The Shapiro & Rogers Megathread

[fmradioguy]

The first three years of his tenure as GM were about building up the farm system. Then after the Mets/Florida trades, he rebuilt it again.

No, he didn't. Stop spreading this absurdly inaccurate LIE.

Firstly, developing your remaining players is part of rebuilding a farm system after trading away many of your top tier prospects.

Secondly, Jacob Brentz, Nick Wells, Kendall Graveman, Matt Boyd, Rob Rassmussen , Franklin Barreto and Jeff Hoffman were all used to acquire parts for the Jays championship team. All were acquired AFTER 2012.

Also drafted, signed or acquired after 2012: Clinton Hollon, Conner Greene, Rowdy Tellez, Max Pentecost, Sean Reid Folley, Lane Thomas, Vlad Guerrero, Justin Maese and Jon Harris and several other prospects that are currently at the low levels.

[fmradioguy]

He did build 4 90+ win teams over his tenure as GM there (since 2001--14 years), something the Blue Jays only did once (last year) over that time span.

Yes. But in those 14 seasons, only 5 times did he build a team with a winning record. And remember, we're talking about an historically weak division.

[Randle McMurphy]

There are a few things that have become clear to me about this entire ridiculous saga.

1.Ed Rogers completely butchered the PR side of the Shapiro hire/AA departure. That was obvious at the time, but I didn't foresee either quite the extent or duration of this (and I'm not sure how to account for that other a lot more people being strongly attached to AA that I thought). Although, outside of going through the process in the offseason, there's really not all that much Ed could have done differently. He made an extravagant 5 year/10M offer and AA still declined it.

2. This fanbase was completely ill-prepared for the consequences/after-effects of the 2015 season (and the bat**** crazy Price trade that AA made on July 30). Those trade deadline acquisitions created an environment in which anything less than signing/trading for an elite player (whatever the cost) this offseason was going to be a disappointment. The Jays have actually had a more busy and productive offseason than quite a few in the AA era, but it seems many have either forgotten that or don't care. I'm also still not sure where anybody got the idea that Price actually had a chance of re-signing here, but the media didn't help any in that regard (see Tim/Sid taking a hour to interpret what a Price rumour tweet meant).

3. After years of inspiring a lot of anger and disgust from his failed Marlins/Dickey trades and inability to get this team in the playoffs, AA has reached godlike status this offseason. He's even become somewhat of a martyr by leaving this organization. As far as his reputation goes, he truly picked the perfect time to walk away. The guy's a hero in the minds of the fans. Considering he did actually get this team in the playoffs for the first team in two decades, I don't know, maybe he should be.

4. Shapiro has entered a virtual no-win situation. He's already more hated than JP Ricciardi ever was (both considered slimy American interlopers to this Canadian franchise) and he hasn't even done anything of real substance (or anything that AA likely wouldn't have done himself, considering Happ, Chavez, and Estrada were all guys that AA liked). It really wasn't going to matter whether he used the Happ money on somebody a bit better/pricier like Chen or Iwakuma instead. If the Jays don't do better than they did last year (which is unlikely), he will be perceived as a failure. Ridiculous, yes, but there's not a hell of a lot he can do about that. He's not been given a fair chance here and perhaps never will get one.

[Schad]

The first three years of his tenure as GM were about building up the farm system. Then after the Mets/Florida trades, he rebuilt it again.

No, he didn't. Stop spreading this absurdly inaccurate LIE.

We didn't "rebuild" anything. Literally all of the major prospects that "rose up" after the Mets/Florida trades (except for Jeff Hoffman) were already in the system PRIOR to either of those two trades being made. Go look it up. Even Anthony Alford who just broke out this past year was drafted and signed prior to either of those two trades being made. Those players were all already in the system, they just ended up maturing into top prospects themselves, so how exactly did he "rebuild" the system? The most important takeaway is that almost all of those players were acquired during the same short time-frame wherein we were able to exploit MLB rules to acquire a chest full of super-talented prospects through draft-pick hoarding and penalty-free international spending. The problem is that those loop-holes have since been closed and further restocking of the system will be infinitely more difficult. Look no further than our most recent draft haul which looks painfully mediocre.

Bingo. This is what the 'sure, we traded the farm, but we'll have it all back in a couple years' crowd has hand-waved away from the start...AA did such a fantastic job of bending the rules to rebuild the system that they changed the rules. We had 7 of the top 80 picks in 2010. 7 of the top 78 in 2011. 6 of the top 81 in 2012. Subtract one pick as it was compensation for Beede and you're still left with 19 picks in the highest echelons of those three drafts. We whiffed on a lot of those, as any team would, but good drafting and a absurdly high pick rate will get you a long way.

