One big offseason move is likely to define the 2023 season for Toronto Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins and team president Mark Shapiro.
With a team already viewed as being in postseason contention in the difficult AL East, Atkins and Shapiro kept things pretty much on the down low in Toronto. As their Jays hit the season’s halfway point Wednesday night with 44-37 record, they have made a conservative 19 personnel moves impacting the major league talent base.
Only one of those — the December trade of catching prospect Gabe Moreno to Arizona for Daulton Varsho — garnered much attention. For the most part, Atkins and Shapiro have approached 2023 as a pat hand.
Grading the Toronto Blue Jays at the midway point of the 2023 season
What follows is a mid-term assessment of the Jays’ personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the Blue Jays’ performance.
The standard of measurement in Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by the front office impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved (or worsened) the team’s status this season.
A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:
1. By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.
2. By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.
3. By the impact of players it signs at free agency or extends.
4. By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.
5. By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.
Here’s how Atkins and Shapiro stack up by those five yardsticks.