Real baseball heads will remember that Mark Shapiro is the basis for the character played by Jonah Hill in the film Moneyball, based on the Michael Lewis book, Moneyball.

The WSJ reports that the Blue Jays are a game away from the World Series because they finally let Shapiro loose of a bagging management structure:

For nearly two decades, the Blue Jays had operated differently from the rest of Major League Baseball, people familiar with the matter say. The executive responsible for running their front office didn’t report directly to ownership, as is standard within the industry. Instead, he was mired in a web of management bureaucracy within the sprawling ecosystem that makes up Rogers Communications, the Canadian telecom giant that purchased the team in 2000.
Around 2018, however, Rogers changed course. Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro would no longer report to the president of Rogers Media, the subsidiary that encompasses the Blue Jays. From then on, he would answer to a small committee of Rogers Communications’ most senior leadership, including CEO Tony Staffieri and Edward Rogers, the executive chair of the company that bears his name.
The switch might sound trivial, but it was indicative of something far greater. Rogers was in the process of elevating its sports properties from a noncore asset into one of the key components of its overall business.

It’s astonishing how often corporate organizations stymie their success by spreading out accountability.