A Tribute to “The Silent Assassin”

The Canadian Press

I guess you could say that this post is carrying on from the last one, where I blogged about all the great work that Alex Anthopolous, aka “The Silent Assassin” has done to revamp the Blue Jays organization (including the farm system) over the last year and a half.

I wanted to approach this blog post from more of a marketing lens than I usually would, because it’s interesting how marketing can be applied to various aspects of the sporting world.  Where the Blue Jays stand now, they have a young core of athletic position players, some of whom aren’t major league ready, to go along with a young, major league ready starting pitching staff.

To address the position players that are not all ready for the big leagues, the benefit of this situation is that a lot of them are playing together in the minor leagues.  Competitive team sporting success is a result of cohesive team chemistry, and if you are an individual that refuses to work in teams, it’s going to be hard for your team to experience any prolonged success.  Like I said last week, these players are very athletic, and offer more than just an on-field product—relentless work ethic, passion for the game, passion for competition, and desire to be the best.

The fact that there are quite a few players that demonstrate those attributes, all at a similar age, is going to produce a sustainable competitive advantage for the Blue Jays in the years to come.  In sports, sustainable competitive advantages are usually referred to as “depth”.  When a team is deep in a certain aspect, it allows them to trade players from that depth, to acquire players with talent/attributes that the organization needs.  Knowing Alex Anthopolous, he is going to use this depth (that he has created) to push the Blue Jays in a favourable direction for many years to come.

-Faiz