This probably explains plenty:
When Mark Shapiro was hired as the president of the Toronto Blue Jays at the end of August, replacing Paul Beeston, the move signalled a full-scale culture shift for a franchise that has done business essentially the same way since the earliest days of its existence.
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Among the Blue Jays? current staff there is still direct lineage going back not just to the glory days of the late ?80s and early ?90s, but to that first April afternoon when Doug Ault briefly became a household name. Beeston dated back even farther than that ? he was hired to look after the books as the team?s first employee.
Anthopoulos was a product of that old culture (though he also chafed against it at times, and though he in fact began his career with the Montreal Expos.) It was within the Blue Jays organization that he learned the ropes, that he quickly rose through the ranks and that he was given an opportunity to run the team at a very early stage in his career.
...the fact that Beeston gave him a shot after the firing of J.P. Ricciardi rather than going out and hiring a new general manager from elsewhere was a very Blue Jays thing to do. So was the fact that Anthopoulos was granted a significant degree of autonomy in running the baseball side of the business. There were payroll parameters, and occasionally Beeston or ownership intervened to push or block a trade or a signing. But beyond that, Anthopoulos could shape the organization as he liked, hire the field manager he wanted, and make whatever deals he could as long as he didn?t spend outside the bounds of his budget.
t wasn?t going to be like that anymore, and Anthopoulos knew it. He knew it as far back as last fall, when stories surfaced about the possible hiring of Dan Duquette or Kenny Williams as team president ? both of them with baseball operations pedigrees. Maybe they could work something out, which allowed him to retain his autonomy, to retain the final say on personnel matters. But that would be a long shot, even if there was a pre-existing relationship.
Shapiro he didn?t know at all, and the former Cleveland Indians GM and president came from a different place, where they did things differently, where there were different loyalties, where there was a very different history. He is by all accounts a detail person, a memo person, a meeting person ? none of which are labels anyone would apply to Beeston. He will make the Jays more button down, more efficient, more modern, and more a part of a larger communications company.
Story:
http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/anthopoulos-exit-a-product-of-blue-jays-culture-shift/