Shapiro building 'sustainable' contender

TORONTO -- The Blue Jays are standing on the edge of something, a new era of baseball in Toronto that they hope to not define with a peak, but with sustainable success.

That’s the mountaintop all teams hope to reach, but one that so few do. It often requires lean years as teams strip down to find their pivot point, so it can be easier to live comfortably in the middle, where the Blue Jays were stuck for years prior to the 2015-16 postseason runs reawakening the franchise.

Under president and CEO Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins, this meant a 67-95 season in 2019, the club’s worst record in 15 years as they transitioned to new manager Charlie Montoyo. When a 67-win season is the start of something larger, though, it’s easier to stomach. That season debuted the Blue Jays’ young core -- one that, 18 months later, has been supplemented with star talent -- and represented the first steps in the direction this front office envisioned.

“Along the way there are definitely tough moments, but that's part of building something meaningful, it's part of building something sustainable,” Shapiro told MLB.com. “The focus has always been, from Day 1, that we're not going to take shortcuts. No matter how tough it is around us, from people being disappointed, or how tough it is for us to watch, we want to build a sustainable championship team. The end goal was, for our fans, to not just win each year but to win a world championship and bring that back to Canada.”

When Shapiro looks back through his own career, the late 1990s Cleveland teams represent sustainable winning. From ‘95-99, Cleveland won the American League Central and reached the World Series twice. Those teams combined young, homegrown talent with major acquisitions as Cleveland tried to make that final push over the top. Prior to ‘99, that big splash was former Blue Jays great Roberto Alomar.

Blue Jays fans know sustainable winning well from the back-to-back World Series championships in 1992 and ‘93, but those were the product of a full decade of winning baseball that included trips to the AL Championship Series in ‘85, ‘89 and ‘91. Those Toronto teams showed -- like the NBA’s Toronto Raptors in 2018-19 -- that if an organization stays competitive and sticks around the postseason year after year, eventually they can kick the door down.

Still, sustainable winning eludes most organizations. Patience is part of that.

That’s where farm systems come in. When Cleveland went on that run in the late 1990s, Shapiro was the club’s farm director. Young talent is the concrete foundation that everything else is built upon. It’s “absolutely necessary” to Shapiro. Regardless of how successful the Major League club is, keeping that pipeline flowing is the surest way to sustain it.

“You cannot take an eye off that,” Shapiro said, “both in terms the environment you're developing players in, that you're focused on getting the most out of them and helping them be the best they can be, and regardless of where you are in the cycle that there are still people in your organization who are obsessively focused on acquiring talent.”

The building blocks are all here. The Blue Jays have a farm system that’s healthy, a young core in place and veteran additions, in George Springer and Marcus Semien. Now, it’s about timing and finding the sweet spot for their jump from good to great.

Prospects can and will be part of that rise eventually, but if the 2015-16 postseason runs taught Blue Jays fans anything, it’s the value of major, timely additions.

“I still think there will be there will be moments in time -- hopefully this Trade Deadline is one of them -- that we have to deal with the reality that we're going to trade some young talent and young players,” Shapiro said, “but that doesn't mean that we'll ever do it in a way that we do it wholesale, and we are going to remain committed.”

Money matters here, too. An added benefit of consistently producing homegrown talent is that it creates more opportunities to spend on free agency or trades, and this is a spot where the Blue Jays should be positioned very well over the coming seasons.

Beyond Hyun Jin Ryu, Randal Grichuk and Springer, the Blue Jays aren’t carrying many large contracts and don’t have any anchors weighing them down. Going into next offseason, they’ll have Semien ($18 million), Tanner Roark ($12 million), Robbie Ray ($8 million), Kirby Yates ($5.5 million), Steven Matz ($5.2 million) and others coming off the books, too.

Some of this payroll will go directly to replacements and, eventually, this young core will need to be extended, but there’s money to spend. That’s a good place for the Blue Jays to be, considering what could be available on the horizon.

“With everything that Ross led our baseball operations staff through this offseason, there was a thought process that we need to stay focused on the fact that we don't need to build it to completion in this moment,” Shapiro said. “We need to be aware of what the Trade Deadline could offer this year and what next offseason offers in what is a very impactful free agent class.”

That's where the Blue Jays stand now, less than two years removed from their 67-win season. It's no longer a question of if they'll add, but who they'll add and when as they chase that lofty goal of sustainable winning.