Q&A with Jays' Shapiro: ‘We're in the sweet spot right now’
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TORONTO — As the 2023 Toronto Blue Jays season got underway with high expectations once again, club president/CEO Mark Shapiro sat down recently inside his Rogers Centre office for a wide-ranging chat about where his franchise sits currently, and where he hopes its headed in the future.
TSN: Whether it’s the roster or infrastructure, you’ve completed so many large-scale projects during your tenure and this first phase of the stadium renovation is the latest one. When you reflect on the last seven or eight years since you arrived in Toronto, how do you feel about where everything sits at this point?
Shapiro: “It’s not my nature to spend a whole bunch of time reflecting about the past. I feel good about, most importantly, the organization, where we are, the people working here, and what we’ve been able to accomplish together. I think we’re in a good position moving forward and all those projects serve as a foundation to put us in a good position moving forward towards the goal, which is win a world championship and we haven’t done that and be able to sustainably complete year in and year out and sustainably feel like we’ve got a objective chance to win a World Series leaving spring training every year. I know there’s [down] cycles that naturally happen and it’s almost impossible to avoid them, but I still think the goal in a market of this size is to sustainably win. There are moments, like walking around the player development complex and TD Ballpark this spring, that this is what we thought it would be all those years ago. Those are the moments of reflection, when you see things being used the way you’d hoped and envisioned.”
TSN: You’ve talked about not just winning but sustainable winning since day one. Where do you feel you are in that quest?
Shapiro: “Well, I clearly feel like we’ve clearly got a three-year window that we’re definitely going to be a very good team. After that, it’s 100 per cent dependent on player development and scouting. That’s a fact. It gets harder and harder when you pick later, you give up draft picks, you trade young players – that’s a natural residue of winning. It’s a good challenge to face. I believe that good decision-making and taking seemingly small acquisitions and turning them into meaningful acquisitions, which happens all the time, is going to be crucial to us. And then using player development to maximize the talent that we’ve got in our system, I think all those things are kind of lined up right now. We’re starting to get to the point that our research and development staff is built out and they’ve got a base of information that’s more than just a couple years. We’ve been playing catch up, there was only one person in place, there wasn’t any system in place, so we’re still 15 years behind Tampa, 15 years behind Houston, Cleveland, Boston, as far as just information. But we’ve got the infrastructure in place and it’s just a matter of continuing to get better.”
TSN: When you look across baseball, there are teams that win 90 games here and there, but how hard is this next step into true World Series contender?
Shapiro: “It’s not as hard as going from .500 to this step. That’s the hardest step. You pop on the scene and everybody’s excited, but the harder step is to come back year two when the expectations are there and then go from 82 or 83 wins to 90 wins. This step is not as hard as that step because players mature and they understand how to handle some of the pressures and challenges that they didn’t understand when they first got there and they’re not in the playoffs for the first time and they understand how to navigate that environment. We’re in the sweet spot right now. That’s where we are and it’s a question of continuing to stay healthy, controlling what we can control, but if we play to our ability we should have a very good year and a very good team.”
TSN: So how do you define success now?
Shapiro: “This is a tough one. We spent a lot of time building a team that we think will be better in October, but anyone that doesn’t accept the fact that there’s a randomness to postseason is just denying the reality. You can look at the teams that win the World Series and they’re not always the teams that were the best over 162. We’ve got to get in and I think winning the division would be a good next goal for us because it’s a big difference not having to go through that first round of playoffs. Skipping one of the rounds of randomness would be a good next goal for us.”
TSN: But if you win a division this year and one round in the postseason, do you feel good going into the off-season?
Shapiro: “I’d say this: there’s two levels of how I’d kind of evaluate it. Every single year if we don’t win the last game played, then it’s going to be short of what our goal is or what our expectation is. However, I’m never going to feel like it’s a failure to win over 90 games and get into the playoffs because I feel like ultimately if you do that enough you will win a World Series. If you keep getting in, then ultimately at some point you’re going to win. I think it’s a trap to start to pin success on how you do in the postseason. That’s a mistake. However, I think it’s a mistake for us to feel satisfied with anything less than winning the last game.”
TSN: Shifting to the ballpark, there’s been a lot made of the dimensions and how it’s going to play. I know you modelled it out and are fairly adamant that it’s going to continue to play relatively neutral offensively. What are your expectations once you get a sample size?
