Rate Shatkins at the mid-way mark of 2018

[dagger]

You want more threads? Okay, here's a thread.

We're effectively two seasons and a half into Shatkins' tenure, since they only took real control after the 2015 season when AA departed. They have had one season of playoff (2016), a season of disappointment (2017) and a half season of fairly predictable mediocrity. Shapiro has made it a point to goose revenues - his mistake in my opinion was raising ticket prices, often significantly, last winter when he didn't have a product worth up-pricing and wasn't going to have one this season to merit such increases. From a trade perspective, they have had some good moves though nothing like a Donaldson acquisition (Grichuk for Woodman and Liriano for Hernandez stand out), some errors of omission and commission (not trading best assets a year ago, or during the last off-season), doing better possibly on the Pearce trade than on Happ. They have not dealt a major league player under control. So far, Stroman, Sanchez, Pillar, etc haven't been the subject of serious trade rumours.

Woodman aside, they seem to be doing well with drafting and international signings. The farm system is among the best, a rebuild in itself. While Guerrero, Borucki, Jansen and Alford were AA signings or draftees, Shatkins drafted Bichette, Pearson and Groshans and several more promising players, and signed Lourdes Gourriel Jr to what could prove to be a bargain. On free agency, they lost Edwin Encarnacion through a misreading of the market by both sides, and replaced him with Kendrys Morales, a significant setback, though for less money and fewer years. Luke Maile was a nice pickup. Otherwise, they have moved towards the kind of modest short term commitments you'd expect at the front end of a rebuild (though they haven't explicitly said that's what they are doing.)

The mood in the city is snarky towards them (Rogers media types aside). Shatkins doesn't have a lot of friends in the media. Some, like Griffin and Blair, are suggesting 2019 is a write-off but that Shatkins will aim for a return to contention in 2020. That seems a little tooambitious. I'd look at 2021 or 2022 for a return to contention, though there should be improvement starting in 2020. Then there are reporters who hate Stakins. Rosie DiMammo of The Star clearly despises them. She hasn't gotten over AA's departure, and tends to blame Shatkins for the descent of the team into crapitude. She doesn't much care to mention the role of ownership in perhaps flogging a dead horse the past two years.

Overall, I'm moderately optimistic and modestly complementary to Shatkins. The most important contribution they may have made is to overhaul player development along with scouting. The Jays simply haven't brought as many draftees to the majors, and that stretches back to regimes before AA. The trend in baseball, for payroll management, is to build organically, and bringing in guys like Cherrington could be instrumental in making the Jays a first-rate talent production system which can lead to sustained success, not just the kind of small window AA opened by trading so many projects in 2014 and 2015.

[Natural11]

Overall I'm happy with the job they've done. Based on what we know about them, I think it's clear that they are operating under the boundaries which Rogers have established. If we as fans knew this season was a wash, you can be sure they did too, but trading guys like Donaldson in the offseason was likely projected to have a negative impact on ticket sales and ratings. I would imagine that operating under the reigns of a publicly traded company adds some hurdles they wouldn't face under a private owner.

I would have preferred pitching talent for Happ, but only they know what was on the market. Otherwise, the 2018 Jays are a bad team with 1 fringe all-star, so I wasn't expecting a huge haul from our trade deadline movement.

In the meantime, they've done what they can to shop at the dollar store and avoid any big/long contracts which will be pointless during this rebuild process. They're probably hoping for the same thing we are; that guys like Vlad, Bichette, Biggio, Gurriel, Jansen, etc. turn into good major league players who we can build a core around. Hopefully this will align with some of our veterans coming off the books, and if fan interest returns, Rogers can be brought on board to return the payroll to playoff tier.

[SharoneWright]

I take this board at it's word (that's my first mistake.., but can someone give the the quote where Rogers tied Shatkins' hands in terms of not selling off our veterans (including Donaldson) last offseason. People have alluded to something said by someone, but I guess I forget. Because to me, that's the whole enchilada. If Shatkins had the leeway to start the rebuild sooner, but didn't, then it's a fail.

[phillipmike]

Of what they can control.

A for staffing, like keeping Gibby around. Sanders, Kim and Cherington were fantastic hires.

A for drafting and IFA signings. Rebuilt the farm very well so far. Getting at least one stud or stud in the making prospect every year.

