Stray Thoughts... - Off Daze

Shapiro Speaks on renovations, revenue, and Rogers! Plus Ricky Tiedemann, Mitch White, Jimmy Robbins, Alejandro Kirk, Daulton Varsho, Yusei Kikuchi, my appearance on Blue Jays Nation Radio, and more!

Image via the Toronto Blue Jays

OK, OK. What’s done is done. The Blue Jays have jetted off to San Diego to enjoy an off day before opening their series with the Padres on Friday night. They’ve moved on, and now we probably should too. Yes, the team is now 10-9 instead of 11-8, the Yankees are 13-6 instead of 12-7, and neither of those things are great. But the just-completed series was really quite good, right up until the gut punch at the very end—and we’ve already talked about all that.

And if you’ve read the earlier piece I’m referring to, you may recall that I suggested a possible post still to come that would address a whole bunch of non-ninth-inning things whizzing around the Blue Jays’ orbit at the moment. Well… you’re looking at it.

You’re also looking at a post that—as it’s really just a “Shapiro Speaks!” and a “Quickly…”—doesn’t seem to require much more of a preamble than that.

So let’s dive in. Here are today’s stray thoughts!…

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Shapiro Speaks!

It's been a little over a week since the Blue Jays opened the now fully gentrified Rogers Centre, and somewhat overlooked among the celebrations, criticisms, and slow-motion train wreck that has been the post-2022 Jays, was Mark Shapiro's sit-down with Simon Houpt of the Globe and Mail last week. In it, once you get past all the crowing about not using taxpayer dollars to retrofit the Dome, there's some pretty interesting stuff about the funding, the revenues the spruced-up building will generate, and the long-term future of the Jays' home.

Some highlights:

On the funding…

“No one here even thought [a public-private partnership] was an option, or a possibility,” he replied. “It wasn’t something we felt was appropriate. There’s no precedent for it.”

Houpt will address the supposed lack of precedent when the quote continues below, but I wanted to pause here because, I gotta tell ya Mark, I sure seem to recall the time you registered as a lobbyist with City Hall, and how, at one point, there were all kinds of whispers about the club getting involved with the Rail Deck Park proposal that ultimately fell apart.¹

And I definitely know that the Jays weren’t just happy to take public money to get their Player Development Complex built in Florida, but that the deal came after years—dating back to before Shapiro’s time here, it must be said—of playing footsie with the idea of moving the club’s spring facilities elsewhere. So, it strains credulity to suggest that the team magnanimously declined to even think about pursuing government funding, even if it is good that they ultimately did not.

(I also think it’s interesting that the first half of the piece, which focuses on the funding, doesn’t bring up Dunedin once. That’s maybe not surprising, and it’s not a criticism of Houpt’s work—I doubt his audience, or fans of the Blue Jays, would see bilking Floridians in quite the same light as they would if it were their own tax dollars—but knowing it certainly makes some of the self-congratulatory stuff ring even more hollow.)

The piece continued…

That’s not entirely true, I responded: The stadium itself was built with hundreds of millions in public funds. I was about to add that it was ultimately sold to Rogers for 4 per cent of the $570-million cost, but Shapiro interjected. “That was 35 years ago,” he said. “There’s not a modern precedent for it. It was not even a discussion.”

Thirty-five years ago or not, this, of course, is why Rogers’ decision to fund the renovations entirely themselves is unprecedented in the modern era. At the risk of sounding a bit too much like one of those “muh taxes!” guys who is hellbent on pulling up the ladder behind him (but weirdly fine with massive funding for cops and roads), we already built the team a dang stadium! And, as Simon was about to point out, Rogers bought it for a song!²

Literally no one would have been behind giving Rogers money for these renovations, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean that our useless politicians wouldn’t have just done it anyway, I think it would have been a lot harder to get away with than a one-off event like, say, the six World Cup games next summer that Toronto is paying nearly $400 million to host. Kudos on not getting laughed out of the city though, Jays!

On the business model…

As we get into the heart of the piece, in which the project itself is discussed, we mostly—but not entirely—encounter unsurprising things.

Naturally, Shapiro emphasized the necessity of the renovations.

