Poll Time: Do you approve of the job Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins are doing?

We haven’t done one of these in a while, and it’s likely not fair to do it in the middle (hopefully closer to the end) of a Blue Jays slump, but I thought we’d do it anyway.

I’ll give my couple of complaints:

The thing that will always drive me nuts about baseball front offices is indecision.

The Blue Jays front office....right now they seem to be running a master class in indecision.

For shortstop, after the Diaz injury the Jays:

• Used Lourdes Gurriel (he was close by, playing second after they shipped out Travis). Gurriel, had a bad day, out he goes, up comes
• Richard Urena (for the second time this season), he’s up for a bit, sharing time with Gio Urshela. I though he was doing ok. Hit .278/.278/.444 and then has a bad game. Being fair, every one on the team had a bad game, but Urena gets sent out.
• And, in there, they traded for Gio Urshela. He’s hitting .231/.231/.462. He hasn’t had a bad day yet, so he’s still with the team.

Personally, pick one, live with him. Tell him he has the job even if he makes a mistake. It’s harder to play ball when you think every mistake will cost you a job.

Outfield:

• Dwight Smith comes up, plays in two games, gets 2 hits in 4 at bats, down he goes, up comes
• Dalton Pompey, he gets 11 PA, doesn’t get down a bunt and down he goes again.
• Anthony Alford gets called up, while Pompey is there, to make sure neither gets enough at bats to get into the swing of things. Alford gets 16 PA and down he goes for
• Dwight Smith again. Smith has been pretty good, hitting .294/.400/.471 in 20 PA now.

I didn’t understand going back to Smith, because he’s a lefty batter and Granderson is the guy he would be platoon.

I would think a front office that prides themselves in player evaluation wouldn’t change their minds on a call up after a dozen or so at bats. In my world, I think fans should be impatient but the front office should be patient.

I’m tired of listening to them tell us that Vlad Guerrero isn’t coming up because of defense or leadership or whatever else they say. The reason he’s not coming up because of service time issues. And there is nothing wrong with that. I understand that. But, I’ll write about that more in a separate post.

The front office tried to improve the team’s depth this winter, but the team has tested the depth. I thought the were smart to pick up Diaz Solarte. I thought the Grichuk deal was a good one, but it appears I was wrong. Looking back at the poll, I wasn’t the only one.

The starting rotation hasn’t been what they (or we) expected it to be. I don’t know if that is a mark against the front office. I can’t imagine anyone would have guessed that it would fall apart the way it has.

On the flip side, I wasn’t thrilled with the ‘grab all the old relievers we can find and hope we can build a bullpen out of them’ plan they had, but it seems to have worked.

The Granderson pickup has worked out better than I hoped. The Kendrys Morales one, far worse than I hoped.

The front office would look so much better if Josh Donaldson was hitting like Josh Donaldson.

There is always a lot of silly stuff, people claim they don’t want to win and a lot of other strange conspiracy theories. I don’t understand any of that stuff.