B for trades. Wish we could have got more for Happ and Osuna (but understand the circumstances). Lost on the Chavez trade. But won or got value back on everything else; Maile, Diaz, Grichuk, Liriano, Smith, Oh, Benoit, Grilli etc.

Solid waiver and rule 5 claims. Biagini, Gaviglio, Leone etc.

D for free agent signings. Outside of Happ, Smoak, Smith, Oh and the first Estrada signing they have left something to be desired. Though I liked all their signings but they didn't turn out.

Good thing about what they lost is the losses were small. Free agent signings were short term and the trades were low risk high reward.

I'm optimistic. Great farm, no long term deals, trades well and great eye for talent. They need all this in this division.

[Tanner]

I don’t get the argument that Shapiro could have convinced Rogers to rebuild sooner. You think after 2 straight ALCS appearances and a massive rise in attendance/revenue/interest that a publicly traded company would listen to anyone who says “we need to trade everyone away which will cause short term revenue loss with no guarantee we will be good again any time soon”? Shapiro works for Rogers. Not the other way around.

He can sell a short term rebuild now because attendance has plummeted but two years ago or even a year ago when they surpassed 3 million there’s no way Rogers was going to rebuild.

As far as ranking them, they came in with a one year window and succeeded in taking advantage of it. The last two years and 2019 will be transition years. The system is top 5 in baseball and I think their big league moves still have upside (Grichuk, Diaz, Drury, etc). I’m not going to fault them for things out of their control.

[Lateral Quicks]

They get high marks for the rapid turnaround of the minor league system. It's not just a Vladdy and Bichette show. The Groshans pick from this year's draft in particular is proving to be quite the coup.

They get poor marks for the roster management of the big league team, which has been a patchwork mess all season. They've yanked guys around too much without giving them a fair shot (for example, Dwight Smith). They've promoted guys that had no business getting the call (for example, Anthony Alford). They've gone outside the organization to get scrubs (for example, Gio Urshela), when we arguably already had better veteran/org players in our system. It's fair to say injuries have forced their hand with the volume of necessary roster moves, but it's also fair to say those moves could have been a lot better.

Given the quality of pieces going out, the trades have been fine. The Osuna trade, given the circumstances, was better than fine. They've also had other nice wins like the Liriano trades. Free agency has been more of a mixed bag. Sure they blew it on Morales, but they've done well with they're bullpen signings.

Most wish they'd started rebuilding at last year's trade deadline, and if Rogers wasn't tying their hands then they deserve a lot of criticism. But if Rogers has tied their hands, then they've done just about as well as they could. We have a nice young core - albeit smaller than we'd like - coming up, and no major contracts on the books beyond Tulo in 2020. It's still looking like a solid 2 years in the wilderness though (not including this year).

[bluerap23]

We won't be able to properly evaluate them for 5 more years.

[Ado05]

some errors of omission and commission (not trading best assets a year ago, or during the last off-season)

I really believe that Rogers didnt allow them or they would've done it.

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/shapiro-blue-jays-hit-reset-year-ago-not-fans/sn-amp/

I feel like his quote in there was a shot to ownership.

[Schad]

I'll give them a B/B-. Making the playoffs in their first season was near-miraculous given the holes that needed to be filled. Prospect depth has improved markedly, if heavily skewed toward position players.

And while I don't believe that they're the driving force behind our attempts to go for it, I still have to mark them down for it. As the recently-hired head of baseball ops, part of your job is to convince the beancounters that doing things for sound baseball reasons will also be financially beneficial. After years of being exceedingly cheap when it came to player development, AA was able to convince Rogers to allow him to invest heavily in the scouting department, to spend big in the draft, and to allocate resources to international free agency. Shapiro was either unwilling to spend -- or came up short in spending -- his own political capital to have a hand in the club's direction.

[zilby]

C from me.

Tbh, I'm not overly impressed with Shatkins, I think they mismanaged our timelines and their inability to execute a proper rebuild last season has really hurt the team now. I've barely watched any baseball this year because my interest in the Jays completely fell off, and them attempting to sell a contender this season was nothing more than trying to pull the wool over fans. I don't appreciate that as a fan of the organization, and that made me lose a lot of my confidence in them.

