Chapter 1: What insights does Ross Atkins share about the Blue Jays' season so far?
Yeah, there should be some passion. This doesn't have to be boring. Yeah, there should be some passion.
This doesn't have to be boring. GM of the Toronto Blue Jays. Remember, when I sat down with him, it was the last day of April. The Blue Jays were two games under .500, and then they go on a tear, and then they end up in the ALCS, and now their season's on the brink, but still, this is a time to look back and reflect.
and appreciate and all of the conversation and all the topics and all of the good stuff that comes with the world of baseball early in the season and now we get a chance to see it manifest itself and yes the last days of the postseason and the blue jays are in the last days of the postseason anyway All right.
Well, this week, in this week that we did record this, it was a flurry of baseball executives, including Seattle, President of Baseball Operations, Jerry DePoto, which we will give you on another Baseballs and Boring audio vault. But this one.
This one is Ross Atkins sitting down with Ross Atkins at Rogers Center to reflect on how they got to the end of April, how he looked forward to the rest of the season, and now we can sort of soak it all in, what it all meant to the here and the now. All right, here's Ross Atkins. There's no human being I'd rather be talking to more than Ross Atkins right now. Fact.
And it's not only because we share the common bond of knowing what it's like to, or hearing the stories of Mike Lowell and the Little League. I love the stories, Ron, because you grew up with Mike, right? Yeah. Congratulations on everything, by the way. On everything that you've done and everything you continue to do. Thank you. Appreciate that.
And we'll get to the very controversial topic we talk about with all executives about our ketchup-flavored potato chips any good, which, you know, Alex Anthopoulos is dying on that hill. But, you know, I do want to...
talk a little bit about Mike, you know, because, you know, I've done a book with him and he, uh, he saw some great stories, but one of the ones that really struck to me is how every, I think it was every Wednesday, his dad, right?
Like that was the day they were like, we're going to go play baseball and we're going to go get ice cream or something like right after you've probably experienced the Lowell family, uh, baseball and ice cream a few times, right?
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Chapter 2: How does Ross Atkins reflect on the team's performance leading up to the postseason?
Mikey was in Little League Baseball. He was... the best player that wasn't as talented as some that was running around on the field every single day, the most skilled, just the eye hand, the ability to make contact, always doing the right thing as a really young baseball player. His older brother was actually more talented, just more powerful, hit the ball farther, threw the ball really hard.
Everybody was scared to face his older brother, Carlos. He was that kid. But Mikey was just always the skilled player that you hated to face. And that proved to be a really good pick for the Yankees and then went on to play for some other teams. But, yeah, special family. They're close to my heart as people and a big part of the fabric of my baseball evolution, too.
Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you mention about how you think about him. Like, think about the type of player he is in your current job. Because I think about him too. I mean, because I see him as the glue guy, the clubhouse guy, the bilingual guy, the guy who, you know, and who was... Just like he was a winning player.
And so much of this is a conversation throughout baseball, Ross, you know, this is like when you're building a clubhouse, when you're building a team, you have to have a little of everything. It can't just be like, oh, this guy's analytics are off the chart. It's 162 game season. You need a lot of Mike Lowell's, you know, so I mean, I would imagine that.
You understand that better than most, right?
Yeah, I mean, I believe it wholeheartedly. It's finding it and identifying it when they're not within your organization and acquiring. Doing all of those things is just not quite as simple as one might think, and they're not growing on trees. Mikey Lowell is... was exceptionally talented.
You know, he'll probably be upset for me saying this, but an overachiever, um, you know, probably exceeded what, not what he expected to do, but certainly what almost all scouts in baseball expected him to do. And not only did he do it as an individual, but went on to win a couple of world series, be an MVP in the world series. And that just doesn't happen.
You know, that doesn't happen because right guy, right time. That happens because of all the things you're talking about. The, the, the decision-making, the chemistry, the preparation, and then the work to put himself in good situations.
You know, when the Red Sox traded for him, And there wasn't a lot of, when you're trading for a guy, you have a lot of more proof of what you think the guy is going to be now. There wasn't that proof.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do baseball executives face when making trades early in the season?