“Something had to be done with this building. Either you have to tear it down and build a new building – you’re talking billions of dollars – or you’re just going to handle it like a team like Oakland handled it maybe, and just kind of patch it as you go.”

He also said he expects the renovation to make positive impacts on the club's bottom line in terms of ticket revenue, sponsorships, food and beverage, etc.—things he's talked about for a long time, like in this quote from way back in early 2018:

“This building generates the third least amount of premium revenue of all Major League Baseball franchises. Only Oakland and Tampa have less revenue than us from premium."

What was different than what I've heard from him before, however, is what he said about how this is all being paid for and, more importantly, where the additional revenues will go.

“It'll get paid back long before we have to think about a new ballpark,” he assured. But when pressed on the issue he changed his stance slightly. “We don't have to pay it back. It's paid,” he said.

From Houpt:

“The way you’re thinking about the money is not at all the way they think about money,” he continued, referring to Rogers. “At the time they allocate capital, we’re one of a lot of major projects for them, like wireless infrastructure.”

Hey, that sounds great!

Shapiro is focused on how he expects the improvements to drive additional revenue – something in the range of $20-million to $30-million, he figures – which will be used, he said, to “offset the deficit spending we’ve been doing on the player-payroll budget.”

Meaning?

“We’ve been losing a lot of money,” he said flatly. “The largest expense is always player payroll. It’ll offset some of those losses.”

Just what every fan wants to hear! You know all that new money we’ve been extracting from your pockets this season? We’re going to use it to pay for the debt we incurred putting together the maddeningly mediocre roster you can’t stand having to endure watching every single goddamn night!

I mean, all baseball accounting is a lie, but it’s at least somewhat plausible that the team’s spending has outpaced their revenues the last few years. But this? Now? The team’s championship window is closing—and with it the chance to continue filling the building you just spent so much money to renovate—and you give us that offseason and now start talking about debt? I get that there is never going to be a good time for fans to hear about fiscal responsibility, and I get that Rogers has committed to payroll at a level well beyond where anyone ever imagined possible over the last few years, but woof.

Woof.

Wooohuuuuhhfff.

On the future…

“The next step is to kind of pull back, evaluate, think about alternatives, determine whether continuing with renovating this building is the right way to go, or whether to consider a new stadium here or a new stadium somewhere else. Those questions have to be considered.” He paused. “Not for a couple of years.”

Yeah, let’s hope not for a couple years. If that.

I mean, the renovations look great, the location will absolutely never be topped, and with a bunch of new concrete in there they’ve managed to add to what was already a massive carbon footprint. How about we just keep on keeping on, huh?

Quickly…

• Jays Prospectus tweets that, according to the Buffalo Bisons’ transactions page, Ricky Tiedemann has been placed on the 7-day injured list. At the time of this writing there is no information out there as to what the issue might be, however I was able to reach a doctor for comment:

• Mitch White, we hardly knew ye. Though some might say we knew ye a little too well. The oft-maligned “Ross Stripling replacement” was designated for assignment earlier in the week when Jordan Romano and Erik Swanson were activated from the injured list. There's a chance White gets through waivers and ends up back in Buffalo—it's happened before!—but after the velocity gains he showed last summer and in spring training (which he bizarrely didn't flash during this spell in the majors until the very end against Colorado) it seems more likely someone will take a chance on him this time. If so, his Jays tenure will come to an end with him having thrown just 65 2/3 innings and posting a 7.26 ERA. (I know I already used "woof" once in this piece, but... woof.)

• Sticking with minor transactions, MLB Trade Rumors caught on Wednesday night that the Jays have sent left-handed prospect Jimmy Robbins to the Texas Rangers for cash considerations. Once a theoretical up-and-comer, Robbins lost the 2020 season to the pandemic, 2021 to Tommy John, and then velocity according his capsule on Scott Mitchell's 2023 top 50 Jays prospect list for TSN (he ranked 39th at the time, but fell off this year's version). Robbins issued 66 walks in 93 1/3 innings last year, with some ugly ERAs to go with it. And with the number of active minor leaguers allowed per organization going down to 165 from 180 this season, one assumes he was simply caught in the numbers game.

