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Atkins Speaks!: Few Surprises In Jays GM’s End-of-Season Press Conference
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Photo credit: Nick Turchiaro-USA Today Sports
Andrew Stoeten
Oct 3, 2017, 16:50 EDT
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José Bautista won’t be back with the Blue Jays in 2018. The club is very open to talking extension with Josh Donalson. It’s not likely that Vladimir Guerrero Jr. makes his big league debut in 2018, but the Jays won’t rule it out. Depth is important.
Stop me if you’ve either heard all this stuff before, or if you could have completely guessed it hours, if not days, if not weeks before Ross Atkins sat down for his 2017 post-mortem press conference, which took place at Rogers Centre here on Tuesday afternoon!
None of this is to say that there was nothing to be gleaned from what Atkins said as he met the media, it’s just that if you’ve been paying attention it hasn’t exactly been difficult to get a handle on where Atkins’ front office is at. Still, I feel duty bound to run through some of the highlights regardless. And then we’ll get down to parsing out what I really thought was the interesting stuff. Which… I think there was some… wasn’t there?
Rather than bother with the notes I furiously typed out during Atkins’ live stream, what say I just lazily copy-and-paste some other peoples’ tweets, eh? Eh!
* * *
Alrighty, so what have we learned? Anything?
  • The Bautista thing — that he’s already been told that his option for next season won’t be exercised by the club — is news, but hardly unexpected. (He later added, referring to last Sunday’s send-off, “That will not be the last celebration of José Bautista.” Damn straight.)
  • I’ve been asked a few times this season about the potential that John Gibbons might lose his job, but it’s never really felt like that was going to happen — and I guess this confirms it. I think the front office really does value Gibbons, even though he isn’t necessarily “their guy.” Plus, he remains a handy layer of cover for them, too. Maybe next year, if things go sideways again, this will be a real question.
  • Adding one impact arm and one impact position player? Sure. Giddy up. Though, I must admit, I’m a little surprised that Atkins would be quite that specific, given how well last year’s talk of getting younger and more athletic went. *COUGH*.
  • Yes, Vlad is very good.
  • The “gloriously non-specific” stuff about communication is kinda interesting, and John had a few more tweets on the subject, noting that Atkins said he felt he let down guys like Devon Travis and Aaron Sanchez with the way some of their medical things were communicated — while adding that he would make the same decisions over again, with respect to the procedures the club recommended those guys have. Sounds like what were frustrating years for those two key players were maybe made a little more frustrating, unnecessarily, by the way the club approached their situations? I dunno. If they’re admitting it, I guess that’s good.
  • Finding a piece to fit in behind Tulo and Travis will, indeed, be vital this winter.
  • Smoak being banged up at the end is a relief — but probably not unexpected. Yes, his numbers took a hit in the second half, but it would have been much more concerning if he’d reverted back to the high strikeout guy we’d seen his first few years here. He didn’t — he just wasn’t quite hitting the ball as well as in the first half, and the fact that he was playing through injuries is as good an explanation for that as you’ll get, I think.
  • They really don’t seem inclined to trade Donaldson.
  • Teoscar gets some praise, but nothing close to a guarantee of a job — which I think is completely expected.
  • The Jays like Anthony Alford quite a bit!
Pretty basic stuff, I think. It’s… pretty much where the club is at.
So, OK. Now here are a few more nuggets that didn’t make it into those tweets:
  • Atkins emphasized that it’s not just the front office that is doubling down on this “trying to contend” thing, it’s the players, too. “We have a group that believes we can contend next year. We’re going to do everything we can to complement that core.”
  • Later, though, when asked about where he thinks he has a surplus he can trade from, he mentioned the minor league system, but added his usual caveat — noting that trading away from the minor league system is a thing a team would do when it means putting themselves in position to win a world series, not merely to just become a contender. So… don’t expect massive trades from the farm this winter — which, unless you’re hopelessly panicky about this front office, I’m sure you didn’t anyway.
  • “We are optimistic that he will return to be a starting pitcher,” is what Atkins said about Aaron Sanchez, which… holy shit, was this ever in doubt??? Having to be told the club is optimistic is maybe not quite as reassuring as it sounds. (I’m sure he’ll be fine.)
  • Interesting stuff about the club getting off to bad starts in April, which Atkins suggests could be combated with a different approach in the spring. “We need to challenge ourselves to see that as an opportunity to create more team work — two words — and team fundamental works and working as a unit more frequently,” he explained, rather than relying too much on individualized schedules for each veteran player. Sure, OK, give it a shot.
  • Regarding the minor league system beyond Guerrero and Bichette, he said, “We’re looking at a group of 30 to 40 players that have a chance to make a significant impact” at the big league level at some point. “When we did that two years ago it was difficult to get past 15 with names that we were excited about.” So… that’s good!
  • Lastly, perhaps most interesting of all, to me, were the things Atkins said about trades, and, specifically, about potentially moving pieces from the big league roster in order to get better in places of greater need. He noted that he thinks the club has a surplus in terms of pitching — particularly, I suspect (if he didn’t say so outright), in the bullpen — as well as one that’s coming in the outfield and in the minors. Opportunities arise, he said, when other teams value your pieces differently than you do, and vice versa. Maybe this is just because it’s what I kind of want to hear, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Kevin Pillar is the guy we’re ultimately talking about here. A Blue Jays team with Teoscar, Alford, and Pompey has options in centre, and Pillar certainly would have appeal to other teams. More appeal than to the Blue Jays? Depends on what they think of him, of course. But maybe we’ll find out!

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