Losing a general manager is not the end of the world for any baseball club, and it certainly won’t be the end for the Toronto Blue Jays.

While former Blue Jays general Manager Alex Anthopoulos did bring in many of the stars responsible for the Jays’ drought-ending 2015 season, he’s not leaving with any of them. All the offensive firepower that made the Jays a contender will remain in place come 2016, while all contract questions facing him, like Estrada and Price, will remain open and unanswered for the next guy in line.

But Anthopoulos isn’t leaving because of what happened in 2015, or might happen to payroll this off-season. He’s leaving because his vision for Blue Jays’ future and his strategy for achieving it do not line up with Mark Shapiro’s.

This may be hard to understand right now, what with Anthopoulos’ Jays making history and restoring a once great franchise to national relevance, but it was a change that had to happen. Anthopoulos’ plan, if past actions are anything to go by, is not sustainable.

Moreover, it’s a plan that only worked for three months at end of the 2015 season. It’s also a plan he tried to execute in 2013, when he made a nine-player mega trade with the Marlins that, in the eyes of many baseball pundits, earned the Jays the title of Word Series front-runners.

Instead, they lost a lot of good, young, controllable talent and finished last in the AL East. That could easily have happened this year. In truth, aside from the playoff push fervour, it did. The Jays didn’t win the World Series, and now have a weaker, thinner talent pipeline than when they started.

If this doesn’t matter to you, or you have rose-coloured glasses for AA because he made the Blue Jay cap cool again, then we need to clear something up: saying that Alex Anthopoulos was the reason the Jays were two games from the World Series, or will go back to mediocrity without him, is not only over-selling his impact on the club, it’s also missing the point.

The World Series may be the grand prize for most fans, but in the baseball business side of the things, it’s about sustainability. The only thing better than making it to and winning the World Series, is making it to and winning the World Series year after year after year. If you’re Mark Shapiro, you see the Jays had a chance to accomplish something sustainable from within, and missed it.

For the vast majority of Jays fans, the standing rapport this year was, “To hell with next year, I want to win now!” But for Shapiro, it’s going to be, “How do we keep winning?” And the answer that Anthopoulos has shown as his go-to: Use the draft to gain tradable commodities, and then acquire someone else’s stars by trading said commodities.

In Anthopoulos’ defence, this approach may not have been of his choosing, but the product of a system he came to power in. In fact, it may be the reason he was tapped to become the Jays GM AND is now being replaced—his ability to work within the company's standing framework.

During his tenure as GM, Anthopoulos’ president, Paul Beeston, instituted an organizational rule forbidding signing free agents to contracts longer than five years. Such stipulations make it much more difficult to compete on the free agent market in terms of straight up guaranteed salary.

Couple that financial fact with the logistical issues players face while playing and living north of the border, plus the physical wear and tear of playing on artificial turf, and choosey free agents choose elsewhere assuming the money is relatively equal across the board.

So what do you do when you’re a GM who can’t offer the money, time, or location that other MLB teams can? You make trades and grab players' contracts instead of wooing them. And to Anthopoulos’ credit, he’s made some big and bold ones that, at least recently, worked.

Whether they were the right ones is another matter.

Hayhurst: Loss of AA will hurt Jays in free agency TSN 1050 Baseball Analyst Dirk Hayhurst joins the Mike Richards in the Morning to discuss the transition for Mark Shapiro coming from the Cleveland Indians and what his game plan is this off-season for both on and off the field.

Josh Donaldson will be seen as Anthopoulos’ signature move. David Price was an effective rental, and Tulowitzki’s future—assuming his production regresses to his career mean—may yet be bright.

But the recent postseason push and the splashy trades may blind Jays fans into believing AA did more than he actually did. The Jays cumulative win/loss record under his tenure was barely over .500, and there were plenty of trades made that Jays fans wish they could get back. Two of them, Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud, will be the Mets’ battery in tomorrow’s World Series matchup.

The Blue Jays gambled to make it to the post season this year and price they paid is high. Not only did they lose a lot of young and controllable parts, their success means their draft pick slot priority goes down, and other weaknesses get exposed, like scouting and development, minor-league depth, and internal succession. These are issues Shapiro will need to address, and not working things out with AA was his first step.

Unfortunately it was a step that has a lot of questions attached to it. Before offers for Price or Estrada or any other free agent can be considered, Blue Jays leadership needs addressed. Who will be the next general manager? Will John Gibbons—brought in because of his willingness to work with Anthopoulos, stay? How many players will feel comfortable playing with the next manager, if there is one? How many connections will the next GM have to current players and free agents?

This may not have been the way Jays fans expected the postseason to start, but it’s far from bad news. In fact, it may be the catalyst for a more sustainable, competitive team for many years to come.