The Shapiro & Rogers Megathread

[bluerap23]

Music to my ears. Free agency is a market inefficiency. It is cheap as hell to sign free agents now, and you can get 2-3 wins out of practically little commitment if you shop in the right aisle. As long as the Jays keep their top prospects, and surround the existing talent with free agents that won't block the Pearson's of the world, then that's the path to take. Maybe it won't lead to the playoffs in 2020, but you can build a good team quickly now that prospects are up, and it won't negatively impact the rebuild since we'd be keeping all of our picks and prospects.

Really? This seems like the exact opposite of what most people would think.

It does feel like things have swung in the other direction in a lot of cases.
There was definitely value to be had the past 2 off-seasons.

I think it would be interesting to see a team (the Jays would make sense) try an unconventional method out of Masai's playbook where you offer a significantly higher aav for shorter term.

Unfortunately this FA class is terribly weak.

[polo007]

Read on Twitter

NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball’s average attendance dropped 1.7% this year for its fourth straight decline, and five of the six biggest drops were by teams with losing records.

Toronto, Seattle, San Francisco and Detroit combined for more than 1.8 million fewer tickets, and a 259-388 won-lost record.

The 30 teams averaged 28,339, according to the commissioner’s office, down from 28,830 last year _ the first time the average was below 30,000 since 2003. Total attendance of 68.5 million was down more than 5 million from 2015.

The players’ association maintains attendance has been hurt by an increase in rebuilding teams, which its members and staff label “tanking.”

“The willful failure of too many franchises to field competitive teams and put their best players on the field is unquestionably hurting our industry,” union head Tony Clark said last week.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred says rebuilding is cyclical and attendance and record correlate in some markets but not all. He also points out the success of the sport in television ratings and an increase in minor league gates.

“We’re going to draw 68-plus million people at the big league level,” Manfred said, “another 41 million in minor league baseball — they’re actually going to be up. I’ll take 110 million people going to see the sport live. That’s a really, really awesome number in an environment where people have more and more and more alternatives to consume.”

Toronto had the biggest home attendance drop, falling 575,137 in a season in which the Blue Jays went 67-95 for their third straight losing season and most losses since 1980.

[ratul]

Indeed, terrible attendance drop. Worst season in decades. No surprise for most fans

[phillipmike]

Some of you may get your wish;

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Read a rumor that Boston is interested in Shapiro for their Presidents job.

[Steelo Green]

Some of you may get your wish;

Read on Twitter

Read a rumor that Boston is interested in Shapiro for their Presidents job.

Well this sucks.

[phillipmike]

Read on Twitter

Shapiro also being considered for a job with MLB.

[ratul]

Some of you may get your wish;

Read on Twitter

Read a rumor that Boston is interested in Shapiro for their Presidents job.

[Black Watch]

Some of you may get your wish;

Read on Twitter

Read a rumor that Boston is interested in Shapiro for their Presidents job.

Hell no!

[Tanner]

Wouldn't surprise me if Shapiro left tbh.

I would imagine the president/GM gig would be pretty enticing to candidates now. Not quite the Braves when AA took over, but a team with good young talent in the majors/minors and a lot of payroll flexibility.

[Black Watch]

Our hoser fanbase hasn't been kind to him, much less the quadrupeds who work in Canadian sports media.

[phillipmike]

Read on Twitter

[Black Watch]

Read on Twitter

Shapiro is a genius. I hope he stays.

[Tanner]

If any of this is true then I would be more inclined to believe that Shapiro wants out, not the other way around. He actually has credibility and would be able to get a job either for another team or for MLB itself fairly easily. It is just crazy to me that Rogers allowed him to rebuild in 2019 and then let him be a lameduck in 2020.

Unfortunately, the one guy who screams Rogers and just became available is Dombrowski. Hopefully that is not the road we are about to head in.

[phillipmike]

Might be a big mistake imo but Rogers did have Dombrowski as their #1 target for the presidents position back in 2015. Maybe they are interested now that he is available.

Shapiro should see this through if he wants, if he doesnt then it should be Cherington as President and LaCava as GM to minimize the disruption plus they are both very qualified.

[Skin Blues]

I would feel the same about the Jays landing Dombrowski as I did when they signed Kendrys: I don't like the decision itself, but I like the indication that they're willing to spend.

[Schad]

Thing is, I'm dubious that throwing a bunch of cash (and more likely, prospects) in order to get us into pseudo-contention is the way to go. We'll do that over time, certainly, but time and time again those quick fix attempts fall short...San Diego has a tonne of prospect value and a path to being very good in the near future, but they set themselves back pretty badly when Preller was given a mandate to launch them into the stratosphere overnight. It's just hard to make a lot of deals in a short period of time without many of them being really poorly-conceived.

[Skin Blues]

It wasn't that Preller spent money on free agents that flopped (although James Shields definitely flopped), it was that he traded away so many good young prospects to land aging, declining veterans. Grandal for Kemp. Max Fried and Mallex Smith for Justin Upton. Trea Turner for Wil Myers.

As long as we're just spending on free agents, or making trades for guys who don't require prospects in return, I'm fine with it. There are good and bad ways to do it, but I'd love to see that they're willing to give it a shot.

[Schad]

Problem being that the good and bad ways often only become apparent in retrospect. We could throw $80m at free agency this offseason, but are there $80m AAV worth of free agents that we'd be happy to have signed in, say, 2022? If not, are we really thinking that we can be a playoff team next year? That seems like an awfully tall task.

[Black Watch]

Dombrowski will never be president of baseball for the Jays.

But Shapiro could leave on account of all the media flak you idiots sanction with your clicks and views.

[SharoneWright]

It wasn't that Preller spent money on free agents that flopped (although James Shields definitely flopped), it was that he traded away so many good young prospects to land aging, declining veterans. Grandal for Kemp. Max Fried and Mallex Smith for Justin Upton. Trea Turner for Wil Myers.

As long as we're just spending on free agents, or making trades for guys who don't require prospects in return, I'm fine with it. There are good and bad ways to do it, but I'd love to see that they're willing to give it a shot.

Rogers would be better to save those dollars for the youngins. Rogers is no longer a bottomless pit of resources, and they should be looking to lock up Vlad and Bo as soon as possible for whatever discount they might be able to get - Acuna style. Even then, those numbers will be goofy. Add your veteran FA's after you have the cost certainty of your young core. Leafs made a similar mistake by not extending Matthews before they got Tavares (not to mention doing Willy first, who was probably the least important). Jays can still effective cap themselves out on Vlad, etc., if they spend too much too fast elsewhere.