Trades: The trades to acquire Liriano and then the trading of Liriano are both amazing in my books. We should have been making more of these kinds of trades IMO, since we're an org with a lot of money and not a lot of talent, where we pay more in exchange for a better prospect return. Everything else has not been good. Didn't like the Happ trade at all, and think accepting an MLB player instead of prospect package was letting the Yankees off the hook big time, considering Drury had no place on their team and he doesn't fit our timelines at all. Trading Ben Revere for Storen was a big mistake and left a big hole on our team in 2016 with no true leadoff guy. Osuna trade is still TBD depending on what the return is when/if we trade Giles, but Perez is an okay prospect and the other is a write-off to me. Diaz and Grichuk didn't cost much, but they've both been underwhelming most of the year anyway.

Free Agency: Happ signing was solid value for what it was. Morales signing was the absolute worst. Pearce was a redundant signing at the time, and it wound up being redundant. Pretty much everything else was a 1-2 year deal, no harm.

Prospects/Drafting: Their style is high-floor players, but obviously this is all TBD until we actually see any of them play a major league game. I don't know where our future pitching prospects are, since we seem to be mostly drafting infield position players, but there's time to make that happen, I suppose.

Management: This is where they lose pretty much all their points for me. We've regressed every single season since 2015 to this point, yet they've tried to say we're a contender in each of the three seasons despite that. The mishandling of the Edwin situation was a massive blunder, and was telling to me that we weren't terribly interested in having a contending team. Bringing back Bautista for the money they did when he was clearly done after 2016 killed our chances of actually having a good outfield. Those two alone is 2 of 9 lineup spots we could've had big improvements on, and we wound up with two negative WAR players.They've half-assed their team building at the major league level for the past two years to put butts in seats, and if they had a mandate from Rogers to win/make money, they certainly didn't try very hard at it, given the **** they trotted out there. Rebuild should have started midway through 2017, end of 2017 at the absolute latest when value was at its highest on Stroman, Donaldson, Happ, Travis, Smoak, Pillar, Loup and others. They didn't, and now value on all 7 of those guys is incredibly low. There seems to never have been a concrete plan put into place with the two of them, and there's essentially no plan for 2019/2020 when Vlad and Bo are ready to enter the league. They absolutely deserve the blame for mismanaging the timeline, because there's been no plan for two year and may completely botch our chance to return to relevance by not supporting our young talent with solid depth.

Lots to be desired from them. Will be an interesting offseason for this team, to say the least. For now, they've killed my interest as a fan of the team, which is a shame because it's been a great year for the MLB as a whole. I can't believe in a management team that thinks the fans are stupid and constantly tries to outsmart themselves, and as of now I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel.

[Schad]

Have to disagree on a couple things. We haven't really been drafting high-floor, with a few exceptions; even our college picks have tended to be guys with oodles of power and major bust potential given their contact woes. We have a tonne of potential 25-30 HR hitters at high-value defensive positions.

I'm also not sure that Encarnacion was a mistake, still. Cheap though his deal felt, he hasn't earned his keep to date, and he's either owed $25m/1 or $55m/2 after this year.

[zilby]

Have to disagree on a couple things. We haven't really been drafting high-floor, with a few exceptions; even our college picks have tended to be guys with oodles of power and major bust potential given their contact woes. We have a tonne of potential 25-30 HR hitters at high-value defensive positions.

I will cede this point to you, given it's quite likely you know the field of prospects better than most. I think the 2017 draft was much better than 2016, so I may have been leaning on that more, but again, I know better than to go against your judgment here.

I'm also not sure that Encarnacion was a mistake, still. Cheap though his deal felt, he hasn't earned his keep to date, and he's either owed $25m/1 or $55m/2 after this year.

It's part of the point, but not all of it. The mistake was the front office assuming they could replace Edwin's production with Morales at a fraction of the cost based on his stats from other ballparks, and practically waving Edwin out as soon as they could. Us rushing into giving Morales that contract and not allowing the other talks to play out was extremely shortsighted, and I'm not sure what the play was there other than Shatkins trying to outsmart themselves for the sake of it. You either sign the players needed to contend or you go into a rebuild, but you don't half-ass it, whatever it is! That's how you end up being perpetually mediocre, as we have been the past two years.

