"It was a good trade": Blue Jays' Shapiro doesn't regret losing Moreno

Toronto Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro doesn’t regret the team trading away Gabriel Moreno.

Sent as part of a deal along with Lourdes Gurriel Jr. last December to the Arizona Diamondbacks in exchange for outfielder Daulton Varsho, the 23-year-old catcher has been having a breakout season in his first full year in the MLB.

In five games with the Diamondbacks in the playoffs — all wins — Moreno has mashed three home runs and picked up five hits while adding six RBIs to go along with a 1.107 OPS.

With the team facing a logjam at the catcher position, the Blue Jays opted to keep Danny Jansen and Alejandro Kirk over the still-developing Moreno after just 25 games with the Jays.

But Shapiro still seems satisfied with the team’s return.

“Over the season, I still feel like that was a good trade and you can’t you can’t evaluate a trade in the short term, you’ve got to give it four or five years to understand whether a trade was effective or not,” Shapiro told reporters on Thursday morning at his end-of-season media availability.

"You can't evaluate a trade in the short term, you've got to give it four or five years to understand whether a trade was effective or not."

Mark Shapiro speaks on the Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. for Daulton Varsho trade. pic.twitter.com/3DpaJDZwCF

— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 12, 2023

Varsho had a remarkable defensive season, leading the major leagues with 29 defensive runs saved over the course of the 2023 campaign, though he struggled at the plate, putting up a .220 batting average and a .674 OPS.

Shapiro confirmed earlier in the press conference that general manager Ross Atkins will be returning in 2024.

“I would say this that I look at, you can be specific about the decisions made and the players acquired just on last year’s team alone, whether it was [Kevin] Kiermaier, [Brandon] Belt, [Chris] Bassitt, the guys that [Atkins] has put together that content in the context of people signing free agents and trading for players, I would argue that the players we added to last year’s team were [good moves]. [Atkins] did a very good job. Every single GM makes mistakes.”

The Blue Jays finished the year with 89 wins, but fell in the playoffs with a 2-0 series sweep to the Minnesota Twins where they scored just one run over the course of 18 innings. The Jays have gone 609-585 under Atkins, the seventh-best mark in the American League and a .510 winning percentage, having made the playoffs in 2016, 2020, 2022, and 2023, but failing to win a playoff game in each of the team’s last three appearances.

“To criticize without [the] context of saying, I’m gonna go and look at all thirty GMs and all the series of decisions they made. There is no GM that’s perfect,” Shapiro added about Atkins. “That’s just the reality of making decisions about human beings and, look at the portfolio of work. I think the results show that he’s done a good job.”

You might also like:
• Blue Jays' Mark Shapiro says that Ross Atkins will be returning as GM