With The Jays collapsing this year, and the dangling of Roy Halladay on the trade block, it appears that JP Ricciardi’s days in Toronto could be numbered. Hailed as one of Billy Beane’s golden boys, expectations were high in Toronto when he was hired following the 2001 campaign. Since then, the Jays have had only once finished above third place in the American League East, and most fans consider his tenure a failure. I am one of the few who disagree, but unfortunately did not really have any numbers to back myself up.
I decided to undertake a small project to put some numbers behind my claim. As I was working through the data, I became unsure that I was going to be able to find a solution. However, the end product gave me the results I wanted. Given the financial resources relative to their division, the Toronto Blue Jays under JP Ricciardi were outperformed in terms of winning percentage compared to their division only by Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics and depending on your point of view, Terry Ryan’s Minnesota Twins. These are arguably the top two GM’s in baseball over this time frame, so I would say JP is in pretty good company. Now to the data.
Ricciardi was hired following the 2001 season, so I plugged the records of every team in the American League from 2002-2008 into Excel. I then tabulated each team’s winning percentage over this time period, as well as the winning percentage of the other team’s in the division. For example, the “Division Winning Percentage” box for the Tampa Bay Rays would include the records of the Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Orioles, but NOT the Rays. I then calculated how much each team had spent on payroll (information from Cot’s MLB Contracts), and figured out what percentage of the division’s total payroll was spent by each team. The results for the three AL divisions are as follows:
*Because the AL West only has four teams, I added a hypothetical fifth team that has a payroll that is the average of the other four teams. This helps make the Percentage of Payroll constant across all divisions.
The numbers are not perfect, and could be refined further, but I think the general point I am trying to make is apparent. Given his financial resources, JP Ricciardi did very well with the Jays. He achieved a winning percentage only .010 lower than the rest of the division, while playing in the toughest division in baseball with the two best teams in the league. You might be saying, well that is not very good, he was below average. However, if you take a closer look, he did this while spending only 14.39% of his division’s total payroll. The only other teams to spend similar or less were Baltimore (.087 lower winning % than division), Tampa Bay (.107 lower), Kansas City (.095 lower) and Oakland (.039 higher). Among these teams, only Oakland was better. With regards to Minnesota, they did spend 3.5% more than Toronto, but I would argue the .088 boost in winning percentage relative to the division is greater than the financial surplus.
The two big failures were Detroit and Seattle. Detroit spent 24.10% of their division’s payroll to be .058 below the rest of their division, while Seattle spent 23.18% to be .053 worse.
So there you have it. In my opinion, the JP Ricciardi era in Toronto has not been a failure, and he has actually done very well. Other than a brutal 2004 season, the Jays have remained extremely competitive with the Red Sox and the Yankees despite financial limitations. A lot of this depends on how you label success. Some would argue that Tampa Bay has done a better job because they won a division title and a pennant with even smaller resources than Toronto. To that I would say, “oh really, how did you enjoy the six 90+ loss seasons prior to 2008?” I do not think success can be attributed to one good year, so overall, I think the top three general managers in the American League from 2002-2008 were Billy Beane, Terry Ryan and JP Ricciardi.
Baseballbriefs.com tracking back JP Ricciardi Is An Excellent GM And I Have Numbers To Back It Up…
Baseballbriefs.com tracking back JP Ricciardi Is An Excellent GM And I Have Numbers To Back It Up…
[...] JP Ricciardi Is An Excellent GM And I Have Numbers To Back It Up … By rtcampbell Ricciardi was hired following the 2001 season, so I plugged the records of every team in the American League from 2002-2008 into Excel. I then tabulated each team's winning percentage over this time period, as well as the winning … MLB INSIGHTS – http://mlbinsights.wordpress.com/ [...]