There wasn't proof that Mike was going to pull himself out of this. But now it's different. Like when you're seeing identifying guy, you're probably like, okay, we see the underlying stats here. If we do tweak this or tweak that, there wasn't that. But now I would imagine there's a lot of that, right? It's not just, hey, I got this gut feeling and we're going to go with it.
Yeah, I mean, I do think that it is harder and harder to beat teams to identifying things or opportunities because of the underlying information that essentially everyone has. Not to say that certain teams don't have better information or more robust information to tap into, but you do see the underlying things where you don't have to have an army of scouts identifying and...
triangulating information in a way that's going to be able to suggest that maybe there's this hope that we can hang our hat on this. There is a lot more.
information available to you to see opportunities like that. Along those lines, do you find it more difficult to make trades than even five years ago?
To me, it's just more difficult to win trades. Everyone always says you want to do a trade that is good for both teams and they like good baseball trades, but at the end of the day, everyone's trying to win the trade. Everyone's trying to get the better end of the deal and
you stop at probably what's fair and occasionally you'll maybe do something that is seemingly to the industry a little less than fair, but you still have a rationale for that or reasons for that, that maybe the underlying information or something that you don't think the industry may be aware of about your talent or the other team's talent. But I think in today's game,
more teams are speaking the same language again. We went through a bit of a transition where there were some teams that were speaking heavy scout and some teams speaking heavy information and data and lining up in terms of value was, you know, a little bit less efficient than it is today. So trades at the deadline are still, you're still, you can make them. There's deals everywhere.
But you're not going to win them. No. Maybe as much. You're going to pay, we're going to pay two or three times like you want, right? Yeah. Yeah, you're just going to, you're going to have to pay a price that is probably going to be deemed usually as, oh, that's pretty fair for both teams.
So, you know, when you talk about you want to win the trade, But there's a lot of GMs now that's a percentage of what percentage is acceptable winning the trade. I hear this. Well, this guy wants to win the trade by 75% instead of 51%. I mean, I don't know if you come across that dynamic, too. Because, listen, I mean, everyone wants to win. That's your point. Everyone wants to win the trade.
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Chapter 4: How does Ross Atkins perceive the importance of player chemistry and instincts in team building?
all the time to to be out in front and he's good at it and he's done it a lot so there were some times where some things got drug out of him that became public that that was just became a little bit of a distraction in the industry but he handled it exceptionally well and i i did believe that
whether it would have been five months from now or maybe it was this week, but I did believe we were going to get something done because there was no doubt in my mind that Vladdy wanted to be a Blue Jay for life. But I think the Juan Soto signing, some of the things that were happening in the industry and us coming off of a down year, I think those things were weighing for him.
And it's... Everyone loves attention to be seduced and the thought of coming into Yankee Stadium and coming into the Met Stadium and being essentially serenaded. You know, that... He's human. Yeah. So those things were going through my head. Like, okay, you know, we'll see how he handled this. But I did believe, because of his desire to be a Blue Jay, that we were...
more likely to be getting something done than not.
But that's the instinct thing. I think, man, instincts are so important. It's so important. Because when I was looking at it from afar, that's what I was thinking. I was thinking they have to know, they have to have an idea whether or not this is going to be a reality. I know that, for instance, the Red Sox went through it with Mookie. They didn't feel like it was going to be good, which is fine.
But, oh, man, like, it's good for you. Good instincts. I mean, really. I feel like it's like, but that's a lot. That's from, I think, your experience in being around the game. And, you know, not only being around the game here, being around the game in other places and seeing Mr. Lowell or whatever, but this is it. You know, like, baseball is a lot of instincts, I'm saying.
Yeah, and the thing that's interesting about Vladdy is I've known him well for 10 years. Yeah. So he wasn't going to fool me, and I wasn't going to fool him. As we were having heart-to-heart interactions, and in the end, I had to believe what I was hearing and seeing and feeling.
That's so important, like you said, to have that, too, because... I mean, I would imagine for you, for free agents, you don't have – you can't lean on those instincts, right? That's right. I don't know this guy. Hey, welcome. Yeah. Welcome, right? Yeah. We think you like it here, but – We just spent four hours together. Yeah. What does that mean? Yeah.
I mean, it's – and so that brings me – I want to talk a little bit about another really good acquisition here with Jeff Hoffman.
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