J.P. Another View
Posted: August 14th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 39 Comments »
Brilliant Reader Eyebleaf posted something in response to my Ricciardis post that I think makes some pretty good sense. True, in it he calls my Ricciardi post irresponsible … but that’s OK. He says that largely because my post doesn’t make more of the fact that Vernon Wells’ signing can be tracked back to President Paul Godfrey and the club’s former ownership, perhaps even more than to J.P. Ricciardi. I see the point. I don’t agree with the entirety of the point, but I see it. These things are always more nuanced than what comes out in a few words.
I’ll put in a few of Eyebleaf’s words before making my own point.
Yet in an article about Vernon Wells and his rightfully unjustifiable contract, nary a mention of ownership; of Rogers; of Paul Godfrey. Convenient, if you ask me. Also: irresponsible. A simple Google search of “wells godfrey contract” leads one to an article, the third search result, by The Toronto Star’s Richard Griffin, entitled Godfrey behind Wells pitch. Written in the days before Wells signed on the dotted line in December 2006, Griffin pulled no punches:
“Ricciardi’s emotions with regard to Wells have always been on the side of letting him walk at the end of his current contract. Either that or deal him for value. But [Paul] Godfrey is the one who responds to his emotions like a fan. Such seems the case again. … If this Wells seven-year extension is done, it will be in spite of Ricciardi.”
Joe … cannot write an article about J.P. Ricciardi and bad contracts, focusing on Vernon Wells, without mentioning that tiny nugget of information about Godfrey. It ain’t right. No, it doesn’t absolve Ricciardi of all responsibility, but it cannot simply be left out.
OK. Fair enough. Now, I’ll say my piece: Nobody ever wants themselves connected to these giant deals. After the signing, Godfrey himself was quoted saying he needed “smelling salts and someone to prop me up to give them to me,” when the team first started negotiating this Wells extension.
But here’s the larger point, and the reason that I find much of this stuff unconvincing: If you are a baseball general manager, you have to deal with quirks and vagaries of ownership and the direction other power brokers want to take the team. That’s not part of the job. That IS the job. It’s not like trading baseball cards. Owners (and presidents and scouts and the field manager and everyone else) want certain things, and they insist upon certain things, and they refuse certain things. Usually, owners want to spend LESS money, not MORE money — which is part of the reason I find the “They wanted to re-sign Wells at any price and over the objections of Ricciardi” line strained — but the point remains the same. No general manager – NO general manager — lives in a vacuum.
So how you deal with the often strange and contradictory decisions and leanings of ownership defines your tenure as a GM. I happen to know that Allard Baird had to deal with all sorts of lunacy and insanity when he was GM of the Royals — stuff that would make your head spin. But at the end of the day — and Allard would agree with this 100 percent — it was his job to overcome those things. And he could not. And he was let go.
Do I believe that Ricciardi went into a meeting with Blue Jays ownership, pounded his shoe on the table and shouted “This Wells deal is lunacy. It will break the organization. Wells will deteriorate as a player in three years and we will be stuck holding the bag on this.” No. I do not.
But even if he did do that and was simply told to shut up and make the deal anyway, I would argue that (1) he was extremely ineffective in getting his point across and (2) he got his team a lousy deal — a backloaded deal that at the time was the sixth most expensive contact in baseball history and now, a couple of years later, is absolutely devastating. He apparently took a chance that the Blue Jays would do some winning early in the contract, when Wells’ contract didn’t pay as much. The Jays didn’t make the playoffs. And now, the mortgage is due.
The Vernon Wells’ contract is pure insanity, that’s all, and, sure, everyone involved takes some of the blame. But Ricciardi is GM. To me, he doesn’t get a pass even if ownership desperately wanted to keep Wells over his intense objections. And here’s the thing: While it may sound cold, that doesn’t even factor in for me. Owners are owners. They are baseball fans with a lot of money. Some are smarter than others, some are shrewder than others, some are more involved than others, some are more emotional than others, some are more determined than others. But they all are fans, and as a general manager (and in pretty much every other type of management job in the world) your job is to navigate through the murky waters, do what you have to do, avoid the pitfalls when you can avoid them and, mainly, protect the owner from himself. If you can’t do that, in my book, you have failed.
