Spring Notes: Tuesday, March 2
George Springer plays for the Toronto Blue Jays. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.
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Game Stuff
As I write this, the Blue Jays and Phillies are already underway in Dunedin. George Springer, who made his Grapefruit League debut today for the club, already has his first hit of the day. We’ve actually, miraculously, even seen it.
I say miraculously because who could possibly have otherwise known that this game was really being played?
We know that the Blue Jays have axed their radio booth (for at least this season), and that they won’t be producing telecasts from TD Ballpark until later on this spring. Well, it turns out that the Phillies’ broadcast partner, NBC Sports Philadelphia, didn’t announce its spring TV schedule until Sunday, which the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on, and in that piece the Inquirer tells us that the team's radio partner, 94.1 WIP, isn’t doing much better. They’ve only committed so far to broadcast five live games this spring.
Today's game — I’ll say it again: George Springer’s Blue Jays debut! — is evidently not one of those.
The league, frankly, needs to step in and put an end to this embarrassing nonsense.
WIP is owned by a company called Entercom, which runs 235 radio stations in 48 markets after having merged with CBS Radio in 2017. They're not a small company, but they're a radio company. They're not a Sportsnet, who should be looking outside their own silo — or afforded the financial leeway by Rogers to do so — and jumping at the chance to help build the Blue Jays into a marquee brand, even if the cost of producing spring training broadcasts maybe doesn’t quite justify the short-term gains. It's entirely understandable why WIP may not want to incur the production costs for a seven-inning game against the Blue Jays in early March that likely wouldn't pull a great rating for them. But someone ought to be required to do it.
MLB’s product is suffering. In a relatively small way, yes, but it is. Fans want to watch these games, and teams want these games broadcast — Mark Shapiro made that much clear last week, telling Rob Longley of the Sun, “We don’t control that and are obviously supportive of having as many games as possible being broadcast.”
Here’s Sportsnet, back in September 2018, tweeting to great fanfare after John Tavares scored his first preseason goal for the Maple Leafs in a nationally televised game.
It’s a far cry from the way Springer was just welcomed to this media market — which was bush league, plain and simple.
If the Blue Jays can convince the higher-ups at Rogers that their brand is worth investing in, why on earth can’t Sportsnet? And why doesn’t MLB?
Three up, three down…
▲ Let’s go back to Monday for a second, because I very much want to single out Anthony Alford’s game, which I have yet to write about here. The former Blue Jays outfielder, in his return to action after breaking his arm against an outfield wall late last season, blasted a home run for the Pirates against Jays starter Robbie Ray.
While I will grant that homering off Ray, who has allowed 43 of them in his last 226 innings, is maybe not the greatest achievement in the game, it was a very nice start for a guy you can’t help but still be pulling for.
Then, after the game, Jamie Campbell revealed this nugget:
The game of baseball — and the world itself — needs more Anthony Alfords.
▲ The game, and the world, need more Alexis Brudnickis, too. Those of you who were Birds All Day listeners will likely remember her outstanding appearances on our show, and Drew, my former co-host, hits the nail on the head — as he so often does — in sharing a thread of hers in the wake of fresh revelations from Brittany Ghiroli and Katie Strang of the Athletic about the behaviour of sex pest and former Mets manager Mickey Callaway.
Because it’s important, and because I have nothing but respect for the bravery she’s showing by putting this out there, here is the rest of Alexis’s thread.
Callaway, of course, has not only been a part of the Mets organization. From 2010 to 2017 he was in four different roles in the Clevaland organization — the club whose president, for the first six of those years, was current Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro. (Jays GM Ross Atkins served director of player development and VP of player personnel during that time as well.)
"What this means," writes Gideon Turk of Blue Jays Nation, "is that while Mark Shapiro was in charge of Cleveland’s entire organization and Ross Atkins was in charge of their minor league system, Mickey Callaway was hired and then promoted three different times. There were at least four different opportunities for Shapiro or Atkins to evaluate the performance of Callaway and check with others on how people felt about Callaway, and yet he continued to advance in the organization."
I’m not sure Atkins quite factors into this story in the same way as Shapiro does, nonetheless, Gideon cites a quote from the Athletic's piece in which an unnamed Cleveland employee calls Callaway's behavior "the worst-kept secret in the organization," and urges the local media to get Shapiro and Atkins on record about how they possibly missed what everyone else seems to have found obvious. He is, of course, correct.