Will he be a mistake going into next year? Maybe, but if the team were serious about contending in 2017, and even this year, it wouldn't have been at all. His 2017 is statistically very similar to his All-Star 2016 year offensively, and he was still a 2.8 WAR player anyhow. Morales and Bautista were worth a combined -1.9 WAR between the two of them. This year, the numbers are slightly down, but he's still been a net positive player for Cleveland and could probably be traded if we covered enough cost for something valuable. Had we been serious about "going for it" the past two years, we likely would have brought back Edwin and replaced Bautista with a better OF. They did neither of those things, and the miserable season that was last year was the result, even with the second Wild Card winning only 85 games (compared to 89 the year before).

[Tanner]

I don’t get how you can blame the team’s declining W/L on the front office. Their moves in 2016 are the reason we even made the playoffs that year (Happ, Estrada, Liriano, Benoit, etc) and the team was always going to regress after that. Trying to cling to a WC spot since then was a mandate from ownership, not Shapiro. Look at how many times he rebuilt in Cleveland. You think he’s oblivious to where the team is? There was a window to sneak into a 2nd WC the last two years and that meant more to Rogers than a rebuild would have. Still, they have rebuilt in the background.

The Jays signed Morales because in 2016 he was top 2% in exit velocity, top 4% in xba, top 3% in xslg, top 4% in xwobacon, and top 2% in hard hit%. In other words he was putting up an elite statcast batting profile but was in a stadium that was not appropriate for that type of player. He’s maintained his great statcast numbers in Toronto (he’s actually better in practically every category this season than in his 2015 season) but it hasn’t manifested into better traditional numbers.

I don’t get this idea that Morales was signed to fool fans into thinking they signed an Edwin replacement. They clearly value hard contact and exit velocity and launch angle, etc, etc. It worked with Smoak, it didn’t work with Morales. Win some, lose some.

They only signed Bautista because no other team was willing to lose a pick to sign him. The only reason to let Jose go was to get a comp pick. If no team was signing him, then no comp pick. The Jays had a hole in the OF and weren’t going to get an extra pick for Jose anyway, so why was signing him to essentially a one year deal a bad thing?

[I_Like_Dirt]

I give them a solid B/B+ or something of that variety. To get an A they'd need to convince Rogers to make the smart move rather than trying to peddle mirages in the short term. Aside from that, though, there isn't too much to complain about. Yeah, minor league pitchers, but I think that's a little overblown as no farm system is perfect and the Jays are pretty stacked at SS and catcher of all places, and the pitching seems to be coming slowly, too.

[-MetA4-]

It's part of the point, but not all of it. The mistake was the front office assuming they could replace Edwin's production with Morales at a fraction of the cost based on his stats from other ballparks, and practically waving Edwin out as soon as they could.

Except that it wasn't replacing Encarnacion with Morales, it was replacing Encarnacion with Morales PLUS obtaining a 1st round pick which is kind of a big part of that move that gets omitted. I was very vocal at the time about them clearly valuing the draft pick over Encarnacion, which is why they were so quick to send him out without giving him much chance to "reconsider" his way back onto the team. Despite what they were saying, I don't think that they had any intention of bringing him back unless it was an extremely team-friendly deal, which they knew he'd decline anyway. Obtaining extra 1st round picks under the new CBA is not easy, and it seemed blatantly obvious to me that a new management team that needed to rebuild the system would gladly trade a declining 34+ year old DH for a 1st round pick. Banking on Morales was just the next best choice from a replacement standpoint, I don't think anyone actually thought that Morales would be as good as Encarnacion. The move first-and-foremost was to take the draft pick, and frankly, I'm kind of flabbergasted that this still gets brought up as some "massive fail" given what we know now. Morales' contract is inconsequential, and whatever production Encarnacion would have brought last season in Morales' horrific year, it wouldn't have made ANY difference on a team that was nowhere near making the playoffs. Is that analyzing in hindsight? Sure, but it seems to me like everything played out exactly like they thought it would.

You are completely glossing over Encarnacion's decline BTW. His wRC+ is 20 points lower this season than it was last year. He is a $20 million dollar 0.7 WAR DH that is barely hitting better than Morales. He was worth 2.5 WAR last season which was 1.3 WAR lower than his final season in Toronto. His contract is OKAY on a team like Cleveland which is a clear World Series contender. On a team like us which was at best a long-shot contender? Nate Pearson is worth much more, which was kind of the whole point of that move. And no, trading Encarnacion and eating salary would not bring a prospect back anywhere near Pearson.

You either sign the players needed to contend or you go into a rebuild, but you don't half-ass it, whatever it is! That's how you end up being perpetually mediocre, as we have been the past two years.

