TORONTO — A little more than 13 years ago, when Mark Shapiro was the new general manager of the Cleveland Indians and looking for a reliable, steady hand to lend him guidance in trading the ace of his pitching staff, he turned to Tony LaCava.
On Monday morning, when Shapiro began his reign as the new president of the Toronto Blue Jays and needed a reliable, steady hand to help guide the club through the off-season, he turned to the same man.
“Tony’s someone I’ve known for over 15 years,” Shapiro said shortly after announcing LaCava as the Blue Jays interim general manager. “I’m extremely excited to have Tony in that role and I’ll lean heavily on him as we navigate towards preparation for the off-season.”
Back in 2002, LaCava was a recently hired national crosschecker with Shapiro’s Indians after coming over from the Montreal Expos where he was director of player development. Holding that role allowed LaCava to become intimately familiar with Montreal’s farm system, something Shapiro leaned heavily on as he negotiated a trade involving Cleveland ace Bartolo Colon with his Expos counterpart, Omar Minaya.
“Tony had a strong role as an evaluator in that trade and really as a voice and an adviser for me in the room as we went down the stretch in that,” Shapiro says. “Tony was a part of some very big trades. And some very successful trades.”
Of course, the Colon deal could easily be regarded as one of the most successful in MLB history. The Indians obtained minor league prospects Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips, along with major league depth piece Lee Stevens, from the Expos in exchange for Colon and Tim Drew.
Drew appeared in just 24 major league games after the trade, while Colon embarked on a long, nomadic career that was never quite as good as his 2005 Cy Young season and never quite as bad as his 2007 when he put up a 6.34 ERA in 99.1 innings.
What’s certain is Colon was never worth what the Indians acquired for him. Lee went on to win a Cy Young of his own in 2008 and was consistently one of the best pitchers in baseball for an entire decade between his age 25 and 35 seasons. Meanwhile, Grady Sizemore appeared in three-straight all-star games for Cleveland and Brandon Phillips went on to become an all-star second baseman, albeit for the Cincinnati Reds after a subsequent trade.
It was LaCava who helped Shapiro select those players, although the new Blue Jays GM will modestly downplay his foresight in identifying three future all-stars, saying Lee and Phillips were obvious choices while Sizemore was the one player other teams may not have recognized as having the potential to be an elite talent.
Nevertheless, through that process LaCava and Shapiro got to know each other well, and LaCava went on to forge a very well-regarded career as an executive after that, so it comes as no surprise that Shapiro’s first significant move in Toronto was installing his former crosschecker as interim GM.
“Tony’s work contributed greatly to the team that’s on the field right now—the team that had the incredible run this year,” Shapiro said. “He’s touched people in all parts of this organization and he’s had universal respect and admiration from those people. He’s a great baseball man.”
For Shapiro, it was an easy choice. But what makes it difficult for the 54-year-old LaCava—well respected throughout the game as a thoughtful, humble and exceptionally intelligent executive—is that he’s taking over the Blue Jays GM chair from one of his closest friends in the game, Alex Anthopoulos.
LaCava first joined the Blue Jays from Shapiro’s Indians in the fall of 2002 to be a special assistant to then GM J.P. Ricciardi, and began working with Anthopoulos in 2003 when the Montrealer became the Blue Jays scouting coordinator. When Anthopoulos took over for Ricciardi in 2009, he made LaCava his director of player development in addition to the assistant general manager role he took on in 2007. LaCava has been one of Anthopoulos’s most trusted lieutenants since.
When Anthopoulos told him he was leaning towards turning down Shapiro’s offer to stay on as GM last week, LaCava spent days trying to convince Anthopoulos to stay. LaCava didn’t have much luck, and now the job is his, a reality he says he’s “humbled” by, but also still coming to terms with.
“I’m shocked, to be honest with you,” LaCava said of suddenly being the Blue Jays GM. “Alex is like a brother. It’s hard to believe he’s not still here. But the one thing I do know is he’s happy. And if he’s happy, I’m happy for him.”
Of course, LaCava won’t have much time to find his feet. The Blue Jays have a number of roster decisions to make over the coming days ahead of next week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton, Fla., and that process started immediately after LaCava was introduced as the interim GM. He went straight from Shapiro’s press conference to the Blue Jays war room on the third level of Rogers Centre to meet with his advisers and weigh the pros and cons of the contract options the Blue Jays hold on a number of players such as Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, R.A. Dickey and Maicer Izturis.
As he makes his transition, LaCava will lean on the baseball operations staff he worked with under Anthopoulos, including assistant GM Andrew Tinnish, pro scouting director Perry Minasian, baseball information analyst Joe Sheehan and others, to formulate a plan for the winter and get the club’s affairs in order before heading to Florida. Shapiro will be in and out of those meetings over the next week and remain looped in on everything as he himself gets acclimated to a new role.
“It’s a collaborative effort,” LaCava said. “We’re planning; we’ve been planning for the past week or so. Transitioning without Alex is a challenge and it’s difficult but we’re working through it. We’ve got good people here.”
LaCava’s background is primarily based in scouting and player evaluation, and while he keeps a low profile when it comes to public appearances and interviews, he’s extremely well connected throughout the game. This will be his third baseball operations regime with the Blue Jays, from Ricciardi to Anthopoulos to himself, which is somewhat of an unlikely feat in modern MLB front offices where allegiances and bloodlines run deep.
“He’s a man of incredible character and compassion, which are attributes I think are necessary to be an effective leader,” Shapiro said of his new GM. “The character is the big thing that stands out. His thoughtfulness; his respect for people. And his level of evaluation. His evaluation is really centred around knowing the player—the complete player, both from a talent and skill perspective, as well as a character and makeup perspective.”
Of course, hanging over everything he does will be the question of how long LaCava will remain in the role, as he’s been given an interim tag in front of his title and watched at Shapiro’s introductory press conference Monday as his new boss talked about how he’d like to go about his search for a permanent general manager.
Although Shapiro said on Monday it was “premature” to discuss any candidates, it’s possible that LaCava could fill that role. It’s believed he’s been given a number of opportunities to jump from the Blue Jays in recent seasons, with his most concrete offer likely coming from the Baltimore Orioles who reportedly wanted to make LaCava their GM in 2011 but couldn’t come to an agreement with him. He’s also interviewed for a handful of GM vacancies over the years, most recently with the Los Angeles Angels this past summer.
But LaCava has always remained with the Blue Jays and says that if he has his druthers, that won’t change anytime soon.
“I’m a Blue Jay. Whatever my seat on the bus is, that’s fine. I’m prepared to do whatever. I’m humbled that Mark’s asked me to lead us through this off-season,” LaCava said. “He could tell me I’m cleaning up the mess after [the media] leaves and I’d do that. Whatever the job is going forward, I’m in.”