And anyway, the Vernon Wells thing to me falls right in line with the way the Blue Jays do business. This isn’t just one isolated incident. There’s the Alex Rios contract. I know some smart people like Dave Cameron think that Rios contract is actually GOOD but I’ll be on record strongly disagreeing. For one thing, Rios will be 29 in February and he’s already looking quite old. It isn’t just that his offensive numbers are down — he has dropped 30-to-40 points of slugging percentage each of the last three years — his DEFENSIVE numbers are way down too. After some time as an excellent fielder, this year, he has been a Dewan minus-4 defender in right field (though a plus defender in limited innings in center field) and his Ultimate Zone Rating is now around zero. He’s an effective base stealer, but his other base running numbers are down too. Maybe it’s an off-year. Then again, maybe we are seeing a declining player. The guy has five years left on the deal after this one — and they’ll be paying him $12.5 million per into the next presidential administration. Seems like a bad contract to me.
But here’s the larger point: That contract was so bad that the Jays had to release Rios and pray that someone else would bail them out. Epic fail. Yes, there were other factors (such as … the Vernon Wells deal). Yes, it turned out that someone was was willing to bail him out — the White Sox are now the proud owners of Alex Rios and we will just have to see how that works out. I have my own opinion about that, of course, but I’ve heard from some people who think the White Sox will be happy with Rios. I’ve also had more than one person around baseball suggest to me they were STUNNED that Kenny picked up that contract.
No matter what happens, it doesn’t change the fact that Ricciardi and the Jays signed Rios to a contract that they could not afford. They will also be paying B.J. Ryan next year. They bought out Frank Thomas. They gave A.J. Burnett a contract that allowed him to opt out … and he did. They did not get a Roy Halladay deal done after going public. They have 14 players on their active roster who are 30 or older. They have not made the playoffs and not come especially close to making the playoffs in the now eight years Ricciardi has been general manager. And they owe the artist formerly known as Vernon Wells a bajillion shmillion quillion dollars. Are there reasons and explanations and other people to blame? Sure. But there’s only one general manager.
There are people who think Ricciardi has done a good job … I’ve heard from many of them. Some make good points. Some don’t. Eyebleaf himself suggests a Ricciardi contract extension in his post. I may be entirely wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. But I just don’t see it.
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Yeah! Get fired up! I like it!
“Eyebleaf” is Canadian for “Ricciardi”
The same people that defend Ricciardi are the same type of people that defend Brian Cashman, saying that it’s not his fault he signed Sheffield over Vlad because Steinbrenner and the Tampa people wanted Sheffield more. I’ve always found that to be ridiculous since to anybody with any general baseball knowledge it was obvious that Vlad was the worlds better than Sheffield and that if Cashman couldn’t get them to realize this than he didn’t deserve to be the GM.
Could be worse, Joe. JP could be the Royals’ manager. I guess that would give you extra material for the blog, though. Not that you need it. When’s the next Pixie Food update coming anyway?
Joe, thank you sincerely for taking the time to read my post. Just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re a great writer. Dissent breeds discussion, and that’s what I’m all about.
You, sir, are a good man.
One question for you: do you think Burnett signs in Toronto without the opt-out?
[...] This post was Twitted by ZamboniRodeo [...]
Quick note on The Metrix: one year of hitting equates to ~ three years of fielding with regard to sample size. Is Rios’ defensive decline real or a statistical quirk?
“You, sir, are a good man”
And thorough.
@Motherscratcher: Well done.
As my man eyebleaf so eloquently stated in his blog, ownerships involvement in the Vernon Wells signing has to be considered.
