Blue Jays executive James Click talks new front office role, future in Toronto

Baseball

Published 17.04.2023

Blue Jays executive James Click talks new front office role, future in Toronto

TORONTO – Within per week final November, James Click celebrated a World Series win because the Houston Astros‘ common supervisor, acquired a seemingly disingenuous one-year provide to remain on as GM and have become a free agent after declining to remain in Houston below these circumstances.

The sequence of occasions was as uncommon because it sounds. Just as soon as within the final 75 years has the GM of the World Series winners not returned.

Just a few months later, with out preamble or fanfare, the Blue Jays made an announcement. They’d employed Click, 45, as their VP of baseball technique. Soon afterwards, he arrived on the group’s participant growth facility in Dunedin, Fla. and began to work. But he initially declined to elaborate on the sequence of occasions that led him to Toronto or his new job, preferring to familiarize himself together with his new colleagues first.

Six weeks into his tenure with the Blue Jays, Click spoke publicly about his function with the Blue Jays for the primary time. In an interview with Sportsnet, he mentioned the trail that led him to the Blue Jays, shared particulars on his function with the Toronto entrance workplace and stated he can see himself staying on this capability for “quite a long time.”

As for the ending of his Astros tenure, Click saved his feedback temporary. “It’s not something I’m focused on,” he stated. “I’m focused on the Blue Jays. That’s in the past. I’m worried about the present and the future.”

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Once it was clear that his time with the Astros was over, Click began listening to from groups occupied with his companies. Knowing that he’d reached a turning level in his profession, he additionally mirrored on what he wished for himself and his household.

At that time, Click wasn’t notably shut with Blue Jays common supervisor Ross Atkins, although he knew him professionally as a rival GM. As the calls got here in, Atkins expressed curiosity in attending to know Click extra.

“It was an extremely flattering experience,” Click stated. “I was extremely fortunate to be able to have quite a few conversations with quite a few teams. For me, it was a great chance to take a step back, take a little time off and reflect on what is it about this game that really is important to me… the more that I reflected on that, the more conversations that I had, the more it led me to this situation here.”

•••

Click’s function with the Blue Jays will probably be in contrast to something he’s performed in baseball. When he began with the Tampa Bay Rays in 2006, he labored on constructing out their proprietary database, utilizing his coding expertise to drag in as a lot info as potential.

Over the years, his function expanded as he labored alongside future GMs together with Andrew Friedman, Chaim Bloom, Erik Neander, Matt Arnold and Peter Bendix. Looking again, Click believes he benefitted from “learning from those guys, working with those guys, being around those guys, being in that intellectually challenging, intellectually stimulating environment.”

By 2019, his remaining season with the Rays, he was serving to oversee numerous features of baseball operations alongside Neander and Bloom, considering strategically about how one can compete with fewer assets than the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays.

By then he was now not coding the best way he did when he first broke in. “The math, quite candidly, has moved beyond me,” he laughed. Soon, one other alternative emerged.

In Houston, Click inherited a World Series calibre group and his job was to maintain the Astros acting at an elite stage. The outcomes over three seasons: a 230-154 document, three ALCS appearances, two AL pennants and one World Series win.

“I’ve been fortunate to be with to this point, two organizations that have been two of the most successful organizations in baseball over the recent past, and they each go about things differently,” Click stated. “Sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice. But part of the appeal of coming here is to see some of the lessons that I’ve learned over the past two franchises and see what I can bring to the Blue Jays to help them.”

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•••

Now, Click’s function will probably be totally different by design. Because Atkins handles the group’s day-to-day operations with assistant GMs Joe Sheehan, Mike Murov and others, Click has the liberty to work with numerous departments with out having to fret about telling a reliever he’s been optioned, as an example, or main the best way on extension negotiations. Plus, all concerned are taking the lengthy view with the expectation that Click’s contributions received’t be restricted to a single season.

“The role itself was designed to be fairly broad and to give me and the Blue Jays freedom,” Click stated. “Part of the appeal is that this is a situation where I can foresee myself being here for quite a long time. It’s obviously a very exciting, very talented team.”

Given Click’s background his work will possible embody an in depth take a look at the Blue Jays’ analysis and growth operations, however he received’t be restricted to a single space.

With the day by day operations already below management, Click will spend time interested by “where this game is going to be five years from now and 10 years from now.” To try to reply that query, he’ll comply with different sports activities and different industries with a view towards ensuring “this organization is perpetually competitive.”

Part of that problem means pulling in as a lot info as potential and utilizing it to create higher choice methods. For occasion, know-how like TrackMan, Statcast and Hawk-Eye means baseball executives have extra info than ever.

Which is nice, “but that also changes how you do the rest of your job,” Click stated. “It changes how you scout, it changes how you develop players. And so making sure that we don’t keep doing things the way that they’ve always been done in the face of all this new information is critical.”

So as a substitute of chasing exit velocity for the sake of exit velocity, executives try to know the larger image. Ideally, that info — understood inside correct context — helps establish, purchase and develop expertise higher.

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“The reason that those things are predictive and informative of future performance is based on the context in which they’re observed,” Click stated. “So if you start chasing those kinds of things and forget how to teach how to swing properly, how to work at that, how to recognize what a pitcher is trying to do to you and all the other skills that players need, (skills) that sometimes we can observe with our eyes and sometimes we can observe with cameras and sometimes we can observe it with other pieces of technology. But we have to make sure that we balance all of that and don’t simply chase whatever the newest, latest, greatest thing is and forget about the reason why that’s important about performance.”

First, although, Click’s been making some extent of attending to know as many individuals as potential. As Rays farm director Mitch Lukevics as soon as put it to Click, seagull administration — an method the place “you fly in, you (excrete) on everything, you fly out” — is finest averted.

“It’s critical that I develop a level of trust with the people in this organization before I come in and start making recommendations,” Click stated.

“Obviously where I come from, things have been done differently,” he added. “Just because they’ve been done differently doesn’t mean they’re better or worse. Yeah, I think it’s critical for me to understand why we’re doing the things we’re doing here at the Blue Jays before starting to make recommendations on things I feel like could be changed.”

There’s no scarcity of territory for Click to cowl together with his new group as he familiarizes himself throughout a number of departments. It might take time to cowl all of that floor, and that’s seemingly high-quality with Click. Asked whether or not he’d wish to be a GM once more, he didn’t sound like somebody in a rush to land elsewhere.

“One of the things that is important is stability,” he stated. “I have two kids that are in elementary school, and providing stability for them is, if not my primary focus, one of the primary focuses that I have. It’s something that was really important to me when I was making this decision. And this is a role, an organization that I could very easily see being here for a very long time. That’s my focus.”