TORONTO – One hundred eighty seven days since the last time he sat at his familiar perch in the Rogers Centre media room, Alex Anthopoulos returned Friday, a black curtain behind him instead of the Toronto Blue Jays backdrop.

“I’d like to announce … ” he quipped as he took the mic, triggering laughs all around.

There was, of course, nothing to announce, and for those hoping Anthopoulos might shed more light on what happened between that Oct. 26 season-wrap session and his Oct. 29 decision to turn down a $10-million, five-year extension to remain general manager of the Blue Jays, well there was nothing on that front, too. Rather than making “fit” a loaded word again, he said of his decision to leave: “That’s me, that’s me. That’s not an indictment on anybody else, or anything like that at all, it’s knowing yourself, knowing what’s going to make you happy.”

The emotional charge of the split, over why he wasn’t going to be happy returning to the American League East champions, has since faded. New Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro is methodically remaking the organization, Ross Atkins is the new general manager, and Anthopoulos is now with the Los Angeles Dodgers as vice-president baseball operations.

Even as questions linger, baseball moves on. Anthopoulos insists there are no regrets.

“The reasons I made the decision – and I know a lot was made that I wasn’t as forthcoming and maybe I should have been more specific, but I wanted to keep that more private overall – I don’t think that changed at all,” said Anthopoulos. “For me, I had to make a decision on what I felt I was going to enjoy. Ultimately it wasn’t my plan to leave, as we talked about, but I did my best to try and enjoy the playoffs, I really made a conscious effort to try and enjoy it and until the decision is final, it’s not final.

“I would say through the end of the month of August, I expected to be here, five, 10, 20 years, whatever it was going to be. And then things rolled into September, and that’s probably the first time it entered my mind that I might not be back. Certainly the decision wasn’t done until the end.”

Shapiro’s hiring, in case you were curious, was announced Aug. 31.

Still, Anthopoulos’ departure may have been for the best as a couple of rival baseball executives who know both men believe their styles wouldn’t have meshed at all. Forced marriages usually aren’t a good thing. That being said, it’s interesting to note that the seeds for some of the Blue Jays’ most important moves of the off-season – the signings of free-agent starters Marco Estrada and J.A. Happ and the trade for swingman Jesse Chavez – may have been planted in the work Anthopoulos started before he left.

“We had gotten to the point that we were ranking free agents, we had small things we had just started, who knows if they would have gotten done,” he said. “Tony LaCava (the assistant GM acting as interim GM at the time) and the group at the time, unbelievable job with guys like Happ, Estrada. Where we got at the time, we weren’t really down the road in trade talks, we had some things we were going to follow up on from July, we had talked about Happ a little bit because we talked about acquiring him in July, we didn’t have the money at the time, we used it on (David) Price, so we ran out of money.”

The Seattle Mariners ended up trading Happ to Pittsburgh at the deadline and his 7-2 finish with a 1.85 ERA in 11 starts with the Pirates, and his past connection with the Blue Jays made him a particularly intriguing free agent.

“A big part of our evaluations was who’s going to come here,” said Anthopoulos. “You can look at the board until you’re blue in the face, but you line up four, five guys, realistically who has a chance to come here? We knew the relationships, he enjoyed it here, he liked it here, we would have a shot if we wanted to pursue him, that decision hadn’t been made, but we had talked about let’s spend more time and look at the changes with the Pirates, are they real, are they not real, where are we going to go? And that was the end of it, no decisions were made.”

Happ ended up signing a $36-million, three-year deal.

Estrada, meanwhile, agreed to a $26-million, two-year deal after the Blue Jays made him a qualifying offer. Once the Blue Jays returned from the playoffs, Anthopoulos spoke to the right-hander in the clubhouse and told him that the team wanted to bring him back, “and I talked to his agent as well, a little bit, that we would deal with it as the off-season got going, but never got into money, years.”

Chavez, meanwhile, came out of some trade talks the Blue Jays had with Oakland the previous July, with Anthopoulos believed to be sitting on a potential swap for the right-hander for prospect Matt Boyd if his other targets, namely Price, fell through. Boyd ended up being used in the Price deal, while LaCava sent Liam Hendriks to the Athletics for Chavez.

“I can’t sit here and tell you we would have gotten those deals done,” said Anthopoulos. “That’s the extent of it. The rest, we ranked some relievers, things like that, but Tony and the guys worked fast.”

Looking back at his trade deadline – when the Blue Jays acquired Price, Troy Tulowitzki, LaTroy Hawkins, Ben Revere and Mark Lowe – Anthopoulos said one thing he still thinks about is a potential deal with the Athletics he could have made for Ben Zobrist, who instead was acquired by the Kansas City Royals.

“That would have been the first deal, it may have influenced some other deals, we may not have had the players to make some of the other deals,” he said. “It felt like at one point we had gotten close, but we weren’t willing to give up an extra player or two to get it done. That’s probably the one I’ve thought about most. What if we had done it? You get to Game 7 in Kansas City, who the heck knows what happens.”

The most polarizing trade Anthopoulos made remains, by far, his acquisition of R.A. Dickey from the New York Mets for then prospects Noah Syndergaard and Travis d’Arnaud. That deal followed the Marlins blockbuster that landed Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and Josh Johnson. Only Dickey remains on the roster, with Reyes flipped to the Colorado Rockies as part of the package for Tulowitzki.

“We felt we were at a bit of a crossroads there in terms of do you scale it back and strip down and maybe (Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion) get moved,” said Anthopoulos. “Do you trade Edwin? Do you trade Jose? It’s hard to be in the middle. I don’t think in any sports team it’s probably not the appropriate place to be. You have to make a decision on where you want to be. Ultimately it didn’t work out for 2013. In 2014 we felt we had a team that could have made the playoffs. The unfortunate part is we just weren’t able to get anything done at the trade deadline. The following year, able to learn from some past experiences, at the trade deadline (we were) able to make moves, and things like that.

“The thought was we were going to be able to (contend) three years in a row and beyond to be able to get to the playoffs and get to the World Series. The thought was it could be what it is today in terms of attendance, TV ratings, fan interest. The belief was there. It was almost like a wick and you needed to light it. If you could, it would open up all kinds of things. That’s what I think I’m most proud of, and sure there are other people here who were involved with it because there were so many people involved, but seeing where the sport is in Canada right now, seeing how the organization is viewed and the fan interest, all those type of things.”

It’s there, and in the AL East crown, that Anthopoulos’s Blue Jays legacy lies. What more might have been, we’ll never know.