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:

1. Tyler Chatwood

Tyler Chatwood came to personify the frustrating incompetence of the Blue Jays bullpen during the first half of the 2021 season.

In one of the uglier parts of his brief time with the club, over 12 consecutive appearances Chatwood posted a 12.00 ERA and a 2.33 WHIP.  He publicly disrespected Charlie Montoyo, fuming at him on the mound while handing the ball over, even after he walked multiple consecutive batters and had completely lost his control (did Chatwood’s intimidation tactics ever influence Montoyo to leave him in longer than he should have?). Chatwood’s 2021 full-season ERA of 5.63 and -0.4 bWAR are actually flattering and belie just how awful he was for the Jays in both performance and attitude.

Before being signed by Shapiro and Atkins prior to the ’21 season, Chatwood had shown flashes of talent in his time with Chicago, but as a report from the Cubs’ Bleacher Nation put it, the problem is that the flashes were always brief: “Chatwood has the stuff to be a dominant pitcher, but he could never command it consistently. His complex mechanics and nasty movement made for a guy who could be really tough on hitters, but it also made him a guy susceptible to bad mistakes on the zone and elevated walk rates.”

In 2020, Chatwood’s ERA with the Cubs was 5.30 over five starts, but Atkins and Shapiro were willing to gamble, signing him to a $3MM deal in January of 2021. By early July, the Jays designated him for assignment and he was released.  He is now out of major league baseball and headed to Japan.  How many games did the Jays front office needlessly give away with Chatwood in May that came back to haunt the team’s playoff push in September?

4. Claiming Jake Lamb

Jake Lamb was claimed off waivers from the White Sox on September 3rd and proceeded to hit .129 over 12 games with the Jays down the stretch, with an OPS of .547. Prior to being acquired by the Blue Jays, Lamb had hit .212 with Chicago over 131 plate appearances in 2021 and his aggregate bWAR for the year was -0.3.  From 2018-20, his slash line was .205/.309/.351, and he would not have been playoff eligible with the Jays, having been added to the roster after August 31.

Again, hard to understand the thinking. Injuries to Cavan Biggio and Santiago Espinal precipitated the acquisition of Lamb, and his left-handed bat did offer potential balance to the lineup. But was it reasonable to expect Lamb to be a meaningful upgrade over Breyvic Valera, who had a .270 avg and .721 OPS by mid-September while playing solidly at third for the Jays? Kevin Smith struggled in a very small sample size with the big league roster while filling in at third, but he had also piled up numbers for years in the Jays minor league system, including an OPS of .931 in 410 plate appearances with AAA Buffalo in 2021. What did Shapiro and Atkins see in Jake Lamb’s recent performance that warranted playing him over Valera, Smith or other in-house alternatives? Ultimately it was another ill-advised, long-shot gamble that became an unqualified disaster in the middle of a September playoff push.

5. DFA of Patrick Murphy

The Blue Jays organization had consistently expressed optimism about Murphy and his development since drafting him in 2013. He was listed as the Jays #18th ranked prospect heading into 2021. Consequently, when he was abruptly DFA’d by the Blue Jays on Aug 11 to clear roster space, many in Jays nation were caught off guard. The Nationals claimed Murphy off waivers almost immediately – he currently holds a spot on their 40-man roster – and the club has expressed optimism on his upside as a reliever going forward.

The 6’4” Murphy came up through the Blue Jays system as a starter and battled through injuries and delivery changes for years before settling into more consistent productivity and moving to the bullpen. Appearing first in the shortened 2020 season for the Jays, he posted a 3.52 ERA and 1.565 WHIP in 15.1 innings and a 1.00 ERA and 1.278 WHIP in 18 innings with the Bisons in 2021. Atkins and Shapiro had, for several years, touted Murphy as one of the key pitching prospects for Jays fans to look forward to, usually while asking for continued patience while tolerating the club’s refusal to invest in front of the rotation free agent starters between 2016 and 2020.

Clearly, there is a complete disconnect between the potential value of the player promoted by the front office prior to 2021 and his outright release – for zero return – in the same season, despite sound performance in the context of his development. The club had invested heavily in Murphy for the past seven years. Before being designated for assignment, should he not have been extended some latitude to find his way, to work through rough spots and ‘figure it out’ in the big leagues – particularly with the team desperate for bullpen help in May and June? Was he given the same opportunities that were afforded to Brad Hand, or Tyler Chatwood in 2021?

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There is a risk/reward analysis associated with every decision, and countless short, mid and long-term considerations are to be factored into that analysis. Prior to the 2021 season, Rogers awarded new, five-year contracts to each of Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins, despite the Blue Jays’ consistent underperformance (and zero playoff success) under their leadership.

By comparison, Tampa Bay has made the playoffs each of the past three years, with a much smaller payroll (e.g. the Rays’ payroll in 2021 was less than half the Jays payroll). There are no certainties in this game and no simple answers. But at this point in its competitive cycle, Toronto should not be gambling on high-risk reclamation projects, it should be proactively engaged at the top tier to significantly deepen its run-prevention capabilities through adding high value, lower-risk targets, both prior to and during the 2022 season.