My issue with JP isn’t so much about his winning percentage or comparative records; it’s doubtful any other GM could have had better success against the Sox, Yankees or, now, the Rays. What concerns me is his judgment. Scrapping Reed Johnson too early, the atrocious contracts for Rios and Wells (decent players, but the contracts…), a constant merry-go-round at third base which doesn’t look to be clearing up anytime soon with Rolen gone, and some interesting situations with troublesome players (Thomas, Hillebrand, etc) all paint a picture to me of a GM who’s not the worst in baseball, but someone who probably didn’t deserve an 8+ year run with an until-recently escalating payroll on the undelivered promise of playoff contention. This team has drafted well, and it’s been wrecked by injuries, but overall I’m looking forward to a change of pace at the top.
I face palm every time someone brings up the Great Reed Johnson argument.
J P Ricciardi isn’t that great a GM at all. What’s he done for the Blue Jays as of late ? Winning percentage count for bs if you aren’t winning the hearts and minds of the fans . Much less championships.
Can you not see that ?
It’s morons like you that have no idea what the _ck you’re talking about . Much less have an understanding of the business side of the game. But then again as they say ……… ‘ a mind is a terrible thing to waste
Stuart- that is very true, but every GM in the league has signings that they regret, and players they had to release.
It is funny that you mention the escalating payroll because I think that the Blue Jays would have been better off if Rogers had not bumped up payroll because the team probably would have either traded Wells or let him walk for draft picks, and the team would be in better shape financially right now as well as on the field.
Alan – First off, watch your language, this is not a website where I promote that kind of stuff. Feel free to disagree with anything, but if you need to drop f-bombs to get your point across I am less than impressed.
Second, maybe I was not perfectly clear with my article, I was not trying to defend the entire JP Ricciardi experience as a whole. The whole Adam Dunn saga was bush league, he stupidly bought out guys like Thomas and Ryan when they probably still had some trade value as long as the Jays were willing to eat the salary, which they ended up doing anyways. However, like I explicitly stated, given the financial resources that JP was afforded, he has put a solid product on the field. Last year, the Blue Jays had the second best pythagorean record in the American League after the Red Sox. They were a good ball team.
Another thing, since only one team a year can win a championship, I believe being successful consists of fielding a competitive team year in, year out. And if you understood the business dynamics of Toronto Blue Jays baseball, you would know that a string of 2-3 last place finishes would absolutely cripple the blue jays in terms of attendance.
So I think you jumped to conclusions about what I was trying to say. Are there better GM’s than JP? Yes. Are there worse GM’s that JP? Yes. Is JP unfairly criticized? Absolutely. Is is time in Toronto about to expire? Probably. I think you will be surprised to see JP get another shot at being a GM in the future.
I think that using weighted winning percentage is actually quite a bit misleading. A lot of that winning percentage was compiled AFTER the Blue Jays were eliminated from contention. As far as I can recollect, the Jays have NOT played a meaningful game past August since JP has been in charge. Additionlly, a the Jays have tended to play rather well AFTER being eliminated. IMHO I think that if your team is done in August every year, it doesn’t matter if they win 86 or 66 games. In fact I’d rather that they win 66 games because it allows them to potentially draft and develop better players.
Additionally, you are seeing JP’s stats at its best. Since he back loaded Well’s and Rio’s contracts, the Jays are going to get expensive AND bad shortly. When you look at how much the Jays are paying Wells and Rios in the future:
Wells: 10:$12.5M, 11:$23M, 12:$21M, 13:$21M, 14:$21M
Rios: 11:$12M, 12:$12M, 13:$12.5M, 14:$12.5M, 15:$13.5M club option ($1M buyout)
You can see that he is actually one of the worst GM’s in the game. He sacrificed the future to win now, and he didn’t win now.
Sorry about the long post, I am a Jay’s fan that is very dissatisfied with Ricciardi’s performance.
I’m afraid I must disagree with your assessment though not with the vitriol that some would. My main concerns with JP are about his judgement around player evaluation. It’s my belief that the only way for the Jays to be competitive in their division is for them to draft extremely well consistently and they haven’t done that during his tenure.
