Toronto Blue Jays president and CEO Mark Shapiro looks on during a Blue Jays spring training session in Dunedin, Fla., in February.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
The Cleveland Indians – who knew?
Mark Shapiro, for one, the man who is now running the show for the Toronto Blue Jays after 24 years in Cleveland, up until last season, running the Indians.
Toronto's president and chief executive officer said he felt heading into the 2016 season that the team he played a large role in creating had a solid chance to turn some heads.
And now that the Indians are proving him right by threatening to make a mockery of the race in the American League Central. Shapiro said it by no means gives him second thoughts about leaving that city in the first place.
"You don't make decisions of this magnitude, trying to time them," Shapiro said during an interview on Wednesday. "I think it was more about where I was in my career and how ready I was for a new challenge and a new opportunity and a new place."
Still, for Shapiro, old habits die hard. He acknowledges that in the morning, it is the Indians' box score from the night before he delves into – right after Toronto's.
Shapiro, along with several other of his new front-office mates who eventually followed him to Toronto from Cleveland, will get a first-hand look at just how the Indians roll this long weekend.
The hottest team in baseball, the Indians will arrive in Toronto on Thursday to begin a four-game series against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.
It will mark the first time the two teams have met since the Cleveland carousel started to turn.
"I think a little weird," Shapiro said when asked what it will feel like facing his old organization for the first time. "But at the same time, I think when it comes down to competing against someone, regardless of whether it's family, friends … you want to win.
"I think if you talk to people like [tennis stars] Serena and Venus Williams, you talk to other siblings that have competed against one another on highest stages, it's probably something akin to that. It's someone you care about deeply and someone you only want good things for. But it's someone when you compete against them you want to beat them – badly."
That will not come easy, not if the Indians continue to play to the form they have grown accustomed to of late.
Cleveland has been the surprise of the 2016 season, their 11-game win streak they rode into Turner Field Wednesday night for a game against the Atlanta Braves being the longest this season in MLB.
The last time the Indians won at least 11 in a row was back in 1982.
Shapiro was the president of the Indians, and a former GM, when he accepted the top job in Toronto last summer.
After the club could not persuade Alex Anthopoulos to commit to a five-year contract extension to remain the Toronto GM, Shapiro went out and hired Ross Atkins as his replacement.
Atkins spent 15 years in the Cleveland front office and was the club's vice-president of player personnel when he agreed to follow Shapiro to Canada.
Eric Wedge, Cleveland's manager from 2003 through 2009, also made the jump when he was offered the position of player development adviser in Toronto.
Most recently, Andrew Miller, who was Cleveland's senior vice-president of strategy and business analysis, came to the Blue Jays to become their executive vice-president of business operations.
The Indians, who last made the postseason in 2013, when they played in the American League wild-card game, are a young, aggressive team built with patience over years of emphasis on building through the draft.
Two-time all-star second baseman Jason Kipnis; right fielder Lonnie Chisenhall; 2015 rookie-of-the-year candidate Francisco Lindor at shortstop; and current rookie candidate Tyler Naquin in centre were all drafted and then developed in the Cleveland minor-league system.
On the pitching front, they have a couple of nine-game winners in Danny Salazar, who the team signed as an international free agent in 2006, and Josh Tomlin, a Cleveland 19th-round draft pick in 2006.
Shapiro said it is not always possible, or even wise, to try to duplicate what was a winning blueprint for success in one baseball market and apply it in another.
But he is confident in his belief that a team's best chance for success year in and year out rests in a solid minor-league system.
"No matter where you are, your talent that is both signed and developed by your own organization or acquired and then primarily developed by your organization is going to help ensure success," he said. "Not determine it but help ensure it."
The only blight on Cleveland's season to date is its home attendance, which ranks dead last in MLB with an average of just less than 17,000.
"It's a tough dynamic," Shapiro said. "It's not a reflection of the fans. You saw them come out to the parade to support the Cavaliers. It's more of a reflection of kind of where the team plays, how many people are around the ballpark, live and work around the ballpark and how hard it is to get people to leave the TV sets and come in and watch the game in person. That's a hard job no matter where you are in today's world but especially in a market of that size."