Joe you are right in the sense that a GM’s job is to at times protect owners from even themselves. However, in the case of the Wells contract, I don’t think JP could have said anything to talk ownership out of signing Wells. At the end of the day JP is an employee of the owner, and regardless of what JP may say, the owner has the final say in how and to whom he wants to allocate his money. Throw in the fact that ownership was trying to save face with us fans because they let Carlos Delgado walk and for some reason thought they could not do the same with Wells. Another aspect in all this is the fact that Toronto for some reason has a very hard time attracting big name free agents. I don’t understand that stigma, being that Toronto is regarded as one of the best cities in the world to live in.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand JP, and as a life long Jays fan, I will be ecstatic when he’s finally fired. This is were me and my friend eyebleaf disagree. However, with all the bad moves and stupid things JP has said, this is the ONE time I can’t blame JP fully. Ownership deserves the blame for this one.
Joe, I agree with you on most of the things you said about JP, however on the Vernon Wells contract I have to agree with Eyebleaf. While JP has made some horrible signings, there are some that have been very good. One only has to look at the contracts of Aaron Hill, Scott Downs, Marco Scutaro, and Rod Barjas. Aaron Hill especially is a great contract. Hill, who has supplanted himself as one of the best 2B in the game was signed to a 4 year/$12M (2008 – 20011) with club options for 2012-2014. So if you’re going to knock JP for his bad contracts, also give him credit for the good ones.
All things considered, the bottom line is that in the 8 years JP has been here in Toronto we haven’t even sniffed the post season. That is unacceptable. He has to go.
Joe, I was with you right up until the end where you railed on the AJ Burnett signing. If you look at the Fangraphs value section for AJ, you can see that he more than earned his keep over the life of his contract.
Frankly, the big knock against AJ was always durability but the organization’s handling of him left a lot to be desired . You leave a pitcher out there on the mound to go up over 125 pitches, a pitcher that you know has had injury problems in the past, a pitcher that everyone in the stadium and watching at home can tell is clearly gassed, and then you express astonishment when he gets hurt and blame it on his fragility? Give me a break!
I would have to disagree with the idea that not protecting an emotional owner (president, actually) from himself is a failure to be a good GM. there’s a lot to criticize JP for, and particularly on a few bad deals, but emotional decisions can seldom be affected by reasoned logic – and at the end of the day, the chain of command applies.
I also disagree that the Rios deal deserves to be in this conversation but that’s something that’s obviously debateable. The Ryan deal, on the other hand, and Thomas, were notably bad specifically because they went directly against what JP was already on record saying he believed.
In fairness though, to imply that JP is synonymous with bad deals ignores that the Hill deal is working out great, as is the Downs deal, Wells’ first contract was a bargain, and he’s signed Doc under market twice. Like most all GMs, he’s got things to brag on and things of which to be ashamed.
IMO, IF the Jays are rebuilding, they MUST hire a new GM to do it – no GM who doesn’t wear a ring is entitled to two rebuilding cycles – but if they are trying to contend next year and finish out this cycle successfully, then there’s nothing wrong with letting him play out his contract.
This sounds like an arguement for the value of RBI’s to me.
I don’t buy the owner wants to pay as little as possible arguement. The owner had to approve the deal, and thus must have found it acceptable.
If JP was publicly against the deal he must have said it privately as well, and was overruled.
JP has to build a winner in a cold city, with no huge market, in a tough division, for a team that hasn’t had real success in 15 years. This isn’t L.A.
I don’t know if he could have convinced his boss not to know the deal. i do know the owner is his boss, and where the buck truly stops.
I also believe that while no huan lives in a vaccuum, to truly measure their skill and ability we must strip away their environment and conditions and judge them in a vaccuum.
You could argue that he failed at his job, but you could also argue no one could have succeeded in that situation.
Joe,
First of all, please stick to ripping on the Royals management. As a Blue Jays fan, I am depressed enough about the team without you making it worse. Thanks.
