Former Blue Jays with a worse reputation than they deserve

Arguably more undeserved criticism than anyone

I know I said I was going to talk about players in this article, but I can’t help but briefly touch on the Blue Jays front office, and specifically the work of Ross Atkins over the last six years.

We’ve written about it many times at Jays Journal here over the years, especially over the past few months, and I hope that most Blue Jays fans have come around on the current front office. When you look at how quickly the Jays went from a rebuilding team into legitimate contenders, I don’t know how you could still dislike the front office team of Ross Atkins, Mark Shapiro and the rest of their staff.

I completely understand why it started that way, and I’ll even admit that I had mixed feelings throughout the rebuilding process. It was very hard to see the last generation of Blue Jays stars go, even if they were heading into the twilight of their careers. For Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Josh Donaldson and more, it’ll probably always feel like there is some unfinished business from the mid-2010’s.

But in hindsight there’s no doubt that Atkins and his team made the right decision to pivot toward a rebuild, and we’re on the cusp of truly enjoying the spoils of their work. They’ve built around and drafted a young core that includes Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (inherited from Anthopoulos’ era), Bo Bichette, Alek Manoah and more, and have supplemented the roster with talented veterans like George Springer, Jose Berrios, Kevin Gausman, Marcus Semien, and several others. The tide has clearly shifted toward a win-now phase in franchise history, and it’s a very exciting time to be a Blue Jays fan.

To be fair, the front office is always going to face criticism from the fan base even when they’re doing the right thing, and that has been no different in Toronto over the last few years. That said, I hope 99% of the fan base understands that the work that’s been done over their tenure has been very impressive.