Uncategorized

J.P. Arencibia Takes Shots at the Blue Jays?

16 Shares

J.P. Arencibia may be long gone from the Toronto Blue Jays roster, but it appears he isn’t quite finished stirring things up and causing controversy in Blue Jays Land.

I’m not sure how this managed to completely slip by weeks after the fact, but upon trying to find a video of a hilariously bad strikeout Arencibia had during Spring Training last week, I came across this video below.

In it he describes what it’s like being in the Texas Rangers organization, and in doing so, perhaps takes a few shots at his former team, the Toronto Blue Jays.

ADVERTISEMENT

Your browser does not support iframes.

A brief transcript of a couple of money quotes from the clip:

“There’s not a lot of riff-raff going on except for baseball stuff. It’s cool, it’s refreshing to be part of something that is really baseball emphasized. I think it comes from the top, and you see the way Wash goes about his business. I think that energy is throughout the clubhouse … Elvis, Beltre, you have these guys who are leaders and have been around for a while, they make it easy. It’s not like you come in here and you’re walking on egg shells.”

The funny thing is this isn’t the first time we’ve heard from current or former Blue Jays about “walking on egg shells” around other players or reported distention and cliques in the Toronto clubhouse.

There’s no telling whether J.P. Arencibia was referring to the Blue Jays specifically, but it certainly seems like he was comparing and contrasting the differences between Toronto and Texas.

But wait … there’s more! ESPN did a feature piece on Arencibia and he echoed the very same comments from that video.

“It’s an easy clubhouse … I’m back to enjoying myself. I’m back to having fun. I’m back to waking up and being excited about coming to the field every day. And I think that has to do with this team. Not to take away anything from where I came from, but it’s a different feeling around here. It’s fun to come to work with guys that work hard and want to win. The culture around here is different. It’s exciting to me. I have fun being a part of that. I’ve missed that the past couple of years, and it’s exciting to get back to that.”

Keep in mind, these comments are coming from a player who fell out of favour with the Blue Jays and ultimately lead to him being non-tendered, so clearly he might have some ill will towards the Blue Jays organization.

However, the Blue Jays gave J.P. Arencibia every opportunity to succeed, with a starting catcher job for the better part of three full seasons. With the disastrous season J.P. had last year, the Blue Jays certainly could have dragged his name through the mud, but they preferred to take the high road.

There may have been some truth in the statements J.P. Arencibia made, but it’s not very respectful to speak that way about a team that went out of its way to make the split as amicable as possible.

Alluding to the clubhouse environment of your former employer probably isn’t the best idea when Arencibia still has yet to officially crack the Texas Rangers Opening Day roster.

ADVERTISEMENT

Image courtesy of AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez