If the Blue Jays sell at the deadline, James Click needs full autonomy over baseball operations

Blue Jays dilemma

But for Ed Rogers and team ownership, the dilemma also includes whether or not to allow the current front office baseball operations leadership under general manager Ross Atkins, now in his ninth season as GM, to conduct that sell-off. Done effectively, a good trade deadline could help the team retool quickly if the Blue Jays are able to acquire good, young MLB-ready talent for those players above.

Remember the Yankees acquired the Cubs top prospect and MLB Pipeline’s No. 24 ranked prospect Gleyber Torres at the 2016 deadline as part of a prospect-laden deal for closer Aroldis Chapman. After that 2016 retooling, the 2017 Yankees would re-sign Chapman as a free agent and go on to finish 2nd in the AL East, and bow out to the eventual 2017 World Series champion Houston Astros in the ALCS that year. Torres was an All-Star and finished third in the AL Rookie of the Year vote in 2018.

Or, it could be handled badly, like when 2015 AL MVP Josh Donaldson was sold for a player to be named later, J.A. Happ only returned Brandon Drury and Billy McKinney, and 1.5 years of control of Marcus Stroman only netted Anthony Kay and Simeon Woods-Richardson for Toronto. Value was destroyed, and the lack of good, MLB-ready talent coming back in those deals set back the Blue Jays rebuild in 2018-2019.

That bungled 2018-2019 rebuild was handled by none other than Ross Atkins. Current team president Mark Shapiro was also involved in a collaborative effort on baseball operations in those years. As Anthopoulos alluded to after he turned down Ed Rogers’ personal contract extension offer to stay on as GM after the 2015 season, "… you can have the greatest organization in the world, if you’re working for people you don’t enjoy, you don’t believe in them, they don’t believe in you, what environment is that going to be? How rewarding is that going to be?"