Adedokun Waliyu 
A season that slams to an end in clear underachievement is always going to be punctuated with disappointment, disillusion and frustration.
It’s the nature of professional sports, an enduring price of fandom and the challenge facing every championship-minded front office..
But, to parrot the team’s own lofty marketing slogan, the aspirational 2023 Toronto Blue Jays took these sentiments next level over a tumultuous season that crash-landed once again in spectacular playoff defeat.
Despite projections and betting odds touting them as World Series contenders, as the Fall Classic is set to begin this weekend, the Jays have been done for three weeks.
The early and meek exit left plenty to ponder from a team that won three fewer games than it did in 2022 and two fewer than 2021, were less dynamic offensively and punctuated the failures with a series of self-made public-relations disasters.
And it set the stage for a critical off-season for an embattled front office, a process that will ramp up quickly following the conclusion of the World Series.
The fallout after getting swept away by the Minnesota Twins in a best-of-three AL wild-card debacle was as bombastic as we’ve seen around this team in the eight-year reign of president Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins.
And the whodunit element of the how and why of starter Jose Berrios’ early removal from the Game 2 clincher defined so much of what infuriated fans about this team.
The pain of defeat degenerated into a blame game with manager John Schneider suggesting post-game that his hands were tied, Atkins throwing him under the bus three days later and Shapiro suggesting it might be time to hug it all out.
That may take some time for a team that became less likeable the deeper the season slipped into the morass, a frustration sharper than it has been since 2019.
In no particular order, the Jays’ hyper-engaged fan base became fed up with the team’s offensive struggles, the maddening inability to get on a hot streak and a front office that, at minimum, seemed elusive with the truth, avoiding transparency at every turn.
So team turmoil it has been — and not just externally.
Players were openly critical of the Berrios boondoggle in the Twin Cities, both on and off the record. Many, in fact, were incensed at how it played out.
“There was definitely some confusion from the players as to what was going on,” Whit Merrifield told the Foul Territory podcast. “I don’t know what happens behind those doors, behind the coach’s doors. I just know what was communicated to us. I know the analytics department is pretty involved.”
I don’t know what happens behind those doors, behind the coach’s doors. I just know what was communicated to us. I know the analytics department is pretty involved.
In fairness, the Jays are far from unique in such strategy, as we’ve seen at various points this post-season. But the communications breakdown that shrouded the events in Minny didn’t sit well.
And now, with a number of free agents potentially on the way out, the baseball operations braintrust faces a mammoth challenge of avoiding a further regression from a team that had such promise.
Along the way, they’ll need to regain trust of an annoyed fanbase and mend the disconnect between front office and clubhouse.
Rarely is the situation ever quite as bad as it seems in the immediate glare of a defeat, but the way the turbulent season played out and ultimately ended has left a mark.
“This season was a grind,” Shapiro said in his season-ending news conference, a presidential address that was part state of the union, part damage control after Atkins’ combative stab at the same a few days earlier.
“It was not easy. It was extremely frustrating and it was challenging. We still won 89 games … but I’ve been in the game 32 years and I can’t remember a season that felt like it was more of an effort.”
Tell that to the fan base, who flooded to the Rogers Centre three-million strong in 2023 and who expected more than the boozy buzz from the new outfield drinking dens.
The old baseball rallying point of playing “meaningful September baseball” rings hollow for a team that has been swept away in wild-card appearances in 2020, 2022 and 2023. Even worse, a team that had vowed improved defence and attention to detail would be the ticket to do damage in the playoffs, was ill-equipped to do so.
Built to sustain the grind of a 162-game season and qualify for the saturated MLB post-season? Sure. Built for championship baseball where power plays and clutch scoring is at a premium? Not yet, it would seem.
“The goal is to play deeper into October,” Shapiro said. “I think at one point, playing meaningful games in September was probably enough. That’s not enough anymore.”
No, it most certainly is not. And, with the key players all safe in their jobs, what comes next could go a long way in evaluating the Shapiro-Atkins legacy and how much longer it plays.
For now — and at least one more season — the answer is no as the Rogers Communications overlords have opted for status quo heading into 2024. And, despite the reaction to the notable underachievement in 2023, there is some sense to letting the current management group finish what they started.
That isn’t to say there aren’t some changes to be made in the team’s messaging and communication of its decision-making process — both from the baseball operations department to game staff and from coaches to players.
Until spring training arrives — pitchers and catchers are scheduled to report somewhere around Feb. 12 — the questions and second-guessing will linger.
Top of the list is the question of how a team fond of amplifying its commitment to process, accountability and collaboration mixed its messages so dramatically.
In a week of high drama, the fallout to the Jose Berrios post-season disaster got ugly. It was miniseries material as manager John Schneider gently shifted the onus to the baseball operations department, GM Ross Atkins shifted it back to Schneider (before saying that his manager would return) while team president Mark Shapiro worked at smoothing the waters by deeming everyone else was to blame.
But when the in-house dysfunction goes public, it’s clear there is work to do. Players notice and get frustrated and the fallout takes time to dissipate and dominates the chatter despite an off-season with plenty on the work order.
The first voice in the blame game was Schneider — often the one left to articulate the front office’s messes. Clearly crushed in the aftermath of the 2-0 loss to the Twins to end the season, Schneider was subtle and sensible in describing the Berrios affair.
“You can sit here and second-guess me, second-guess the organization, second-second-guess anybody,” Schneider said in Minneapolis within an hour off his team’s elimination. “I get that.”
Heat of the moment, sure, yet eyebrow-raising stuff nonetheless. The mayhem, it turns out, was just getting started.
