Q&A with Jays president Mark Shapiro: Payroll, playoffs and the joys of home

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This article was published 25/03/2022 (1358 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DUNEDIN, Fla.—The Blue Jays are two weeks away from their first opening day game on Canadian soil in three years. The long journey that took them through Florida and New York at the height of a pandemic is over and a sense of normalcy has finally returned.

It must feel pretty good to be Mark Shapiro these days. The Jays president has a new player development complex to show off in Dunedin, a roster that is expected to contend for a title, and on Friday he officially announced significant renovations will begin at the Rogers Centre later this year.

Shapiro recently sat down with the Star for his annual spring interview at his office in Florida. A facelift for the Rogers Centre was just one of many topics he touched on during the wide-ranging 45-minute conversation. Here are some of the other highlights:

Your team has been aggressive each of the last two off-seasons with upgrading the roster. Yet whenever there’s a move, one of the first questions fans and media always ask is: What’s next? How would you define being all-in, and can that be a bad thing for an organization that wants to build a sustained winner, not a one-off post-season run?

It’s only bad in the sense that it often gets defined by a small subset of transactions at the major-league level. We were all-in the day we got here, and ownership has been all-in when they contributed $40 million to (the player development complex), are about to undertake a renovation in Toronto, grew an analytics staff from one person to 20 people, committed to building out the nutrition department from zero to six full-time nutritionists, built out a mental-performance department to five full-time mental-performance coaches, and sports science.

Those are all resources that may not be as easy for a fan to see contributing to a championship team and a championship culture and environment. But to me, those things signal all-in. It’s not just trading for Matt Chapman. We were never not in, and part of that is being willing to take the criticism to do the right things, to build a foundation. Ownership has bought in from day one.

You talked in the past about incremental increases to payroll and how your spending would come in waves, which has happened each of the last three off-seasons. Your philosophy also appears to be never backing yourself into a corner, maintaining flexibility into the future. Does that mean there is more room for payroll to grow? Is it going even higher in future years?

I think so. It’s hard for me to be definitive on that. At some point, it depends on the business generating the revenue and being successful on the field, and that’s largely dependent on attendance. It’s not like a secret formula. You’ll know, especially with some of the work that’s been done across our business organization to ensure that we have opportunities to support a high payroll from a revenue generation perspective.

When we have the eyeballs that I think we’re capable of getting in an incredibly dynamic city like Toronto and across the country, with our ratings, I think you’ll start to see that our payroll can be higher than it is now. Where that stops I’m not certain, but I think it’s unfair to say that we’ll probably be in that top two, three, four or five teams. I think we’ve always kind of said if we’re in that five-to-10 range every year, we should be a championship-calibre team.

The competitive balance tax threshold went up (from $210 million to $230 million U.S.) after the collective bargaining agreement was signed. Does that give you more room to grow payroll?

Right now, the CBT is not in my windshield. Boy, it would be great to have that be an issue. But certainly, as the core players we’ve got get more expensive, and we continue to supplement around them, that’s possible. But it hasn’t been something that we have thought about.

I remember you saying a year ago that the easiest path to economic recovery post-pandemic is building a winning team. Was that part of your pitch to ownership, or were this year’s off-season expenditures always part of the plan?

I think COVID was probably the singular greatest example of where having an ownership with deep resources allowed us to stay the course, despite the fact that we were losing more than tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars at some point.

It’s hard for fans to appreciate, but remember we were the only team that weren’t playing games for almost two seasons in Toronto, which meant we had almost no revenue and still had to support all the expenses of running our operation. And we didn’t pull back on any of those things in a meaningful way, particularly for our players. So, it was more about staying the course with the understanding that we need to make sure that we have a chance to win when we come out of this, because the fastest path back to a full recovery is winning and we still we still believe that.

The details have yet to be announced, but commissioner Rob Manfred said a more balanced regular-season schedule will be unveiled next year. That would seem to benefit the Jays and other teams in the American League East. Where do you stand on that issue?

