The Top Five Worst Moves by the Blue Jays Front Office in 2021

The 2021 Blue Jays led the majors in team OPS by a significant margin. They also fielded the AL Cy Young award winner, an MVP runner-up who made a legitimate run at the Triple Crown, three Silver Slugger award winners, a Gold Glove winner, and the AL leader in hits. Yet, Toronto finished one game out of a playoff spot, Marcus Semien and Robbie Ray left town, and Blue Jays nation was left only with questions of what might have been.

How could a team with so much talent have missed the playoffs?

Given the significance of the opportunity at hand, and the imminent departures of Semien and Ray, why wasn’t the organization more aggressive in addressing glaring deficiencies earlier in the season?

The answers to these types of questions, both during and following the season, from Jays President Mark Shapiro, GM Ross Atkins, and other Rogers employees (i.e. those who appear on Blue Jays game broadcasts or otherwise work for Sportsnet or the Fan590), typically went something like this:

(a) injuries in the bullpen, particularly impacting the first half of the season, were primarily responsible for the team’s underperformance

(b) unfortunately, pitching injuries are an inevitable reality of the max-effort, low volume pitching strategy that dominates this era, and beyond anyone’s reasonable control

(c) pitching depth is hard to come by, we did everything we could given the circumstances

(d) on the bright side – just wait ‘til next year!

But of course, it’s not quite that simple. Clearly, the team’s young talent holds promise, but unless Shapiro and Atkins are effectively held accountable for their past decision-making, these rare opportunities will continue to be squandered. To that end, here are – in no particular order – the top five worst moves of the 2021 Blue Jays front office: