PONDERABLES
After watching eighteen-year-old Chicago Black Hawk rookie Connor Bedard’s NHL debut last Tuesday, I can’t help but ponder about just how good he’s going to be. His impressive maturity and wicked shot augur well for a long and successful career.
THINGS I FIRMLY BELIEVE
The sooner the media stops paying attention to Donald Trump, the sooner this blight on humanity will disappear from the scene.
The Blue Jays are underachievers and are the worst base running team in baseball. (More on their base running below.)
TORONTO BLUE JAYS MANAGEMENT
Jays president Mark Shapiro has proven to be adept at redesigning the Rogers Center to make it a fan-friendly, baseball-only stadium. And apparently has done an excellent job of turning the Blue Jays Dunedin training camp into one of the most admired in the majors. However, he seems to be an unmitigated control freak. It’s pretty well known in the baseball world that the reason Alex Anthopolous moved on to Atlanta when Shapiro was hired is that Shapiro insisted Anthopolous clear all decisions with him. Anthopolous’ success in Atlanta proves that he has more baseball smarts than Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins combined. (Akins has apparently has no problem clearing all decisions with Shapiro.)
Some of the player moves Shapiro has made (Atkins, having been reduced to a non-entity who can’t make an independent decision, is blameless) are mind-boggling. For example, trading proven superstars Teoscar Hernandez, Lourdes Gurriel, Jr., and future all-star catcher Gabriel Moreno for the mediocre Daulton Varsho and Eric Swanson.
It’s time for these two carpetbaggers from Cleveland to move on.
And when it comes to Atkins, as indicated by the following quotation, there’s no one in the English speaking world who uses more words to say absolutely nothing.
ROSS ATKINS’ CONVOLUTED ANSWER TO A SIMPLE QUESTION
When asked about the dubious decision to remove pitcher Jose Berrios from the Jays’ final game, Atkins answered as follows.
“Yeah, I was surprised he was coming out. The strategy and the decisions that had that available I thought were, you know, why I wasn’t at a moment thinking that not understanding what was behind it or not understanding what was going on. There was not an influence from the office that factored into it other than that maybe that it was an organizational strategy that had been communicated to players — when I say ‘organizational’ I’m including players, many players—over the course of the days prior to that strategy. In our view, the strategy ended up getting us to a point where we deployed the right-handed relievers in an effective way against a more right-handed hitting lineup that led us to an outcome where we allowed two runs in a playoff game. We see that from a run-prevention standpoint as a solid outcome.” Egad!
BLUE JAYS BASERUNNING
The Blue Jays are the worst base running team in MLB. Third base coach Luis Rivera recently resigned, saying “they never paid any attention to me anyway.”