From Deadspin, former Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos suddenly and suprisingly leaves the team, rejecting a long-term contract offer.
Sportsnet had the news first, and every subsequent report repeats that Anthopoulos was offered a long-term contract extension, but turned it down. The disagreement reportedly wasn’t over money, and there are no other GM jobs open, so it’s not as if Anthopoulos is leaving for something better. Instead, it’s not hard to connect the dots between Anthopoulos’s departure and the hiring of new president and CEO Mark Shapiro in August.
Shapiro had more or less run baseball operations in Cleveland since 2001, so when he came to Toronto, you knew it wouldn’t be just to handle the financial side of things. Anthopoulos, who said it was his decision not to negotiate an extension during the playoffs (negotiations that ended up lasting three business days at most) appears to have balked at having to cede decision-making power, especially to someone who reportedly came right in and criticized the way he had been doing things.
Speculation as to the cause of the departure include the hiring of CEO Mark Shapiro in August, as well as concerns over philosophical disagreements on how to build a winner.
There are currently no open General Manager positions, so Anthopoulos’ future remains cloudy.
Personally, I’ll just be happy to get to stop typing in Anthopoulos for a little while.
Fan Interference 
I’m stunned.
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It has been reported that, in their first and only meeting, Shapiro scolded Anthopoulos for trading so many top prospects this year. Looks like Shapiro wants to implement the highly successful Cleveland Indians’ model of holding on to all their prospects and never winning anything. This is why we can’t have nice things…
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You have beaver. You have poutine. You can legally bash in a baby seal’s head on a bad day instead of going home and kicking your dog, which can get you jailed or fined.
Stop whining.
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PS – not to mention bitten.
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shots fired!
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Can’t he land a bench coach job somewhere?
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Now you are getting timely 😉
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It’s funny being a Jays fan in Toronto… Anthopoulos goes back and forth from being hero to goat… he just happens to be a hero at this point, cue the outrage.
Sucks to see him leave in my opinion.
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I agree. I have seen a lot of people get on him for the Dickey trade, for example, but IMO, he’s the best GM the Jays have had since Pat Gillick. Hell, even with all the blockbuster trades he mage this year, I still think his biggest coup was unloading Vernon Wells’ albatross contract off onto the Angels.
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If you make any trades at all…some of them are going to turn out poorly.
More often than not…trades that people hate at the time turn out just fine….and trades that people love at the time don’t.
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Jeff Luhnow is probably looking for an assistant who will create new mathematical algorithms for player performance related to eye color, personal hygiene, astrological symbol, political leanings, cholesterol level, musical preference. and phases of Pluto.
Alex should check in with Houston.
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I’d like to see him use an eye-color algorithm on Scherzer 🙂
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Wow, Anthopoulis sure was gone in a hurry. Reminds me of some organizational analogy with Montezuma’s Revenge.
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