Second, absolutely everything Richard Griffin writes about J.P. Ricciardi must be taken with a bowlful of salt. Griffin hates Ricciardi with the fiery heat of a thousand suns, and demonstrates an obvious bias whenever he writes, going so far as to manufacture controversy where none exists. Unfortunately, in this case the result is that Ricciardi probably was pushing for the Wells deal, which goes to prove your point. Also, Griffin is in the Bill Plasche school of stat-hating writers, the sort who assume all bloggers live in basements and so on. Bottom line: Griffin sucks, and Toronto sports fans are the worse for being stuck with him.
That’s all. Keep up the great (albeit depressing) work.
@13:
Sorry, but “no huge market”? Toronto is somewhere between the 4th and 7th biggest market in North America. As recently as 1993 (not recent, I know), the Jays drew over 4,000,000 fans – the first team to do so. They also had no difficulty attracting free agents, perhaps because Toronto in the summer isn’t cold, but is actually quite pleasant (this summer’s rain notwithstanding). The difference, of course, was payroll. Success brings in the fans, who bring in money, and the cycle continues. But now the city is apathetic. It is much like how the Chicago Blackhawks drew 13,000 fans in a 21,000 seat arena due to their long-term ineptness. One good season, one pennant run, and things could turn.
Let me ask you a question, Joe:
Did you think the Torii Hunter contract was lunacy? I don’t believe you mentioned it in your last post. I bring it up because at the time they signed their respective deals, Vernon and Torii were about as comparable as two players can be, with the main exception that Torii was 4 years older when he signed his. Yet somehow, that was a brilliant deal, while Vernon’s was “hysterical.” Why is that? Hindsight, that’s why.
I forgot to mention that they signed deals worth the same annual salary (18M.) Vernon’s contract runs through age 35. Torii’s runs through age 36.
It was basically the same situation to the same type of player, and they agreed to almost the same contract. Vernon tanked, Torii didn’t. Coin flip.
Joe you have my apologies. I may… just maybe have said some … well…. not good things after your initial article.
I still think you glossed over some facts when ranking the bad contracts, but you have my respect for posting a rebuttal and presenting a decent argument.
I may still disagree with some things you have wrote but for my previous comments regarding your article I sincerely apologize.
Although I was somewhat sympathetic to Riccardi over the (alleged) pressure from management to sign Wells, I was also wary of giving him too much credit for the reasons Joe explains; in fact, I think Joe has persuaded me entirely.
Here’s where Riccardi truly falls down: the attempt to move Halladay. Halladay is a horse, and one of the top 3-5 pitchers in baseball; he’s also relatively well priced for this year and next. In short, he’s the cornerstone for any team that’s gonna make a run at winning.
The Jays came out of the gates like gangbusters this year, and although part of their fall back to earth is probably a bit of regression towards the mean, it was also largely because they were just hammered by injuries. In fact, counting the pitchers who didn’t start at all this year because of injuries (McGowan, Marcum, etc), you could fairly say that the Jays* have been without 4 of their top 5 starters – and then you can throw in BJ Ryan as well. Simply put: look at the level of success the Jays have had this year, and then try to imagine if they’d had even some – let alone all – of their guys healthy. Put another way, the Jays potentially have the parts of a nice team for 2010.
And that brings me to the point about Riccardi. The Jays have already been through at *least* one rebuilding cycle. It’s hard to justify going through another before they have some success. 2010 is their realistic shot to make a real run at it. In order to do this, you absolutely have to hold on to one of the best pitchers in baseball. Not only do they have Halladay under contract for 2010, they have him at a relatively decent price. You simply can’t tank 2010 now, but that’s basically what Riccardi was prepared to do. And that, to me, is the biggest nail in Riccardi’s coffin.
You Go Eyeb. He has a great blog by the way. Great of Mr. Posnanski to discuss the comments.
*Oops – I intended to include a Pozsterisk, so here it is – as it relates to the injury woes plaguing the Jays’ pitchers: I do recognize that at some point – much like Joe has touched on with the Royals’ training staff – injuries may well be a product of the system the team uses, and not simply random acts of chance. At the rate the Jays have been racking up pitching DL days (er, months), it may be fair to call them out for this too.
