3 ways the Blue Jays can shake things up, 2 moves they need to avoid

Barely a month into the 2024 season, the Toronto Blue Jays find themselves teetering on the brink of calamity, under .500 and in last place in the American League East, thanks to an offense which is not only among the worst in the game, but among the worst in franchise history.

No, seriously. At 3.45 runs per game, the Jays sit third last in the league, ahead of only Oakland and the White Sox, while the number is worse than that put up by every incarnation of the team for the past 47 years, save for 1981.

Of course, manager John Schneider is still preaching patience. “We’ll get better,” he insisted only days ago, “we’re confident that we will.”

But years-deep into this type of tomorrow-ism, frustration levels are rising, and many believe that something dramatic must be done immediately. In fact, even the mouthpiece of the team over at Sportsnet loudly proclaimed, “staying course no longer an option” earlier this week.

The question is, what can the Blue Jays do to shake things up and save the season before it is too late?

Below are five conspicuous options staring the team in the face right now. Three are moves they should make as soon as right this minute, while the other two, well, they should probably stay away from …

Three moves the Jays should make to shake things up right now

1. Sack the Front Office

Coming into the 2024 season, many wondered why the Blue Jays had not made more substantial changes in the offseason, after a year in which offensive underperformance ultimately doomed the team. Sure, ‘Old Man’ Turner, as he is affectionately known amongst Jays fans, was brought into the mix, while Don Mattingly was elevated to the role of ‘offensive coordinator,’ but how, many asked, could the front office have failed to fundamentally alter a team structure which brought so much frustration in 2023?

The answer is actually a simple one.

When observed through the analytics framework created and exulted by the front office, underperformance in 2023 was little more than an error of sample size, one which would surely even itself out through a 2024 bounce-back up and down the lineup.

And that’s just the issue. The Ross Atkins-led Blue Jays front office has constructed as canon an analytics framework based not upon any sort of mathematical truth, but upon their opinion as to what constitutes positive processes and outcomes.

The problem is that their opinion is wrong. The things which their invented analytics framework tells them should be happening on the field are not happening on the field, leaving Atkins to appear more and more like a guy sitting at a slot machine, pulling the handle again and again as he loses, always believing that the next tug will bring the jackpot.

In many ways, the options for what the Jays can do to shake things up which appear below can be seen as tinkering around the edges while ignoring the root of the problem. If the Jays are to truly reach any sort of long-dreamed-about potential, they must first remove the anchor of Atkins’ failed analytics from around their neck.