• Say what you will about Alejandro Kirk’s struggles at the plate so far, but there’s no denying that the kid can really catch.

• The Jays should have pitched better in the ninth inning on Wednesday, yes. It can’t also be forgotten that their hitters had enough opportunities to have made the relievers’ lives easier. So, there’s really no excuse for not winning that one. And yet, if there were to be an excuse, they might actually have a good one. (Is this maybe odd to bring up right after noting Kirk’s prowess at stealing strikes? Probably. Do I care? No.)

• I tweeted this already, but I think it’s worth repeating (and updating the numbers): Nineteen plate appearances ago Daulton Varsho had a 29 wRC+. Right now it stands at 122. People don’t just yell about small sample sizes because they like alliteration!

• The numbers in the first one may have changed slightly since it was posted, but these Kikuchi tweets 👀

• Sportsnet’s David Singh had a great chat with Edwin Encarnación, who you have surely noticed around the Jays lately—specifically working with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. I’m not always a fan when it looks like somebody might be a stunt coach, but I have all the time in the world for Edwin. He still looks good in blue.

• Elsewhere at Sportsnet, my Blue Jays Happy Hour cohost Nick Ashbourne explains why home runs will determine the Blue Jays’ fate this season—which is kind of a scary thought, even if it really, really shouldn’t be given the talent on the roster. (Oh, and while we’re here, be sure to check out the latest episode of the pod, in case you missed it.)

• A nice one here from Jim Scott at Blue Jays Nation, as he looks at some recent comments from Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, who felt as though the Jays' hitters we saw this week were far different than the ones that were in the Bronx earlier this month—specifically with respect to their approach, and their ability to foul off tough pitches. Jim pivots off this to take us down a rabbit hole about the potential for AI to help teams and hitters catch when opponents are tipping their pitches. Fascinating stuff.

• OK, a little bit of housekeeping, as I just wanted to put it out there that lately I’ve been considering moving the site away from Substack and to a different platform like Ghost. Changes are by no means imminent, but this is something I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while now. These thoughts certainly resurface every time the people who run this thing end up in the news, but I’ll be honest and say that it’s mostly because Substack takes a not-insignificant chunk of the money that my paid subscribers generously send to me, and as far as I can tell Ghost would take less. I’m sure everyone would prefer it if as much of what they’re paying as possible actually makes its way to me, myself very much included. But I don’t want to make any big changes without getting a feel for what readers and subscribers think. The changeover would be pretty seamless, but things would look slightly different and some of the tools that Substack provides readers would necessarily have to go away. So please let me know if that would be annoying to you, or if you have any other questions or concerns.

• Please also don’t take this to mean, if you’re on the fence about upgrading to paid, that it would be better to just wait and do it once I’m on a new platform. I would still very much like your mone—er… support! (Also, knowing me, this may take a while, if it even happens.)

• Lastly, I took a few minutes on Thursday to have a chat about all things Blue Jays with my old pal Cam Lewis on Blue Jays Nation Radio. Other than my camera failing to understand the concept of consistent lighting at times, I think it was a pretty good one. My segment starts at the 21:20 mark. Have a watch below!

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1. Shapiro also stepped up to help John Tory kill ActiveTO, writing a letter opposing certain road closures just days after the then-Mayor backed away from the program because of complaints about traffic. (Though the fact that Tory also held a $100K position as a member of the Rogers family trust, and is likely to be reinstated to the company’s board of directors later this month, means that it’s not clear whether Shapiro was helping Tory the Mayor, Tory the Rogers employee, or whether Tory the Rogers employee was helping Shapiro’s Rogers-owned Jays. Fuck Rogers.)

2. Part of the reason they were able to purchase it so cheaply from the previous owners was that after the Gord Ash era flamed out the main tenant of the building, the Toronto Blue Jays, just so happened to enter an era of payroll slashing that allowed the gap between them and their division rivals to widen massively. Their opening day payroll in first year of Rogers' ownership ($76 million) was 70% of the Yankees' MLB-best number. By the final year that Sportsco owned the building the Jays’ payroll had sunk to $50 million, and was just 27% of what the Yankees' were spending. Fuck Rogers.