Quote:
Originally Posted by Roof-Daddy
BA just came out with their top ten list of Blue Jays prospects, every single one of them except for SRF was drafted or signed by the Shapiro/Atkins management group.
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I am with you in this regard. I do think it's fair to be upset at the front office for some definite bungles, as a lot are, but there have been some definite positive steps that you have to give the front office credit for. They aren't just these Cleveland cronies that are here to decimate the Blue Jays and rub their hands in glee as they see dollars being saved. The 2015, 2016 iteration of the Jays was successful, but also extremely old and their competitive window was clearly over. They missed the sell off by a year, as they should be held accountable for, but the tear down was inevitable regardless of what year it should have happened.
First of all, and most importantly to me, they have significantly improved the the farm system in pretty short order. In 2016 their farm system was ranked 24th, in 2017 20th, 2018 they were 8th and at the beginning of this season they were 3rd. Incredible for a team that had traded away basically every single prospect of value in the system besides Vladdy Jr. In short order they drafted Pearson, Bichette, Biggio, Groshans, Manoah, signed international prospects Pardinho, Gurriel Jr (to a contract that is looking pretty damn valuable right now) to only name a few. Obviously a lot of these guys might be total busts but it definitely doesn't hurt to have some highly touted, and still extremely young, prospects in the pipeline.
Making significant upgrades to the Dunedin facility and make it a state of the art training, rehab and coaching facility is something that I think is awesome as well and deserves some serious praise. A lot of what I am reading/listening about baseball now is that all front offices are extremely adept at analytics and there is not much disparity in how front offices value players. The big movement is towards development from the second the players enter the organization, which is what I see this regime doing with their Dunedin upgrades. I am pretty sure Paul Beeston still uses a rotary phone, so it's nice to see this front office do everything it can in terms of using advanced development models to gain an edge on the competition.
-Turning Osuna into Giles plus.
-Turning J.B. Woodman into Aledmys Diaz and then into Trent Thornton.
-Trading Connor Greene and Dominic Leone into Grichuk.
-Picking up Sogard as a free agent for league minimum, guy is worth 2.0 WAR
-Picking up Galvis for 4 million dollars, 1.6 WAR. Incredible value.
-Signing Lourdes Gurriel Jr to a 7 year 22 million dollar deal. He has an OPS + of 139. 1.9 WAR, leads the team in HR, and is making 1.9 million dollars this year. That is crazy value.
While some of these aren't exactly earth shattering they managed to unearth some value from virtually nothing or a tainted product (Osuna).
Paying their minor league players more deserves kudos.
Shapiro is making efforts to significantly improve the fan experience at the SkyDome and it sounds like he is hoping to do a major renovation. Obviously a lot of what his plans are are disguised in his typical corporate double-speak but one of his major moves in Cleveland was upgrading Jacobs Field and I think he has a real desire to make massive improvements to the Skydome.
Bringing in former Red Sox GM Ben Cherington. When he was let go of the Red Sox he had left them behind: Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, Brock Holt, Eduardo Rodríguez, Blake Swihart, Travis Shaw, Henry Owens, Christian Vázquez. Not a bad guy to have on your team.
Yes, the Jays suck, a lot, but there is still a lot to be optimistic about.