The Blue Jays Front Office and the Hot Seat

The Athletic recently published the results of an insiders poll – 32 executives, former executives, coaches and scouts – ranking the pressure index of each team’s front office. It should come as no surprise to Blue Jays fans that the cliche-spewing, disingenuous-seeming tandem of president and CEO Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins didn’t just lead the voting, but very nearly lapped the field. They earned 22 votes, while no other team had more than 12. Let’s look at the front office situation from a few viewpoints: a fan’s perspective (specifically mine), the front office itself, team ownership.

Fan Perspective
Excuse me while I scream into the void for a moment. Shapiro and Atkins were hired following the 2015 season. That year, the Jays won the division with 93 wins behind AL MVP Josh Donaldson, Cy Young runner-up David Price and Level of Excellence member Jose Bautista. They haven’t won a division in the nine seasons since. They’ve been to the playoffs 4 times, but haven’t won a game since 2016. They’ve finished on average more than 16 games behind the division leader. They completely mishandled the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. extension, and looking around, if winning is his goal, how could we expect him to stay?

Front Office Perspective
Meanwhile, the front office has to think it’s doing a good job – or at least as good a job as is possible under some difficult circumstances. They’ve brought in some big names and spent some big money for sure, but that hasn’t translated into success. They’ve also talked a lot about their player valuation process and have (seemingly) stuck to their word when trying to sign or extend players. I’m sure they’ve spent lots of time the last two years planning their pitches and forecasting their budgets for Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto. Those efforts turned out to be futile, but I would love to know the operational cost of planning for a reported offer of $700 million to Othani and slightly less than that to Soto. Is that partly why negotiations with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. never really seemed to take much urgency? Or why talks with Bo Bichette haven’t even started?! The farm system features some interesting names, but FanGraphs ranks the organization 23rd overall, so it’s not as if we’re well positioned for the future. Back to the Guerrero negotiations for a moment, without anyone leaking numbers (yet) we’re all just guessing how far apart “not close” is.

Maybe this is giving the front office too much credit — and “too much” is just as nebulous as “not close” — but unless their internal valuation and projections for Vladdy are more Sano and less Soto, they must think they’re making the right call.

Ownership Perspective
The reality of the Jays front office situation is that Shapiro and Atkins only have to be worried about their jobs if Edward Rogers and the board of directors are unhappy. Rogers is spending a reported $300 million on their multi-year renovation project. They’ve raised single and season ticket prices annually. How much of a dip in attendance would have to be projected for Shapiro and Atkins to really sweat? Last year saw a drop of 4,000 tickets per game from 2023. Can the fan base and ticket sales handle an honest, teardown rebuild? Or would ownership be content if the Blue Jays remained just competitive enough to be in the Wild Card hunt? As the offers to Ohtani and Soto indicated, Rogers was okay with spending $700 million under the right circumstances, but they’re certainly not handing the Jays a handful of blank cheques to go on a spree with.

I’ve asked a lot of questions through this piece with very few answers, but from all perspectives,  the biggest one might be: Who is best to lead this franchise forward?