By Ken Rosenthal / The Athletic
Fans in several cities with MLB teams want change — ownership changes, in some cases, but front office changes, at the very least.
Many of those changes seem unlikely.
“I’m a huge believer in stability and continuity, and those are competitive advantages in professional sports, that reacting and change don’t necessarily mean improvement,” Mark Shapiro, the president of the Toronto Blue Jays, said last month when asked about the job status of his general manager, Ross Atkins.
No one should be surprised in the coming weeks to hear similar comments from other executives with disappointing clubs. Which raises the questions: Why are owners so complacent? Why aren’t more front offices on the hot seat?
Fans of the Blue Jays are exasperated, if not angry. The same is true for fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Those teams intended to contend. They did not. And more trust-the-process blather is probably coming their fans’ way. Insular, sad sack franchises — the Chicago White Sox, Oakland Athletics, Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies, to name four — belong in a separate category. They barely bothered to try.
Managers are easy scapegoats. The Mariners already fired theirs. The Reds, Pirates and others might, too. But modern managers are glorified middlemen, extensions of their front offices. A managerial change is often an act of deflection by the head of baseball operations, a bid to buy more time.
Shapiro had a point. Stability and continuity indeed should be valued. If teams reacted to every fan eruption, they would be firing people every three days. Still, the passivity in the sport is disturbing.
Part of it may stem from the expansion of the postseason in 2022, and the illusion of contention provided by the addition of a third wild card in each league. Groupthink is another factor. Fire your head of baseball operations, and whom will you hire? Probably another executive whose decision making is not that dissimilar from the one you let go.
The biggest issue, though, is that many teams do not face the kind of financial pressure that would motivate a business to act. Most franchises evidently have it quite good, not that you would know it from their occasional sky-is-falling rhetoric.
But consider how some teams operate:
The Blue Jays are in last place with a club-record payroll. They have not won a playoff game since 2016, the year after Alex Anthopoulos, who was the team’s general manager, rejected a five-year extension to work under Shapiro.
But why should the team’s owner, Rogers Communications, worry? Rogers has a monopoly on baseball in Canada, and the team ranks ninth in the majors in home attendance, even with renovations reducing the capacity at Rogers Centre.
The Cardinals face the possibility of finishing with losing records in back-to-back full seasons for the first time since 1958 and 1959. Their loss of 4,561 fans per game in attendance is the second largest in the sport, behind only the New York Mets’. The growing apathy in St. Louis was especially apparent during an August series against the Brewers, when attendance twice dropped below 30,000 for the first time since Busch Stadium III opened in 2006.
All that should compel team owner Bill DeWitt Jr. to orchestrate a graceful exit for his president of baseball operations, John Mozeliak, the game’s second-longest tenured lead executive. Such a move would enable DeWitt to elevate former Red Sox executive Chaim Bloom, who joined the club as an adviser this season, or make an outside hire.
But here is the thing: Mozeliak has publicly acknowledged his desire to step back from day-to-day responsibilities when his contract expires at the end of 2025. And DeWitt is not the type to push things along when attendance at Busch Stadium, even in decline, remains the seventh highest in the sport.
The Giants hired a new manager and committed nearly $400 million in new guaranteed money last offseason, and to what end? Not only are they chasing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West but also the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. In six seasons under their president of baseball operations, Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ only outright success was in 2021, an outlier year in which they won 107 games.
This season could be their third consecutive at .500 or below. But Zaidi, who signed an extension of unknown length last October, could still be safe. Like DeWitt, Giants owner Greg Johnson is not one for disruption, particularly when his team’s attendance increase from 2023 is the seventh largest in the sport.
The Mariners are run by yet another inert owner, John Stanton. They achieved a major breakthrough in 2022, ending a 21-year postseason drought, at that time the longest in professional sports. But what have they done in the two seasons since? They have drawn criticism from catcher Cal Raleigh for not spending enough, led the majors in strikeouts a second consecutive year and, on Aug. 23, replaced manager Scott Servais with a beloved former player, Dan Wilson.
The team still faces long playoff odds, wasting the best pitching staff in the majors. The team’s president of baseball operations, Jerry Dipoto, is completing his ninth season. His sloppy handling of Servais’ dismissal only added to fan frustration. But he seems to maintain Stanton’s confidence, and it would be an upset if the team started over.
The Reds, coming off an 82-80 finish, spent more than $110 million in free agency. Yet it seemed fitting their season all but ended at home in mid-August, when they were outscored by the Kansas City Royals, 28-3, in a three-game sweep. The Royals invested wisely during the offseason. The Reds committed $45 million to infielder Jeimer Candelario, who was an odd fit, and traded one of their top pitching investments, Frankie Montas, to the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Reds strike out too much. They do not play good defense. With the exception of shortstop Elly De La Cruz, their position players are not improving.
Bob Castellini, unlike some of the other owners mentioned, is not necessarily the type to sit back, particularly with attendance flat. Manager David Bell would appear in greater jeopardy than the president of baseball operations, Nick Krall. In any case, the clock keeps ticking. The Reds have not won a playoff game in 12 years, or a playoff series since 1995.
The Pirates are headed for their sixth consecutive losing season, with general manager Ben Cherington presiding over the past five. The difference this year is that team owner Bob Nutting said in February that he expected a “meaningful step forward,” adding, “We collectively believe we can compete for the division and a postseason berth.”
An 8-21 collapse, most of which came after Cherington made modest additions at the trade deadline, ended any chance of either occurring. But attendance is up nearly 2,000 per game — thank you, Paul Skenes — and Nutting, whose estimated worth is $1.1 billion, continues to wallow in his revenue-sharing windfall.
Cherington, like every head of baseball operations, can point to a handful of player development successes as proof that better days lie ahead. Struggling teams always point to tomorrow. Some, like the Baltimore Orioles, eventually get to a better place. But too many others are running what amounts to a borderline con.
In most cases, the problem starts with ownership, not the head of baseball operations. Owners should be scrambling to find the next Anthopoulos, the next Dave Dombrowski, the next A.J. Preller.
Financial commitment is one thing. Emotional commitment is another, and too many owners see no need to make that type of investment. Stability and continuity represent the easy way out, even when such noble concepts fail to produce results.
When financial success is attainable without on-field success, why rock the boat?
Comments