Too Many Cooks? Blue Jays Add Murov To Front Office
By Jay Blue
Blue Jays from Away
The Blue Jays announced the hiring of Mike Murov as the “Director, Baseball Operations,” further muddying the picture of who’s doing what in the Blue Jays front office.

According to the Blue Jays’ press release, Murov, who has been in the Boston Red Sox organization since 2010, will “support Baseball Operations in creating and implementing decision making systems and processes across the department. He will assist in the preparation and analysis of financial, statistical, and contractual information, coordinating contract negotiation and arbitration preparation.”

Everyone got that? What this hiring does is bring in more baseball minds, showing how Mark Shapiro likes to build a team to take care of decisions. That said, the fact that Murov is going to implement “decision making systems and processes” makes me feel much better knowing that the decision making will have a system and a process to enable things to run much smoother. (If that sounds like sarcasm, then just go with it, folks.)

Murov will be in a crowded front office, with newly hired Gil Kim joining the club in his own brand new position of “Director, Player Development.” 
Also in the decision making process will be “Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations and GM” Ross Atkins, “Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations and assistant GM” Tony LaCava, assistant GM Andrew Tinnish, director of analytics Joe Sheehan and a bunch of other folks down there at Rogers Centre.

My first question is whether Shapiro is insulating himself and the organization against a purge of the front office after the 2016 season. Kim appears to be taking over a lot of the duties that LaCava (and possibly Tinnish) had while Murov could be that extra AGM-in-waiting. 

A change at the top usually trickles down to those underneath and the new hirings could be a way of bringing in personnel who will slowly phase out some of the older faces.

The possibility also exists that some of the renovation money tabbed for bringing the Rogers Centre up to date will be spent on an addition to the front office, giving Shapiro and his crew more room to spread out.

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