Unpacking George Springer's introductory press conference

On fit, culture, scandal, marriage, and "heavy lifting"

The Blue Jays introduced their most expensive player of all time to the media on Wednesday morning, officially welcoming George Springer to the organization by way of a Zoom call featuring not only him, but club president Mark Shapiro, GM Ross Atkins, and manager Charlie Montoyo.

You can see the call in its entirety by following the link in the tweet below.

Toronto Blue Jays @BlueJays

Watch LIVE as we officially introduce George Springer! https://t.co/KaAmUFZUhT

There was a whole lot to digest in that 40-odd minutes, but you can also save yourself the time it would take to watch it if you just understand that the basic dynamic was that Shapiro acted as hype man for the suits at Rogers, Atkins acted as a hype man for Springer, Montoyo was excited to be adding an excellent player to the team, and Springer himself just seemed genuinely happy to be there (and also, one can rather easily surmise, happy to be $150 million richer).

Of course, the devil is, as they say, in the details. So rather than just stop there, let’s go through some of what was said with a fine-tooth comb, starting with the man of the hour himself, the Blue Jays’ new starting centre fielder.

Fit, culture, and the $150 million former Astro

It’s a bit gauche in free agent press conferences to acknowledge the fact that, in just about every single case, the team that a player has just signed with offered him more money for his signature than anybody else. Seeing as MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported last week that the Mets’ highest offer only came in at around $125 million, on Wednesday that certainly felt like the elephant in the Zoom. And what it meant was that George Springer ended up maybe over-emphasizing some of the aspects of Jays organization that he was drawn to.

He spoke about the young talent. He rejected the notion that he was bothered at all by playing in Canada or any uncertainty about where the Jays will play in 2021. He praised the electric atmosphere he remembers at the Rogers Centre earlier in his career, and made specific mention of the west coast Blue Jays fans who invade Seattle whenever the team plays the Mariners. He spoke about the belief that the front office showed in their own players. And he spoke about their honesty with him.

Those things didn’t by any means sound insincere. Still, though: $25 million more than anyone other offer.

That all said, I don’t want to downplay too much how easy it was to see why the Blue Jays believe the somewhat unassuming Springer could potentially fit seamlessly into the culture they’re already building.

“I pride myself on being consistent,” he explained at one point. “I don't want to be that hot-cold guy. I want to make sure that I bring the same thing every day, all the time. I'm not an individual goal guy, I guess. I want to win. I want the team to win. And I'm willing to do what I have to do on my end to help that happen.”

You could argue those are just platitudes, typical athlete boilerplate, but to anyone who has paid attention to what Shapiro and Atkins say when they talk about culture — what they said they want in a manager, and what they’ve said about leadership — it’s impossible not to notice some real synergy.

I’m reminded of something that I’ve pointed out a few times on this subject, and that’s the fact that during a podcast episode I co-hosted back in 2019, Ross Atkins raved about a book called The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World’s Greatest Teams by Sam Walker of the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s what I wrote about it for my former employer in the wake of the Marcus Stroman trade in July of that year:

“An ‘incredible book,’ he called it, that he says explains that great teams exist because of people. ‘It really comes down to, if your best players are also your best people, you have a chance to do something exceptional, because you’re raising standards. So that’s why we talk about culture. It isn’t just because we want a lot of people to like each other. It’s that we want people raising standards and continuing to set the bar, continuing to have the curiosity and the passion for greatness. That’s why exceptional things happen.’ ”

At one point during Wednesday’s presser, Atkins spoke about Springer specifically in those sorts of terms.

“One of the things that we spend a lot of time and energy on and thinking about is influence on one another and the environment that our players are creating for one another,” he explained. “And we have zero doubt that George is going to lift our environment that we already feel very strong about.”

In “The Captain Class,” Walker lays out seven traits that he says define elite captains: Extreme doggedness and focus in competition. Aggressive play that tests the limits of the rules. A willingness to do thankless jobs in the shadows. A low-key, practical, and democratic communication style. Motivates others with passionate nonverbal displays. Strong convictions and the courage to stand apart. And ironclad emotional control.

It’s impossible to know from where we sit how Springer grades out in some of those areas. And some fans will surely look at anyone who went along with the Astros’ trashcan banging scheme as lacking convictions or courage. But I see a lot of Springer in that list.

Atkins praised his focus, his preparedness, and called him someone who embraces competition and has “an elite desire to win.” Ironclad emotional control seems a fair descriptor for Springer. On Wednesday his low-key, practical, and democratic communication style was on display. And when asked about coming to Toronto as a veteran who will take on a leadership role, Springer all but said that he prefers to motivate others with passionate nonverbal displays.

“I just kind of see myself as a normal guy who's going to show up every day to the park and play as hard as I possibly can,” he explained. “I will try me best to mentor to my ability — which I think is just to go out and play. Go out and play as hard as I can every day.”

You can absolutely see the fit from Springer’s perspective, too.

