Alex Anthopoulos and Title Inflation
Yesterday, Alex Anthopolous left the Blue Jays, turning down a contract to remain with the team because, as he said in his conference call, he didn’t think it was a good fit anymore.
“I don’t know that I’ve had to make a harder decision in my life, but I did what I felt like I needed to do,” Anthopoulos said. “I just didn’t feel like this was a right fit for me going forward.”
It’s pretty clearly not a coincidence that Anthopoulos’ exit coincides with the arrival of Mark Shapiro, who was hired in August to take over as the new team president. Shapiro was brought in to replace Paul Beeston, so while it’s not a new position in the Blue Jays organization, the fact that ownership openly courted guys with baseball operations backgrounds — first Kenny Williams, then Dan Duquette, and now Shapiro — makes it seem that they’re changing the responsibilities of the position. Beeston was a business guy, an accountant who worked his way up through the organization’s financial side, but the Blue Jays actions over the last year make it clear they wanted a baseball guy in the team president role.
This is the new trend in baseball, of course. Over the last five years, it has become en vogue to promote the General Manager to President of Baseball Operations, or some similar title. The Blue Jays, in fact, became the 12th team to employ a recently promoted GM (or manager, in one case) in that job, with the title of GM going to someone else in the baseball operations department.
Arizona: Tony LaRussa
Atlanta: John Hart
Boston: Dave Dombrowski
Chicago Cubs: Theo Epstein
Chicago White Sox: Kenny Williams
Cleveland: Chris Antonetti
Los Angeles: Andrew Friedman
Miami Marlins: Michael Hill
Oakland: Billy Beane
Philadelpiha: Andy MacPhail
San Francisco: Brian Sabean
There are a few other GMs who also have the title of President of Baseball Operations, including Mike Rizzo and Jon Daniels, but they retain the GM title as well, so those organizational structures are a little different. But now in 12 of the 30 organizations in baseball, the General Manager is no longer the top decision maker in the baseball operations department, or at the very least, doesn’t have complete control over the final decisions when it comes to roster construction.
So, while the Blue Jays are spinning this as Anthopoulos turning down a five year contract extension to remain in his job, it seems pretty likely that they were actually offering him a demotion, while simply allowing him to keep a title that no longer means what it did even just a few years ago. MLB teams have been using title inflation to retain their coveted young executives, as it’s something of an understood rule in the game that teams are allowed to hire each other’s front office personnel as long as they are giving them a promotion; lateral moves are generally not permitted if the organization wants to retain their employee. Rather than lose quality assistant GMs, teams simply promoted them to the GM position, which necessitated the new President of Baseball Operations title for the guy who was still realistically in charge of things.
Under Beeston, Anthopoulos was more like a Daniels or a Rizzo, a GM with final say (barring ownership meddling, anyway) over the moves the team made to put the roster together. Under Shapiro, however, his position would have been more akin to the new style of GM, the guy who gets to run the day to day operations of the department but doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally decide whether to make a trade or how to fill out a roster. While ownership is involved in major free agent signings in every organization, and no GM or even President of Baseball Ops can go spend large sums of money without ownership approval, there’s a significant difference between selling the ownership’s representative on a big free agent deal versus having a former GM in the office for every trade discussion or every conversation about team construction.
For 11 organizations, the GM is now roughly equivalent in responsibility to what an empowered Assistant GM is in the organizations that don’t have a President of Baseball Operations. Guys like David Forst, Farhan Zaidi, Jed Hoyer, and Mike Hazen all have plenty of responsibility and are recognized for their contributions to their organizations, but its pretty well understood that Beane, Friedman, Epstein, and Dombrowski are the guys who get the last word when it comes to significant organizational decisions. So while the Rogers ownership can spin this as an extension offer, it was more realistically a contract for a new position within the organization. Same title, but a demotion all the same.
Just like with currency inflation, where it’s pretty well understood that $100 now isn’t worth the same as it was years ago, job title inflation has the same effect. The Blue Jays joined the ranks of MLB organizations making their GM the #2 guy in the baseball operations department, and Anthopoulos understandably didn’t want to accept a position that appears to not be what it was previously after a wildly successful season. The kind of season the Jays just had doesn’t seem to warrant a demotion, but given that the ownership set these wheels in motion last winter, it seems that they made up their minds a year ago that they didn’t want AA to be be the leader of their baseball operations department for the long-term, and they didn’t let the team’s success in 2015 deter them from that conclusion.
