There's no doubt this management group came into a tough situation, but regardless, they should have made a decision, either keep going and go all in, or tear it down and build your own team. These guys seem to be somewhere in the middle and because of this, the jays will go back to being .500 team they were for the last 20 years.
.
Keep going with what? The decline of this team was inevitable and unavoidable after AA left.
The problem is you can't go "all in" when you have zero prospect capital to trade, you had a prior GM who failed to develop any positional prospects over a 5 year period, and a budget that does not allow you to increase your payroll with the oldest team and oldest core in baseball. There is no cheap or easy way to fill open spots on your roster when you have no quality young players to come up and fill your holes. Right now any hole on this team that needs to be filled needs to be funded externally which is the most terrible way to try to build a sustainable team while on a budget. AA crushed the team's flexibility with an old core and a few bad contacts.
Let's remember that Russell Martin was making $7 million in 2015 and $20 million in 2017. That type of salary structure is a crippling under a budget team with an old core, especially given all the holes and free agents that were becoming due at the end of 2016. It was a short sighted signing that helped in 2015, but hurt in 2017.
The team's inevitable fall is due to AA's decisions for anyone with good team building sense -- any baseball analyst has or would say the same. And yet you can certainly argue it was all worth it. The 2 past years were very rewarding as a fan and to the organization.
What really hurt during the AA era was the lack of position players the Jays developed. Look at the holes on this team - you have no Outfielders (nor anyone ready to come up). You have an aging catcher who is overpaid at $20M. and have no adequate backup catcher. You have been unable to develop a bat internally who could be a 1b/DH/ corner outfielder type. Over the entire AA reign, he did not develop anyone for any of those roles.
Shatkins have made a few mistakes, but they are doing a fairly good job of trying to sustain this and are doing the best they can to stay relevant while trying to slowly move forward. You could argue that EE >> Morales +Pearce. That I will grant you -- but in terms of wins over the course of a season, that is about a 2 to 3 win difference (statistically anyway).
For all those crapping on Shapiro and Atkins. Where would the Jays have been last year without the great deals granted to Marco Estrada and J.A Happ?