▲ As will likely be the case for as long as I continue employing this (stolen) conceit, today’s last up arrow is reserved for the Blue Jays who performed well yesterday, which in this case is going to be Robbie Ray. Despite the home run to Alford noted above, Ray threw 24 of his 26 pitches for strikes, which… um… is not very Robbie Ray-like, to put it politely. Ray walked 45 batters in 51 2/3 innings in 2020 and has walked 13.1% of the batters he's faced since 2018. Personally, I am very much looking forward to the Pete Walker Mystique discourse after he manages to fix Ray.
(Honourable mention here has to go to Rowdy Tellez, who had two more plate appearances on Monday and managed not just another hit, but a third ball to come off the bat at more than 100 mph. Keep crushing, King. Take those at-bats from Grichuk!)
(Honourable honourable mention to Jordan Romano, who apparently was warming up to War Pigs.)
▼ I'm being exceptionally harsh with this one, but I have to give a down arrow to Austin Martin, who had an uneven day in the field against the Pirates on Monday. Uneven days are fine, of course, and part of the learning process. And he did make an amazing leaping grab at one point. But Martin's early error couldn't help but remind us of one of the biggest knocks on him going into last year's draft.
"Martin mostly played third base with the Commodores and moved to center field this season after experiencing throwing accuracy problems," Baseball America explained when ranking him number two on their list of draft prospects last June.
To add insult to insult, it was revealed immediately after the game that Martin will start getting some work in the outfield.
That's a completely expected development, and one that Martin is cool with...
...but still! Not exactly the best first bit of action for a guy who is going to be really, really important for the Jays going forward.
▼ Another harsh one, but Nate Pearson wasn’t exactly at his best on Monday either. It was March 1st, so I don’t think we need to nitpick it too badly, but it’s true.
▼ This may seem redundant, but as I type the Blue Jays and Phillies are playing and I have no way to see or hear it, so I’m going to give a down arrow (a Griffin, as it were, as opposed to the three Gibbers’ I handed out above) to Sportsnet here. It just feels right.
Lastly…
A bit of background: I was going to end today’s piece with a bunch of links, followed by a lengthy “Shapiro Speaks!” section. I had already transcribed extensive quotes from Mark Shapiro’s recent 50 minute appearance on a YouTube show called Good Stuff with Kevin Bille, in which he talked about culture and leadership. Everything was coming together nicely and I seemed on track to get the piece posted in time for the start of the Jays-Phillies contest no one can see or hear.
That didn’t happen, and I’ll tell you why. In order to get a little bit of background information for my paragraph introducing the Shapiro Speaks! section, I did a Google search for “Kevin Bille.” Turns out I very quickly found an article by the Columbus Dispatch from June 2019 titled "Gay teen sues Ohio school oficials, alleges harassment."
The report is about a lawsuit that involved a basketball-playing student who, in the fall of 2017, had been outed by one of his peers at Fairless High School in Stark County, Ohio. That’s the school where Bille — according to his own LinkedIn profile, which also acknowledges him as the owner of Good Stuff — was the Athletic Director and Head Boys Basketball Coach from 2013 to 2019. He was named in the suit, along with several teachers and schoolboard officials.
In the piece we’re told some of the specific things the lawsuit alleged.
Many of the cited instances involve Bille. After he told Bille he was gay, the teen says Bille began treating him differently. According to the lawsuit, the coach:
Significantly reduced the teen’s playing time and told him he was worried students from the student section would learn he is gay and start yelling.
Singled out the teen by giving him punitive workouts.
Told the teen during team prayers he didn’t have to pray because he knew the teen “hates Jesus.”
Called the teen weak and required the teen to feel the coach’s arm muscles.
Failed to introduce at least one prospective college recruiter to the teen even though the recruiter had expressed interest.
Gave the teen a “certificate of participation” instead of a varsity letter even though a team manager who had played zero minutes of basketball during the season received a varsity letter.
I refer to the lawsuit in the past tense here because, according to a story from the Canton Repository in August of 2020, the school board eventually agreed to settle the case out of court.
According to that report, the teen’s family’s attorney, Cortney R. Morgan, “said the settlement includes ‘substantial’ monetary relief, which she did not disclose.”
Perhaps not a guy whose YouTube show the president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays should be going on!
Top image via the Toronto Blue Jays
roared at "(a Griffin, as it were, as opposed to the three Gibbers’ I handed out above)"
Awesome post.
Great post Andrew