Spring Notes: Thursday, March 4th
Featuring: the ongoing broadcast saga, Gibbers and Griffins, and a ton of Mark Shapiro (including comments on Buffalo, Mickey Callaway, Pearson, Vlad, Danny Jansen, the Dunedin complex, and more!)
Get set for a heavy dose of Mark Shapiro and decades old TV references! It’s time for today’s Spring Notes.
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Game Stuff
The Jays and Tigers are underway in Lakeland as I type this, in a game that’s actually available to listen to on MLB.com. If you’re not already listening and are seeing this while the game is still ongoing, I encourage you to tune in, because we’re about to hit a bit of a dry spell when it comes to Jays spring training coverage.
According to MLB.tv, which has both radio and TV broadcasts on its schedule when they’re available, the next Blue Jays game available in either format won’t be until Sunday. That one will again be against the Tigers, and we’ll again only have the Detroit radio feed available. And then we won’t be able to see or hear the Jays again until next Friday! They’ll take on the Pirates in Bradenton in that one, which will be broadcast on TV by Pittsburgh’s crew.
We love spring training, don’t we?
Three up, three down…
There is a lot to get to in today’s post, so we’re going to make this a quick one.
▲ Simeon Woods Richardson had an impressive debut against the Yankees on Wednesday, which his family was able to take in, and which he and they both seemed to thoroughly enjoy. You love to see it. Something you also love to see? How deliciously quickly he works.
▲ Another of the Jays’ excellent next wave of pitching prospects is Alek Manoah, and he followed Woods Richardson on Wednesday with a beastly pair of innings. You have to absolutely love his mindset.
▲ Yes, I’m going to give another up arrow this week to Rowdy Tellez, but not for anything he’s done on the field. Tellez was on Spotsnet Today earlier in the week, and he opened up about dealing with anxiety and depression, and how he’s been working on his mentality this winter — including reading one of legendary UCLA coach John Wooden’s many books on leadership. Good stuff.
▼ A down arrow for due diligence, which surely is the only real explanation for why the Blue Jays were one of several teams to check out Yoenis Cespedes’s showcase this week. Stop trying to cut into Rowdy’s playing time!
▼ I’ll give a down arrow here to the situation that Breyvic Valera found himself in last year, which Shi Davidi wrote about for Sportsnet earlier in the week. He explains:
When spring training shut down March 12, he returned home to the municipality of Montalban, a small town roughly 225 kilometres east of Caracas, off the country’s southern coast. Five days after that, president Nicolas Maduro suspended all international travel, while neighbouring Colombia sealed the border, measures only recently loosened.
. . .
The most feasible path to North America was to enter Colombia and find transit from there, but that was fraught with the border sealed. In recent years, Venezuelans seeking to skirt various border blockages found ways to cross illegally "Via Trocha," or by trail. Wading the Tachira River between the countries to reach the border town of Cucuta is one route.
Desperate to play, Valera considered doing something similar, but didn’t get far enough down the line to know if he’d have to simply walk a bridge, wade, swim or take a boat across to Cucuta before deciding it was a bad idea.
I’m not going to claim that I’m super high on the idea of Valera making the club this spring, but you’ve got to sympathize with his plight — especially since, as Shi explains, he had a real path to some playing time last year, which eventually went to Santiago Espinal instead.
▼ LATE ADDITION, WITH APOLOGIES TO FRANK STALLONE: As our final down arrow of the day, it’s this doofus! (No, not Jonah.) Apparently Arencibia, like his right wing grifter girlfriend, has suddenly become an anti-masker.
Shapiro Speaks!
Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro appeared on an episode this week of The Bob McCown Podcast, and unlike the last time I tried to do a Shapiro Speaks! section in one of these posts, everybody’s background seems to check out just fine. So let’s take a look at some quotes!
• On where the team will play in 2021
I’m going to go through the interview out of sequence because, rather than simply being an interesting interview with and (sometimes) unusually forthright version of the club president, there was some actual newsworthy stuff to come out of the segment, and I think it makes the most sense to lead with that. And, though this is by far the less important of the two most noteworthy subjects, with one quote in particular:
“We’re going to sell tickets in Buffalo.”
As usual, Shapiro was mostly careful not to close any doors or to be too definitive, but you don’t exactly have to read between the lines in the above quote to see what he’s really saying. The Jays are going to end up in Buffalo at some point this season, and they’re going to allow fans in to watch.
That’s going to be possible because last month soon-to-be-former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo began allowing fans to return to stadiums in the state. Currently this is limited to venues with 10,000 seats or more, and for now it caps attendance at 10% of capacity.
