Fans in a number of major-league cities want change. Ownership changes in many cases, yes. But front-office changes, at the very least.
And in many cases, those changes seem unlikely.
“I’m a huge believer in stability and continuity, and those are competitive advantages in professional sports, that reacting and change don’t necessarily mean improvement,” Toronto Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro said last month when asked about the job status of his general manager, Ross Atkins.
No one should be surprised in the coming weeks to hear similar comments from other executives with disappointing clubs. Which raises the questions: Why are owners so complacent? Why aren’t more front offices on the hot seat?
Many fans of the Blue Jays are exasperated, if not downright angry. Ditto for fans of the St. Louis Cardinals, Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Those teams intended to contend and didn’t. And yet, more trust-the-process blather likely is coming their fans’ way. Insular, sadsack franchises – the Chicago White Sox, Oakland Athletics, Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies, to name four – belong in a separate category. Those teams barely even bothered to try.
For underachieving clubs, managers are always easy scapegoats. The Mariners already fired theirs. The Reds, Pirates and others might, too. But modern managers are glorified middle men, extensions of their front offices. A managerial change often is an act of deflection by the head of baseball operations, a bid to buy more time.
Shapiro had a point. Stability and continuity indeed should be valued. If teams, particularly in this age of social media, reacted to every fan eruption, they would be firing people every three days, if not every three minutes.
Still, the passivity in the sport is disturbing.
Part of it might stem from the expansion of the postseason in 2022, and the illusion of contention provided by the addition of a third wild card in each league. Consider the Chicago Cubs. A good month of August thrust them into the fringes of the wild-card race, and now things don’t look so bad, if you’re willing to overlook how for four months they underachieved.
Another factor is the analytically based groupthink that pervades front offices. Fire your head of baseball operations, and who will you hire? Probably another executive whose decision-making is not all that dissimilar from the one you let go.
The biggest issue, though, is that many teams face minimal financial pressure, the kind of pressure that would motivate a business to act.
Most franchises evidently have it quite good, not that you would know it from their occasional sky-is-falling rhetoric, whether during the COVID-19 pandemic or recent regional television shakeup. Nor would you know it from the rumblings by management, every time collective-bargaining talks roll around, about the need for a salary cap.
But consider how some teams operate:
*The Blue Jays are in last place with a club-record payroll. They have not won a playoff game since 2016, the year after former GM Alex Anthopoulos rejected a five-year extension to work under Shapiro. But why should the team’s owner, Rogers Communications, worry?
Rogers has a monopoly on baseball in Canada. And the team still ranks ninth in the majors in home attendance, even with renovations reducing the capacity at Rogers Centre.
*The Cardinals face the possibility of finishing with losing records in back-to-back full seasons for the first time since 1958-59. Their loss of 4,561 fans per game in attendance is the second-largest the sport, behind only that of the New York Mets’. The growing apathy in St. Louis was especially apparent during a late August series against the Brewers, when attendance twice dropped below 30,000 for the first time since Busch Stadium III opened in 2006.
Cardinals president of baseball operations John Mozeliak is the second-longest tenured lead exec in the sport. (Kim Klement Neitzel-USA TODAY Sports)
All that seemingly should compel owner Bill DeWitt Jr. to orchestrate a graceful exit for president of baseball operations John Mozeliak, the game’s second-longest tenured lead executive. Such a move would enable DeWitt to elevate former Red Sox exec Chaim Bloom, who joined the club as an adviser this season, or make an outside hire.
But here’s the thing: Mozeliak has publicly acknowledged his desire to step back from day-to-day responsibilities when his contract expires at the end of the 2025 season. And DeWitt is not the type to push things along when fans continue to flock to Ballpark Village and attendance at Busch Stadium, even in decline, remains the seventh-highest in the sport.
*The Giants hired a new manager and committed nearly $400 million in new guaranteed money last offseason, and to what end? Not only are they chasing the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NL West, but also the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres. In six seasons under president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, their only outright success was in 2021, an outlier year in which they won 107 games.
This season could be their third straight at .500 or below. They are an average team by many measures. But Zaidi, who signed an extension of unknown length last October, still could be safe. Like DeWitt, Giants owner Greg Johnson is not one for disruption, particularly when his team’s attendance increase from 2023 is the seventh largest in the sport.
*The Mariners are run by yet another inert owner, John Stanton. They achieved a major breakthrough in 2022, ending a 21-year postseason drought, at that time the longest in professional sports. But what have they done in the two seasons since? Drawn criticism from catcher Cal Raleigh for not spending enough. Led the majors in strikeouts a second straight year even after turning over a strikeout-prone part of their roster. And on Aug. 23, replaced manager Scott Servais with a beloved former player, Dan Wilson.
The team has since gone (5-4) and still faces long playoff odds, wasting the best pitching staff in the majors. President of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto is completing his ninth season. His sloppy handling of Servais’ dismissal only added to fan frustration. But he seems to maintain Stanton’s confidence, and it would be an upset if the team started over.
*The Reds, coming off an 82-80 finish, spent more than $110 million in free agency. Yet, it seemed fitting their season all but ended at home in mid-August, when they were outscored by the Royals 28-3 in a three-game sweep. The Royals invested wisely during the offseason. The Reds committed $45 million to infielder Jeimer Canderlario, who was an odd fit. And they traded one of their top pitching investments, right-hander Frankie Montas, to the Milwaukee Brewers.
The Reds strike out too much. They don’t play good defense. This is the second straight September in which injuries and inconsistency left them short on starting pitching. And with the exception of shortstop Elly De La Cruz, their position players aren’t improving.
Castellini, unlike some of the other owners mentioned, isn’t necessarily the type to sit back, particularly with attendance flat. Manager David Bell would appear in greater jeopardy than president of baseball operations Nick Krall, who was promoted to his current position at the end of last season. In any case, the clock keeps ticking. The Reds have not won a playoff game in 12 years, or a playoff series since 1995.
*The Pirates are headed for their sixth straight losing season, with GM Ben Cherington presiding over the last five. The difference this year is that owner Bob Nutting told The Athletic in February he expected a “meaningful step forward,” adding, “We collectively believe we can compete for the division and a postseason berth.”
An 8-21 collapse, most of which came after Cherington made modest additions at the trade deadline, ended any chance of either occurring. The Pirates’ .463 winning percentage through Sunday is lower than their .469 mark last season. But attendance is up nearly 2,000 per game – thank you, Paul Skenes – and Nutting, whose estimated worth is $1.1 billion, continues to wallow in his revenue-sharing windfall.
Cherington, like every head of baseball operations, can point to a handful of player-development successes as proof that better days lie ahead. Struggling teams always point to tomorrow. Some, like the Baltimore Orioles, eventually get to a better place. But too many others are running what amounts to a borderline con.
In most cases, the problem starts with ownership, not the head of baseball operations. Owners should be scrambling to find the next Anthopoulos, the next Dave Dombrowski, the next A.J. Preller. No one would accuse any of those executives of being afraid. But each also works for committed ownerships.
Financial commitment is one thing. Emotional commitment is another, and too many owners see no need to make that type of investment. Stability and continuity represent the easy way out, even when such noble concepts fail to produce results.
When financial success is attainable without on-field success, why rock the boat?
(Top photo of Blue Jays president/CEO Mark Shapiro (left) and GM Ross Atkins (right): Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images)