Given that, they shouldn’t really be surprised that he left. His success in Toronto will make it pretty likely that the next few teams who make changes at the top of their baseball operations departments will have Anthopoulos pretty high up the list, and given the way MLB is going, turning down this GM job probably sets him up to be a President of Baseball Operations in his next gig.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
*Dombrowski
“Ohhhh, ummmm, ugh!” (Shrugs, takes a deep swig from a Bud tallboy…)
“Well you know…”
Is this related to the article above, or just another Friday morning?
DDs and Boston connection all the same, I think you may have confused Dave Dombrowski for Dan Duquette. Or is it Dave Duquette and Dan Dombrowski? I’m not even sure any more.
This article re: Anthopoulos (another double initialed guy!) could have been written all the same about Ben Cherington. I suppose the exception is that Anthopoulos has enjoyed recent success while Cherington and the Red Sox have come up lame. The intention in Boston, at least the publicly stated intention, was to hire Dombrowski and keep Ben Cherington on as GM — but despite the illusion of his being retained in the same position, it was obviously a demotion in responsibility.
Dave, I’m curious if you wrote this after seeing my comment in your Instagraphs posting yesterday about the increasing trend of GM title inflation? No matter.
You obviously had a brain fart on Dan Duquette being in charge of baseball ops in Boston. Dave Dombrowski.
There’s also at least one team you missed. The Giants promoted Brian Sabean and made Bobby Evans the GM. The Padres’ fits into this trend on paper too: a novice GM (AJ Preller) reports to an experienced GM (Omar Minaya) with a fancy title (VP of Baseball Operations). But the narrative w/ all of the ballsy trades seemed to be that Preller is making his own decisions. You could also count the DBacks, where Dave Stewart reports to Tony La Russa (who supposedly pulls the string).
Omar Minaya left the Padres in January and is now working for the MLBPA. I don’t think his duties with the Padres included supervising the GM. If anything, it seemed he landed in a sort of Assistant GM role (albeit with a fancier title) there after his time with the Mets.
I totally missed that news about Minaya leaving the Padres. So did wikipedia, apparently. And I don’t know what his responsibilities were in SD, but I agree that I never heard anything about him being the guy in charge.
You realize Dave’s been talking about GM “title inflation” (with exactly that wording) in the podcast on and off for weeks now, including the one just this Tuesday? This has been a common theme in baseball publications for a couple of years now, and even got picked up by media as mainstream as the WSJ last year.
I doubt Dave needed a comment to prompt him to write the article, though it was probably with some reluctance because he’d already addressed it in the Instagram post. But that got shuffled off the front page rather quickly, and whenever that happens there are always folks who didn’t see it and think there’s some kind of anti-(your team here) conspiracy whenever it looks like some news didn’t get the obsessive attention they think it deserves.
Do you need help removing that stick?
Exactly. Yirmiyahu comes off as comically self-important.
Seriously, are you that full of yourself? Your Instigram comment triggered this post?
I don’t think the trend of title inflation was something that was just discovered recently….
I respect the ownership for not deviating from their plan despite a good half season. I don’t think this decision will hurt the Blue Jays. Alex Anthopoulos made some good moves, but he certainly made some questionable ones as well.
The same can be said for Shapiro, as well.
True, but I’d take AA over Shapiro if forced to make that choice. For one thing, AA’s success is much more recent and baseball is an ever-evolving game. Shapiro may be a great executive (who knows), but he hasn’t built a winning baseball team since 2007.
I can’t imagine that AA’s decision was a surprise to them. I’m certain that ownership consulted with AA during the discussions about replacing Beeston, and he probably had something to say about the fact that his new boss would be a baseball guy.
Would’ve been great to be a fly on the wall during the single meeting between Shapiro and Anthopoulos. “So you traded away a lot of prospects. You shouldn’t have done that.” “I know what I’m doing. We just had our best season in 22 years.” “Oh, right. So what can we do to keep you here?” “How about you give me your job?” “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Yes I would also take AA over Shapiro, don’t know if that was clear. As I said on another site, I imagine Shapiro’s shock over trading all those prospects is that Shapiro has never built a farm capable of producing that number of high ceiling guys, and was therefore shocked that AA had done that. Just an awful draft record by Shapiro.