“I think one that was most important is they were themselves,” he said about the Jays’ pitch to him to come play in Toronto. “They were honest about where they wanted the team to go, about what they believed in, about how much they believe in their players now — the guys who are already in that locker room. The direction that they saw these guys going. And when you have a young, a talented group that's already in place, it's obviously very, very attractive, because you know what they could potentially do. All the conversations I've had, not one person hasn't said that they don't want to win, that they don't go out there every day and play as hard as they possibly can. That's what I'm looking forward to the most, just getting down to it and playing hard every day with these guys.”

Speaking about Springer on Sportsnet’s Tim & Sid later in the day on Wednesday, Atkins made it clear that he and the team loves the fact that their new centre fielder seems to be on the exact same page about this stuff.

“These worlds are not too big,” Atkins explained, referring to the background work the club did prior to signing him. “There’s so many different stakeholders and touch points where you’re learning about different individuals and how many different people they’ve touched — whether that’s a fan, someone that’s assisting with travel, someone that’s assisting in the clubhouse, someone that’s assisting with something logistically in the front office, media, obviously players and coaches — but all those touch points were so consistent on George about the person, the teammate. And what kept coming up was the passion for winning. And it resonated with us in all of our discussions with him because he was fixated on our group and their desire to win.”

“We do have what we believe is several of those individuals that are entirely focused on winning,” he continued. “And willing to — like Cavan Biggio, say ‘Hey, wherever I need to play. Where do you want me to play to help the team win?’ George Springer said something similar in the press conference today. And over time, that really does show its colours.”

The Donaldson-Bautista Blue Jays of 2015 and 2016 had an incredible desire to win in their own right, but it was projected so outwardly, and seemed to burned so hot, that they were often viewed from outside as a bunch of prima donnas. Of course, those teams had more enough talent to back it up and not care what anybody else thought, which was what made them so much absolute fun to cheer for.

This Jays era is now well on its way to being a whole lot of fun as well, but it most certainly is going to come in a bit of a different flavour. That’s been done by design, and Springer is clearly a huge piece it — and clearly buying in for himself.

“I think the one thing that (bench coach, and former Astros hitting coach, Dave Hudgens) said that was actually echoed by more than one person was everybody is egoless,” Springer said during a Tim & Sid segment of his own on Wednesday evening. “And when you put it that way, and you’re in a locker room and you’re around guys who are having success, but you’re all pulling in the same direction, that really, really had a big impact on me. And, you know, when Hudgie said that, when Charlie said that, it was kind of like, OK, it’s not just a line. It’s not just a phrase. That’s how they operate.”

“It’s on me to understand how the guys operate,” Springer added. “It’s on me to come into the locker room and really respect their space, and really respect what’s already been instilled and what’s been created. It’s also on me to earn that respect. I’m not going to try to come in there and change the way they go about things, and all that stuff. I’m being brought into their locker room and it’s my job to earn their respect. It’s my job to earn the trust of that locker room, whatever that is — but fully understanding that I can have an influence, hopefully just by having some fun and being who I’ve always been.”

Will his fellow Blue Jays players embrace him easily, given his involvement in the 2017 Astros scandal?

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, I’m going to be who I always have been,” he told Tim & Sid. “I am who I am. I’m a guy who likes to have fun and enjoy the game and that’s what I’m going to continue to do.”

That likely won’t be a satisfactory answer — if you can even call it an answer — for fans still stung by the idea of having to cheer for someone involved in such a major scandal, and it’s not much better than the one he gave earlier in the day, in which he said that he believes in himself, his performances, and in the 2017 Astros. But will it be enough for his new teammates?

That, of course, remains to be seen. That Hudgens is still here suggests it’s probably going to be fine. And Atkins, for his part, is confident.

“It obviously was a controversy that was unfortunate for the game, and it’s one that the stakeholders — players, coaches, staff — are coming to grips with. George has handled himself so exceptionally well throughout that process,” he told Tim & Sid.

The GM added that both he and the organization “are confident that he is going to make this city and this country and this organization very proud. And not just with his ability, not just with his ability to hit the ball over the fence and run it down in centre field, but in how he goes about the game, how he treats people on and off the field, and I’m very confident that this city and this country is going to love him.”

It’s hard to feel anything but love on day one of a franchise-altering contract. Especially when you get to relatively easily elide questions about the massive cheating scandal your former team was involved in. But if Atkins’ opening comments during the press conference sounded like wedding vows — and they did — by the end of it all, given the mutual respect and the similar outlooks on culture, you get a sense that this is one that has a real shot of working.

What more can you really ask for at this stage?

Wait, what was that about “heavy lifting” being done?

It was Springer’s big day, so naturally he’s the focus of this piece, but I would be remiss if I didn’t touch on some less intentional news that the club made during Wednesday’s festivities.

I joked above about Mark Shapiro serving as a hype man for the suits at Rogers, and while that’s nothing especially new, it did seem to me as though his praise was even more pronounced than usual. If doing a little bit of extra P.R. for Rogers is the price Shapiro has to pay for having the company’s top executives believe in the Blue Jays like never before, it’s an awfully small one. It’s completely understandable that his praise for those above him would be effusive on a day like this, and for a while it certainly felt like the good times were rolling. There were even hints dropped about extensions being explored with the Jays’ current core.