JP has been trying to get an every day shortstop since he got to Toronto and there still isn’t one in the system worth mentioning. Scott Carson wrote an excellent piece noting that none of the Jays positional prospects are doing at all well in the minors and the team certainly doesn’t have alot of players listed in the top 100 prospects list. Some will point to all the young pitchers the Jays have used this season and the success they’ve had as evidence of his success. Again I’m not convinced, as none of them look to be top of the rotation starters (a possible exception with Ricky Romero) but instead look to be middle to bottom of the rotation guys who tend to benefit from very solid defence.
There are also a couple of potential problems with using the statistics you’ve used to make your case. The most notable outlier is Roy Halladay. Putting Halladay on any other team would likely significantly change the results in terms of winning percentage etc.
You touch on it a bit there, but my complaints about Ricciardi are not dealing with his direct GM skills.
I actually think he has been pretty good, other than the Wells contract (I’m actually okay with the Rios deal… I think this is just a blip)
His ability dealing with the media and public, otoh, is just terrible… and that is part of the job.
Chris – That is an interesting point about the winning percentage late in the season. I never thought of that, so I will look into it later today and get back to you.
With regards to the back-loaded contracts, I see where your frustration is coming from. However, I think that there may have been some dialogue beehind the scenes where Rogers made it be known that payroll would not be a limitation for the Jays. We are seeing this now where the Jays are saying that it is not going to be money that causes Doc to leave, but simply the fact that Doc wants to win a World Series.
I also follow the Jays quite closely, and am certainly not happy with the results of the team over the last 7.5 years. However, I think JP is being criticized unfairly at times, and I am happy that the Jays gave him every opportunity to build a winner.
Darryl – That is an excellent point about the young pitchers benefiting from the Jays exceptional defence. I never thought of that. I am going to look further into the fielding-independant pitching stats to see if that is indeed true. However, on the opposite end of the spectrum, that is one of the nice things about building a strong defence; you don’t have to bunch of aces and strike-out pitchers waiting in the minors in order to remain a competitive team.
I disagree completely with your point about Halladay being on outlier. You could make that argument for any team. The Twins had Santana, the A’s had the Big Three, etc… And it’s not like Halladay fell into JP’s lap by accident from 2008-10. In 2006, JP signed Halladay to a ridiculously below-market value extension (3 years/ $40 million). However, no one ever seems to mention that went talking abotu Ricciardi…. funny how that works.
Rusty – Hard to disagree with you there. It is really amazing the transformation that has occured since JP took over. He was a media darling without ever having accomplished anything as a GM, but as his skills (or lack thereof) with the media began to appear, the fans and blogosphere really started to jump on him, although I think the mainstream media still has his back.
Shannon Stewart – hilarious
Nice article! I am with the author — I think JP Ricciardi has been overly criticized by Jays fans.
Of course the Wells contract is one that makes us wince, but every team has similar issues and really now…when the Wells contract was signed Jays fans across the nation embraced the fact that he was locked up long term. (Funny how they won’t admit that now, lol).
Ricciardi has definitely made some mistakes. All GM’s do. His inability to bring along a true superstar in the draft hurts, but Travis Snider is out to change that. Publically announcing that Roy Halladay forced the Jays into shopping him certainly makes me scratch my head, but heck, being a fan means you are only privy to so much information, so who knows what the entire story is.
Bottomline, the Jays have been fun to watch for the most part during JP’s tenure.
Would I agree that he’s the 3rd best GM in the AL? I don’t know about that, but as I said, unfairly criticized no doubt.
I’m willing to bet that a GM change isn’t going to solve the Jays problems.
Chris – You were right. From 2002-2008, the Jays had a 110-78 record in september, good for a .585 winning percentage.
