TODAY: Toronto has also relieved minor league field coordinator Doug Davis of his duties, Shi David of Sportsnet.ca. A part of the organization since 2006, Davis was one of the highest-ranking members of the player development staff.
YESTERDAY: The Blue Jays have made two significant changes at the top of their scouting department, Baseball America’s John Manuel reports. Scouting director Brian Parker and national crosschecker Blake Davis have been let go from their positions, per the report.
Parker has been with the Toronto organization since 2009 and took the seat atop the amateur scouting group in 2012. Davis has a history not only in scouting, but also as an agent, BP Toronto’s Gideon Turk explains in further detailing their respective roles.
The Jays’ drafting history over the last several years is somewhat mixed, though obviously it remains incomplete. As both of the above-cited pieces detail, the Parker-led drafts have focused on projectable righties. Among the selections, some have reached the majors (Manuel cites Matt Boyd and Kendall Graveman), while others have shown promise (e.g. Conner Greene, Sean Reid-Foley), but none appear particularly likely to be stars.
Regardless of how the work of these two men was assessed, their eventual departure from the organization was fairly likely with the installation of the Mark Shapiro/Ross Atkins-led front office. With this year’s draft recently going in the books — the Jays took right-hander TJ Zeuch with their first selection — it was an opportune time for Shapiro and Atkins to continue re-shaping their support group.
Still not sold on Jays new front office and surely Shapiro will be brining in some Cleveland guys. But who had better drafts since 2012, Jays or Indians? I haven’t done the research but suspect the answer is Cleveland.
Beyond drafting, whenever I hear people bashing the new front office that came from Cleveland I usually say to shut them up, “Esmil Rogers for Yan Gomes.” The Indians scouts saw enough and thought enough of getting Gomes from Toronto, converting him from a third sacker who wasn’t sticking with the Blue Jays to turn him into an all-star catcher. It makes you wonder, why didn’t the Blue Jays see the potential of Gomes switching positions and being a MLB caliber backstop? Imagine the money they would have saved by keeping Gomes and not forking out the sort of cake they spent on Russel Martin and where the other places they could have put those millions of dollars instead?
Now I don’t know how many Indian scouts have come over to the Jays, but that one trade is enough to make me give Shipiro/Atkins a chance to show how they are going to fix the mess that Anthopolous made with the team when he left Toronto (farm system, the possible free agent exodus at the end of 2016, etc.).
Yan Gomes is an all-star catcher since when? His last 651 PA between this year and last he has a .599 OPS and 0.2 fWAR. He was pretty good when he gave the Indians 7 WAR his first two years — and I’ll grant that the Indians clearly won the trade — but Yan Gomes is hardly the superstar the Jays let get away.
And really — you’d rather have Gomes in 2015 and 2016 than Russell Martin? Who cares about the money… Martin has been fantastic and Gomes terrible over that span.
You may want to look at those stats again….ill take Gomes any day
Actually you may want to look at the stats again. Martin has an ops of 97 and is a better defender/framer, Gomes has the great ops of 27. That is horrible, more like backup numbers
Which stats? Gomes has been dreadful the last 2 years. Martin is vastly superior with the bat and has worked exceedingly well with the Jays rotation.
One more thing too – the Indians didn’t change Gomes from 3B to C. He was always a catcher with the Jays org.
Yan Gomes was our fifth string catcher hitting .204 when he was a throw in to the trade for Esmil Rogers who had just went 3-1 with a 3.06 ERA, piling up 54 strikeouts against 12 walks in 53 innings when we got him. You wouldn’t have made that trade? Anybody would have made that trade. Please!
Even the Shatkins admits he got lucky on that trade and your going endorse Shatkins based on that. Roadapple you need to be educated my son.
Hey Toronto fans, it could be a lot worse, you could have ended up with Williams from the white sox. He blows!!!!
Here we go again, Shapiro and Atkins dismantling a front office that was perfectly fine
I don’t know much about these two, but Connor Greene and Sean Reid foley were great picks. They probably both have ceilings as a good number 3, but they’ve both dominated the minors this year
Marcus Stroman, Joe Musgrove, Dan Norris, Jeff Hoffman, they seem to be very good at identifying young pitchers to draft. Anthony Descalfini, Graveman and Boyd were 6th round or lower picks.
In 2010 alone the Blue Jays drafted Noah Syndergaard, Aaron Sanchez, Justin Nicolino and Sam Dyson.
Not sure how much these people had to do with those former drafts but I hope the new management can do the same or better.