Now, imagine we didn't have the bonus picks. Here are the players taken with only the allotment we began with (and the aforementioned compensation for Beede):

2010: We draft Deck McGuire, Griffin Murphy and Chris Hawkins with our top three picks.
2011: We draft Tyler Beede (unsigned), Jeremy Gabryszwski and John Stilson with our top three.
2012: We draft DJ Davis, Marcus Stroman, Chase De Jong and Anthony Alford in the top three rounds.

Still some good talent in 2012, but that's an awfully different farm system.

[The_Hater]

There are a few things that have become clear to me about this entire ridiculous saga.

1.Ed Rogers completely butchered the PR side of the Shapiro hire/AA departure. That was obvious at the time, but I didn't foresee either quite the extent or duration of this (and I'm not sure how to account for that other a lot more people being strongly attached to AA that I thought). Although, outside of going through the process in the offseason, there's really not all that much Ed could have done differently. He made an extravagant 5 year/10M offer and AA still declined it.

2. This fanbase was completely ill-prepared for the consequences/after-effects of the 2015 season (and the bat**** crazy Price trade that AA made on July 30). Those trade deadline acquisitions created an environment in which anything less than signing/trading for an elite player (whatever the cost) this offseason was going to be a disappointment. The Jays have actually had a more busy and productive offseason than quite a few in the AA era, but it seems many have either forgotten that or don't care. I'm also still not sure where anybody got the idea that Price actually had a chance of re-signing here, but the media didn't help any in that regard (see Tim/Sid taking a hour to interpret what a Price rumour tweet meant).

3. After years of inspiring a lot of anger and disgust from his failed Marlins/Dickey trades and inability to get this team in the playoffs, AA has reached godlike status this offseason. He's even become somewhat of a martyr by leaving this organization. As far as his reputation goes, he truly picked the perfect time to walk away. The guy's a hero in the minds of the fans. Considering he did actually get this team in the playoffs for the first team in two decades, I don't know, maybe he should be.

4. Shapiro has entered a virtual no-win situation. He's already more hated than JP Ricciardi ever was (both considered slimy American interlopers to this Canadian franchise) and he hasn't even done anything of real substance (or anything that AA likely wouldn't have done himself, considering Happ, Chavez, and Estrada were all guys that AA liked). It really wasn't going to matter whether he used the Happ money on somebody a bit better/pricier like Chen or Iwakuma instead. If the Jays don't do better than they did last year (which is unlikely), he will be perceived as a failure. Ridiculous, yes, but there's not a hell of a lot he can do about that. He's not been given a fair chance here and perhaps never will get one.

Everything is summed up nicely here MT.

I wonder if Shapiro realizes the degree of PR nightmare of which he's now stuck in the middle? Obviously at the time he was hired, AA was still here with the expectation that he'd sign an extension and the fanbase wasn't yet amped up to 1000% due the wild ride through September and the playoffs.

But you can also tell the fans that didn't really follow the team until some point in 2015, they're the ones that have put AA on a pedestal because he was a pretty middling GM before that. (I suspect that I liked AA better than 90% of the fanbase prior to the past season).

Like you said, he couldn't have picked a better time to leave. Shapiro is now in a no-win situation too. If the Jays have success and even win the World Series during the next couple of years, those will be AA's teams with Shapiro just along for the ride. Even if Happ, Chavez and whoever else is added to the roster going forward exceed all expectations. And if they fall, that will be Shaprio's fault for failing to sustain what AA had built.

[changes]

Shapiro is better off focusing on improving his terribly mediocre run in cleveland, instead of nonsense like pr.

*Too lazy to type but, insert some more passive aggressive trash here about being a true fan, time said fan has followed the team, and self rating one's own baseball knowledge.

[-MetA4-]

Firstly, developing your remaining players is part of rebuilding a farm system after trading away many of your top tier prospects.

You can't develop something that isn't there already. "Rebuilding" implies that we went out and replaced all those guys we traded away, which really wasn't the case at all...yet this is the exact story that people are pushing left and right.

Secondly, Jacob Brentz, Nick Wells, Kendall Graveman, Matt Boyd, Rob Rassmussen , Franklin Barreto and Jeff Hoffman were all used to acquire parts for the Jays championship team. All were acquired AFTER 2012.

Franklin Barreto was signed in July 2012 and the Marlins trade didn't happen until late November of that same year. Hoffman I already mentioned, as he's pretty much the only exception to what I'm referencing (TOP prospects). The other guys you just mentioned were literally all complementary pieces in moves...NONE were "instrumental" in making any serious acquisition. Wells and Brentz together only got us a few months of a "pretty good" RENTAL reliever. Graveman and Boyd were literally the third pieces in their respective trades: every minor league system in the league has guys like that.

