Comments on The Tao of Stieb: A defense of J.P. Ricciardi's legacy

A little off topic, Guys... I have a question. Las...

2009-12-06T06:07:41.487-05:00

A little off topic, Guys... I have a question. Last week I trapped on this site:
[url=http://www.rivalspot.com]Rivalspot.com - Xbox Live Tournaments[/url]
They say you can play online Nhl2k game tournaments on any console for cash... had anyone tried that before? Looks like a cool idea...
Are there any other sites where you can play sports games for real moneys? I Googled and found only Bringit.com and Worldgaming.com but it looks these guys don't specialize in sport gamez. Any suggestions?

A little off topic, Guys... I have a question. Las...

2009-12-06T06:07:08.374-05:00

A little off topic, Guys... I have a question. Last week I saw this site:
[url=http://www.rivalspot.com]Rivalspot.com - Ps3 Live Tournaments[/url]
They say you can play online Football game tournaments on any console for cash... had anyone tried that before? Looks like a cool idea...
Are there any other sites where you can play sports games for real moneys? I Googled and found only Bringit.com and Worldgaming.com but it looks these guys don't specialize in sport gamez. Any suggestions?

While JP's results were mixed and he did of course...

2009-10-30T14:05:03.232-04:00

While JP's results were mixed and he did of course have many environmental factors beyond his control working against him, it was his arrogance and treatment of both players and fans that raised the ire of most people. You can't a) not deliver on your promise (5 years and then contention) b) lie to fans and players alike c) never admit you're wrong and still treat everyone around you like they're the village idiot and not be vilified. Whether Alex succeeds or fails will be secondary to how he builds relationships in how he's viewed by the fans and media of Toronto.

Well said my man... Well said... Also, the "5 yea...

2009-10-08T21:12:58.820-04:00

Well said my man... Well said... Also, the "5 year plan" was a Toronto made media term, I don't remeber JP ONCE mentioning or uttering the words "5 year plan"...

Isabella, Not all of JP's big moves were failures...

2009-10-07T20:53:08.571-04:00

Isabella,

Not all of JP's big moves were failures. People like to throw out Burnett as a failure but nobody really says why it was a bad move. The trade for Glaus and then the trade for Rolen was a success. Ryan and Thomas ended badly, but people forget that those two performed well at first.

Oh, and Stewart was not a big move.

That may be, though like I said, I think attendanc...

2009-10-07T16:40:19.696-04:00

That may be, though like I said, I think attendance on it's own isn't an indication of how good a GM you have, and JP was a fine GM. I do know that the friends who bought their tickets for $10 from scalpers this summer said the dollar value printed on the ticket was something like $1.98. I think all the regimes have had ways of boosting attendance -- the honest fans get milked 'cause they do things the expensive way.

Re: Attendance Whatever your take on the numbers ...

2009-10-07T14:41:31.394-04:00

Re: Attendance

Whatever your take on the numbers that Paul Godfrey cooked up, there were attendance increases throughout Ricciardi's tenure.

If you remember where this team was going by the time Gord Ash had finished effing it up, people were running away in droves from the SkyDome.

It was pretty depressing to see some of the smaller crowds this year, but the thing about them is that they were crowds full of people who dug into their pockets and bought tickets rather than getting them for free at the Rogers Video or wherever.

Very well said. I wrote my own defense of J.P. in ...

2009-10-07T12:36:56.544-04:00

Very well said. I wrote my own defense of J.P. in my blog as well. I, however, also bought into the whole "Ricciardi is bringing Moneyball to Toronto" thing, so thanks for setting me straight on that!

Looks like I'm a little late in the praise-fest, b...

2009-10-07T10:56:47.709-04:00

Looks like I'm a little late in the praise-fest, but yeah, you nailed it.

Bravo Tao - (congratulatory back slap to someone w...

2009-10-07T10:14:18.383-04:00

Bravo Tao - (congratulatory back slap to someone who I agree with ... followed by meaningless chatter)
I think some of the commenters make reasonable points too -- the one about attendance is, in part, an important one (JP didn't rub the audience particularly well), but I personally think that it really points out an ongoing problem of baseball in Canada, as opposed to a specific problem of JP. For example: why is it that the Leafs play to sell-out crowds when they've been a comparably worse team, while minor variations in the Jays record leads to significant variations in attendance? The baseball fan-base is not engaged in the same manner, so the evaluation of what is being done properly by most "fans" is a different one.

