Atkins on the Special Juan (sort of), the competitive window, Jordan Romano, plus the latest Soto chatter, new coaches, minor moves, Sasaki, Teoscar, Vlad, prospects, and a whole lot more!
Excellent article again - thanks! I think the statement that worries (scares?) me the most is this one:
'I would say probably right now, as it stands, we're better situated offensively from the trade pieces we acquired last year. Jake Bloss is a very intriguing piece for us, but we acquired a good number of position players that have impact on both sides of the ball with upside. So I think that group has more depth, and we see a good number of opportunities in both markets via free agency and trade.'
To me it says that while there's no doubt going to be some FA signings and trades, there's no way the Jays can fill/solve all the problems they have that way - so once again they are going to have to rely a fair bit on internal improvement - perhaps more than a fair bit. It's not out of the realm of possibility that that will work - but it could also backfire badly.
> bad faith nitpicking that often boils down to “please do spin at me better,”
A more charitable take (not that the real mouth-breathing crowd necessarily deserve this much credit, but I think this is at least a factor whether or not they know it or could articulate it) is that, aside from trades/signings/etc., talking to the press is the only part of the job that's visible to fans, and so if the GM is incompetent at it (and dear lord, you'd think someone would almost luck into some improvement over almost ten years but goddamn, Atkins remains a dumpster fire), then people think that they're just generally incompetent. Maybe he's doing a great job behind the scenes running baseball ops and hiring great people and being a great boss and coming up with great strategy or whatever, but nobody can see that. Everybody can see him face-planting, again and again, with absolutely no signs of self-awareness or improvement, and I don't know that it's unreasonable to extrapolate at least a little from that into general inability to learn/improve/be good at the job. Not totally reasonable, either, but there's something there.
And I mean, if he talks to his staff anything like the way he talks to the press, they must have their eyeballs stapled in the forward position or they'd have rolled so far back they'd never find them again.
I think that’s basically correct, yeah. Though I think the lines between what’s an actual face-plant and what’s just eye-roll-worthy or easily made into a bad faith criticism are awfully blurry at this point.
Like, a million people not knowing, or acting like they don’t know, what the phrase “low-hanging fruit” means. That definitely adds to the sense he’s incompetent but isn’t what I’d call a face plant. I’d reserve a term like that for getting embarrassed by Anthony Bass or not being equipped to adequately do damage control after the Twins playoff thing.
There’s just so mych bad faith piled upon bad faith underpinning it that, why I get why that might be why fans have come to the conclusions they have, I have a hard time excusing them for not seeing through all that.
Excellent article again - thanks! I think the statement that worries (scares?) me the most is this one:
'I would say probably right now, as it stands, we're better situated offensively from the trade pieces we acquired last year. Jake Bloss is a very intriguing piece for us, but we acquired a good number of position players that have impact on both sides of the ball with upside. So I think that group has more depth, and we see a good number of opportunities in both markets via free agency and trade.'
To me it says that while there's no doubt going to be some FA signings and trades, there's no way the Jays can fill/solve all the problems they have that way - so once again they are going to have to rely a fair bit on internal improvement - perhaps more than a fair bit. It's not out of the realm of possibility that that will work - but it could also backfire badly.
> bad faith nitpicking that often boils down to “please do spin at me better,”
A more charitable take (not that the real mouth-breathing crowd necessarily deserve this much credit, but I think this is at least a factor whether or not they know it or could articulate it) is that, aside from trades/signings/etc., talking to the press is the only part of the job that's visible to fans, and so if the GM is incompetent at it (and dear lord, you'd think someone would almost luck into some improvement over almost ten years but goddamn, Atkins remains a dumpster fire), then people think that they're just generally incompetent. Maybe he's doing a great job behind the scenes running baseball ops and hiring great people and being a great boss and coming up with great strategy or whatever, but nobody can see that. Everybody can see him face-planting, again and again, with absolutely no signs of self-awareness or improvement, and I don't know that it's unreasonable to extrapolate at least a little from that into general inability to learn/improve/be good at the job. Not totally reasonable, either, but there's something there.
And I mean, if he talks to his staff anything like the way he talks to the press, they must have their eyeballs stapled in the forward position or they'd have rolled so far back they'd never find them again.
I think that’s basically correct, yeah. Though I think the lines between what’s an actual face-plant and what’s just eye-roll-worthy or easily made into a bad faith criticism are awfully blurry at this point.
Like, a million people not knowing, or acting like they don’t know, what the phrase “low-hanging fruit” means. That definitely adds to the sense he’s incompetent but isn’t what I’d call a face plant. I’d reserve a term like that for getting embarrassed by Anthony Bass or not being equipped to adequately do damage control after the Twins playoff thing.
There’s just so mych bad faith piled upon bad faith underpinning it that, why I get why that might be why fans have come to the conclusions they have, I have a hard time excusing them for not seeing through all that.