As always, an insightful and thought-provoking post. Though, I have to admit. My favorite part was when you said, “Epic fail.” It’s a common phrase in many places these days, I just guess I never expected to see it written in seriousness by a professional newspaper writer. Way to go, Joe!
Is the bajillion shmillion quillion dollars in US dollars or Canadian?
I totally agree that J.P. Riccardi has made some strange moves while in Toronto and despite his “five year plan” (now it what, it’s eighth year) the Jays are the same .500 baseball team they were when he took the job. Unfortunately, however, with an unbalanced schedule and playing in the American League East which means a schedule dominated by powerful teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, and now the Rays, even if Riccardi goes, the Jays are unlikely to be able to compete. If you look at stats like run-differential (which the Jays were second in last year) you could argue that the Jays are a top six to eight team in the majors when healthy, which might put them in the playoffs with a balanced schedule. But since the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays would all rank higher than the Jays and since the Jays play the majority of their games against those teams, the Jays finish with a record closer to .500 and out of the playoffs. I’m not saying the Jays would definitely make the playoffs with a balanced schedule (as they would likely still be below the other three American League East teams) but they probably would have gotten 90 wins last year and the same again this year (without so many injuries). What do you think? Do you think the Jays (and I suppose the Orioles and even one of the Rays/Red Sox/Yankees trio) are hurt by an unfair schedule that assures them of playing the majority of their games against three of the best teams in baseball (not to mention playing the Phillies twice a year in interleague play)?
@19 But did Ricciardi *really* try to move Halladay? I’ve heard exactly the opposite argument from many people, that he should have traded Halladay but didn’t get it done because his demands were too high. I tend to agree with you that Halladay has value to the Jays next year and they have a shot at a playoff spot (albeit a small one) which they would not have if they dumped Halladay for a bunch of lottery ticket prospects.
It’s interesting that Ricciardi gets criticized now no matter what he does. Some of the criticism is warranted but other people are just obviously out to get the guy no matter what.
@24; Yes every team in the AL East is hurt by playing in the AL East. It’s by far the toughest division in baseball and I HATE the unbalanced schedule.
I disagree with your take on Ricciardi — and really, as discussed at the Book Blog, you should be judging the contracts by the player’s apparent true talent when they were signed, not in perfect hindsight (Personally, I think Well’s was overpaid,
But whatever… but let’s get to the point. This isn’t a defense of J.P., who isn’t a great GM. But if Ricciardi is worthy of this much ridicule, despite usually fielding an over .500 team in baseball’s toughest division, well, shouldn’t you basically be calling for Dayton Moore’s job in basically every column you write about the Royals? I realize that Dayton Moore doesn’t have as thin a skin (although that seems to be changing now that he doesn’t get constant verbal tongue bathes from the KC media) as J.P., and is thus more likable, and that “grizzled old baseball men” probably respect him more than Ricciardi… but given the respective contexts, I think it’s pretty clear that J.P. is far superior to Moore, and that’s not a compliment to Moore.
The past two offseasons have shown Moore to be one of the worst, most “in over his head” GMs in baseball, right there with Omar Minaya, Bill Smith, and Brian Sabean. If you want to see where “The Process” leads, just look at the pre-Friedman Tampa Bay Devil Rays.
If you’re going to (rightly or wrongly) bash J.P., who isn’t exactly a great GM, but is fielding a teams that are winning in the high 80s in the AL East, when are you going to take on the Moore directly, who has made a 100-loss AL Central team in his own image?
I think the Halladay moves were brilliant AND idiotic. Brilliant in that Ricciardi let the pennant chasers have a chance to buy 2+ years of one of the best pitchers in baseball in exchange for (probably) 3+ regulars for the next several years. I mean, for a team that isn’t in the playoffs, trading one for three is usually a good idea. Ricciardi looked at the team he had, the injury prone starting pitchers, and decided that if he could sell Halladay for more than what Halladay was worth, it would be a good idea. And I agree with Ricciardi.