“All attendees will have to show proof of a negative P.C.R. test taken within 72 hours of the event, and the state’s Department of Health will have to approve each venue,” the New York Times reported on February 10. “Fans will also be required to remain socially distanced and wear face coverings at games.”
Considering that the Blue Jays were using concourses and parking lots in Buffalo as temporary structures last year, that’s going to be tricky. But, evidently, the Blue Jays are way ahead of us on all that.
Here’s Shapiro:
What I've been pretty candid about is that at some point Dunedin becomes too hot and too rainy to stay here. We don't have a domed stadium, and frankly we have a minor league stadium. So, we're going to have to move from Dunedin.
. . .
If I had to guess, our season kind of lies in some combination of Dunedin, Buffalo, and Toronto. If I had to guess, we'll be here (Dunedin) probably April and May, depending on how it goes, Bob. Like, if it's a disaster here, if it's a nightmare here, we'll try to get to Buffalo sooner. But we are in the process now of trying to make more lasting permanent renovations to Buffalo that will facilitate that being a better Triple-A facility moving forward, and certainly a suitable facility for more than 60 games. By the end of our time there last year, regardless of how great a job our staff did in making it a good place to play, it was starting to be clear it was temporary. So we need to be a little more permanent.
Shapiro made clear that the Jays did explore options other than Buffalo, but it sure seems that’s what’s going to happen.
We looked at not just Tampa Bay, we looked at probably four or five eastern major league teams. The challenge with this year — last year we obviously looked at Pittsburgh and Baltimore — but the challenge of being the second team in a major league city in an environment where they're all selling tickets this year, is that there's just not the space.
To be the third team, we would have a worse facility than the visiting team, which would wear thin. And our players, once we settled in Buffalo said, 'Yeah, we need to have a home that is our home, not somebody else's home.'
So, we did look at that, but again, recognized that a lot of what was going to enable us to play in Pittsburgh and Baltimore was utilization of a concourse with no fans. So, building batting cages, building weight rooms, building some clubhouse facilities on concourses, which sounds crazy, but in Buffalo our batting cage and our weight room were by concession stands on the concourse, we just had no fans there. So that's why we have to make that different this year when we go to Buffalo.
So, basically, Buffalo is happening. And part of the reason is the fact that it’s still just too soon to expect a return to Toronto to be a possibility. As Shapiro made clear when answering a question from McCown’s cohost, John Shannon, he is hopeful, however, that at some point in the season that will change.
I think Mayor Tory's announcement kind of set that benchmark for all of us, right? No live entertainment until July 1st. He didn't leave a lot of opening for exceptions in that.
I guess I'm hopeful, with the announcement with vaccines (from US president Joe Biden this week), if every single person has access to vaccines in May, then at some point the US isn't going to be the huge threat to Canadian public health that it is right now. And when that happens, maybe the border opens up.
We have our own issues in Canada, getting access to the vaccine and getting it distributed, but I think the things that guide that, John, are going to be just obvious. It's not going to be me having to, like, figure that out. And that's why we haven't wasted the government's time. They've got more important things to deal with. It's going to be clear, numbers are going to start getting better, vaccines are going to start getting distributed, we're going to see some movement toward normalcy, and you'll see that probably first in the stadiums here (in the States). And then we'll have a case to make that we're not so much, our players, you know, 25 flights in the second half of the year may not be that big of a threat to public health.
What of the Bisons in all this? They won’t be in Buffalo, Shapiro says, if the Blue Jays have to be.
“We’ve done the research on that,” he says. Uh, yeah, I’ve done some research on that, too.
• On his former employee, Mickey Callaway
At the very end of the segment, John Shannon managed to squeeze in one last question on a topic that had yet to come up: the continuing revelations about Mickey Callaway. Those revelations, of course, are about Callaway’s long history of sexually inappropriate behaviour, which were first reported by Brittany Ghiroli and Katie Strang of the Athletic last month, and again in a follow-up piece this week.
“Over the past month, The Athletic has interviewed 22 people who interacted with Callaway during his years in the (Cleveland) organization, including 12 current and former employees. They say that Callaway’s sexual indiscretions permeated the workplace to such an extent that it would have been difficult for top officials to not be aware of his behavior, and they push back against any assertion that Callaway’s actions, when made public by The Athletic last month, caught team executives or MLB by surprise,” they write. “‘I laughed out loud when I saw the quote (in The Athletic’s original report) that said it was the worst-kept secret in baseball, because it was,’ said one (Cleveland) employee. ‘It was the worst-kept secret in the organization.’”