I don’t think it’s a fair comparison. Let’s see how Shapiro does with 130 million in payroll. Not the shoe string budget in Cleveland.
Regardless of whether it’s a fair comparison or not, your reasoning is not sound. Shapiro on a shoe string budget should have a far better draft record since he couldn’t add value via free agency.
Nathan I’d argue budget has MORE to do with drafting and success in that realm. You need a ton of cash to sign the best players or you have to avoid them. A lot of teams never pick near the top yet manage to do well year after year if they can throw bucks around at draft and intl signings.
The Jays probably spent 5x what the Indians (and a lot of teams) have in the INTL market over the last decade.
Yet I think we can probably agree that the money an organization invests in the draft will likely return more future value than an organization can get from signing marginal free agents, since they are priced out from signing impact players.
I doubt they consulted with Anthopoulos, considering they didn’t tell Beeston they were looking to replace him last year when they tried to hire Williams and Duquette. I think that gong show was probably what triggered Anthopoulos’ decision not to return.
{General Manager} made some good moves, but he certainly made some questionable ones as well.
So broadly applicable it says virtually nothing. I mean, with a bit of squinting you could even say that about Ruben Amaro Jr.
There is nothing about the Cleveland Indians past DECADE from a baseball personnel perspective that I would want to see in Toronto. Innovative marketing and ticket pricing sure… But the Jays have been doing that, too.
This was an incredibly dumb move. Anthopoulos made some mistakes? Really? So did everybody great who ever attempted anything.
Shapiro apparently didn’t like the moves AA made at the trade deadline this year. Didn’t like them. Gave away too much apparently.
Not like those genius Cleveland Indians. Their big moves were signing aging veterans past their prime (Swisher, Bourn) then trading them away for little return at the trade deadline. Then Cleveland put on a terrific late season charge only to fall short, since mngmt had actually not thought they had a chance and had made zero moves to bolster the roster.
Didn’t like AAs moves.
What a friggin moron.
This is Salieri complaining that Mozart’s music had “too many notes”.
AA’s trade deadline moves this year will be studied for years to come. They are the gold standard for transforming an also-ran into a juggernaut. The Jays could have one the WS with that roster and we would still have this result, dumping AA.
This is so typical of Rogers, whose idea of customer service is to disconnect their helplines when the cable is down. Again. And again.
🙁
How long until a team creates a Chief Baseball Officer (CBO) role to “promote” someone else’s President of Baseball Operations?
Take a look at Tony La Russa’s title in Arizona
GM < President of Baseball Ops < Chief Baseball Officer < King of Baseball Ops < Super King of Baseball Ops < Super Giant King of Baseball Ops…. Soon the GM will actually be the bat boy.
Don’t we as fans still owe him a bronze statue for unloading Vernon Wells contract?
Arte Moreno is paying for that too, just as soon as the check clears.
That deal alone should have secured AA’s lifetime appointment as GM (or whatever they want to call the job title that handles GM duties these days).
But AA should find himself a nice landing spot, and very likely a nice pay raise as well. Plenty of teams could use the guy who unloaded the seemingly untraceable contract of Vernon Wells.
I think the circumstances involved AA’s departure are unfortunate; seems like some of the stuff that has leaked makes the Jays/Shapiro look really petty. Coming off their playoff run, I think Toronto fans are so angered because this seemed to come out of nowhere.
What I do think is lost in all of this is that Mark Shapiro is pretty good at his job, and had some very nice seasons in Cleveland.
The argument could also be made that Shapiro has enjoyed a very positive reputation in the game despite not accomplishing much. In 14 years as the decision-maker in Cleveland, they had 4 winning seasons and two playoff appearances — one is an ALCS loss, and one is losing the 2013 Wild Card game. By all accounts he’s a smart administrator/executive and has the vaunted dual analytic and scouting background, but my read when he was hired by the Jays was that he would serve in a very similar capacity to Beeston and, while perhaps more involved in baseball ops, would still afford the GM most of the decision-making power.