Not being a hockey fan, my impression of the Leafs is that they are a crappy team with ownership that clearly doesn't value its fans -- I can base that on their lack of appearance in the playoffs (which 50% of teams get to play in). That's pretty much it, and I know its horribly simplistic. Despite my knowledge of Burke's past record, if he doesn't turn it around quickly, he must be a terrible GM -- unless I base my evaluation on attendance, in which case, he must be amazing. Clearly the fans like what they see!

I think JP's curse is partly that he arrived when the World Series victories still seemed pretty recent in most people's minds, and maybe the Dome still seemed new too, or at least a place where winners played. Victory remained a possibility -- and in baseball (as opposed to hockey) that is crucial. But the same number of years again, and it's been a generation since Toronto has had a championship baseball team. So even if things were, in fact, pretty hopeless when JP arrived, they became increasingly hopeless to most onlookers despite any positives that he might have brought.

In short, your fine-tuned evaluation of JP's positives is great, but it is also understandable why a lesser-engaged fan-base is not listening to that evaluation. And to be fair, I think the attendance and play-offs problems are the main reasons why pretty much all of us agree that it was time for a change.

Oh, and I hope JP gets a ring too, but not as much as hope Halladay gets one.

@Torgen How can you claim the payroll bumps weren...

2009-10-07T02:08:06.400-04:00

@Torgen

How can you claim the payroll bumps weren't a change in philosophy when Ricciardi's first act of business was to strip payroll of fat contracts? I don't see how payroll contraction and payroll expansion are pretty much the same way to fill out the preposition 'to compete' on the baseball field. If the philosophy of competitiveness was the same, Delgado wouldn't have been allowed to leave for bubkus, among other things.

I'm sorry, I'm not buying this. I understand your...

2009-10-06T21:19:28.642-04:00

I'm sorry, I'm not buying this. I understand your position, and I agree that Ricciardi's most egregious 'mistakes' were not his alone and may not have been his at all--I'm thinking particularly of the Wells contract. However he had two egregious failings that, as far as I'm concerned, made him unsuitable for his position. One was controllable: he could have kept his mouth shut on numerous occasions when it would have been better for him and everyone else to stay quiet. The other was not controllable: he was fatally unlucky. On a number of occasions he made bold gambles, and not one of those gambles ever worked out. His quieter moves were more successful. Scutaro was a terrific pick-up. The pitchers he picked up on the back end of trades have worked out well and will continue to work out well. But his big moves blew up every single time. Ryan, Burnett, Thomas, Koskie, Stewart. All looked great on paper, all ended up costing the team big money and not helping the team win games. The law of averages suggests that at least a couple of these guys should have worked out but none of them did. No one needs a yappy GM with that kind of luck. It's better he's gone.

Isabella Reyes

Rogers does business in Canadian Dollars. The Can...

2009-10-06T20:02:49.069-04:00

Rogers does business in Canadian Dollars. The Canadian Dollar went from being worth $0.67 US$ to being worth $1.05 US in the space of about 4 years. Rogers did not give JP one cent more in payroll to spend in their terms - they just let him spend the then current US$ equivalent because that's how the players get paid. There was no change in philosophy to debate - there was a massive weakening in the US$.

Idiots like Richard Griffin wrote glowing columns about the Rogers organization loosening the purse strings because they were too dumb to do the math on the conversion rate.

All that being said, the only signing I disagreed with at the time was David Eckstein. Otherwise I thoughty JP did a great job.

And, before I go, I've been wandering around the interweb since the beginning and blogs since they started, and that was one of the finest posts I have had the pleasure to read. Well done.

The payroll bumps weren't a change in philosophy. ...

2009-10-06T16:38:20.352-04:00

The payroll bumps weren't a change in philosophy. The philosophy was to beat the big payrolls with a middle-of-the-pack payroll. What constituted a middle-of-the-pack payroll was what changed.

When is this site getting the Score stamp of legit...

2009-10-06T16:23:28.550-04:00

When is this site getting the Score stamp of legitimacy.

Still can't believe JOAAANNNAAAA!! and The Blue Jays Cunter hot it before Tao and Ack!