Rather than fly home following the game, the Jays remained in Minnesota and those that returned to Toronto didn’t do so until Thursday, Oct. 6. After a day to absorb the wrath being rained down on the front office, a still-hot Atkins was trotted out to face the media on the Saturday morning of Thanksgiving weekend.
Combative and defensive, the GM didn’t hold back in deflecting the blame away from the tall foreheads in his department to the uniformed commandos in the clubhouse and dugout.
Among the gems delivered from the Jays press conference room in the bowels of the Rogers Centre:
“I have 100% confidence that it’s not front-office pressure,” Atkins said, when asked if Schneider felt heat to make the in-game call on Berrios.
“Those meetings are John Schneider’s meetings,” Atkins said of the process that led to the early Berrios hook. “The group is the staff that’s on the field. It’s not the front office. I do not attend those meetings and I certainly do not make those decisions.”
Suddenly, a communications strategy designed to have the gloomy season obituary buried beneath the turkey and stuffing of the Canadian long weekend, instead became a tawdry show destined to drive the off-season narrative.
As Thanksgiving feasts go, it was a mouthful for an agitated fan base and a still-unnerved group of players to digest.
Team personnel we spoke with were incredulous at Atkins’ public stance. Reaction ranged from the belief that such thoughts should be dealt with internally rather than from a podium watched eagerly by a fan base waiting for blood to incredulity from some players that the GM would so brazenly hang his manager out to dry.
Remember that on the night it happened, players reportedly had their manager’s back, making it known that the decision to remove Berrios wasn’t entirely driven by the skipper’s instincts.
Meanwhile, in his public debrief, Atkins had an opportunity to soothe the angst surrounding his team rather than inflame it.
And the crazy thing? His clear dodging of blame for the Berrios affair all but muted his purely salient point that a team was never going to win a playoff series scoring just two runs.
There always will be a disconnect between a front office and a clubhouse/locker room in any sport, but when the gap widens to a chasm, it can become an issue. That said, how the team responds in the months between the conclusion of the World Series and the start of spring training will be telling.
While there will no doubt be some minor changes on the coaching staff — likely on the hitting side, plus the replacement of retiring third base coach Luis Rivera — the main decision-makers remain in place.
This is how it should be for a team that still has a strong core in place and a manager with upside who continues to learn on the job.
But at the same time, there is work to done as outlined by Shapiro in his mop-up press conference five days after the Atkins debacle.
“We need to be more open,” Shapiro said. “We need to be more transparent about who the people are that are in the room and the information that is provided to our staff and John before each game.
“We need to get better.”
Damage control by the president and CEO? Of course. But perhaps foreboding for a regime — one staked with a franchise-record payroll, remember — overdue on delivering meaningful results beyond the first week of October.
The 2023 World Series will begin 383 days after Lourdes Gurriel Jr. and Gabriel Moreno were effectively finished as Blue Jays, their time in Toronto ending quietly with the only Major League Baseball team they’d known.
Moreno was the third catcher on the Jays team that suffered an epic collapse against the Seattle Mariners, Gurriel left off the doomed playoff roster due to injury.
The subsequent expulsion of those two, plus Teoscar Hernandez being dealt to Seattle, were the triggers of a thematic change to the Jays roster that didn’t exactly cash in.
But life couldn’t be more different now for Gurriel and Moreno, two important pieces for the National League-champion Arizona Diamondbacks, who will begin play in the World Series on Friday in Texas.
Nor for the Jays, quite obviously.
“You can’t evaluate a trade in the short term,” team president Mark Shapiro said earlier this month, referring to the move that brought outfielder Daulton Varsho to the Jays. “You’ve got to give it four or five years to understand whether a trade was effective or not.
“Over the season I still feel like that was a good trade.”
It is, however, a deal that may haunt the Jays for the better part of a decade.
Shapiro’s rationale aside, should the Diamondbacks knock off the Rangers in the best-of-seven championship series, it’s an instant loss for the Jays — and a rather significant one.
Over the season, I still feel like that was a good trade.
Put it simply: A trade designed to help lift the Jays to a Fall Classic as early as this year, instead did the same to the other party in the transaction.
But this is not another hot-take swing at the low-hanging fruit submission that the Ross Atkins-orchestrated deal was the worst in club history because it likely isn’t.
It does, however, further sting in the aftermath of a Jays playoff “run” that lasted all of two games (again) with two runs scored. The fact that Moreno and Gurriel, hitting high in the D-backs order, certainly provides some painful piling on.
The fact is the Jays felt the effects of the trade long before Arizona launched its unlikely cruise through the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies.
It started in spring training, when catcher Alejandro Kirk reported late after awaiting the birth of his first child and clearly not in physical condition to begin such an important season in his career. Kirk never truly recovered and, although he was fine defensively, regressed significantly at the plate.
Danny Jansen, the stable figure at the catcher position, once again battled injury in 2023 and continued a frustrating career trend of bad luck despite some renewed power and production at the plate.
The fact that the Jays felt that they were solid enough at the catcher position to swap a top prospect for a corner outfielder seems like a gross miscalculation — and not just in hindsight.
Circling back to Moreno, his performance this post-season is precisely what was feared by his supporters both in and outside of the Toronto organization.
His elite defensive skills have earned rave reviews on the Snakes’ magical October run and the blossoming performance has included some slugging at the plate, a feature not often on display during his days developing in the minors.
Moreno has been comfortable and productive in key situations while hitting third in the D-backs lineup. Varsho, meanwhile, started his Jays career hitting cleanup, but plunged all the way to ninth, where he was a non-factor 0-for-5 in the abbreviated playoff loss to the Twins.