That’s true. It’s not obvious that you could argue that either would be an upgrade over the other.
Undoubtedly there are talents now in the Blue Jays system now that Shapiro wouldn’t have traded for, and talents outside the system he would rather have, so there’s going to be some shuffling of deck chairs that wouldn’t have happened with continued AA regime. Whether the Jays come out ahead or behind when that is done is impossible to say.
I really think, though, that it was troubling for AA to know that he’d be reporting up to someone who was essentially a peer with a fairly similar background. Had Beeston’s role been filled by a more experienced, more “old school” type (like Duquette or Dombrowski), there’s an outside chance AA would have stuck around for a while.
This has been articulated by others already but it bears repeating. Assuming ownership was pleased with Anthopoulos, hiring a Shapiro as president knowing that he would take over baseball ops and thinking Anthopoulos wouldn’t react was remarkably myopic. I think many believed at the time that Shapiro, who is certainly qualified to be a business-side president (perhaps moreso than baseball-ops prez), wouldn’t unreasonably interfere with Anthopoulos’ baseball ops decisions.
I think that at the time Shapiro was hired, Rogers was pretty indifferent to what happens to the gm and team affairs. they thought Shapiro was the right guy and gave him all the power he wanted to pull him from Cleveland and he could make all decisions on the remainder of the staff… After all that the Jays went on that miracle run, Rogers profits soared and AA become a way more valuable piece than Rogers realized a few months ago!
So we hired a guy who is “pretty good at his job” to replace a guy that rebuilt our franchise, is a born and bred Canadian that loves the team, has an excellent rapport with all of his front office, and loves living here.
That’s not a bad take, but I still question AA’s decision. Whether it’s warranted or not, he’s now stuck with the label of prima donna. Someone who won’t work under certain conditions. His alternative was to work under Shapiro for 1 or more additional years, continue improving the Jays, and then moving on to something else. When interviewing for the next position, he would have the label of team player as opposed to prima donna.
One saving grace for him is he didn’t bad mouth his employers on his way out the door. If he holds to that, it might loosen the hold of the prima donna label.
He’s got a reputation as a guy that won’t accept a demotion after having a season where he was overwhelmingly voted as executive of the year by all of the GM/AGMs across baseball. That’s hardly primadonna behaviour, and I doubt it will prevent him from landing future jobs.
You may consider him a prima donna, but I suspect most of the people in baseball would laugh at your characterization. Even if it was accurate, evidence suggests it’s hardly a detriment to getting another job in the field.
rustydude – in pretty much every field, being known as a “team player” is pretty much synonymous with “will bust their ass to enable the self-serving ladder climbers to do as they please”
In other words, you’re more likely to get A job than a “prima donna”, but it’s far more likely to be somebody’s lackey.
AA very likely deserves some of the blame for the Jays not having a GM in place on October 31.
This is starting to make sense now, Anthopoulos’ tenure as GM has been characterized by bold moves, not always successful but still bold. Under the new régime taking over his value as a GM would be no higher than it is now. If the Jays make the WS next year the credit for that gain would be at least shared with his new boss. If the Jays falter next year, he is seen as the GM who gambled and lost, and got fired. Either way his perceived value diminishes. By leaving at his peak value he can retain his “boy wonder” image, essentially selling high on himself. Just one more bold move, time and opportunity will tell if it is good one or not.
It’s almost certainly a good move. He’s likely to get a “President of Baseball Operations” job in his next gig, ie the promotion that the Jays weren’t willing to give him. And no matter how bad or unlucky he is in that next job, he’s unlikely to do so poorly he ends up any lower in the gig after that than where he was destined to be in Toronto, let alone crashing all the way down to a field position
Totally agree with Dave’s assessment.
I think the comments to the effect that “Shapiro = AA, therefore no big loss” miss the point a bit. It’s not just AA, there’s an entire baseball operations staff that were very much in tune with him (Toronto media said staff were literally crying at their desks on Thursday). The Jays seemed to have developed, over time, into an organization where there was philosophical harmony from president down to scouting. From early days enhancing scouting and development was a major foundation of AA’s plan, and it worked very well – their drafts and international signing have been excellent.
