Blue Jays president says '24 season is 'biggest disappointment' - ESPN

After entering the 2024 season with great expectations, Toronto Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro is not happy about a team that's languishing in last place in the American League East and already looking toward next year.

But that doesn't mean that big changes are on the horizon.

«I'm not fixated on language, terming it a rebuild, terming it retool,,» Shapiro told reporters on Wednesday. «We just need to get better. In the nine seasons I've been through, this is the biggest disconnect from expectations.

»It doesn't mean we haven't had difficult endings to seasons and it doesn't mean we haven't had seasons where we knew we were going to have a challenge competing, but this has been, by far, the biggest disconnect from our expectations and the biggest disappointment. We need to learn. We need to get better from it."

The Blue Jays are 52-62 and are 15.5 games out of the division lead — 11 games from a wild-card spot — entering Thursday's games. They kept cornerstones Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette rather than dealing them away at the trade deadline. The club has been trying to move under the $237 million tax threshold after starting the season with a $244 million payroll.

This season just hasn't worked out like Shapiro — and fans — had hoped.

«We've done a good job identifying talent individually,» Shapiro said. «We have not done as good a job, collectively, placing that talent on a roster to win. It's that connection between identification of talent, where I think we actually have done a pretty good job individually, but they haven't come together to produce the numbers that we would expect from a championship offense.»

Shapiro didn't comment directly on the status of general manager Ross Atkins, who is in