I hope Shapeero slept well last night.
From today's Star.
Opinion | Mark Shapiro doesn’t even talk a good game. The Blue Jays are a disaster. And the boss has to go
Shoo. Scram. Beat it. Hop the stick. Bugger off.
But no-o-o-o. There was Mark Shapiro, with his state of the post-nation schmegegge, sitting pretty as the once-and-for-another-year contracted (unless a bolt of balls suddenly strikes Edward Rogers) for the media.
Doing his J.D. Vance thing of elide, obfuscate and pivot. When the Blue Jays president and CEO wasn’t outright lying.
Injuries, he mentioned first, as an explanation for a season that went sideways long before game 162 was in the books: “Injuries are tough to forecast and tough to overcome.’’
Except the Jays had the fewest players go on the injured list (13) of any MLB team, as per Spotrac.com. They also had the fewest man games missed due to injury (670) and their total salary for missed days was just a little over $19 million (U.S.), which was 24th highest in the majors.
On the question of whether Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is a generational player as this outfit once believed — the slugger a prezzie left behind by departed (pushed out) general manager Alex Anthopoulos: “Generational player? What’s your definition of that? He’s one of the better offensive players in the game today. I’m not sure … He certainly has the opportunity to be a generational player because of how young he is.’’
That would be the Vladdy whom the Jays irritatingly took to arbitration in February, where Guerrero won his case and was awarded a salary bump to $19.9 million for 2024. The Vladdy who has one year left on his contract, unless this front-office brain trust can work out an extension. Weirdly ambivalent about their four-time all-star, one of the few exceptionals who continued drawing fans to the ballpark this woebegone season. Who do you think will fill those seats if Guerrero is lost or decides he’s had enough of this cockamamie organization?
Shapiro couldn’t even get his facts straight. Emphasizing that Hall of Famers put up bulging numbers across their career — apparently Guerrero’s six years of service is still too small a sample size — he pointed to the basher’s 199 hits in ’24, just missing the 200-hit threshold. “You think about Pete Rose … 200 hits, how hard it is to do. Vladdy knows just how hard. That guy (Rose) did it 22 times.”
He did it 10 times.
In the ashes of this season, there are no prominent changes in top personnel.
General manager Ross Atkins — who functions mainly as Shapiro’s buffer against the howls of fan protest, his Maginot Line — will be back. The Jays instead fired hitting coach Guillermo Martínez, dumped field co-ordinator Gil Kim and assistant pitching coach Jeff Ware and relieved Don Mattingly as offensive co-ordinator, demoting him to full-time bench coach.
After a disastrous season that included some historical offensive lows (which can be traced back to ditching Teoscar Hernández and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in favour of a defensive-runs-saved catechism) that arid landscape hasn’t been fundamentally altered. It’s status quo for quid pro quo.
Not a shred of humbling from the Cleveland Carpetbaggers for a team that finished 14 games below .500, 20 games behind American League East champion New York Yankees and 12 games out of a wild-card spot, which was their saving grace in 2023 — albeit not for long. This dim-wit gang hasn’t won a post-season game since 2016 under the stewardship of Shapiro and Atkins.
Yet repeatedly in Wednesday’s confab, Shapiro lauded the teams of recent vintage: “The fact that we played in the playoffs three of the past five years … to me that’s not grounds to make a change.’’
But they didn’t win even one (1) for criminy’s sake.
Slam Brendan Shanahan all you like for post-season futility, but in his tenure the Maple Leafs have won 24 playoff games.
And still Shapiro thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. He doesn’t do humility, even when ostensibly taking responsibility for this mess of a season, amidst this mess of a franchise.
Roll it on back, however, after vowing 12 months ago that mistakes and maladjustment wouldn’t be repeated. Playing out the string, post trade deadline, with a feeble farm system (11 times they went to the waiver wire since then) and scrambling to fill the roster with also-rans, rejects and washouts.
This is not a serious ball club. It is contemptuous of its fans, offering gimmicky circus acts (Loonie Dog nights) and a retrofitted park in lieu of substantive performance.
I won’t blame the players; many would not make any other MLB team’s roster. This rot starts at the top and seeps down into the clubhouse. Can’t even point the finger at parsimony because the Jays are among the top 10 in payroll.
Shapiro was a bust in Cleveland, he’s been a bust in Toronto, and maybe some day he’ll be a bust as baseball commissioner.
Out, damn spot.
