TORONTO – Whether at the draft, at the trade deadline or during free agency, Ross Atkins has always emphasized the importance of values during his decade as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Whenever there was a potential addition to the team, Atkins never failed to mention his “great character.”
He believes that policy has paid off in 2025, when the Blue Jays reach the World Series for the first time in 32 years, thanks in large part to their cohesion and dedication to each other.
“I’ve always been taught and learned and firmly believed that recruiting and identifying, whether it’s players, coaches, scouts or whoever is helping to support the organization, that recruiting is the most important thing we do,” Atkins said during a news conference Friday before Game 1 of the World Series. “If you do that with values that are important to you, over time, it will pay off for you.”
Atkins said focusing the team’s personnel policy and the resulting atmosphere is something he and manager John Schneider actually talked about earlier in the week.
“What I think about most is the relationships, the people we’ve hired and the people we’ve grown together with,” said Atkins, who was hired as the team’s general manager in December 2015. “I’ve always felt like there’s a great group of people here that I’m working with that will definitely be lifelong relationships and friendships.
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“This success, even though we’re not done, we have work to do, not just this year, but well beyond, I think emboldens that feeling of how powerful these relationships will be.”
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Toronto led all of Major League Baseball with 49 come-from-behind wins in the regular season, 12 of those wins coming when the Blue Jays were trailing by at least three runs.
They also recovered from a 2-0 deficit against the Seattle Mariners in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series. The climactic Game 7 in Toronto was capped by George Springer’s three-run homer in the seventh inning, breaking Seattle’s early 3-1 lead late in that series.
“I think that’s what makes a good team. It’s talent and players, but it’s people,” Schneider said before the World Series began. “I think we’ve done a phenomenal job of creating a culture where people are just welcome.
“It’s what we’ve held on to, the standard we’ve set. Not just the type of player we want, but the type of people we want here.”
Schneider has been with the Blue Jays organization since 2002, when he was selected in the 13th round of that year’s draft. He retired from playing after the 2007 season due to three concussions suffered that year, then became a minor league manager for the Blue Jays of the rookie-level Gulf Coast League in 2008, working his way through the franchise’s different levels of ball.
He said the relationships built in Toronto during Atkins’ tenure helped create the culture that made the Blue Jays’ (94-68) playoff run possible.
“I think when you’re trying to establish a winning environment and a winning organization that can do it repeatedly, people come into play,” Schneider said. “People who are going to push things forward and will not be satisfied.
“Even this year, when we acquired (infielder Andrés Giménez) and signed (Anthony Santander) and signed Max (Scherzer), we were talking about what that would do for the people around them as well and where were the people that we had already been in their careers and in their lives.”
Schneider said it was also a factor in July as the major league trade deadline approached and the Blue Jays were preparing for a deep postseason run.
“It was great to have those conversations with Ross, understand what we were doing at the time and not try to interrupt him,” Schneider said. “You want to try to add people who are going to help.
“So Seranthony (Dominguez), who is as selfless as they come, Louis Varland, Ty France, they’re also good pieces for what we already have. We set out to be really conscious of that this year and, again, it’s been a couple of years to get to this point.”
Varland and France were traded to Toronto by the Minnesota Twins on July 31 for Alan Roden and Kendry Rojas. Varland, who has become a fixture in the Blue Jays bullpen in the postseason, said the strong culture on his new team was immediately evident.
“From the coaching staff to the players, the support staff and the chefs, everyone is great, everyone is friendly and welcoming,” he said. “I saw this the other day, ‘the Glue Jays.’
“That’s a perfect way to sum it up. Everyone is very close and everyone is a good guy or girl.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2025.
© 2025 The Canadian Press