However, there were only four years where they were more than one game over .500 in september, 2008, 2006, 2003, 2002. In those years, they only missed the playoffs by:
9 games (2008, when their pythagorean record actually had them as the 2nd best team in the AL)
2 games (2006)
9 games (2003, but Boston was the wild card with 95 wins, the cubs won their division with 88 wins)
21 games (2002, Anaheim was the wild card with 99 wins)
So in three of those years, I would say they had a realistic shot at the postseason, and turned it on in september. The four years that they were out of it big time, they played like garbage in september.
So while you brought up an interesting point, I don’t think it hurts the credibility of my model very much.
Darryl – You were right. I picked 5 of the successful guys the Jays have brought up, and four of them had significantly better ERA’s than FIP.
McGowan – 4.71 ERA, 4.07 ERA (the lone exception)
Marcum – 3.95 ERA, 4.82 FIP
Litsch – 3.83 ERA, 4.71 FIP
Romero – 3.53 ERA, 4.28 FIP
Richmond – 3.98 ERA, 4.35 FIP
So I guess you can look at this two ways. You can say the these pithers are not as good as advertised, or credit JP for building a strong defence so that he does not have to spend his resources brining in top tier pitchers. And it’s not like every pitcher the Jays bring in is succesful. Guys like Ohka, Wolfe, Towers etc…were garbage.
Ray – My first supporter!! You’re right about the draft thing. But it is hard to get a superstar in the draft when you are consitently finishing with 80-85 wins. Another reason why I think you should be able to trade draft picks. However, they have drafted several good players in the first round, like Hill, Romero and Snider.
Thanks for responding
I agree that JP has done a decent job of getting a solid defensive squad on the field. The concern remains that few solid position players have been developed. Aaron Hill has been great, Lind looks promising, and Rios has had his moments but the prospect cupboard is so incredibly bare.
It annoys me every time i see the wells and rios contracts bashing ricciardi. One, Wells was being begged to be resigned by toronto, especially after what happened with carlos when he first showed up and was told by mr rogers to slash the team payroll by $40 million. Ricciardi, Godfrey and Rogers didnt want him walking, as much as rogers didnt care. He must’ve a bit at the time because those signing bonuses were from rogers, and ricciardi wasnt directly involved with signing vernon because of how substantial the contract was.
Two, nearly the same situation with Alex. Everyone in toronto was losing their minds when they heard he was looking to deal Alex for some ****ing guy named Tim Lincecum. After Brian Sabean got his head fixed he said no to the deal, watched his prized pitcher win the cy young on an awful team and the jays locked up rios to an at the time “Great, contract with incredible value for a 26 year old.”
Since I’m here already typing, their draft picks, they haven’t been awful which means no early picks, and they’ve been mediocre, and were not allowed to issue signing bonuses to players that were above what was slated for a certain draft position so they never drafter the chaberlains, or hughes.
I’ve also seen numbers long ago and can’t remember exact ones but only 44% or there and about of first round picks are considered successful based on games played.
So here are his picks.
Russ Adams – Unsuccessful
Aaron Hill – …Successful I’d say
Zach Jackson – No
David Purcey – Unknown…we’ll say no
Ricky Romero – Starting to look good
Travis Snider – Starting to tear up AAA now that he’s healthy
2007 college picks
JP Arencibia – Looks like a lost year in AAA stressing his plate disipline and defence but has shown promise
Brett Cecil – Minor league numbers incredibly comparable to David Price last season and has now arrived
I did not show 2009 or 2008 picks or the HS 2007 picks.
What do the say about statistics? There’s lies, damned lies and statistics. You can cobble together a case for Ricciardi. He’s demonstrably adept at ferreting out useful bench players and relief pitchers. He knows back of the rotation pitchers when they are on the draft board. Beyond that, I don’t have much use for the man.