Not good!
Callaway, who is somehow still the Angels pitching coach, and also spent time managing the Mets, had advanced up the MLB chain in Shapiro’s Cleveland organization, which he joined in 2010 as a Low-A pitching coach. He moved up to High-A as a pitching coach in 2011, then in 2013 graduated to the big league job.
Jays GM Ross Atkins was Cleveland’s director of player development from 2006 until 2014, meaning he was directly responsible for hiring and promoting Callaway. Sportsnet’s Shi Davidi pointed out in a piece Wednesday evening that Joel Sherman of the New York Post detailed Callaway’s rise in the Cleveland organization back in October 2017, which had Atkins’ fingerprints all over it. He championed him at several stages. And Sherman notes that, by the end of Callaway’s second season in the organization, “Atkins and Callaway had become good friends.”
Woof.
Atkins addressed the media about the situation here on Thursday morning.
He’s saying the right things, at least. But these are things that needed to be said and thought and considered years ago. The words also ring a bit hollow when you were out there talking to Trevor Bauer two months ago.
There’s also this:
Here’s how Shapiro answered Shannon’s question:
I guess (I’ll say I’m) bitterly disappointed to be any part of an organization that, especially leading one, that people were subjected to that type of behavior and that they didn't feel comfortable coming forward at that time. But recommitted to building an organization here that fosters equality and empowerment and diversity and open-mindedness. So, I guess, all I can do is continue to commit to — and know that I didn't know those things, John, I was completely unaware and unsure of that — so, I'm disappointed in myself, but I think, if anything, as a generation of people in the last year we have all been challenged to think differently about race, about equality, about inequity, and it's a reminder that we may think we're open minded, we may think we're progressive, we may think that we're liberal in our belief system, but we can never do enough to continue to strive to be better. This is just a reminder to me like, hey, I've got to be better. And we have to be better as an organization.
• On the loss of radio broadcasts
Shapiro didn’t have a whole lot to say on this subject, though he reiterated that getting rid of the radio booth this season is a “decision by Sportsnet, and we don't own Sportsnet, they're a partner.”
You're talking to a kid that grew up listening to Chuck Thompson and Jon Miller, and fell asleep at night with my head next to the radio. So there's a purist in all of us. I'd like to think that, you know, they're facing tough business decisions like everybody, and that's just a sign of one year, and we'll see what it brings next year.
. . .
I'm sure that their business people, I'm sure they'll see how it goes, and they'll get feedback from their market.
Translation: If fans want a proper radio broadcast back, fans are going to have to make their voices heard. It’s out of the club’s hands.
• On starting pitching
When asked about why the club wasn’t a little more aggressive on the starting pitching front, Shapiro gave an answer that a politician could be truly proud of.
We're obviously not blind, and we know that starting pitching was one of our areas of greatest need, but when you go into any market and attempt to improve your team, you want to go with where the biggest impact lies. So we made the moves that we felt improved the team in the most dramatic way.
It's always about increasing run scoring and run prevention. We added a couple players that we feel like will improve our defence, so that was not pitching but will make our pitching better. And we also feel like we're going to put out one of the best lineups in all of major league baseball too. So, we're going to score a lot of runs.
I would say that the second piece is, that you didn't mention, is that it's not one window. I don't put up my finger and say, 'We're done, we've arrived, we're ready to go.' Remember, we lost over 95 games two years ago. Our players sped our time frame up last year, and we're just trying to work off their belief in each other, their confidence, and the talent. But we're building it to have a chance to be very good for four, five, six years. Hopefully longer.
I expect us to be active at the trade deadline, I expect us to be active in next off-season's free agent market. To feel like we need to go into one off-season, Bob, and answer every issue, and address every need, no. I mean, first of all, we need to play more to make sure we really truly know where our greatest areas of need are. And then the final point would be our greatest area of depth in our farm system, and we've said this all along, is in our starting pitching. And the starting pitching just, you know, is behind our position players — our young position players. That's why we got Ryu, signed Robbie Ray back, and I think we'll probably still look to add to starting pitching, but when you think about Pearson, Manoah, Kloffenstein — we've got a group of your pitchers that we feel excited about, and a few guys that don't have as big names, that we feel also have a chance to really make an impact and help.
