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Time marches on, even if the 2023 Blue Jays season doesn't.
It’s mid-October, which means that a bunch of teams who aren’t the Toronto Blue Jays are still out there having fun and playing baseball. And, frankly, other than the whole no-longer-playing thing, it feels like little has changed since the season officially ended. The Jays are still a confounding mess, and they’re still being run by Mark Shapiro and—perhaps surprisingly—Ross Atkins.
So… uh… what exactly do we think of how it all turned out? Where does this team go from here? Where do we think it should go? What can be done to prevent the Vlad and Bo Era from ultimately ending up a failure? Or is it already too late?
Fun stuff to chew on until the offseason begins in earnest when the GM meetings open in Scottsdale on November 7th, huh? But we can at least do some of that chewing together.
The fact that it’s mid-October also means that it has been quite a while—two months, to be precise—since I last took a dip into the ‘ol mail bag and squared off with the many delights inside. Later on this week I’ll be doing it again.
So leave me your best thoughts and questions in the comments on this post!
Of course, as always, comments are only open to paid subscribers—and I’d love for you to choose that option if you’re not already doing so. Reader support is the only way I make a living, meaning that your support keeps all my work free to read for everyone else. Please don’t make me start having to paywall things!
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I asked this a few posts ago, but wasn't expecting a reply so now I can ask this properly. Contrary to popular opinion, Ross Atkins is an intelligent person. He surely must have realised that his comments about the Berrios removal and game planning in general would be perceived as throwing Schneider under the bus. So why was he so blatant about doing that? Is he so opaque that he couldn't see the shit storm it would create? Amongst all the discussion about it - I haven't seen anyone ask why he would do it. Did it just come out spontaneously? Is he in fact, not that smart? Thoughts?
How great or not great is James Click, how sad or not sad should we be that Atkins is still running the show instead of Click and how scared or not scared should we be about Click getting a GM job elsewhere?