The mid-season top 100 minor league prospects list from the various major sites probably have something like 120 players in total. Not one of them is a Toronto Blue Jays prospect. That’s almost ridiculously inept. Sure, the Jays have several could-have-been’s actually IN the majors at the time of compilation of the lists, but nobody believes those Jay prospects are anything other than 4-5 starter types. There are no stars in the making. Snider? A hot September last year, the last few weeks. That’s all for the last two seasons. I don’t deny he can be a useful major leaguer. But we’ve seen enough of him to have doubts about him being better than that. That said, the jury’s still out.
Hill. Snider and Romero as possibles. Three average-plus big-leaguers in, what, eight years of drafting?
His treatment of Delgado (and the ticket-buying public, who apparently don’t deserve the truth), his response to the Hudson ‘pimp’ remark (demotion, followed by a trade out of town, despite the Gold Glove and marketable personality), his firing of Buck Martinez, the managerial choices he made subsequently (Gaston’s return was ordered from on high), the Dunn fiasco, his handling of private conversations he had with Halladay …
With talent provided by his predecessor fueling a lot of his ‘success’ in terms of overall record, I think judging Ricciardi solely on the win-loss record his team has achieved, despite his bumbling, squarely places the statistic in the “hardly related to the truth” category. I find it hard to believe anybody could come up with anything other than a failing mark and a bottom rank for the longest serving GM in the game without a post-season appearance.
But that’s just one more statistic.
Hey rt
I wanted to say that I did enjoy the article, and thought that it was fairly well done. I’m only a casual sabermetrician so I don’t know if any work has been done on modeling done only on “games that count/matter”. Because I think that using a metric such as that would give you a much different result in this case because the Blue Jays winning percentage is significantly worse in “games that matter”.
My premise would be that “games that matter” are the best indicator of a success of a team (or maybe even individual players). Of course deciding when a game doesn’t matter is somewhat subjective (other than I think everyone would say that once a team is mathematically eliminated it’s subsequent games “don’t matter” ). I think that you could use a much broader set to define games that don’t matter, but that is just me.
I think this is relevant because the Blue Jays under JP’s tenure seem to play much better in games that don’t matter then games that matter.
Something seemed off on the stats that you listed in your comment.
I did some checking on mlb.com and put together some quick numbers. On August 31 the Blue Jays were never closer than 9 games out. So I would say that all their September games “didn’t matter”.
Year GBWC Aug 31 GBWC End of Year
2002 22 21
2003 12.5 9
2004 24 30.5
2005 9 15
2006 9.5 8
2007 9.5 8
2008 9 9
Furthermore the premise that JP is the best general manager in the game seems a bit in doubt when his teams averaged being 14 games out at the end of the year, and 13.64 in the end of August. His best effort has the Jays only within 9 games of the wildcard on August 31.
I know the AL East is the nastiest division in Baseball by a large margin, and that makes things difficult if not impossible to win for the Jays, and that JP isn’t one of the worst GM’s in the game as I specified earlier.
However, I think playing games that matter in September is a fairly big indicator of a success of a team and a GM, and JP failed to do this even in his teams that had significant salary and expensive free agents.
Thanks again for the interesting read.
Gary – I disagree with your take on Snider. He is tearing it up in AAA with a 1.002 OPS. So what if he struggled at the start of this year? He is young, it happens.
Also, calling Hill an above-average major leaguer is an absolute travesty. In my opinion, the only second baseman in the league that you can hands-down say is better than Hill is Chase Utley.
Your paragraph about Delgado, O-dawg, etc… I will not disagree with. That was not the point of my article though. The point I wanted to make was that in the standings, JP did more than you could reasonably expect him to do. He even did this despite all of the bad things you mentioned in that paragraph.
With regards to the “talent” left to him by Gord Ash, it is pretty laughable.
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/roster.php?y=2001&t=TOR
Wells had accumulated 186 career at-bats and was still a unknown.
Halladay owned an 18-17 career record.
Delgado was the only player on that entire team that had established himself as anything more than an above-average player.