But that’s just one side of the coin. It was idiotic in that he went public with it the wrong way. That kind of news is going to leak, and then whether Ricciardi is going to look bad. He’ll be killing attendance for the rest of this season (if the Jays are giving up, why show up?). If he doesn’t make the trade, then he’ll look ineffective.
The right way to go about it is, “World, this year because of injuries to our rotation, we’re unlikely to make the playoffs. We’re willing to trade contenders the best pitcher in baseball, but we have to think that the deal will upgrade us at at least two positions next season, when we’ll hopefully have all those injured starters back.”
If Ricciardi made those moves in a Strat-O-Matic league, they would have been fine. The problem is real fans and real fan interest means you cannot risk trading your franchise’s best player without it being seen as a great deal. Look at what happened to the Dodgers when they traded Piazza. The smart fans knew the Marlins wanted to shed salary, so the Dodgers could probably have pulled the same deal without the two catchers. Or maybe trade Karros instead of Piazza; Johnson could give PIazza a lot of days when Piazza could play first instead. The stupid fans were just unhappy because Piazza was gone. So trading Halladay is very risky, and could only be survived if the deal was so clearly good for the Jays that the smart fans would endorse it, and maybe persuade the rest of the fan base.
All GM’s have their ups and downs. Billy Beane has made some dumb deals. The Royals have had some steals. But the problem with JP is that he can’t seem to fit individual deals into a greater vision.
L’affaire Halladay is the perfect example. He has the best pitcher in the game with 1 1/2 years to go on a reasonable contract and a team that isn’t going to make the playoffs. He has 2 options: A) Load up, go for broke, sell the farm and try to make the playoffs either this year or the next. With the economy in the tank, it’ll never be cheaper to go all in. Or B) Sell your most valuable asset while he’s worth something. Get a couple blue chip prospects so the Jays will be ready to take advantage of the coming Yankees mass retirement.
JP does neither. Or both. Can’t really tell. He annoys/antagonizes the rest of the league through his various proclamations and statements, thereby depressing the market for Halladay, and then decides to keep him when the Phillies find Cliff Lee for half the price. Ok, that’s fine. I guess the Jays are going for it. But wait! He also traded Scott Rolen, possibly the best all around player on the Jays this year. And then he let go of Alex Rios, who may be unmotivated but is probably the most naturally gifted ballplayer who isn’t a household name. So what are we supposed to draw from this? JP’s gunning for 78 wins?
The difference between having Roy Halladay for the rest of this year and trading him is worth maybe 3 wins. That makes a difference for the Red Sox. And Nationals fans would probably notice it too (3 wins is a lot to a Nats fan). But it’s nothing for the Jays. It’s totally meaningless. So what’s the logic in even considering keeping him?
It’s not like attendance will plunge without Roy, because it really can’t go any lower. Besides, I’d like to think that the fans aren’t stupid and would respond well to a smart and necessary trade. What really kills fan support is a directionless team. Just look at the Leafs.
If JP hands out all of these horrible contracts, has drafted terribly and, in general, has done nothing particularly well (as many people would have you believe), how has he assembled a playoff-calibre team in baseball pretty much every year since 2006 (since his payroll was brought into the middle of the pack) that gets stifled by the division and the unbalanced schedule? Around the time of the Lincecum-Rios rumours, at least one NL scout said flat out that the Jays “would win the NL”. The 2008 team was one of the top 4 teams in the AL and top 5 in all of baseball (of course, 4 of the top teams were all in the AL East) and people seem to keep looking at the job JP has done without any context. If there was a balanced schedule, people would give JP a TON more credit. The 2006 team, 2008 team and even the 2009 team with its whack of injuries are playoff contending teams stifled by an imbalanced schedule and ridiculous divisional set-up…not only do the Jays typically have very nice run differential’s since 2006, they also accumulate this RD while playing nearly half of their games vs the AL East and 1/3rd of games in 2008 and 2009 vs quite possibly the 3 best teams in baseball.
