The Toronto Blue Jays are back to .500. A winning streak should be doing wonders for the job security of manager John Gibbons, president Paul Godfrey and GM JP Ricciardi. But it hasn't.
Toronto Star columnist Richard Griffin has been detailing Ricciardi's failings in ever-greater detail. He's virtually turned into the baseball version of Dave Feschuk, the perpetually depressed Star sports scribe. He'd be skating on thin ice if the thin ice wasn't actually over under Ricciardi's feet.
Seven years, Griffin points out, has resulted in four Blue Jay draft choices wearing Blue Jay togs currently. None is a star or even close to the best on the team. Guys the former GM Gord Ash drafted in HIS seven years (some of which were under the Belgian Beer Brewers' miserly rule) are still there and leading the team. A lot more than four. One of them, Roy Halladay, is so fancied by US President George W. Bush, that he was named as one of two players the outgoing prez would use to start a new baseball team. The other was Chase Utley, who Ash passed over to draft Vernon Wells. It was a whiff, but not a horrible one.
Compare that with Ricciardi missing out on Troy Tulowitzki to draft Ricky Romero, who's been mainly damaged for the last two years. Might become a major-league reliever one day. Of course, the REASON Ricciardi whiffed on Tulowitzki is because he already had drafted two shortstops in Russ Adams and Aaron Hill, neither of whom plays shortstop these days. And Adams is in the minors with Romero anyway.
Griffin does a great job of highlighting how Ricciardi drafted quick-promotion low-upside (aka mediocre) college talent and then spent like a lottery-winner when Uncle Ted opened up the wallet. He's left the farm system in tatters. And there's not a lot of talent that's catching OTHER people's eyes. Sure, he TELLS Mike Wilner and others that the farm system is in great shape with talent coming. But the emperor has no clothes and nothing truthful to show for his seven-year itch of a hitch.
It's time to scratch that itch and make the New Englander an ex-GM.
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