From a pure fan perspective, I’ve been supportive of a more balanced schedule for a long time. I think playing the same team 17, 18, 19 times, for fans, can get tiresome. Maybe not seeing teams you’re most passionate about beating, but some of the other teams, yes. From a player’s perspective, it’s more exciting to see a variety of teams you’re competing against, too. I look at it from every stakeholder involved. I think it’s better for the game to move to a more balanced schedule.

Along the same lines, an expanded post-season was announced as part of the recent CBA. Your team would have made the post-season last year if the new 12-team format had been in place then. Is that something you were lobbying for?

I was a supporter of it going to 14 teams when we studied that. I’m disappointed it’s 12, not 14, but I do think it’s important for the game to have more fan bases watch meaningful baseball in August and September. I’m interested to see what the consequences are on the trade deadline. I think it puts a little more emphasis on the club you build in the off-season. There won’t be as many options to address it in July. I’m excited about that. I think that’s an important addition, and I would love to see a move from 12 to 14 at some point.

This organization used to have a policy of not signing players to contracts that lasted more than five years. As evidenced by George Springer and José Berríos, that’s not a philosophy you subscribe to. Do you have a maximum number of years for contracts?

No. I’m not a big believer in any black and white. The situation, the risk, the person, all the variables that go into a contract will dictate the circumstance. To draw lines in the sand, it just boxes yourself into a corner. Why do that?

It doesn’t mean the reasons behind those things were bad — they were good; they were founded in the right thoughts — but why draw lines in the sand? We won’t do it. The right person could come along who has impeccable character, low medical risk, elite discipline and supreme talent. You’re going to tell me that person doesn’t deserve (a deal)? That person exists somewhere. There is no limit. The person and the variables will dictate the limit.

There have been a lot of long-term contracts handed out across baseball the last several years, particularly to some of the game’s young stars like Fernando Tatis Jr. You have some young stars of your own. Where do you stand on locking up players like that to long-term deals vs. taking them through their arbitration years?

The best approach is every off-season or every spring — this one’s obviously awkward because of the condensed time frame: examine if there’s an opportunity for a multi-year deal. We’ve done it before, by the way, with those guys. I know I’m being repetitive, but every one of those situations is about sharing risk. The player is risking some upside and we’re risking some injury or dip in performance. It’s an effort to determine: Is there a sweet spot where you’re both comfortable with the risk shared?

If not, we’re fortunate this market’s big enough that it doesn’t mean we’re going to be trading the guy. It just means we’ll go through the system conventionally, which is not a big deal. We still want to pay them a ton. Believe me, we want to pay them a lot of money because that means they performed well. But we always will (talk). We’re never going to announce it, we’re never going to broadcast it. We’re not going to hold press conferences and say we offered an eight-year deal. But you can assume that (with) every one of our young core players at some point we’re approaching them about multi-year deals of some length.

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The Jays seemed to be in a tricky spot with the recent lockout. It took a long time for baseball to recover after the 1994 strike in this area. You’re also coming off two seasons that weren’t played in Toronto with a young core built to win now. How concerned were you about the potential damage missing regular-season games would have on this market?

I was concerned about that, not because of the history but because I think we’re in a position where we need to be present, because we haven’t been present so much over the last two years. More of a delay of us not being around would not have been good. And because we had a chance to be so good, I felt like it would have been heartbreaking (to miss games). So yeah, I was concerned, but it didn’t affect my role when I sat in those meetings. I’ve got two hats. When I’m representing our ownership there, I’ve got to just think about the game, not just the Toronto Blue Jays.

Your team returned home late last season, but this will be the club’s first opening day in Toronto in three years. What do you think that night is going to be like?

I think it’s going to be a magical night. I think it’s going to be a celebration of the city and country re-embracing the team. For our players, to feel a sold-out environment for the first time in a very long time. For some of our young players, who have never experienced that. That’s going to be remarkable. I think it’s going to be emotional for all of us. It’s going to be a great moment. It’s going to be a special night.

Gregor Chisholm is a Toronto-based baseball columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @GregorChisholm or reach him via email: gchisholm@thestar.ca