Looking at things like JP’s all-time record hovering around .500 is parochial. The first 4 years were spent with a $50 million payroll (and most of those years included Delgado at 1/3rd of the payroll). Not to mention the fact that the JAYS PLAY IN THE AL EAST and people seem to just consider this an “excuse”. Put them in the AL Central and there are 2 or 3 playoff appearances (pretty much guaranteed last year and this year, IMO) and nobody makes these weak arguments.
If someone wants to state that “JP is a decent GM trapped in a ridiculously tough situation” then fine, that is acceptable. But it is the hardest job in baseball, trying to compete in the AL East with a middling (or worse) payroll and without the luxury of a ten year period of futility (see Rays & Orioles).
“But wait! He also traded Scott Rolen, possibly the best all around player on the Jays this year. And then he let go of Alex Rios, who may be unmotivated but is probably the most naturally gifted ballplayer who isn’t a household name. So what are we supposed to draw from this? JP’s gunning for 78 wins?”
Rolen is injury prone and a lot of his offensive value this year was based on a good BABIP. There’s good reason to think he will be less valuable next year. Rios…Well if you believe Joe he’s in decline and overpaid. Even if you think he can be adeuate offensively for a centerfielder, well if you use him in CF where do you play Wells.
If I’m Ricciardi I’d much rather free up money so I can judge what the team needs to make a playoff run in 2010 and spend money wisely with that in mind. I doubt Rolen and Riosare going to cost the Jays the chance to compete for a playoff spot. They’re simply not that good and the money you save by ditching them (and picking up some decent pitching prospects for Rolen) can be better used on the free agent market to target players who will give the most value to the team in 2010.
Of course they may trade Halladay and slash payroll in the offseason in which case Ricciardi really WILL look dumb. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
At the end of Moneyball the process of Toronto hiring Ricciardi was discussed. They tried to get DePodesta but he didn’t want it. They talked to John Hart and some of the other usual suspects. They all said “if you give me the money, i can compete with the yankees. Ricciardi was the only one who said something different: you’re spending too much money, you can win the same amount of games with cheaper players…etc. The fact is, he has not really done this. He has tried to keep up with the benjamins. he went after Frank Thomas and Marco Scutaro and maybe some other Oakland castoffs…but has he done anything impressive? Anything remotely approaching an Oakland or a Cleveland?
@Joe:
Certainly there is a lot to debate, and I for one will not argue with some of the bad contracts handed out. The team banked on winning early into the deals, and failed to do so. Thus, they are paying for those mistakes now.
However, as others have pointed out, the good contracts do need to be acknowledged in any fair assessment of a GM. And Ricciardi has made several good signings as mentioned above, I won’t rehash those here.
What I would bring into this debate would be Ricciardi’s draft record, also. Several of the young players in the Jays’ system look to have a real future, many of whom we have already seen. Hill, Marcum, Lind, Romero, Snider, Cecil … to name a few.
Some of the contracts have been bad, yes. Wells’ in particular, no matter who is to blame for it. But my point is that JP’s tenure hasn’t been nearly as bad as many of the bandwagoners seem to love to suggest, considering their favorite players are all guys drafted and developed under JP’s watch.
Interesting discussion. I think the Jays lack of success is largly bad luck and very tough competition in the East.
I love Joe’s writing, but here again he makes unspecified claims about Allard Baird having to deal with “lunacy and insanity” from Glass as owner. As far as I know, neither Joe nor anyone else has ever pointed to anything specific other than an alleged demand that he trade Jermaine Dye withint 72 hours, which supposedly resulted in the trade for Perez. Even if true, it is no excuse for that trade.
Baird apparently has talked to Joe off the record complaining about Glass. It seems unfair for Joe to repeatedly rip Glass on such off the record claims and without revealing what he is talking about.
If Joe actually has specified the allegations about Glass, I apologize and would love to read what he has written. Otherwise, I think it is time to stop printing claims by Baird demeaning Glass when Baird is unwilling to stand behind.
Great discussion, Pos. Thanks again for shedding light on the plight of Ricciardi and the Blue Jays.
I think the problem in evaluating GMs is the tendency to list their deals and then determine whether they were good or bad.
