Archive for the ‘Anthopoulos Speaks!’ Category

Getting an early jump on putting this disasterfuck of a season to bed, Alex Anthopoulos joined Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler on the Sportsnet broadcast for a talk during what turned out to be a lengthy the top of the second inning of Friday night’s game, commenting on the year that was and what we can expect as we move into the off-season. Continuing a recent trend, Anthopoulos was a bit more candid than we’ve become accustomed to during his three seasons at the Jays’ helm, especially with regard to how he’s looking to reshape the roster during the winter.

“I’m not as concerned with guys who have options,” he said, explaining an evolving philosophy– or, at the very least, a what it seems he hopes will be a newfound ability to avoid relying on the organization’s young players. “They want to be up here– but we’re going to do what’s best for the organization. We want to see some of the young guys play, but there isn’t anything wrong with having them wait if we can have guys that can help the team right now and have that depth, because as we’ve seen, over the coming year guys won’t perform, guys are going get hurt, and we need that depth– it’s going to be important. So, if we can fill spots and have some of the young guys waiting in the wings to force our hand, that’s definitely going to be something that we’re going to adjust to.”

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Ahhhh, to think back on more quaint, innocent times here in Jaysland… like last Thursday! That was the day, long before any of this week’s unfortunateness, when the Jays were kind enough to let our very own Drew Fairservice sit down with Alex Anthopoulos for a wide-ranging interview that you can see in full over at Getting Blanked.

Obviously it would serve no purpose for me to reprint here what you can simply click the link above to see (seriously, do it), but what I can do is pick out the most interesting, eyebrow-raising segments and explode them all like so many small homophobic-slur-written-on-eye-black-in-a-different-language controversies… er… or something. And naturally, the main topic in an Anthopoulos interview that any fan is going to skip to regards payroll, and what we can expect to see there going forward. So let’s focus on that.

When we do so, we see that, unfortunately, at times, somewhat like his predecessor, I’m starting to get the sense that Alex actively wants to distance himself from the question. Granted, any of what appears to be a newfound appreciation for opening up on the subject may be due to the fact that, as he explains near the end of the conversation, “with more time spent in the job, it is natural that you get more comfortable in your own skin. At the same time, you get to know your own media so well and build relationships. You can let your guard down at times.”

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On most days around the time I intended to have this published, I’d be tossing up an Afternoon Snack post, but let’s be honest, today there were really only two things in the Jays-a-verse worth discussing, and everybody’s already been talking about them: Ricky Romero’s continuing struggles, and the talk Alex Anthopoulos gave to assembled reporters before last night’s game. So I’ll focus in on those. I began earlier with last night’s tales of Romer-woe, and continue here with AA’s talk…

Alex Anthopoulos spoke with reporters prior to yesterday’s loss to the Mariners, which naturally led to a number of stories in the local papers– for example, John Lott reviews the chat’s highlights at the National Post, Mike Rutsey has it covered for the Toronto Sun, and Brendan Kennedy provides a handy digest at the Toronto Star.

Here in the online world, however, space isn’t at the same– or any– kind of premium, meaning that Kennedy, in the Star, as well as Gregor Chisholm of BlueJays.com, at his North of the Border blog, have been able to provide full transcripts. That not only means that everyone can read the entirety of what was said, but that other sources– like yours truly, for example *WINK*– can pull out whatever they feel was most interesting. And, indeed, there were some nuggets.

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Jays GM Alex Anthopoulos took to the airwaves last week, heading straight into the firing line in what was yet another eventful few days for a club that one suspects would rather just slink off into the ether until it’s about time for the Winter Meetings– or, hmmm… perhaps I’m merely projecting my own fantasies onto the organization as a whole at this point.

Speaking on TSN Radio with James Cybulski and/or Company (audio here), and on the Fan 590 with Bob McCown and– ugh– Damien Cox (audio here), Anthopoulos touched on a wide range of topics… but since the Fan hosts were mostly preoccupied with PED bullshit, we’ll mostly take a look at what he said to TSN.

We’ll start, however, with the Fan, as that’s where he said perhaps the most interesting thing of the mini radio junket, regarding their handling of Marcus Stroman’s suspension.

“If Stroman had been on the 40-man roster, whether he was at the big league level or had been optioned down to the minor leagues, all he would have gotten was a warning,” Anthopoulos said, striking directly at the key reason this whole damn thing is a non-issue not worth of discussion for half a bloody radio hit.

What might have been worth further exploration, however, was when he next said.

“We could have easily just said, ‘he’s getting a call-up in September,’ and this wouldn’t have been announced, he would have got a warning like I’m sure a lot of other players around the league have gotten– something like this. We didn’t feel it was the right thing to do. He’s in the minor leagues, and whether it was ignorance, negligence, that’s not an excuse, and unfortunately he has to pay the price for it. Though it wasn’t his intent, we weren’t going to certainly try to circumvent those things, and we’re going to stand by the program.”

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Most times the Anthopoulos Speaks! posts we do around here involve transcribing a lengthy series of Anthopoulosian ramblings and occasionally trying to shoehorn them into some broader context, or simply unburying them, letting his comments stand alone. Times seem to be changing for Alex Anthopoulos, though– not to mention the media, who have caught on to the value of the verbatim translation racket– and in his latest round of chatting with the media there appear, to me, at least, to be more small details that need to be isolated and picked at, like the diseased bones of the weakest runt in a flock of antelope. Or… something.

The GM spoke to reporters following Sunday’s game (or perhaps before, I don’t fucking know). A transcript of it was provided later by, among others, Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star, and few of the comments marked an intriguing bit of departure from the typical Anthopoulos fare, and allow us to try and peer a little more deeply into the inner workings of 1 Blue Jay Way. Maybe.

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Yesterday’s trade deadline may have passed at 4 PM, but that didn’t mean that work was over for Alex Anthopoulos, as he then embarked on a mini press junket, speaking to the Fan 590, TSN radio, and an assemblage of reporters, about the day’s (and previous night’s) dealings and non-dealings.

If he were JP Ricciardi, and I wasn’t worried about diving too deep into the hackneyed “honeymoon is over” meme, I might have labelled this some kind of a “bullshit tour,” but… what he was saying wasn’t really too outlandish or unexpected, even if at least a couple of items struck me as odd.

From the Fan590 Interview

Chatting with Bob McCown and Damien Cox on Prime Time Sports (audio here), Anthopoulos spoke mostly about the deals that went down on Monday night, involving Travis Snider and Eric Thames, as well as the club’s situation in both left field and the bullpen.

At the start of the year, he tells McCown and Cox, in left, “we didn’t really have anybody who took the job and ran with it.”

“It really came down to, you know, Raj Davis wasn’t really a candidate for us because of the season he had for us last year– he had every day at-bats and he didn’t perform. We felt that his best role might be as that fourth outfielder, and get some playing time at all three outfield spots. And really, when you look at the way Eric and Travis both played last season for us, Eric clearly played better than Travis for that short period of time,” he says.

Clearly? OK, sure if you look at their overall offensive numbers– completely ignoring Thames’ butchery on defence, the fact that Snider performed about as well at the plate in 2010 as Thames, and that Thames’ hitting was buoyed in 2012 by a couple of unexpectedly hot months– I guess you can say that? Maybe?

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