Also drafted, signed or acquired after 2012: Clinton Hollon, Conner Greene, Rowdy Tellez, Max Pentecost, Sean Reid Folley, Lane Thomas, Vlad Guerrero, Justin Maese and Jon Harris and several other prospects that are currently at the low levels.

Almost every team in the league can put a list like this together "since 2012". Most of the guys you just mentioned are giant question marks even if they present some excitement, and at this point hardly compare to what we traded away. I mean...Max Pentecost? Really? He's got ~100 career at bats and is coming off his dozenth surgical procedure. Lets see him actually do something before we start parading him around. Jon Harris? Passed up by every other team and then stunk it up in Rookie ball. The reality is that our system is now in the bottom half of the league, and while there are some really young potential pieces in there, we're not going to have a million compensation picks to go out and "rebuild" with like we did before.

[-MetA4-]

For me, there's nothing more overrated than a MLB prospect. The chances of these prospects becoming great players is low. They should be used to acquire proven controllable talent.

LOL.

~80% of the teams that made the Playoffs this past year were home-grown. 3 of the "Final 4" were literally carried by home-grown "top prospects" (Cubs, Mets, Royals).

Ironically, all of those teams have brighter future outlooks than we do. Is that surprising? What would you prefer; your best players being in their 20's making next to nothing, or your best players being 32-33+ years old and making tens of millions of dollars while realistically declining on a year-to-year basis?

[polo007]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/LottOnBaseball/status/677575585888133122[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/LottOnBaseball/status/677575720835633154[/tweet]
[tweet]https://twitter.com/LottOnBaseball/status/677575811977904129[/tweet]

[OakleyDokely]

For me, there's nothing more overrated than a MLB prospect. The chances of these prospects becoming great players is low. They should be used to acquire proven controllable talent.

LOL.

~80% of the teams that made the Playoffs this past year were home-grown. 3 of the "Final 4" were literally carried by home-grown "top prospects" (Cubs, Mets, Royals).

Ironically, all of those teams have brighter future outlooks than we do. Is that surprising? What would you prefer; your best players being in their 20's making next to nothing, or your best players being 32-33+ years old and making tens of millions of dollars while realistically declining on a year-to-year basis?

LOL.

The Jays had/have homegrown players as well. The only "old" core players the Jays have are Joey and EE and the guys Shapiro just signed - Dickey/Estrada/Happ.

KC also TRADED prospects at the deadline to get a FA to be in Cueto. When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

[Santoki]

Oh boy now Shapiro will get to take the brunt of the grass thing that was realistically not happening any time soon. Beeston has been pushing back that date with no actual updates,outside of the University of Guelph commencing research on what kinds of grass could work, for at least a few years.

Good luck with that one, Mark. He really should have kept putting it off but at least he was honest about it not happening.

[The_Hater]

When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

Of course they do. But if the well runs dry, then one season later you're stuck trying to put 4/5's of a starting pitching staff together through much more expensive free agents without ownership increasing the budget much to help with that. Don't make the Price trade and the Jays would have Norris and Boyd as rotation pieces for next season AND have had a lot more free-agent money to possibly make a run at a stud FA pitcher rather than 3 guys in the $10-12 million range.

AS for Cueto, KC didn't even try to re-sign him after they gave up that ransom of prospects for him. WTF!?!?!

[OakleyDokely]

When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

Of course they do. But if the well runs dry, then one season later you're stuck trying to put 4/5's of a starting pitching staff together through much more expensive free agents without ownership increasing the budget much to help with that. Don't make the Price trade and the Jays would have Norris and Boyd as rotation pieces for next season AND have had a lot more free-agent money to possibly make a run at a stud FA pitcher rather than 3 guys in the $10-12 million range.

AS for Cueto, KC didn't even try to re-sign him after they gave up that ransom of prospects for him. WTF!?!?!

Don't make Price trade, maybe they don't win the division and they are in a one game playoff instead.

[-MetA4-]

LOL.

The Jays had/have homegrown players as well. The only "old" core players the Jays have are Joey and EE and the guys Shapiro just signed - Dickey/Estrada/Happ.

KC also TRADED prospects at the deadline to get a FA to be in Cueto. When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

Russell Martin doesn't count as an old "core" player now? Tulowitzki may not be "old", but the guy has the body of a 45 year old, so in the end he's really no different from a risk standpoint.

KC is a team built around young controllable players. When you've got that core around making peanuts (which ensures that you'll at least be competitive for years), trading for rental pieces to "put you over the top" is no problem. You bring them up as an example of teams "buying", yet arguably the biggest move they made which created this entire run was trading away Zach Grienke (a PROVEN star player) for a bunch of unproven prospects. Those prospects ended up being Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar whom were instrumental in their World Series run. They also got Jake Odorizzi in that trade who ended up being a key piece in the James Shields trade. James Shields actually failed to get them a World Series and he ended up leaving a season later, yet because of their young, cheap core they still had the flexibility and timeframe to try again. Notice that they didn't bother to go full-retard and overpay to sign either Shields or Cueto longterm?