I agree that such an evaluation process may have some small part in deciding, but only a small part. In every case it will be possible to identify some great moves as well as a majority that did not work out. That goes for Beane or Epstein or Friedman as well as Moore or Sabean or Bavasi. If one looks at all the trades Friedman has made, for example, the great majority have been busts. But he has been a exceptionally effective GM nonetheless because he has had a guiding set of reasonable principles and has been diligent in sticking to them.
The true measure should be an analysis of their processes and how well they follow through on those processes. For example, LaMar is sometimes defended in TB because of the Kazmir deal and because he picked up some excellent prospects in the draft. Moore defied many analysts by overpaying Meche and also nabbed Soria. The problem with that defense is there is no evidence that either GM had any overall plan for building a contender; their moves were random.
So the issue with Ricciardi, it seems to me, is not whether the Wells deal was legitimate or his fault, or whether the Rios deal made sense but whether they fit into a reasonable plan to build a contender. And while ultimately results are important, the fact is that good decisions can still lead to failure and stupid ones may still work out well.
I don’t know, Joe, I still think Rios will be fine.
And I agree with Bob R, it’s easy to criticize a GM when a certain deal doesn’t work out without understanding the scope of it.
Take the Red Sox, for example. Currently have their fair share of clunkers.
You can’t call Ortiz’s deal a “bad contract”. For $13,000,000 / year, they locked in one of the best hitters in the game at the time. His decline happened a good 2 years earlier than most thought.
Dice-K, possibly. Then again, he may be fine.
Lugo was bad. Locked in a SS whose defense had been regressing based on 4 star-level months in early 2006.
Honestly, I do believe Ricciardi was hamstrung by the owners over Wells. Even before I got into hardcore analysis, I knew that deal was a clunker from day 1. Rios was young and good, and may still be good. Either way, it’s not Riccardi’s problem anymore.
I apologize early this is become an essay like rant…
As a baseball fan in the proximity of Toronto (I’m not that home team die-hard fan, just a fan of good baseball) I have been going to games in Toronto frequently for years and followed many of the team’s moves and players careers, before and after they’ve left, and have come to the conclusion that JP is quite skilled when it comes to his eye for talent. He has done a great job with young players, especially pitchers. He seems to regularly find guys that have been under the radar and get them up on the club producing yet he consistently blows my mind when it comes to veterans. David Eckstein was the worst move he could have made and it was only Cito’s refusal to play him that opened the door for Scutaro. Some people seem to praise JP for Scutaro’s success but it has much more to do with Gaston than Ricciardi, who he didn’t even want as the manager after he was forced to fire his old buddy John Gibbons (who was unbelievably terrible and is now working his “magic” as bench coach of the Royals).
JP is also an appalling business person. He doesn’t seem to know anything about negotiation or financial risks, constantly shows his hand too soon (something I think endears him to some who see it as forthrightness) and opens his trap on subjects best kept mum (Dunn, Halladay’s willingness to test free agency and his inability to accept offers from NY and Boston*).
Even if this wasn’t year eight of his four year plan, he blew every edge that he had in the Halladay debacle which, regardless of Verducci defending him in SI, was a disaster and should have been the end. I pray that something awful happens so that is forced to quit because it’s clear that the ownership won’t bounce this idiot for anything.
*There are a lot of jays fans that would hate to see Roy go to the competition and rightly so but it is obvious that he could go there as a free agent anyways and prying some of there considerable prospects could be a coupe in the future but he wouldn’t even return their calls. At least keep the pressure on Philly by keeping them in it whether it was actually going to happen or not. His constant updates of “maybe this deal will happen but I’m saying he stays” certainly seemed to me to give Philly notice that they should be walking away from the table sooner rather than later.
[...] J.P. Another View [...]
I’ve got an ANSWER to your question:
“How can someone keep giving out contracts THIS BAD and keep his job and reputation? How? I’m serious. How?”
I just wrote an article to answer your question. Here’s the link:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/246712-how-has-jp-ricciardi-kept-his-job-for-so-long