Culture is at the heart of the Blue Jays World Series run

TORONTO – Whether at the draft, the trade deadline or during free agency, Ross Atkins has always emphasized the importance of values ​​during his decade as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Whenever there was a potential addition to the team, Atkins always neglected to mention their “high character.”

He believes the policy paid off in 2025, with the Blue Jays reaching the World Series for the first time in 32 years, thanks in large part to their cohesion and commitment to each other.

“I have always been taught and strongly believed that hiring and identifying players, coaches, scouts, anyone who helps support the organization is the most important thing we do,” Atkins said Friday during a news conference before Game 1 of the World Series. “If you do that with values ​​that are important to you, it will pay off over time.”

Atkins said centering the team’s personnel practices and the resulting atmosphere is something he and manager John Schneider talked about earlier this week.

“What I think about most is the relationships, the people we’ve hired and the people we’ve grown with,” said Atkins, who was hired as the team’s general manager in December 2015. “I’ve always felt like there’s a great group of people here that I work with that are definitely going to have lifelong relationships and lifelong friendships.

“This success – even though we’re not done yet, with work to be done – not just this year, but well beyond, I think only reinforces the sense of how powerful these relationships will be.”

Toronto led all of Major League Baseball with 49 come-from-behind wins in the regular season, 12 of which came when the Blue Jays trailed by at least three points.

They also came back from a 2-0 deficit against the Seattle Mariners in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series. The climax of Game 7 in Toronto was capped by George Springer’s three-run homer in the seventh inning, erasing Seattle’s early 3-1 lead in that series finale.

“I think that’s what makes a good team. It’s talent and it’s players, but it’s people,” Schneider said before the World Series started. “I think we’ve done a fantastic job of creating a culture where people are just welcome.

“It’s what we’ve stuck to, the standard we’ve set. Not just the type of player we want, but the type of people we want here.”

Schneider has been with the Blue Jays organization since 2002, when he was drafted in the 13th round of that year’s draft. He retired from playing after the 2007 season due to three concussions he suffered that year, and then became a minor league manager for the Gulf Coast League Blue Jays at the rookie level in 2008, working his way up through the franchise’s various ball levels.

He said the relationships built during Atkins’ tenure in Toronto helped create the culture that made the Blue Jays’ (94-68) playoff run possible.

“I think if you try to create a winning environment and a winning organization that can do this repeatedly, people come into play,” Schneider said. “People who want to move things forward and are not satisfied.

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“Even this year, when we hired (infielder Andres Gimenez) and signed (Anthony Santander) and Max (signed Scherzer), we were talking about what that would do for the people around them and where the people we already had were in their careers and in their lives.”

Schneider said that was also a factor in July, as the Major League Baseball trade deadline approached and the Blue Jays geared up for a deep postseason run.

“It was cool to have those conversations with Ross, understand what we were doing at the time, and not try to disrupt that,” Schneider said. “You want to try to add people who are going to help.

“So Seranthony (Dominguez), who is about as unselfish as we are, Louis Varland and Ty France, they’re also good pieces for what we already have. We’ve made it a point this year to really be aware of that and, again, it’s taken a few years to get to this point.”

Varland and France were traded to Toronto by the Minnesota Twins on July 31 for Alan Roden and Kendry Rojas. Varland, who has become a fixture in the Blue Jays bullpen in the postseason, said the strong culture in his new team was immediately apparent.

“From the coaching staff and the players to the support staff and the chefs, everyone is great, everyone is friendly and welcoming,” he said. “I saw this the other day, ‘the Glue Jays.’

“That’s a perfect way to sum it up. Everyone is so close and everyone is a great guy or girl.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2025.

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