Shapiro: “Just to clarify one of the misperceptions, it wasn’t that we went into designing for a purpose. The reality is we were dealing with the infrastructure of the ballpark. We didn’t do the bump outs to the bullpen because we thought that would be a cool angle or interesting, or bring the fences in to have more home runs or build a team for this ballpark, we did it because the concrete and the infrastructure of this ballpark when we raised the bullpens and made it wide enough didn’t allow us to push them back. So, we had to do the bump outs where the bullpens were. Then we went to our research and development staff and said ‘Okay, if we’re going to have bullpens of this size, if we’re going to raise them, we need to understand what the impact would be and we need to understand how high the fences should be to make it relatively neutral.’ That was result. We know there will probably be a few more home runs, but that’s going to benefit us as well as the visiting team. We embrace, and I personally embrace, the nuance and character that comes with unique angles and different wall heights.”
TSN: How much did the ballpark changes influence the roster decisions this winter and how much will it influence it going forward?
Shapiro: “It really didn’t. I don’t think we knew enough to be certain to factor it in. I’d to say we were so smart that we knew Kevin Kiermaier on opening night would scale the fence, but you know Ross [Atkins] and our baseball ops team just wanted better outfield defence, more athleticism and to balance out left-handedness. We got the guys we got and it wasn’t just because of the ballpark it was trying to make the team better.”
TSN: You mentioned the three-year window earlier and that obviously lines up with two of your stars contractually in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. Where do you sit with negotiations of trying to keep them in Toronto long-term?
Shapiro: “I’m obviously going to stick to our policy that we don’t discuss those things publicly. I’ll say, obviously, for every player that has the characteristics and attributes of a core player, we maintain a desire and openness to consider long-term deals. That has been the case in the conversations that have been had. It is a very tough equation. It takes sharing risk. They have to get comfortable with giving up something and we have to get comfortable with giving up a lot, as well, and you look for that sweet spot where both parties are comfortable with what they’re giving up. As of yet, we haven’t found that sweet spot, but I think we’re hopeful we will.”
TSN: Now that things are back to normal post-pandemic, what are the expectations for attendance this season?
Shapiro: “Last year, we did not fully return with what I think would be representative of what the Blue Jays can be when they’re a contending team winning over 90 games. If feels like this year we’re more on a path to do that and I’ll let you know in two or three months. It won’t be any secret, you’ll be able to see in the stands. We expect to do better than last year. What did we finish last year at 2.65 million or something like that? We expect it to be better but we didn’t predict it to be much better. It’s more of a challenge than it’s ever been for us to project because the dynamic is just not what it was. It’s just different. Something is different. We’re having no trouble on weekends. Weekdays there aren’t as many people working downtown so that’s made an impact. I think the outfield district is going to create some weekday bump from the young people that live in the buildings around here and it already seems that way. We’ll see over the season.”
TSN: Moving to some league-wide stuff, you’re on the competition committee and played a role in all the changes across baseball. What do you think of the new rules at this point now that we’re a couple weeks in?
Shapiro: “I’m excited. The shift has surprised me that it hasn’t felt like it’s impacted as much just watching the game. Bigger bases I kind of knew was a safety issue more than anything and kind of subtlety impacts base stealing. The pitch clock’s a game-changer. It’s a game-changer. I kind of knew that coming in because I had watched so many minor-league games over the past few years. I knew it would meet with some discomfort in transition, especially for some of the veteran major leaguers who hadn’t played with it in the minor leagues, but also knew that within two or three years or four years or five it’s a complete non-issue because every player will have played with it at some point. But it is absolutely necessary for us to grow the game. Less dead time, more action, and we need to continue to think about how to get action into the game.”
TSN: What do you say to the people that are worried about the pitch clock in late-game situations in big games later in the season or in the playoffs?
Shapiro: “I think ultimately we’ll have to see, but umpires are going to have to exercise discretion at some point and if they feel like the pace of the pitch clock doesn’t fit the circumstance or situation then they’ve got the ability, always, to step in and say, ‘Okay, there’s something going on here that can’t be governed within the rule.’ We could also go to an extra timeout, there’s all sorts of options that we can go to at that point.”
TSN: To finish things off and tie everything together here with my first question … you’ve rebuilt the roster since you arrived late in 2015, you’ve built a new player development and spring training complex in Dunedin, you’ve completed stage one here, and have more dome renovations on the way next winter. What’s next?
Shapiro: “World championship. That’s it. That’s the last piece to deliver — bring a World Series back to Canada. Again, you want to do that sustainably and not just do that once, but feel like we objectively have a chance to do that every year. We still haven’t completed that ultimate goal of winning the last game played in a Major League Baseball season and we still have work to do to make sure we can year in and year out believe we have a chance to make that happen.”