Winter Meetings Notebook: In lieu of news, Blue Jays talk tactics

LAS VEGAS — With the news of Troy Tulowitzki’s release coming down early in the afternoon, Toronto Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins quickly made it known in his evening media availability that nothing was coming down the pipeline.

He was even kind enough to render an editorial judgment on the day, deeming his club’s actions as “nothing newsworthy”.

In lieu of that news, Atkins did speak about his club’s on-field tactics for 2019. By bringing in a new manager from the Tampa Bay Rays organization, there had been some speculation the Blue Jays would shift to an “opener” pitcher deployment strategy.

On Tuesday, Atkins did his best to bury that notion, reiterating his desire for more starting pitching.

“We’re planning on filling the rotation with guys who are starters and looking to build a pitching staff more in line with what fans are accustomed to,” he said. “Having said that, the season could start, we could have one injury and that could completely change. Or performance could completely change that. But we’re going to look to acquire as many starting pitchers as we can.”

In the view of Atkins, having a situation where you’ve got five full starters or even a surplus of starters is far preferable to be in the position where you are flipping roles around.

“The pluses of a traditional model is that if you execute it there’s a lot more consistency. Guys who can get 27 outs, if you have them, you are acquiring the best talent,” he added. “So that’s the plus. If you can actually acquire 5-8 starters who can pitch into the seventh inning you’re doing better than 80 percent of teams.”

For his part, manager Charlie Montoyo – who addressed the media earlier in the day – was committal about the idea.

“At the end of the day you’ve got to have good pitching, [then] you can use the opener all you want,” he said. “If we have guys throwing 98 to open the game, that works pretty good.”

While the pair is talking about it – only because they’re being asked about it – they’re a long way from looking in any tactical plans.

“It’s late January early February when we start thinking that way. I’m sure Charlie will be thinking about it,” Atkins said. “We won’t be proactively collaborating on that until we really have a good idea of what that roster’s going to shore up to look like.”

Blue Jays see value in Ken Giles

Yesterday it was floated in some circles that Giles was “available”, which figures because the Blue Jays are unlikely to compete in 2019 and there’s always a market for a power reliever.

Atkins dismissed the notion that only front-running teams benefit from a high-end closer though.

“There’s huge value in someone who creates stability and creates consistency for others. We talked about it yesterday. We don’t put guys into vacuums where ‘we are going to trade this player’,” he said. “I know that Charlie and Pete Walker and their staffs will be from Day 1 thinking about winning each game. We’ll see where that goes.”

Blue Jays could experiment with new timing at Spring Training

One thing that Montoyo floated as a possibility for the spring was having players arrive at 10 a.m. rather than 8 a.m. in hopes of improving their rest.

While that sounds like a mundane change, professional sports teams have been trying to experiment with players’ sleep for some time, while acknowledging you can’t exactly control when your employees go to bed.

The whole topic was as inside baseball as it gets, but it did prompt a rather amusing and uncharacteristically crotchety mini-rant from Atkins on “this generation”.

“Getting guys to sleep is hard to do. There’s been a long debate amongst executives, especially in player development about starting early so guys will get to bed. But is today’s generation actually getting to bed with the access to constant information and things that are at their fingertips to keep them awake.”