the contract. Clubs know that, Bob. They know they're doing that. They're kind of deferring the issue. They're kicking the can down the road in order to get a player for the next one, two, three, or four years. That's what they're doing.
Correct.
Have you ever done a deal of eight years or beyond?
I want to say we did one for Omar Vizquel when I was young in Cleveland. They almost never end well, you know. The eight-, nine-, ten-year deals. What I would say is more and more there's understanding of what you're doing. I think teams know what they're doing. They understand, OK, we're going to have this liability at the end, we're just deferring money until later years.
I mean, Berríos was seven years, so… close enough.
Lastly, so is your inclination to not get into one of those types of deals?
You'll never hear me ever say black-and-white 'I just don't believe that you should do that.' There's a player and a situation that warrants it for every single contract. So I've never been a black-and-white guy, 'We won't do this deal, we won't talk to this agent, we won't' — I think there's a situation and a player that warrants it for every team.
Cool. OK, byeeeeee!!!
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Vom not von
What is a VOM in a stadium?
» VOM or VOMITORIUM. Definition: A passageway, originally for spectators, used to clear the seating area in quick fashion.
My add....also used as a camera bay and for game ops
I'm extremely happy the Blue Jays acquired a player I wasn't aware existed two months ago.