TORONTO - Alex Anthopoulos is putting the final touches on a long-term plan for the Toronto Blue Jays and expects to share some of the details before next week's general managers meetings in Chicago.
The rookie GM spent most of his first month on the job putting the struggling and aimless franchise's house in order by restructuring the scouting and player development departments, and later sorting through the coaching staff's dysfunction.
Next on the agenda is installing a philosophy and a direction to guide the Blue Jays through this off-season as Anthopoulos and his staff try to build a winner from the rubble of a 75-87 season.
He'll sit down in the coming days with team president and CEO Paul Beeston and the team's ownership to hammer out the guidelines before giving the public the gist of things, likely this weekend.
"I'm getting really close," Anthopoulos said in an interview Monday. "By the time I go to the GMs meetings (Nov. 9-11) I'm going to know exactly what direction I'm going in, and where the organization is headed, and what he have to work with, and so on."
The over-riding question is whether to add to a payroll that was about US$80 million last year, or scale back to rebuild the core for a competitive window down the line.
The answer there will decide the fate of ace Roy Halladay, who is eligible for free agency after the 2010 season and won't want to stick around for any kind of rebuild. Dealing him would help kickstart the process by fetching a group of young players to boost the farm system.
"If this team wins, then there's a good opportunity for him to stay here. The reality of it is we were a 75-win team last year and obviously that doesn't meet Roy's criteria for winning right now," said Anthopoulos. "Roy's goals are the same as ours but his timeline might not be the same as ours and what I'm working through right now is how soon, in this off-season, can we turn this entire thing around, that we can be a team that really makes a run at the playoffs."
Given that they finished 28 games back of the American League East champion New York Yankees, and 20 games behind the wild-card winning Boston Red Sox, the team's first post-season berth since 1993 doesn't seem imminent.
Consider too that there are several holes on the pitching staff and in the batting order, and some sort of rebuild appears to be in order.
"Every year you're trying to win, but that being said, what's the probability of winning?" said Anthopoulos. "I think that's the biggest thing. Every year there are teams that surprise and depending on the type of team you have, every one can look at it and say it can be a playoff team but these things need to occur. You evaluate what's the likelihood of certain things occurring."
Also up in the air is the status of shortstops Marco Scutaro and John McDonald, plus catcher Rod Barajas. Anthopoulos confirmed that while the team's fourth free agent, utilityman Kevin Millar, won't be back, he does have some interest in retaining the other three.
Should they not return, the need to fill two key positions would be added to his winter to-do list.
"As much as I like John McDonald, Rod Barajas and Marco Scutaro, there might be alternatives that make this organization better and are the right alternatives for this team," said Anthopoulos.
"We'd like to bring them back, (but) everything has to fit with respect to what the alternatives are and with respect to what their financial requirements are. I'm starting to get a pretty good handle on where their expectations are with respect to the market and what they feel their value might be."
