Mark Shapiro is president and CEO of the Toronto Blue Jays the man who has overseen the renovation of the Rogers Center and uh we're very pleased to have Mark shapy join us in blur and Barker mark thank you so much for doing this uh happy home opener and um look the you've made a lot of changes to the Roger Center uh both for the players and for the fans I wanted to ask you can you beyond the you know how it looks and and and all that how important is it for a team to be able to utilize its ball
park for revenue streams given the way the game is going now I mean our most important Revenue stream is always baseball so uh you know I think you want to be able to have other opportunities for concerts we have a fairly big one coming up here in November you might have heard about Taylor swi right uh but our primary business is baseball and that's the most important thing that we do here and the renovation and the spirit of the renovation is all about making this baseball a specific ballpark m
oving from a stadium to a ballpark taking a 1980s facility that was largely circular and the same experience everywhere where the players were removed from the fans to some extent and making it baseball specific you know the where the angles in all the seats more than than you mentioned down the line everywhere are facing the action they're bigger they're wider seats and and it's a much better experience for all of our fans incl and for our players as well Mark what was the most difficult part o
f getting this thing done as as quickly as it's been done just a massive construction project one that would have taken probably 18 months conventionally um that we got done in less than 6 months so thousands of Canadian workers here overnight over weekends over holidays tirelessly working to get this done to get it to the state that it's in right now ready to play ball Mark what have players said about the renovations and you know there's no more excuses right you've given them everything every
you know everything you can possibly get them to be the best player they can be feedback from the players been what I'm not a big believer in excuses anyway but uh we're trying to narrow them down every step of the way between the training facility in here and that's more that's more a byproduct Kevin of our philosophy and mind of controlling what we can control we can control the environment they play in we can control the facilities they have the coaches they have all the resources they've go
t mentally physically and fundamentally and this is a testament to being best-in class support of our ownership to allow us to have the best facility in all spring training and now the best clubhouse so the players got in late last night I didn't get a whole lot of reaction I've gotten some really positive ones today but we need to get past opening day and all it goes with opening day settle in and then using the spaces um and and really see what the impact is Mark did did you at any point in th
e off seon or even during last season as the season was going on wonder why the team's offensive performance seemed to be different at home last year than it was the year before I know we we talked but we had bo bashet on and Bo said hey thought it got in our head a little bit baseball is a mental game I mean I you know Kevin could tell you that it's the biggest separator it separates out players it makes good players great players and it is a challenge It's a Grind is a very tough thing to do t
o hit and it's uh it's tough mentally as well as it is physically so uh but yeah of course I wondered that but I also was cautious to draw any conclusions from one year mark the first games of the Season what's your takeaway what what have you seen what have you liked what have you not liked well my takeaway is to not take too much away from the first 10 games of the season I you know despite the fact that I'm watching the same thing you're watching we faced some very good pitching obviously wha
t we faced in Houston wasn't a coincidence you saw what they did to the Texas Rangers lineup um and that we faced some tough pitching and we've seen some really positive things but we've also seen some things have to get iron out this team's going to be fine we're going to go as far as our great players take us our young players are now in their Prime and they are great players everybody in the game knows it if they play like great players we're going to be fine yeah Mark what's your sense of th
e fan base you know you've been out and about what what are fans saying to you when they see you I mean fans are incredibly positive to my face I think you guys hear the other side of things that's actually that a very a very good answer uh changing focus a little bit you know we saw a number starting pitchers go down this week uh and we saw of course the Players Association and the Commissioner's Office engage in a back and forth Saturday night How concerned are you as a as a baseball man as a
lifelong baseball man about the injuries we've seen to pitchers and and I mean is there anything that can be done about it yeah I mean listen we've on the I'm on that competition committee we have got to study that it is a much bigger problem than just anecdotally blame the pitch clock for it uh I mean I think the biggest issue is the way pitchers train now the velocity training some of the strength conditioning routines the way the pitchers build up but the fact that pitchers throw Max velocity
from the time they come out and start a game 95 96 97 98 miles an hour U just the way that pitchers are are bringing velocity and generating velocity most human bodies cannot withstand that pitching has always been such a difficult thing to sustain uh from a physical and and health standpoint but when you tack on the training that's involved with maximizing velocity I think that's creating our issues and we've got to think more about what we can do to to offset some of that Mark is there any wo
rry about a rotation getting off to a slow start like the Blue Jays I don't think so I mean I think our again I I'd rest on track records and what these guys have done over their careers reinforcements potentially coming with yel Rodriguez and monoa um you know I think we're going to be fine in the pitching category Mark listen I know you've got a lot to do today your time is valuable thanks so much for doing this again enjoy the opener congratulations on the Roger Center and uh hopefully he'll
have a moment to sit back and kind of kind of enjoy all the work that's gone into this because it's spectacular thanks so much for joining us thanks so much guys I appreciate that take care take care
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