Blue Jays fire pitching coordinator in what could be first of many moves

The last place Toronto Blue Jays have let go of pitching coordinator Cory Popham, as announced by himself on X. He was with the organization for six seasons and was a big piece in the organization’s pitching development. Obviously, without a single homegrown pitcher on the current 28-man MLB roster (Bowden Francis was acquired from the Brewers in the Rowdy Tellez trade in July 2021), something had to give.

Popham was hired from Post University, where he was the pitching coach in 2017-2018. He’d pitched for the University of the Pacific Tigers from 2011-2015, where he earned an undergraduate degree in history and a graduate degree in sports management. Initially an assistant pitching coach for the DSL Blue Jays in 2019, he was promoted to pitching coach with the GCL Blue Jays in 2020 before the minor league season was cancelled that year due to the pandemic.

Popham then worked as the Blue Jays' pitching development coordinator in 2021-2022, sharing the role with Matt Tracy, who is now the bullpen coach for the Cincinnati Reds, before working as the Blue Jays' minor league pitching coordinator since 2023.

As per Arden Zwelling of Sportsnet, firing Popham is “part of a larger, ongoing restructuring within the club’s player development system.” That seems logical given how weak player development has been for the Blue Jays organisation for years now.

The farm system has been ranked bottom third since the 2022 preseason, and despite some glimpses from Davis Schneider last year and some of the rookies led by Spencer Horwitz this year, the last impact pitcher developed by Toronto’s system was Alek Manoah, who made his MLB debut on May 27, 2021.

The 2024 season has not been kind to Blue Jays pitching in general, but their top prospect ranks have been decimated by injury, with Ricky Tiedemann, Brandon Barriera and Landen Maroudis all undergoing reconstructive elbow surgery along with Manoah. Could the pitching coordinator be to blame for a system that put too much physical stress on younger, developing arms?

As per Harvard Business Review, “when organization design problems arise, managers often focus on the most glaring flaws and, in the process, make the overall structure even more unwieldy and even less strategic.” Good organisational design often starts from the top, so going after the pitching coordinator may be seen by some as a front office blame game, with Popham thrown under the proverbial bus to protect those above him in the player development hierarchy.

If axing Popham is the start of larger restructuring in player development, could we see wholesale changes across the organisation, with major changes also coming to amateur, international and pro scouting, as well as other position coordinators in player development?

Let’s be honest: scouting and player development have been serious weaknesses for the current Blue Jays’ organisation. The inability of the farm system to provide waves MLB-ready talent has been particularly painful this year in the bullpen, where the team couldn’t call up competitive replacements for the flailing Tim Mayza, Trevor Richards and Erik Swanson, or the injured Jordan Romano.

The result has been an MLB-worst reliever FIP of 4.94, with an fWAR of -2.3 — a full two wins worse than the second-worst bullpen in Colorado, which plays half of their games a mile high. That’s due to poor drafting, poor trades and yes, dumpster diving by general manager Ross Atkins.

And this is the third season since 2021 where the bullpen has been, in the words of team president Mark Shapiro, “an Achilles.” The cumulative bullpen fWAR of 6.0 since 2021 ranks 27th in baseball, so this is a glaring, multi-year issue.

So yes, Popham deserves some of the blame given he’s been in various pitching development roles since 2019. However, back to Harvard on organisational design: they will tell us that these decisions “are inevitably complex, and tweaking one area may produce unanticipated consequences in a very different area.”

Change generally starts from the top, so it’s long overdue for owner Ed Rogers and team president Shapiro to admit that the baseball operations side of the organisation is flawed and mediocre, and apparently incapable of learning from their mistakes to both improve and evolve. But that would imply that Ross Atkins, who runs the baseball operations side, is the one deserving of the bulk of the blame.