freshie on snagging Moneyball trio: "We got a big upgrade compared to our previous roster"

BLUEJAYS are competing at their first LAN event since rebuilding the roster around Adam "freshie⁠" Paterson. After the BLUEJAYS organization hit the reset button earlier this year, they acquired the former Nouns core in Paytyn "junior" Johnson, Matthew "Cryptic" Whitmore, and Anthony "CLASIA" Kearney before bringing on a fifth in Maks "laxiee" Andryei just yesterday.

At Fragadelphia 19, freshie talked to Dust2.us' Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey "Mnmzzz" Moore about how the old roster feel apart and the high expectations of the new one.

The full interview is available below on YouTube, with key snippets transcribed underneath. All questions and answers have been edited slightly for clarity and length.

Three map series vs MIGHT, a bit surprising to see you guys struggle on LAN. What are your thoughts heading out of that series?

We won, that was good. Map one was clean. On map two, we won a lot on T-side, but then on CT-side rounds just fell apart. We tried to do an outside push and got unlucky and lost the gunfights, I got timing’d really bad and one time I tabbed out which gave them an opening kill. It was a rough CT-side for us, but after that we just had to lock in a little more. Inferno got a little close but we ended up winning.

How do you feel about the team’s ability to make a deep run here?

I think we’re going to go pretty far. There’s some good teams here so we’ll see how that goes, but we’re very confident we’re going to win against these teams.

Of course you won Frag in Philly with the old BLUEJAYS roster. Were you aware that the team was going to move on from SLIGHT, snav, and Fruitcupx?

There was something that happened inside the team that didn't go too well. There were already people we were going to get rid of, and once one person was gone the org was thinking about other people, and then we wanted someone but then someone wanted someone else. It was just a real mess trying to find who we wanted, but at the end of the day I feel li]ke we got a big upgrade compared to our previous roster. I mean I love the old guys and they’re all my friends, but it’s just really good that I get to play with these new guys.

Those moves were around a similar time as when the team got rid of Wolffe. Was that just a continuation of the drama that came from that?

No, there wasn’t really much drama. It was a buildup; some of the players were worried about going into the RMR with Wolffe, and it’s nothing against him, but we decided at the last second to get someone else because we were just worried about what would happen if the same mistakes would happen in the regular games.

You ended up picking the Moneyball trio of junior, Cryptic, and CLASIA. How did this come together?

Well since Nouns kind of died, junior was available and that whole roster was available. So the org just decided to jump on them and get them, and I don’t blame them. Junior is a really good player, and honestly I really wanted to play with Cryptic again. I’ve played with him for a long time in my career; he’s such a great teammate, and I kind of came up with him, so it means a lot to me that I get to play with him again.

I can’t say too much about the situation, but we wanted one player on Moneyball but then that one player wouldn’t leave unless another player came in. So we had to get this guy because we want this guy and this guy’s good. Plus VRS is really important too, so if we’re getting two of them we might as well just keep the core. On paper the individuals are better. I did really like my old teammates but I think it’s a huge upgrade for sure. Once we start getting a lot of reps in, I think we’re going to hit a new peak higher than we could have hit with the previous BLUEJAYS roster.