The propects were not much better. Here are the only players who ever amounted to anything from the previous years drafts:
2001: Brandon League
2000: Dustin McGowan, Vinnie Chulk
1999: Alex Rios, Reed Johnson, Brandon Lyon
1998: Felipe Lopez, Jay Gibbons
So in his last four drafts, Ash drafted three all-star appearances (Lopez had one in Cincy and Rios two with TO)
Maybe that is why the ’01 Jays finished under .500 and Ash got fired.
Hey Chris -
That is interesting how you took a different approach, going with games back instead of simply won-loss record. It definitely does not bode well for JP the Jays were never better than 9 games back on Aug 31.
However, you kind of disproved your own point too. You said they were on average 14 games out at the end of the season, and only 13.64 at the end of August. This means they actually lost ground during those “meaningless” September games.
As per your definition of success, I respect that completely. I have a different picture of what success is in my head, and it seems everyone who has commented on this article (either on my website or on the forums that have linked here) has a different opinion.
Some people think fielding a competitive team year-in, year-out defines success, while others are World Series or bust. Others think that simply sticking with the big dogs when you are not expected to is pretty good. I really believe it depends on what your expectations were to begin with.
RT,
Not sure I completely get your rebuttal to my post. I chose poorly by splitting the major leaguers into better than average, average and below average. Hill belongs in the first camp. Romero and Snider might. But it doesn’t make the statement incorrect, just unrefined.
Your listing of the youth of Ash’s picks and their then current lack of accomplishment, doesn’t obviate the fact that they were solid picks and future all-stars. Ash added a few more future all-stars in Orlando Hudson, Michael Young, Rios and Lopez. This seems to compare quite favourably to the lack of star talent-drafting record of Ricciardi. Ash’s issues were more with trading than drafting, and signing the odd bad contract. Well, more than odd. But for every Ash mis-step on the dotted line, I can draw a parallel with a Ricciardi signing.
While baseball is a great deal more complicated to draft for and to assemble a winning team, the fact remains that star talent is required for both. In basketball a couple of super-stars can propel you to the championship. In baseball, you need at least one and probably two too, just to content. And it doesn’t hurt the Bosox or the Yankees to have more than two. Drafting safely, getting bottom of the rotation guys and bench players, is ultimately a futile organizational strategy. And yet, that’s exactly what we’ve seen for several years here in T.O. (Snider, the high school kid, being the only seeming outlier)
I have distaste for the way the man conducts himself. As a member of the great unwashed, I hate being dismissed as not being deserving of the truth, which he freely admitted to in the first Ryan injury affair two springs ago. His form of brashness is reserved for winners, which he hasn’t been. His winning percentage is based on talent passed along to him and not augmented all that well. Plus a LOT of September rallies from out of contention to … well … not in contention. September stats and also-ran September wins aren’t worth the bytes spent analyzing them.
The word you hear around Toronto a lot is “if.” IF the club is healthy. IF the club gets career standard years from everybody and the odd career year. IF the Yankees and/or Red Sox have an off year.
If luck is the residue of good design, then there’s no chance Toronto will ever get lucky enough during the Ricciardi reign to do more than be average. It’s what he aspires to do.
Gary – I think you missed a couple of draft picks. Romero is having a great rookie season. I don’t see why he can’t be average-plus. Why doesn’t Adam Lind count? He’s only hit 23 HRs so far this year. That’s probably above average. What about Brett Cecil who actually compares favorably to the almighty David Price of Tampa. I would say he has a great chance at being successful.
Yes, J.P. released Reed Johnson. But I would argue that move has been inconsequential at most. And yes he traded Orlando Hudson. But it had little to do with the pimp comment. It was actually because they had Aaron Hill blocked in the minors and no use for Hudson so they turned him into Troy Glaus. Pretty good move IMO. The Michael Young trade? Obviously a terrible move. But for every terrible move you can look at others like J.P. fleecing San Fran in that Accardo – Hillenbrand deal. His trades have for the most part worked out.
