Quote:
Originally Posted by fleury
He had a plan. The plan in hindsight was to deal guys who had no future with the club, get draft picks and solid prospects, see who pans out, promote them to the club, then deal others at the right time for bonafide stars the year the Jays went for it. Some of those deals, as you mentioned, didn't go well, but that one that you pointed out was the one in hindsight they'd take back. However, almost all the others, at the time, were solid deals which had the Jays even then winning all. He did leave the cupboards bare, but even Norris dealt to the Tigers didn't amount to much. AA deserved a ton of credit for rebuilding and going for it at the right moment.
This isn't to poop on Atkins and Shapiro yet, because they've made a lot of smaller signings and deals that have worked out. However, I've yet to see them acquire those blue chip prospects. Seems like they're working with a lot of mediocrity and not going to the direction of a rebuild but rather a retool, without fully committing. It's just a lot of neither here nor there and I'm scratching my head as to what direction it's going to go. Am I the only one who can't read what's going on?
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I feel like Atkins and Shapiro have done the same thing - they are trying to build through the draft. Most of AAs good work was done in the draft and the only real big seller trade was Roy Halladay.
This is where AA was patient his first couple years in Toronto too - stockpiling players in the draft and getting value in free agents/ waiver players (Smoak / Encarnación / Estrada ).
I think in retrospect the issue was outside of the Donaldson trade AA didn’t really spend those assets well (even though most of the prospects didn’t turn out). Dickey was just okay, the Reyes trade was a flop, Tulo wasn’t a great move, and Price was good but failed come playoff time.
In the end the moves that AA made to go all in resulted in a playoff spot but ultimately weren’t that great of moves when looked at individually (outside of JD of course).
Price: 2.6 WAR as a Jay, 0 playoff wins (Rental)
Dickey: 7.3 WAR as a Jay (4 seasons)
Tulo: 4.8 WAR as a Jay (4 seasons)
Reyes: 6.2 WAR as a Jay (3 seasons)
Pretty much all these guys ended up being 2.0 WAR players on average. Even though the prospects didn’t pan out for the most part too there was opportunity cost there and AA went all in on the wrong guys.