“Where I feel incredibly fortunate for us as an organization, and for our fans, is that we've got an ownership group that, regardless of the circumstances now — which, we're all dealing with those challenges — they empowered us and encouraged us to stay the course and continue to stay on plan and continue to move in that direction,” Shapiro explained at one point on Wednesday morning. “That plan is that we'll continue to win, and as we win the revenues will increase. Where those dollars go? I think there's no limit to what this market can be. It's a behemoth, and we're going to continue to get better, and continue to add the players, and keep the players that we have, necessary to be a championship team year in and year out.”

That is maybe the clearest and most positive statement on the Jays’ finances we’ve heard in 20 years, for whatever little that’s worth. That’s great stuff!

Shapiro also made clear that their landing Springer wasn’t just some fluke made possible by the fact that so many teams are choosing not to spend.

“This is the plan,” he said. “It was to continue to build and, once our young core demonstrated that we were ready to win — and they certainly demonstrated that themselves and took ownership of that — that we would continue to supplement and build where we thought we needed to, from both a leadership perspective and a skill level perspective. Year to year, where that payroll actually goes — I think this winter was less about the opportunistic nature of it and more about, probably just the continued support, despite the challenges that are going on in the world, (and) the realization that revenues are pretty limited (elsewhere). So (we're) incredibly fortunate that we've got an ownership group that is so strongly positioned and whose commitment has been steadfast regardless of the challenges. But this is about what we expected, not beyond or below.”

Man alive! This is cool! Haha! Yes!

Uh, but then he laid this on us. (Emphasis mine.)

“You don't make moves like this, moves like last year, and have a young core that we've got, without the understanding that once you set course that you'll continue in that direction. But part of that plan also is that we would win and the revenues will follow. So those things are all very important to (be) continuing. As far as this year, we've got some flexibility but the bulk of our heavy lifting is done. There are still opportunities for Ross and our baseball operations group to be creative in what they do. So I'll leave the transactions that -- with the remainder of the off-season, I think that will be all of us working together but led by Ross and baseball operations.”

There are at least a couple ways that an optimist could look at a statement like that.

One is that maybe the Jays don’t want to signal to what’s left of the market — a collection of relative bargains that they very patiently have waited out — that they’ve got the same kind of aggressive mindset they’ve been showing all winter. The well has run dry, Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, Jake Odorizzi, and Masahiro Tanaka. Our heavy lifting is done. Take the offer in front of you or leave it.

Another is that we may have a different definition of “heavy” than Shapiro does. If he means not to expect Trevor Bauer to follow George Springer’s path to the Blue Jays, that’s totally fine. I mean, I think we all pretty much figured that out after all of the talk about character on Wednesday, but I, for one, am happy to have that point reinforced.

Ross Atkins almost even made the latter interpretation sound plausible during his appearance on Tim & Sid.

“I think what we’ve done is accomplished some goals that aren’t something you just do overnight,” he said. “They take time, and there’s a lot of heavy lifting that goes into them. That doesn’t mean that we’re done. We don’t rest thinking about how to improve the team. There are several ways to do that, many ways to do that. But it would be hard at this point to pull of multiple deals of that magnitude with the time remaining. We’ll see. We never stop thinking about it, we always are thinking about how we can improve the team.”

Hmm. OK. “Deals of that magnitude.” I can live with those being off the table. What I would have a harder time living with, however, is a team that just went and added George Springer, Marcus Semien, and Kirby Yates deciding to go with a rotation of Hyun Jin Ryu, Nate Pearson, Robbie Ray, Tanner Roark, and then one of either Ross Stripling, Trent Thornton, Julian Merryweather, Anthony Kay, or Thomas Hatch.

But that’s not what he’s saying, righ—

“There’s good players that are available, for sure. There’s definitely different opportunities that we will have — ways to acquire players, via trade, via free agency, that we will seriously consider. At some point you have to also factor in the progress and development of the talent that you do have as well. So part of team building and culture is patience, and there are a lot of players that we want to make sure have good solid opportunities to continue to grow. We believe wholeheartedly in that.”

Robbie Ray is entering his eighth big league season, walked 45 guys in 51 2/3 innings last year, has a career BB/9 of 4.28, and yet is somehow more inspiring than Tanner Roark. I don’t exactly think you’re going to be hurting for opportunities to give some of your young pitchers innings, Ross. Especially considering Ryu and Pearson will likely need extra rest rather frequently.

So what am I missing here? Did the fact that Merryweather had an extra option year imposed on him (which will allow him to be a part of the rotation mix rather than in the big league bullpen) make things look that much rosier? Why would a team that scored the third most runs in the American League last year, and allowed the fifth most runs in baseball, spend over $40 million in 2021 salary to upgrade their position player group, add a couple of bullpen arms, and then just stop with a half-finished rotation?

Hopefully because it’s bullshit and they won’t!