How did KC even get "close" in the first place? They built up what was the strongest farm system in the game, and that system ended up pumping out players like Hosmer, Perez, Moustakis, etc, etc, etc.

[Schad]

LOL.

The Jays had/have homegrown players as well. The only "old" core players the Jays have are Joey and EE and the guys Shapiro just signed - Dickey/Estrada/Happ.

KC also TRADED prospects at the deadline to get a FA to be in Cueto. When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

The Jays have more old than that; you forgot Martin and Tulowitzki, who will make a combined $35m and are entering their year 33 and 31 seasons, respectively. We had the second-oldest position players (weighted by plate appearances) in the AL last year, behind only the Yankees, and the second-oldest pitching staff behind the Royals. The Royals were actually older overall, but cheaper because many are homegrown talent underpaid on arb/extensions, which made rather much of a difference in acquiring that PROVEN talent to round out the roster. And we stand to be even older this season; proven is good, but it also makes us more susceptible to injuries and decline (as we discovered a couple years back).

The Mets, for what it's worth? League-average in age, while the Cubs made the NLCS with an older pitching staff, but the third-youngest position players in all of baseball.

[Kurtz]

Grass is nice but we don't need it? I guess that's technically true. Everyone wants it, most of all the outfielders...but technically we can survive without it. But what is it that we need more than grass?

[OakleyDokely]

LOL.

The Jays had/have homegrown players as well. The only "old" core players the Jays have are Joey and EE and the guys Shapiro just signed - Dickey/Estrada/Happ.

KC also TRADED prospects at the deadline to get a FA to be in Cueto. When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

Russell Martin doesn't count as an old "core" player now? Tulowitzki may not be "old", but the guy has the body of a 45 year old, so in the end he's really no different from a risk standpoint.

KC is a team built around young controllable players. When you've got that core around making peanuts (which ensures that you'll at least be competitive for years), trading for rental pieces to "put you over the top" is no problem. You bring them up as an example of teams "buying", yet arguably the biggest move they made which created this entire run was trading away Zach Grienke (a PROVEN star player) for a bunch of unproven prospects. Those prospects ended up being Lorenzo Cain and Alcides Escobar whom were instrumental in their World Series run. They also got Jake Odorizzi in that trade who ended up being a key piece in the James Shields trade. James Shields actually failed to get them a World Series and he ended up leaving that offseason, yet because of their young, cheap core they still had the flexibility and timeframe to try again. Notice that they didn't bother to go full-retard and overpay to sign either Shields or Cueto longterm?

How did KC even get "close" in the first place? They built up what was the strongest farm system in the game, and that system ended up pumping out players like Hosmer, Perez, Moustakis, etc, etc, etc.

Nothing you said here refutes any of my points at all. KC is a well run team. Nobody will argue that. The Jays were a well run under AA. Both teams should be contenders in 2016. There are different ways to build contending clubs, not just one way.

[OakleyDokely]

LOL.

The Jays had/have homegrown players as well. The only "old" core players the Jays have are Joey and EE and the guys Shapiro just signed - Dickey/Estrada/Happ.

KC also TRADED prospects at the deadline to get a FA to be in Cueto. When good teams are close, they trade prospects for PROVEN players.

The Jays have more old than that; you forgot Martin and Tulowitzki, who will make a combined $35m and are entering their year 33 and 31 seasons, respectively. We had the second-oldest position players (weighted by plate appearances) in the AL last year, behind only the Yankees, and the second-oldest pitching staff behind the Royals. The Royals were actually older overall, but cheaper because many are homegrown talent underpaid on arb/extensions, which made rather much of a difference in acquiring that PROVEN talent to round out the roster. And we stand to be even older this season; proven is good, but it also makes us more susceptible to injuries and decline (as we discovered a couple years back).

The Mets, for what it's worth? League-average in age, while the Cubs made the NLCS with an older pitching staff, but the third-youngest position players in all of baseball.

It's not about age, it's about productivity.

[Schad]

It's not about age, it's about productivity.

It's not about productivity, it's about price for production. Guys in their allotted team control are the most likely to offer both; players acquired in free agency generally offer production at an exorbitant price...and as they hit their declines, often offer neither.

[Scott Hall]

So no grass now huh?

It's like Shapiro/Rogers are doing everything they can to make me not want to go to a Blue Jays game.
I seriously don't want to spend a dollar on this organization but I want to support the players.