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but shouldn't the sente...

2009-10-06T16:23:05.295-04:00

Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but shouldn't the sentence:" The payroll bumps that Ricciardi was permitted over the past few years in order to go after high-priced free agents wasn't so much a change of philosophy as it was a recognition of the change in the market." be a bit different? There was a change in philosophy because the market place had changed. Not everyone in the AL East responded in the same way to the changing market - it's not like the Orioles or the Rays made big splashes in the free agent market once they realized the Yankees and the Red Sox were operating with their own printing press. Can you positively state that the Blue Jays operated the same way before they made these large free agent signings, but on a smaller financial scale?

Other than that little bit of nitpicking, the post was pretty good. Never understood those who thought Ricciardi was completely terrible, he made a few mistakes, I wouldn't have signed the Beej with his wonky delivery, but the plusses outweigh the negatives, not overwhelmingly though.

(Maybe you could have added another point about his drafting record, but that would have probably netted an inconclusive result. With regards to the draft, he did change drafting philosophy because the cupboard was pretty bare when he initially started and the desire to draft collegians was because they would get to the big leagues faster, hence the avoidance of high schoolers until the budget was increased - I wonder if Travis Snider would have been passed over had the purse strings remained tight. Once JP could spend some money on the big league roster he could actually draft high school projects because the wait-time to get the big leagues wasn't so much an issue with a larger budget team. I don't think it's any coincidence that with the increase in budget the philosophy via the draft had changed, and quite frankly, needed to change.)

Ari-0 Speedwagon: speak for your self numbnuts.

2009-10-06T16:22:19.919-04:00

Ari-0 Speedwagon: speak for your self numbnuts.

JET!!

2009-10-06T16:21:18.866-04:00

JET!!

40 Million. How much JP paid out to players who ...

2009-10-06T16:19:13.364-04:00

40 Million.

How much JP paid out to players who were no longer playing for the Jays.

Or, more than the entire payroll of a few MLB teams.

Very good post. I've been no JPR fan for the last ...

2009-10-06T16:17:12.302-04:00

Very good post. I've been no JPR fan for the last three years, but I do remember the agreement and excitement that I felt after almost every one of his big signings. Wrapping up Hinske made sense. Signing Wells, Rios and Hill to long-term deals made sense at the time. Rolen for Glaus was a coup. Koske? Not so much.

How much did steroids mess up the deals? I think speculation has to be made that, at least for two-thirds of those signings that turned sour, that their sudden, rapid decline may have been due to a discontinued use of performance enhancers.

Tao, that's not JP's cock in your mouth! That's hi...

2009-10-06T16:12:08.555-04:00

Tao, that's not JP's cock in your mouth! That's his nose!!

J.P was going good at picking up players off the s...

2009-10-06T16:08:24.065-04:00

J.P was going good at picking up players off the scrap heap who turned into productive players.

He was great at pulling the wool over Halladay's eyes and convincing him to re-sign twice with the Jays with the promise that we would compete.

He was terrible in spending big money.

He was terrible in media / fan relations.

People talk about what a great pitching rotation he created but he backed into that rotation when he was left no choce after the Ohko, Thomson, Zambrano debacle.

They talked about how he created a great defence but he backed into that as wel. If he cared so much about defence why trade Hudson for Glaus?

So, overall 8 years of wasted baseball, not one meaningful game played, low attendance...this is JP's legacy. Defend it all you want.

That was one hell of an awesome post. I'd love to ...

2009-10-06T15:47:02.968-04:00

That was one hell of an awesome post. I'd love to say that I've been thinking the same thing, which is true, but I never could possibly say it so concisely. Well done...

Cito in and Arnsberg gone is really crazy crazy st...

2009-10-06T15:44:37.403-04:00

Cito in and Arnsberg gone is really crazy crazy stuff.

It makes me want to give Beeston a pink belly.

I am loving this. All of it. Seriously. I'm not l...

2009-10-06T15:36:43.893-04:00

I am loving this. All of it. Seriously.

I'm not loving this, from Robert MacLeod in The Globe. In fact, I may be crying right now: "And you can expect more changes, including the removal of Brad Arnsberg as the pitching coach before the start of next season."

Cito might actually survive. Which blows the fucking mind.