Blue Jays

[polo007]

http://sports.nationalpost.com/2012/01/ ... -patience/

The team now bears little resemblance to the team then. Free agents have been signed and turned into draft picks so as to accelerate the asset base, prospects have been acquired and flipped and moved around, veterans have been jettisoned, and the Angels were convinced to take the vast majority of the US$86-million left on the Vernon Wells contract, along with Vernon Wells himself. Baseball people are now debating where in the top three they should rank Toronto’s farm system, and the payroll is unencumbered by dead weight. That doesn’t matter now, but it might matter later.

As well, sources indicate the Jays have doubled spending on scouting and front-office operations under Anthopoulos, and have greatly increased their spending on draft picks. Things are better. And he’s been on the job for two whole years.

None of this, of course, has produced a meaningful baseball game, which means impatience is not invalid. It’s just that the frustration is being pointed in the wrong direction.

And the Jays are nibbling. They traded for closer Sergio Santos, and signed ancient left-handed reliever Darren Oliver, and repatriated reliever Jason Frasor. Nice moves, but not game-changers. The speculation on Darvish was largely vapour, according to sources familiar with the team’s thinking — it was never a real possibility, though the organization’s policy of silence allowed the resulting chatter to raise fans’ expectations too high. That was a mistake, in terms of public relations, and that’s a part of the whole impatience narrative that has been built.

But if you want to be impatient, here’s what you need to be impatient with. Rogers Communications, the Jays owner, has clearly given this team specific payroll parameters, and they won’t move much until the revenues move first, and Anthopoulos can’t do much to control either one. All he can do is this: he can scrimp and save and wheedle his way to a team so good that when he goes to his bosses and asks for the money to make a good team a contender, he has pushed the parameters of what Rogers will give. That’s it.

And that’s the job. You want to show your impatience, write Rogers a letter telling them that their star GM deserves to exhibit the same discipline and tradecraft he has demonstrated so far, but with a bigger budget. While you’re at it, tell Anthopoulos that when he eventually asks for money, he should swing from his heels.

But don’t expect Prince Fielder, or pine over Yu Darvish. That’s not the game right now. Rogers is a big business, and while Rogers may consider baseball fans chickens, the fans — rightly, it says here — consider themselves eggs. It’s a standoff, and Alex Anthopoulos is caught in the middle of it, farming as fast as he can.

[gei]

Revenues will not increase until they field a winning team - not the other way around.

Their model right now is doomed for failure. If Rogers is the bottleneck then AA should communicate this to them.

20 years of patience is enough - this team deserves no more.

[phillipmike]

AA's timeline is when he was hired in 2009. He does not deserve the blame or fall of his predecessors. People NEED to understand that - he started in 2009 not 1993.

He started with a terrible team in 2009 and has turned it into a team on the rise. We are doing well because he does not take shortcuts or make high risk deals rather he is taking the longterm approach and making low risk deals with high rewards. So far it is paying off. Be patient and stay the course.

There will be a time when we need Rogers backing and he will get it. It is coming soon but it is not now.

[Rhettmatic]

Essentially he's saying: Blame Rogers, not AA.

Which, yeah. Obviously.

[tiger7]

20 years of patience is enough - this team deserves no more.

^This +1

[torontoaces04]

Revenues will not increase until they field a winning team - not the other way around.

Their model right now is doomed for failure. If Rogers is the bottleneck then AA should communicate this to them.

20 years of patience is enough - this team deserves no more.

BINGO!!!

[satyr9]

I think there's an interesting parallel for how to re-grow fan interest and build a winning team with the early 2000's Tigers. Detroit is a nice corollary to me for geographic proximity, similar metropolitan size, and similar recent historical peaks and valleys. For everyone clamouring for extra budget now there's also a little something in there for you.

Consider these numbers:
att. yr.att sal.
18.8k 1.50m 55.0m
16.9k 1.37m 49.2m
23.7k 1.92m 46.8m
25.0k 2.02m 69.1m
32.0k 2.59m 82.6m

This is the bottoming out of the Tigers organization and their resurgence for the 2002-2006 seasons. The 2003 season is the absolute basement. It's the year they almost lost 120 games. While the Jays never fell so far in the standings, I think it's actually a fairly accurate representation of fan support and enthusiasm near the end of JP's tenure. The prevailing sentiment of the time being that Jays are hopeless and will never compete for the playoffs ever again. The fact they're always between 75-85 wins doesn't mean things feel any less hopeless than they did for the Tigers 100+ loss seasons.

So here's 2009-2011 in Toronto:

23.1k 1.87m 80.5m
18.4k 1.49m 78.7m
22.4k 1.82m 70.5m

So here. like 02-04 for the Tigers, the overall attendance valley has hopefully come and gone, even though the salaries are still headed south. The transition to be hoped for is getting closer to 2m and then breaking through into real competition and higher payrolls. Detroit after the 5 years I showed above spent 589m over the next 5 years on payroll and drew almost 14m over that stretch.

Now, there are a million ways to try and compare building processes, but if you're interested just mess around yourself. I did it, but it's not really worth repeating, 'cause it's all just my own speculation and drawing arbitrary x player = y player stuff.

The only part I will point out is the spending the Tigers did on the way back up. 2004's attendance figures are helped by the Pudge Rodriguez signing even though the overall salary went down (they were moving vet SPs out for young controllable ones at this point). No matter what, I don't think you can give Pudge more credit for the Tigers than Bautista for the Jays (BTW, it's pretty sick that less than 1.5m fans went to the park the year he broke our HR record).

Next however, the equivalent of this offseason, if 2009 is the Jays version of 2002, featured a monstrous signing for the Tigers when they grabbed Ordonez from the White Sox and gave him something like 6/90. Despite this the attendance barely rose and the record was only improved by a single game. Then in 2006, they went with smaller FA signings for K.Rogers and T.Jones and a deadline deal for S.Casey. That does leave out that 2006 was Verlander's rookie year, which is a pretty important part of their resurgence. Still, they made some shrewd deals, got some incredibly important pieces from internal development and needed a couple well-placed and high profile signings to both improve the club and drive fan interest.

This isn't meant to push a particular agenda. I think, if you're inclined, you can make the case you grab the Magglio when you can (Fielder being the obvious option for the Jays this offseason), or you can point to his inability to put the team over the hump by himself and look at waiting for prospect development and bargain hunting in the FA market. Realistically, it probably requires a bit of both.

I don't really know that all this means much of anything, but personally I think how the Tigers drew back the fans and competed is a model I'd be more than happy to try and replicate.

[ahollz]

People should go to baseball games because they genuinely like the sport, not because "their" team is winning. Bandwagon/fickle fans are deplorable.

[satyr9]

People should go to baseball games because they genuinely like the sport, not because "their" team is winning. Bandwagon/fickle fans are deplorable.

I simply don't agree. It's just personal taste. There's no obligation to support a sports franchise, just go when you want, watch when you want, etc...

I'd be happier if people who knew themselves to be only casually interested in things admitted as much when discussing a subject (and that relates far beyond sports), but I don't begrudge anyone who gets bored or disinterested in a losing team.

[LBJSeizedMyID]

That's fine and dandy, but to proclaim that this year's team is not an exciting team is just ludicrous. Which I think more than enough people seem to be implying.

[gei]

They are exciting because of their potential to be a good team so long as ownership is committed to making them a good team.

Since we know ownership is not, we know in advance that potential is wasted, hence making things very un-exciting.

[Parataxis]

People should go to baseball games because they genuinely like the sport, not because "their" team is winning. Bandwagon/fickle fans are deplorable.

If this was 1995, you'd have an excellent point.