Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 Toronto Blue Jays: They're frust-didly-ating!
Two culprits
As most people will tell you, there is one main culprit for this: JP Riccardi. I'm kind of in their boat. He might be a great assistant GM, but he doesn't have the acumen to be a full time GM. He makes too many rash decisions based on the most cursory of evidence. Now, most GMs do that, but JP was supposed to be a Moneyball GM who would NOT make these decisions. No one expected the team to run away with the division, but play well enough to threaten year after year even with a substantial turn-around in players (a la Oakland A's). Obviously, JP is not that man.
But there is a second culprit that people are only now starting to turn on. But they should not be surprised by this because this is his history. His name is Cito Gaston, as as we call him The Cito-bot 2000 (now running Windows 3.11 - Windows for Workgroups).
His first run
I fully admit that I hated Cito Gaston the first time around for purely esoteric reasons: I was an Expos fan, and could not stand Nos Amours having to play second fiddle to the team with the ugly soccer jerseys in Toronto.
But even then looking at him and the way he managed I had doubts. He had teams with Jack Morris, Ricky Henderson, Dave Stewart, Paul Molitor and Roberto Alomar just off the top of my head. It would have been harder to LOSE pennants with that team than to win them. I'm not taking anything away from him being able to manage a team full of superstars, but it has been done before, and has been done since. It's not an accomplishment, it's his job. And like his biggest defender, Joe Carter, he's spent most of a slightly better than mediocre career dining out on that.
It's a job that in a lot of ways he wasn't too good at. He likes to play his own boys on his own terms, and is very stubborn. He once moved around the All-Star Game lineup to feature more of his Blue Jays, players he was familiar with. And when given someone outside of that who he couldn't bench, he made their lives miserable - John Olerud for example.
A lot of people think Gaston left the team a conquering hero. He left them in last place, after three miserable seasons following their World Series victories. He didn't have the toys to play with anymore, and his limitations as manager were starting to show. It's not so much that he won two World Series rings as he leased them.
And he didn't work again until 2008. Let's think about that - he won two World Series', was supposed to be a genius because of the way that he deftly managed the egos on his team and National League rules (which are SOOOOOO different...oh no the pitcher bats. No wonder no American League team has ever won a World Series in the entire history of baseball, except for all the ones who have.). Everyone likes to claim that it was the inherent racism in baseball, but there has been Felipe Alou, Ozzie Guillen, Ron Washington, Dusty Baker, Fredi Gonzalez, Cecil Cooper, Willie Randolph, Frank Robinson...you get the idea. (DOn't get me wrong, it's still an issue, a HUGE issue, but it's an excuse not and explination when it comes to the Cito-Bot 2000).
Could it be maybe his obstinacy, his stubbornness, his inability to see that a situation is not working and his reluctance to change it were reasons for his exile. It's very possible.
Maybe the time off mellowed him.
Second verse, same as the first
The Beloved Jays started the season en fuego and were first in their division. Fans and media in Toronto were proclaiming them the second coming of the Rays. Most people outside of the city were predicting an eventual crash, based mostly on some people having very out-of-the- ordinary starts, and a lack of depth in pitching especially in middle and late relief.
Who didn't listen? The Cito-Bot 2000. The Cito-Bot 2000's programming indicated that BJ Ryan was a good reliever a couple of seasons ago, despite being a horrorshow since 2008. Game after game he was brought in and either loaded the bases or gave the game away. It was easy to see that something was wrong, but instead Cito kept playing him over and over, weakening his arm and his confidence. He would rather do that than risk admitting that his programming was in error and the job should be moved around to find the next fit.
Hallyday, a proud man, pitched longer and longer into games because he couldn't trust his pen, and that has more to do with his August swoon as any trade rumour does - he's exhausted. Straight up, Cito's inability to do anything with the pen cost Doc a Cy Young season.
But, people say, Cito isn't a pitching coach (Brad Arnsberg is, and he should be fired also for how the bullpen has gotten worse year after year) he's a hitting coach. Great! So that would explain how he was able to fix Vernon's traditional start-of-the-year slump and propensity for swinging at every first pitch? And how he was able to teach Alex Rios some patience at the plate? And how he saw the natural situational hitter in Lyle Overbay and place him effectively in the lineup? And how he saw that while Scott Rolen wasn't the power hitter he used to be, he was changing his game to adapt to this new situation and changed his lineup accordingly?
Oh right...None of those things happened!
Instead the same line up, which wasn't working, was trotted out day after day. And when he did make a change, it was dropping Wells one spot, and moving everyone else up one. Come on boys, take your turn! Thank goodness Lind and Hill didn't have slumps until later in the year, when the Cito-Bot 2000 stopped caring, as then the Snyder-snippet of his code would have stepped in
IF isInSlump(nonVetranPlayer) Then
SendTo.Minors
ELSE
Do.Nothing
END IF
So when things are lost, what happens? You start bringing up new players, which was done more or less. But now that the roster is set to be expanded, who are they talking about bringing up? Joe Inglett and Brian Wolfe, I imagine, the same-ol same-ol so that Cito doesn't have to learn new names.
The season is lost. They will make no difference. So why not bring up some kids, get their feet wet, play around with the lineup? Either you do that or say "Even though we're out, I'm going to play my team like there's no tomorrow anyway, and we're going to do two-a-days and slide on every play, because the Jays under Cito never give up."
Instead in Boston I saw this happen: Marco Scutaro in the hole, the Jays losing but not lost, standing up, smiling, waving his arms around and getting ready, itching to get in there for an at bat that might not happen. And Cito Gaston, leaning back, not looking at the field, a look on his face that seemed to say "Oh, will someone just pop it up so we can get out of here."
Yeah, he manages players nicely to get the most out of them...
Enough blame to go around
Yes, a lot of people will point fingers at JP, and rightfully so. He's not the GM this team needs, and saddled them with a lot of players who have underperformed. And the final decision for who to bring up and who to send down remains with him.
But he has a farm system that actually is pretty well stocked. A good manager would have seen that, and seen a team that wasn't working. He would have sat down with him at a meeting, which I'm sure they have, and said "Look, we're in the tank. Give me some of these tools to work with for a while and see what I can so with them."
But he didn't.
He sat there and when asked what his plans for the team were, he said "I tried nothing, and it didn't work. I'm fresh out of ideas."
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