Dan Duquette Doubles Down On Logic Behind Not Signing Jose Bautista, Says Orioles Fans Don't Like Him And He Prefers "Gritty Players That Work Hard"
Back in December, Baltimore Orioles executive vice president of baseball operations Dan Duquette straight up told Jose Bautista’s agent that the Orioles are not interested in signing him as a free agent “because our fans don’t like him.” Bautista, after seeing a surprisingly limited amount of interest on the free agent market, crawled back to Toronto to re-sign with the Blue Jays on a one-year deal with two option years.
Like I said, that story about Duquette saying that he didn’t want to sign Bautista because Orioles fans don’t like him was from way back in December. However, it was brought up in an interview with MLB.com yesterday, and here’s what Duquette had to say about it:
MLB.com: You expressed no interest in Jose Bautista this offseason, saying, “Jose is a villain in Baltimore and I’m not going to go tell our fans that we’re courting Jose Bautista for the Orioles, because they’re not going to be happy.” How often do you consider something like fan reaction when considering potential acquisitions?
Duquette: (Laughs) Well that was an easy one; our fans just don’t like Jose. We play those guys 25 times a year and he’s the face of the Blue Jays. He’s the villain in the play whenever we play the Blue Jays. I like our guys. Our guys are good. [Mark] Trumbo is like a working-class-type baseball player. If he was going to work every day on a construction site, you would understand that he brings that kind of work ethic every day. That’s the kind of player that our fans identify with. We try to get gritty players that work hard every day and give their best effort every day. Our fans seem to like that and respond to it.
The reason why this quote in particular is making the rounds today is because Deadspin picked it up, ran the quotes from above, and posed this question at the end:
Here’s a question to ponder: Why did Duquette decide to use Mark Trumbo, a guy who has so far played exactly one season in Baltimore, as an exemplar of the Orioles’ working-class values rather than, say, Adam Jones, an excellent player who has been the beating heart of the Orioles for many years now?
I honestly can’t tell if the author is implying some sort of racist undertone or something. My brain is still fried from the story about Boston Globe writer Pete Abraham calling Red Sox fans racist on Twitter for criticizing players of ethnicity. I’m sure some people will interpret the question that way, but I don’t think it’s fair to just outright assume that’s what they were doing.
I’m gonna give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that’s not the point they were trying to get across. Regardless, the answer to your question, sir, is because he was talking about the DH position. He used Mark Trumbo as the example because the Orioles re-signed Trumbo to be their DH this past offseason, a player that Orioles fans already like, compared to Bautista, a player that Orioles fans do not like, who also would’ve been brought in to primarily DH had Baltimore signed him. Pretty simple.
But let’s just say that Trumbo wasn’t a free agent at the same time as Bautista, and Duquette just randomly brought up Trumbo’s name in that same context, THEN the author would’ve been absolutely right for asking that question. If you’re the Orioles, and you want to talk about the prime example of what Orioles fans want their players to be, it’s Adam Jones. I wrote about this last week, saying that Jones is a player who has superstar talent without the superstar recognition that he deserves.
The word choice by Duquette here is still a little off, though. You wanna say that you prefer gritty players, then knock yourself out. But you can’t really go the “working class” route when you’re talking about guys who make tens of millions of dollars. None of them are working class heroes, so to speak. However, when you want to give a shining example of what Orioles baseball is all about, Adam Jones is your guy.
By the way, I know it sounds ridiculous to say that you’re not going to sign a player because your fans don’t like him, but I think Bautista and the Orioles is an extreme case that can definitely be justified.