Jays GM takes some blame for Vlad’s Victoria Day no-show - Toronto Star

No Vlad on Monday led to a mea culpa from Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins on Tuesday.

The club drew criticism on Victoria Day when red-hot Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was left out of the lineup for the opener of a four-game set against the Boston Red Sox at the Rogers Centre.

Guerrero had broken out on a seven-game road trip, hitting .333 with four home runs, nine RBIs and a 1.321 OPS. The 20-year-old third baseman earned American League player of the week honours, and fans were excited to see what kind of performance he could deliver at home, having found his groove.

But the hot streak coupled with a holiday Monday matinee crowd — 26,794, the third-largest of the season — wasn’t enough for the Jays to change their plans to give Guerrero a scheduled day off.

Who plays on a daily basis is up to manager Charlie Montoyo, said general manager Ross Atkins, adding that the front office doesn’t ask Montoyo to factor crowd size into the decision making.

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“There’s so many variables to factor in: performance, the matchup information, fatigue, workload, travel, coming off of a road, day game, whether after a night game or not,” Atkins said. “Those are the variables that we ask him to factor in. And when the fans are coming, we’ve never asked him to factor that in.”

Atkins said, however, that he can “absolutely” understand why fans were upset by the decision not to play Guerrero: “I certainly would not prefer that.”

The GM added that he regrets not talking to Montoyo about the “importance of Victoria Day” to Canadians.

“I think it is intuition a lot of times, for managers to think about playing key players, potentially star players, on those days, the reason being that players want to play in those games,” Atkins said. “There is a lot of attention and more fanfare and it is important to get players into those games.”

He said later: “If that’s what’s disappointed fans, I’ve certainly missed that.”

Guerrero toed the party line after Monday’s 12-2 loss, when asked about sitting out.

“It’s a plan that we have here and it happens (that) today it was my day off,” Guerrero said.

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He was back in the two-hole against the Red Sox for Tuesday night’s game.

While Atkins seemed to regret the decision and the uproar it created, he added that it’s bound to happen again on a day with a large crowd on hand.

“I think over the course of 162 games that’s going to happen quite often,” Atkins said. “There’s going to be times where he’s hot, and that’s why we leave it up to the staff that’s with him every day to make those decisions.

“It’s a very difficult thing to balance all of it.”

The GM couldn’t recall another time when he was asked about meeting fans’ needs on a national holiday. But you can bet that if a similar set of circumstances arises on Canada Day — which will also fall on a Monday, with the Jays home to the Kansas City Royals — Montoyo and Atkins will take the Victoria Day uproar into consideration.

“I think now that intuition takes over,” Atkins said.

Laura Armstrong is a sports reporter based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @lauraarmy

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May 22, 2019 at 06:51AM