I’m not saying any of what Shapiro is saying here is wrong, it’s just a pretty deft deflection. And I think it especially worked because of some of the things Shapiro had been saying earlier in the interview…
• On the new player development complex
We involved the players in a lot of the design elements. Even guys that aren't here anymore, guys that have been multiple places. 'What do you want to see?' 'What motivates you?' Kind of cool that, you know, like, 'Put more about winning.' So, in the weight room there are giant photographs of the World Series rings and the trophies from 92 and 93. We've got the banners up of every pennant and division and playoff appearance. Yet there's three blank ones at the end. And underneath those banners it says, 'Make your legacy.' So, I want those guys thinking about, when they head out to the field and they're waving them onto the field, we're out here to put some stuff up on banners. That's what we're here to do.
So, it's not just like being in a beautiful facility and training and being good players, we're here to win championships. There is Blue Jays-centric (elements), it's Canadian-centric, and I think that's important to remember why we're here and who we're a part of.
It comes through that Shapiro sincerely believes in the power of this kind of stuff, and you can see how the Jays, now that they’ve tasted a little bit of success and the stakes are getting higher, have made a bit of a turn in terms of mindset. This isn’t a developing club anymore, it’s a club that’s thinking about winning.
Referring to the old facility, Shapiro acknowledged that “it didn't help proliferate the reputation we want for the organization — which is, again, we're doing everything possible for our players.”
He mentioned that originally when discussing how the facility can be used as a tool for recruitment.
This game's interesting, there's only 30 teams in the world. So when a building inspires awe or, you know, ‘holy shit,’ when the players walk in, that gets around. That gets around within the industry and players talk. Players that have either come from other places. And I would say this to you, like, the one thing I think — you know — I've told all of us that were involved in the design that when the players walk in I want them to feel how much we care. I want them to feel that we're doing everything humanly possible to put them in a position to win, and to be the best they can be, and to make money, and all those things.
So, I think guys that have been around, and been to like three, four, five, six different places, you know, but want to be here. That word gets out. That is definitely, I think, a positive. I'm not going to BS you, (where a player goes in free agency) usually comes down to money. But after money, John, little things make a difference. Little things make an impact. And this facility is one of those things that can make a difference for us — not the only thing, but one of those things.
Shapiro adds that the more important thing about the facility, however, is what it means for the players and coaches that are already here, and how far advanced it all is. “We skipped a generation. We went from last generation, and we're not in this generation, we're in the next generation.”
The benefit for me is clearly wins and losses, because I think it maximizes our ability to develop players most effectively — not just our major league players — and help them perform at the highest levels — but throughout our entire player development system.
. . .
I guess what I'd say is, if you just develop one or two players more, that's got impact of tens of millions of dollars. So I think it will help us be more effective, because of the programs we can run, the ability to keep major and minor league players together in one building that our major players can model what it takes to be an elite player — they can see George Springer take BP, they can watch Ryu go about his business in the weight room and see, like, this is what a major league player looks like when he's working.
But most importantly, probably, is that ability to foster best in class performance. So, on the mental, physical, and fundamental side, from nutrition to the mental performance to technology — we have a pitching lab, Bob, that I'm not going to talk about the technology in it. But it allows us to go up and in to that lab, dissect a pitcher's delivery, and kind of pinpoint opportunities to get better. So, I think it's a competitive advantage, it's a difference-maker in how we're developing our players and maximizing their potential, mentally, physically, and fundamentally.
Love to still hear about those John Farrell concepts! “Mentally, physically, fundamentally” for life!
• On Nate Pearson
At the end of Atkins’ Thursday media session, he informed reporters that the club’s top prospect, right-hander Nate Pearson, has been shut down due to a Grade 1 groin strain.
Obligatory look at Pearson right now:
Atkins added that the team will be cautious about the injury, and that there’s no timeline for his return as yet. A Grade 1 strain is, at least, the most minor version.
Still, you don’t like hearing that the club’s oft-injured pitching prospect is once again injured.
Shapiro spoke specifically about him during his segment on McCown’s show, prompted by a question about how soon he could get to a typical full workload for a starter.
Not this year. I think it's going to be a multiple-year — when it comes to development of starting pitchers, particularly at the major league level, patience is so important. It's hard for fans to be patient. They're focused on this moment and this minute. We both have the benefit of seeing decades of baseball come through, and prospects, and just knowing that it's going to be — you need to be prepared for a process with starting pitching. It's just, it's a hard thing to do at the major league level. But when I think about Nate, I think about size, athleticism, stuff, and work ethic, I think it's going to happen, it's just not going to happen maybe as fast as we want it to.
Hey, so maybe sign some more top quality starting pitching!
