New Blue Jays GM wants to build foundation, but with or without Halladay?
CHICAGO -- Maybe this brash, new plan will work in Toronto. If it does, I guarantee you there will be 12 other American League clubs cribbing notes, and new Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos will make far more dough as a consultant than he ever will running a ballclub.
Far as I can tell, here is the snappy new plan in Toronto: Ignore the New York Yankees. Pretend they're not there.
Maybe, in the end, somehow ... they won't be?
Don't ask me. Ask Anthopoulos, 32, the replacement part for the deposed J.P. Ricciardi, who arrived in Toronto in 2003 by way of three years in Montreal's organization and a degree in economics from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada.
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| The Yankees don't seem to be on GM Alex Anthopoulos' radar -- but a decision on ace Roy Halladay had better be. (US Presswire) |
OK, the Angels have won the AL West in five of the past six years.
The Red Sox have won the World Series in two of the past six years.
The White Sox? Well, they've won the AL Central in two of the past five seasons.
But it sure seems like there's one monolith missing from the landscape Anthopoulos paints. One Bronx Bomber of a baseball club that the Blue Jays must spring over in their own division.
So I went back and checked my notes again and, yep, sure enough, maybe nobody in Toronto told Anthopoulos about that monster before he accepted this gig.
"I've overhauled professional scouting, amateur scouting and player development," he said, emphasizing that the key in Toronto is to return to the notion of building a strong foundation above all else. "I think we need to have whatever competitive advantage we have.
"We need to be more creative and take a few more risks until we get to the Anaheims, Chicagos and Bostons."
Aw, the poor, sweet kid.
Nobody told him about the Yankees!
That, or he's operating under the theory that if you ignore something, maybe it will go away and not become an issue.
He is an earnest, intelligent, rapid-fire-speaking executive, this young man charged with returning the Blue Jays to relevancy. He talks fast and thinks faster. Those are going to be a couple of key tools, especially the latter, in what, let's be honest here, is his first larger-than-life task: Moving the Blue Jays to the point where there is more to talk about than what the devil they're going to do with Halladay.
The blueprint for that this winter could not be more different than the plan was last summer.
When the topic first emerged under Ricciardi last July, the thinking wasn't far from the perfectly orchestrated Obama presidential campaign: Use the power of the Internet to spread the word and stir up the passions. The thinking was that a rival club would get so swept up in the tide that it would fork over a fistful of A-list young big leaguers and prospects.
That idea gone up in smoke, the Jays under Anthopoulos clearly will take the complete opposite approach.
"I just don't want to comment on any type of trade rumors," the GM said. "I understand [Halladay] is the best player on this team and one of the best players in the game, probably the greatest Blue Jay to ever pitch and play for us. And I understand he's got a year left on his contract and it's going to be a story. It was a story last July.
"But for us going forward, we'd love to have him here. I can't say enough about him. All Roy Halladay wants to do is win. We respect that and understand that.
"Last year, we were a 75-win team and we didn't meet the criteria for him to win. But with respect to trades, it's something I don't want to comment on, any type of rumors. It makes it very complicated and more complex for me to do my job that way. ...
"At the end of the day, the fans, as much as they're dying to know, and I understand the blogs that are out there and the media outlets, if I can do a better job, whether it's from the trade front or the signing front, they'll ultimately be satisfied."
Whew. Got that?
What hasn't changed in Toronto are these circumstances: The Jays are at risk to lose Halladay for nothing to free agency one year from now. They are not positioned to win in 2010, not with their current team (hello, Vernon Wells, anybody home?). Halladay is set to make $15.75 million, severely limiting Toronto's potential trade pool because who can afford that?
A franchise player without a supporting cast is barely worth the mound he's pitching on. No disrespect, because it's a crying shame that someone as talented and classy as Halladay can't win in Toronto.
Consequently, Anthopoulos assumes control of the Jays at one of the most pivotal points in franchise history. Players like Halladay come along once in a generation. If the new GM mishandles or misreads the situation, it will hamper the Toronto franchise for years, not to mention the brilliant star Anthopoulos has become.
In other words, he can't screw it up.
"Really, to answer that question, it's important that we continue to add," he said. "We have a lot of good young players. We just need to keep adding good, young, controllable players to this team. And that's ultimately what we're going to look to do, no matter what it is.
"We're not going to take short cuts for the short term, make irresponsible financial signings or big free-agent signings just to make a splash. We need to have a sustained model of success here. Especially knowing the upside of the market we have, knowing because of market, city, country ownership we have a chance to sustain it."
Anthopoulos, who calls Ricciardi "a great, great friend", pointed back to when the Jays were winning those World Series in 1992 and 1993, and how that resulted in a couple of years of drawing 4 million fans.
"The market that we have, with the ownership that we have, we have an opportunity and [if successful] the fans will come out," he said. "They've shown that in the past. Will it be four million fans again? I'm not sure.
"But you look at the Brewers and they're now drawing three million fans, and you look at Toronto as a market where three million fans should be no problem at all. But you need to win."
To do that, he said, it all goes back to scouting and player development.
And each of those operations will be vital if the Jays do move Halladay this winter, because they can't swing and miss on it. The players coming back must be well-scouted, well-researched and, in the case of prospects in the deal, they're going to have to be developed well.
The Jays will not hesitate to trade Halladay within the division if that's what it takes, Anthopoulos said. No doubt that would make their task more difficult in the short term if, say, the Yankees bag him (first, of course, the Jays would have to acknowledge that the Yankees exist!). But the new GM is looking big picture, not small.
"Ideally, in a perfect world, you wouldn't want to," he said of the notion of trading a player like Halladay to a division rival. "But if you get a return you believe in, going forward, I think that's what you need to worry about.
"It's all about the value. Look, if it's apples and apples and you have a trade you feel is of equal value within the division and outside the division, then it's a pretty easy choice to make. But even if there's a slightly greater value inside your division, I feel that's something you strongly have to look at.
"It's all about getting the most value for your organization."
It's something that, for many different reasons, the Jays largely have been unable to do consistently since Joe Carter was dancing around the bases in 1993.
Now they're back to square one, trying to fit a round Halladay in a square hole.
As Anthopoulos himself acknowledged, this guy might be the greatest Blue Jay of them all.
A winter awaits for the Jays to investigate every option. They can't screw this one up, or it will take years to recover.
Unless ... unless they really have figured out a way to make the Yankees not exist.
"We were a 75-win team last year, non-contending," Anthopoulos said. "We need to get better. In this division, you look at the last 10 years, you're looking at 95 wins at a minimum [to get into the playoffs]. You look a few years ago and Boston won the wild-card with 98 wins, Anaheim won with 99.
"This is not an easy division at all. You look at the last 10, 15 years, this team's won 88 games, 87 games. In other divisions, that would get you into the playoffs. That's not going to work here."