The philosophical harmony only broke down between ownership and president. Now there will be a rift between pres/GM and the rest of the baseball department. That suggests a year or two of upheaval, coinciding with the MLB roster being squarely within their “win now” window of contention. Not good. Shapiro, through not much fault of his own, steps into a scene wearing a black hat in the eyes of fans, media, and probably the staff and players. Terrible.
And on top of the churn / lack of continuity in the front office, there will also be whatever trades/acquisitions Shapiro does to remake the team itself to be more of the model he envisages. That may work out well once it comes time to play ball, but the scrutiny while they’re going through the offseason will be intense and likely tending towards critical. But who knows, he might pull off some crazy trade that brings the Jays both Kershaw and Trout, and all is forgiven.
(Having said that, if it’s true that the one and only interaction Shapiro and Anthopolous had involved the former chiding the latter for trading away too many prospects, a blockbuster trade to bring in veterans seems like an unlikely way for Shapiro to announce himself. It sounds like the Jays’ fans may want to gird themselves for long-term rebuilding aka Indians-esque non-contention. But they’re used to that, since so many of them also follow the Leafs)
i think AA’s perceived character and his story of mail room to front office is what has a lot of people angered too. he is one of the best employees the organization has ever produced, and nobody has a bad word to say about him. what is disappointing is that i think he got a lot better at his job as the years went by, learning from his mistakes (and there were a couple big ones). he has a great reputation in the business as both a talent identifier, a dealmaker and a relentless hard worker. ultimately another team will now reap the rewards of that.
Having met him on numerous occasions, you won’t find a more humble, down to earth person anywhere.
Even his exit (decision) was something to be admired.
He will be missed but the Jays loss will surely be another teams gain.
My comment during the ALDS:
“It makes me really happy to see that the GM of our team is also the biggest fan of our team.”
Knowing and tracking AA like we Jays fans have, his dedication to his craft and process and doing things in proper order have always been top notch. He never cuts corners, never stops working if the job demands it. He actually reminds me of a supremely good Service Manager in an IT department.
All of these things really made him feel like he was doing a superior job, and to top it off with unabashed love for his team, he really was a fan favorite for a reason.
I’m sure that’s why lots of Giants fans would love Sabean, even if they never even made it to the WS under his tenure. Well said.
Prior to this season the Jays were 396-414 under AA and this season they were basically a .500 team until the last 60 games. In what world is that a success? Or does success mean sub-par? Lets be real, AA’s stint was marred by mostly failure until this season, when, during the deadline, to boost his .500 team record he crippled the teams farm system for years, for an aging, brittle shortstop and a rental who will almost certainly not re-sign with them. When you say success do you mean average?
And boom goes the dynamite.
I don’t think it’s entirely fair to include the W-L record from a flawed group he inherited from JP “I don’t need scouts” Ricciardi.
Anthopoulos took his time, remade the organization top-to-bottom and what matters to most Jays fans right now I imagine is that their trajectory is pointing up.
Pretty short sighted view.
Firstly, going by a GM’s record for the first 1-2 years they are in power is ridiculously pointless. That was JP Ricciardis team, not his.
Secondly, ignoring things like ownership, existing conditions (farm system, payroll) and bad luck (injuries, poor performances) makes your opinion, based solely on record, even more shallow.
The players have the ultimate say in how good a GM is. The Gm has control over which players play for their team. While the teams performance wasn’t anything special, a lot of it fell on players who under performed, despite the data that suggests they wouldn’t.
I’m talk R.A Dickey, Josh Johnson, Brandon Morrow, Jose Reyes, Adam Lind, Aaron Hill, Colby Rasmus etc. these were big names that AA banked on that fell through. it happens, no GM bats 1.000.
but what AA did, besides drafting well which a lot of other teams/GMs do, was his ability to be bold. Josh Donaldson is the AL MVP and wasn’t available last offseason, AA was able to pry him from Oakland for a Canadian 3B that was thought to be a foundation piece moving forward.
His trade deadline deals were important, but lets not ignore the fact that R.A dickey, Marco Estrada and Marcus Stroman were amazing down the stretch, all acquired before the deadline. EE and Bautista were unbelievable in august and september, again non deadline deals.
