Blue Jays: Ross Atkins at the crossroads of his legacy in Toronto

As Ross Atkins works to improve the Blue Jays roster this offseason, he does so while at the potential crossroads of his legacy in Toronto.

I’ve gotta say, it’s nice to hear the GM of the Blue Jays speak and leave you a little more excited than you were before. That’s how I felt after listening to Ross Atkins on Sunday, as he talked about trying to make the roster better.

In his favour, Atkins has pretty much all of the tools that he should need to help push the Blue Jays from a fringe playoff team to a true contender. They have a talented homegrown core that’s very inexpensive, which allows them the payroll space they need to make impact acquisitions. Atkins could choose to use that available money to sign free agents, or they’ve also built quite the treasure chest of prospects that could be utilized in trades. Atkins himself talked about how teams are recognizing that the Blue Jays have the parts needed to get the job done this winter.

Having said, I got thinking about where the Blue Jays are right now, and how previous GMs have operated when in a similar position. A few years ago we saw Alex Anthopoulos pushing his chips to the centre of the table by trading for the likes of David Price, Troy Tulowitzki, and more, and he’s not the first GM to make a bold move. Don’t forget that Pat Gillick once traded two of the team’s best players in Tony Fernandez and Fred McGriff in order to acquire Roberto Alomar and Joe Carter. It was a highly-debated swap at the time, but I don’t know that the Blue Jays eventually become World Series champions without pulling that trade lever.

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As Atkins stares ahead at his own offseason, he’s likely at a very similar crossroads. I’m not suggesting that he has to make a bold move right now by any means, but there has definitely been a fair bit of chatter about the idea, and the GM said as much in his recent discussions with media, talking about a hope of acquiring one, two, or even three impact players this winter. If he’s serious about that type of offseason, then it pushes him the more into a legacy-defining time in his Blue Jays’ tenure.

Whether that means trading away some of their coveted prospects, or even potentially using a player from the big league roster, it feels like a time when there could be a lot of options on the table. One name that’s been banded about on social media as a possible trade piece is Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who would represent a perfect example of what I’m talking about for Atkins right now. If he were to use Gurriel Jr. as the centre piece of a trade package for someone like Francisco Lindor, that’s the type of trade that would follow Atkins around for years. If Lindor helped the Blue Jays make it back to the World Series then the GM is a genius, but if Gurriel Jr. went on to become a 2-3x All-Star in Cleveland, we’d never hear the end of it.

Think big. @BlueJays | #BlueJays pic.twitter.com/PixSYw5pdc
— MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM (@MLBNetworkRadio) November 15, 2020

The front office doesn’t have to go “all in” to improve the roster this winter, but having that mentality certainly opens up their options a lot more. That said, committing big dollars to the payroll or trading away significant prospects will limit what they can do in the future as well. It’s a deep end of the pool that you have to jump into at some point, and right now Atkins is climbing the ladder to the diving board.

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Will he actually jump over the next month or two? In the past I would have been pessimistic, but something feels different about this offseason. Atkins said it on Sunday, that it’s not easy to acquire impact players, and that much is true. He does have the tools at his disposal though, and the decisions that he and his team make over the next few months will likely define his tenure with the club, and maybe even an era of the franchise. No pressure, eh?