Look its true that J.P. has run his mouth more than I would like, and he isn’t a very likable person. But in terms of the team he has put on the field – it just isn’t nearly as bad as everyone thinks. This team has consistently been one of the top 10 teams in baseball over the past few years. The bigger problem is the division. I firmly believe that if the Blue Jays were in the AL Central for the last 3 years they would be 3-time division champs. And they would’ve made the playoffs every year from anywhere in the NL too.
My point in all of this is that replacing Ricciardi may appease everyone in Toronto in the short term. But don’t be surprised if nothing changes or if the team actually regresses when the next guy is brought in. The margin for error in this division is just too thin.
JJM,
I did have Romero as a potential average-plus player. And (overlooked by me) Lind could be too. I tend to wait for a second good year before doling out star projections (and big contracts. Hinske anyone?). And comparing Cecil to Price is a bit myopic, although he does have a chance to be better than average. Not much of one, but I thought the same thing about Romero this time last year. I could be wrong. And by the way, I WAS listing actual minted all-stars, not just better than average players.
I never talked about Ricciardi’s trade record (nor the releasing of Johnson, which was wrong on PR levels and the replacements, but not on a talent level). The trade record isn’t embarrassing. Glaus wasn’t a turf 3B and inevitably ended up hurt. Like a pitcher with bad mechanics, sometimes injuries CAN be foreseen. Sorry, but Hill would have looked quite fine at third while Hudson played all-star ball at second. No question in my mind, the personality clash meant that wasn’t a possible solution to the issue.
No question, the division dictates much of Toronto’s poor finishes. But those are the cards you’re dealt. Trying to pretend otherwise isn’t going to get it done. Ever. Being around the .500 mark isn’t a goal, it should be a disappointment.
Like RT says in a reply to Chris, it comes down to expectations and goals. RT wants a competitive team that’s entertaining to watch and he doesn’t care for the idea of going for broke … and going broke. He thinks Ricciardi has fulfilled his goals and cites a stat to back him up. And, since you can always find SOME stat to back your argument, he’s absolutely right. (Plus, he did a lot of work coming up with those numbers). On the other hand, I play to win. And I want my home-team to do the same. My stat to prove his failure at that is that he’s the longest serving GM without a playoff game ticket to frame on his wall. And I’m absolutely right.
Whether his replacement succeeds or not, I expect a different approach, one that doesn’t ignore the reality of the Yanks and Sox and prepares for the chance we can acquire the players that will be key to beating one or both out for the playoff spots those teams think of as their birthrights. It won’t happen overnight. So, I agree, it won’t change in the short-term, even if we were to get some latter-day Pat Gillick. But I hope a new regime will attract, rather than repel, talent at a decent price point, will draft potential stars and have a steal or two to brag about after trades. It’s a tall order, but I’m not giving up on that hope.
Gary,
Thanks for clarifying your point about Hill and Romero, it makes more sense now.
With regards to the draft, I did miss Hudson. However, I was only listng players that made a difference for Ricciardi. Young was gone long before he could deliver any value for JP.
You are also right about the Jays taking low-risk, low-reward players, which is shown by their reluctance to take high school players. This did hold them back, and while they have started to open their minds, it may be a case of too little, too late.
With regards to your personal comments about JP, my article was never meant to defend this aspect of Ricciardi. I simply wanted to discuss on-field success. The title may have been a little misleading, but I think the article explained my point well enough.
I also completely respect you opinion that you want your team to WIN, not simply be competitive. I have a different point of view, at least with the Jays, but that is what makes blogs like these so much fun. There is always room for civilized, well thought out discussion. So thank you for that.
As an aside, my side has now moved to http://www.mvn.com/mlbinsights, so feel free to post comments there!
JJM -
Thanks for brining up the point about how the Jays would have been much ore successful in other divisions. That was a large point of my article. I was arguing that Ricciardi did well considering he was playing in the hyper-competitive AL East, with the underlying message being that a moderate level of success there actually made the Jays a lot better than a 3rd place team.