Point being, no stock should have been put in to judging AA on his last work, it was the culmination of his tireless efforts to put a good team together that finally paid off.
Except for his amazing success he has been mostly a failure. You nailed it, dude. Not like that huge record of accomplishment that Shapiro brings up here.
Only thing that bugs me in all this is the rumour that the rift first began with Shapiro ‘scolding’ AA and staff on the Price deal.
Not the way I want a new President to conduct himself firstly. Secondly, it shows he doesn’t understand the market and how desperate Toronto was for a winning ball club. Even if he had a legit beef with the trade, it wasn’t his team at the time, he accepted the job AFTER that trade.
losing AA isn’t the end of the world, but Shapiro isn’t doing himself any favours making new friends in Toronto.
To be honest, that “scolding” report doesn’t sound very truthful at all. Shapiro doesn’t even technically start the job until Monday so who is he to chastise anyone in the organization at this point? It’s hard to imagine an introductory setting between two well-respected professionals involving such a juvenile response. I call BS.
the rumour is coming out of multiple sources.
and its pretty detailed and specific to giving away boyd and norris.
AA has built this team, loves toronto, toronto loves him. this is his dream job. for him to walk away from it, it has to have been an extremely uncomfortable situation.
I hope its not true. not just because I hope he doesn’t conduct himself that way. but also because it was a neccssary move and shouldn’t recieve criticism
The Price trade was worth it. Tigers ownership was so pissed they dumped Dumbrowski within a few days of that trade.
Consider that Norris had already been diagnosed with cancer when that trade was made and the Tigers knew that. If he goes on to greatness still living out of the back of that van ( spooky thing to do in Detroit) more power to him but this trade involved risk on Detroits side too. Cost him his job, actually.
I still don’t get what inflation has to do with winning a title.
Was just writing about this yesterday. Good timing, Cameron.
Right…
As I see it, it’s like a guy who dressed as a horse for Halloween and won for best costume. His prize was an offer to join another guy who won at another Halloween party in a two-man horse costume. Once he found out he’d be the horse’s behind, he said “See ya!”
Just neighing.
I wish I could upvote this twice.
I’ve heard it operates differently for San Francisco. Bobby Evans is effectively the executive decision maker, while Sabean’s position is more akin to a GM emeritus. His baseball operations title was to reduce his job responsibilities while keeping his opinion in the organization, and giving him less strenuous activities (like scouting).
Giants fans have noted there are key differences in the personnel decisions of Evans versus Sabean, and Evans is the one most involved in quotes to the media and player negotiations. There are similarities between Evans and Sabean, but the same could be said between Sabean and Colleti, and Colleti heads a different organization.
Why is Mark Shapiro such a big deal? He failed to notice the talent he had in his low-level analyst Mr. Peter Brand.
The worst will be when AA pulls a ninja move on Shapiro sometime in the next couple of seasons.
Worst for toronto fans that is.
Great for wherever he’s AGM.
Ted Rogers is now saying that he can’t understand why AA left, Shapiro’s role would be same as Beeston’s, there would be no interference in decision making. Nice try, but who would you believe, Ted Rodgers and his minions or AA?
Ted Rogers had no comment on this, he died in ’08
Apologies, didn’t realize his son had the same name
AA has great credibility in Toronto. Rogers have a great credibility GAP.
Toronto is in a great situation with talent and depth at both the major league and minor league levels. Post trade, their farm system is still well regarded. That is AAs legacy.
I have no faith in Shapiro’s timid Cleveland ways when bold moves are needed to get over the top. I think he’ll dither and fret, maybe pull off a Dustin Ackley trade at the deadline (thank you, Cashman) or dump veterans a la Cleveland, rather than make the right moves.
Watch and see; the new GM , if there is one, will be a lame duck. Shapiro is in charge now.
And is he going to complain in 5 years time about the ‘mess’ he inherited? Eight of the 11 prospects traded were international free agents. The draft picks are almost all still there in the system. The Jays have never been in a stronger position, although you could make a case that the 92 team was in a strong position too! (Repeating required some more free agents though )
Wherever AA goes, I am likely to include that team among my favorites.
But what I really want is to go to sleep and someone to make it didn’t happen when I wake up.
Not buying the gear. Not buying the tickets. Product quality in serious question.