This is correct, in a bubble, but it should be very obvious that we were in a very uniquely precarious position which is why they did what they did. Namely, sandbagging that they were still "in contention" when they knew full well that they were heading to rebuild all the while making moves that really didn't push the team over the top. Unfortunately, real life baseball isn't played like a video game, and I fully believe that there was a Rogers-mandated initiative to milk the goodwill for as long as possible. The other angle that rarely gets mentioned is how the unfathomably poorly received transition away from Anthopoulos plays into ownership direction. Do you really believe that Rogers, already facing scrutiny for "pushing out" the Crown Prince, would allow the now-hated new management team to immediately blow up the team's first playoff roster in ~30 years? Even looking past ticket sales/revenue, the optics of shredding AA's roster would have been terrible. "Baseball people" don't really care about **** like that, but the media-company which owns the team, that also broadcasts the games, certainly does.

[Skin Blues]

Unfortunately, real life baseball isn't played like a video game, and I fully believe that there was a Rogers-mandated initiative to milk the goodwill for as long as possible. The other angle that rarely gets mentioned is how the unfathomably poorly received transition away from Anthopoulos plays into ownership direction. Do you really believe that Rogers, already facing scrutiny for "pushing out" the Crown Prince, would allow the now-hated new management team to immediately blow up the team's first playoff roster in ~30 years? Even looking past ticket sales/revenue, the optics of shredding AA's roster would have been terrible. "Baseball people" don't really care about **** like that, but the media-company which owns the team, that also broadcasts the games, certainly does.

Yes I believe they would have, and they should have, allowed the now-hated new management team to tear it down, if they thought that was the ebst course of action. The fans disappeared anyway, and the only thing anybody cares about nowadays is what prospects are on the horizon. The team probably actually thought they had a chance to compete this season, as the A's and Mariners have done, despite being a bubble team and not a clear runaway contender. It was a gamble, and one that failed, but I don't think Rogers is as stupid as most people do. I'm sure they know, as almost everybody does, that winning games will sell tickets and TV ads, as opposed to the names on the jerseys.

[Trilogy]

Competing in 2017 after two straight ALCS appearances is fine and I don't think anyone really faults them for that. But after an awful 2017 with an aging roster this year was pretty damn obvious to flip the switch to a rebuild.

I'm sure there was a ton of pressure from ownership to stay competitive but as Schad alludes to part of their job is to convince ownership of what the right thing to do is while taking the finances into account. Even if they believed it internally they weren't able to get that done and it's a negative mark.

They've been generally fine so far though. But this burning of assets in 2018 is going to hurt going forward. Margin for error has reduced a fair bit for the next cycle.

[Schad]

Yes I believe they would have, and they should have, allowed the now-hated new management team to tear it down, if they thought that was the ebst course of action. The fans disappeared anyway, and the only thing anybody cares about nowadays is what prospects are on the horizon. The team probably actually thought they had a chance to compete this season, as the A's and Mariners have done, despite being a bubble team and not a clear runaway contender. It was a gamble, and one that failed, but I don't think Rogers is as stupid as most people do. I'm sure they know, as almost everybody does, that winning games will sell tickets and TV ads, as opposed to the names on the jerseys.

I don't think that anyone expected that they'd be blowing things up immediately following 2015, or even 2016. But during/after 2017, when our window abruptly closed, is a different story.

Yeah, I think that they believed that they had a chance to be there or thereabouts, but given our position and the reality that we knew our run (such as it was after 2017) had a maximum of one more year in it, on baseball grounds alone that's not a very good decision.

[Tanner]

I think the only real missed opportunity that doesn’t involve hindsight is Osuna. If it’s true that Houston made a better offer last trade deadline then it should have been done. Relievers are so fragile that even if the Jays wanted to go for it in 2018 they could have still traded Osuna and spent the saved money on replacements in the winter time. Other than that though, I don’t blame them for holding on to Happ and JD and seeing what the team could do. One, they likely had no choice, and two, even one year rentals were not going for much.

[Scott Hall]

I'll always blame and point the fingers towards Rogers first and they walked into a tough situation
with that said...

Thumbs down for how they handled the Josh Donaldson situation he had to be traded last offseason and
also thumbs down for the Osuna situation and trading him with his value at it's absolute lowest. These were
our 2 biggest assets on the big league roster.

As for the prospects they've brought in to early to tell so TBD