As for when the brakes will be pumped on Pearson, Shapiro continued:
The philosophy is to monitor fatigue. That's it. It's not to go in with a presupposed (innings) limit. It's definitely not to take the major leagues and make the major leagues a laboratory where we're going to, like, change our chance to win games over Nate Pearson's development. If that's the case he should be in the minor leagues.
So, we're probably not going to pace it, we're going to monitor fatigue, but know that, when he tires, two things happen: his performance will drop, and he'll be at risk for injury.
Fortunately, we live in an era where the ability to gauge fatigue is a lot more precise, and there are better ways to do it than just the eye. The eye is still important — you know, one important way — but we have other ways to keep an eye on them as well.
There may not be a specific innings limit on Pearson this year, but clearly they’re going to be cautious with him. That maybe makes the news about his g-g-groin injury go down a little more smoothly.
• On Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
“I think that the most likely scenario is he's playing more first base than anywhere else, but I think we respect both his desire, and we recognize how much better we could be if he could play third base too, so we're giving him every chance to go out and do it,” Shapiro told McCown, perhaps wary of potentially sparking a wave of Vlad Moving To First Base Permanently articles.
He's obviously made a huge commitment to his fitness level that will make it easier for him to play third base, but there's been, from my own experience with Jim Thome, to Miguel Cabrera, there's been dozens of players who started at third base but just got too big and were too strong and ultimately had to move across to first. The longer he can play third, the better flexibility we maintain, but we've got a lot of versatility on the team, whether it's Gurriel, Biggio, and now Vladdy, that that's a plus for Charlie and thinking about how he deploys the weapons on this team.
Too strong for third? Uh, sure. OK. We’ll go with that.
The really interesting stuff about Vlad, however, was in Shapiro’s description of the way the team passive aggressively tries to get players “to take ownership and accountability of their own careers.”
That comes down to personal philosophy, and you're not going to see us pressure people. We more want players to take ownership and accountability of their own careers. And we'll give them the feedback and we'll challenge them to be objective about their self evaluation. We'll, most importantly, partner with them to provide the best resources and support possible. But I think what we'll do, Bob, is ask a player the questions, like, 'Do you think you're at the right weight right now?' 'Do you see that weight being a detriment or a plus to your ability to hit the inside pitch, to stay on the field? Do you think you can stay healthy at this weight? What do you think that's going to look like in ten years?'
So, we'll engage in that feedback, but you can't do it to a player. A player has to take ownership of that, just like any of us in our lives. For anything meaningful, any meaningful change, someone can't tell us what to do. No boss can tell me you need to want to win more, you need to care more, you have to work harder, that has to come from me. And it's the exact same with a player. This is their profession and their job. We don't tell them what to do, they're men. With a younger player we may be a little more proactive in how we guide him, but it's more just to engage, get their feedback, and then provide the best support possible.
Those are fair questions to ask, and seem to be pointing him in the right direction in terms of his own professional development, it’s just kind of funny is all. And I’m not sure how well that qualifies as “not pressuring” someone.
• On Danny Jansen
Lastly, some of the most lavish praise Shapiro had for anyone throughout the segment was saved for his catcher. Asked about the idea of bringing in a veteran backstop this winter, Shapiro went to bat hard for Danny Jansen.
For what you're talking about, I'll put Danny Jansen up against anyone. What he hasn't done is hit, but maybe what's been most impressive to me, and what is not characteristic of a young player, is that despite the fact that he's had disappointing offensive performance, man, he bleeds for the pitchers. And he studies attacking hitters, and he goes in with a game plan, and those guys love him. He is a difference-maker in his receiving, throws well, and his game-calling is really good. So, the defensive side of the game, Danny Jansen — he does not catch or receive or lead a staff like his age or like his year. He is beyond his years.
I guess we're confident based on track record in the minor leagues that the offence will get better. And then we've got some combination of him and Kirk and, obviously, guys like Moreno and Riley Adams coming. So, yeah, it's an area of depth. But you're right, we did flirt with Realmuto and talk to him some, because it's just such a difference-making — if you have offence from that position — it's such a difference-making position on the field.
That right there seems like a pretty honest answer.
It sure would be great to see Jansen start to hit like he did in the minors, wouldn’t it?
Good stuff, as always. I love these notes sections, and miss them since the old blog days.
I love watching the games in a game thread, so hopefully we get some regulars once the season starts?
One of the things I don't envy you for, Stoeten, is having to parse through the torrent of corporate, self help, Tony Robbins-esque horseshit vocabulary coming from Shapiro constantly. He's done a good job as Jays president, truly, and seems like a pretty nice guy but Jesus H Christ.
Jansen answer was interesting for skipping past Reese McGuire...