Alex Anthopoulos can pinpoint the exact moment his mindset as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays changed.
The instant when the "light bulb went off" came during a conversation with Cincinnati Reds GM Walt Jocketty during spring training in March.
Anthopoulos was digesting the decision to give Cuban shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria US$10 million over four years. Weeks earlier, Jocketty had outbid Anthopoulos for another Cuban, left-hander Aroldis Chapman, and praised him for accepting the risk in signing Hechavarria.
"He said, 'That's how you're going to get better, you're going to get better if you take a shot, you're going to have to take a shot at times,'" Anthopoulos recalled during a recent interview.
"I looked back at my off-season, trade talks, dialogue ... and I just found myself being so much more conservative than I needed to be or wanted to be."
The main take-away for Anthopoulos as he heads into his second off-season as GM is that while risk shouldn't be embraced recklessly, it's OK to swing and miss once in a while if the potential reward is worthwhile.
"We're going to have take chances at times and make moves that may open us for criticism, but we also have to look at the upside of the moves. They may backfire and may not work, but if they hit, we're going to do really well.
"And that's how we're going to get better."
He expects to be more active on the trade front than in free agency, and feels the Blue Jays farm system is deep enough now that he can deal prospects for big-league help.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/baseball/ ... n-approach
Hes repeatedly talked about how they have a lot of prospects that they can trade away for players. So we re probably going to see 3-4 trades of high value guys. This board freaked when Brett Wallace was traded away. Its nice to see trades. Not many GM's do them anymore. We re sort of lucky that all 3 GM's of our big league teams like trades.
