What's gone wrong with the Jays, you ask? Well, not as much as you might think: every team goes through bad stretches. (Ask the Yankees, who had to face The Boss's full-on wrath after punting a few games early in the season.) But one thing now seems clear to me: talent always trumps effort.
First of all, let's give credit where it is due: the Jays have moulded themselves into a tough, competitive, hard-working team. Unfortunately, with the exception of Halladay, the Jays don't have much in the way of top-drawer talent. (Wells could get there, and one or two others might eventually step forward, but they're not there right now.) And it's those guys - guys like Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, to name two - that win you ballgames. (Which is why I think they should have kept Delgado, but that's a whole separate issue.)
My hypothesis: most teams that have top-drawer talent develop it through the farm system, and a certain amount of luck is required. A clever scouting and development team can identify players that are likely to become stars, but there's no way of knowing whether a particular player has the will and the talent to move from the 99th percentile (where all pro athletes are) to the 99.9th percentile (where the star players live) or even to the 99.99th percentile (hi there, Mr. Pujols).
I think those of us who are Jays fans sometimes underestimate how difficult it is to do this. We think that every quality farm system regularly produces players such as Fernandez, Stieb, Key, Barfield, Moseby, and so on and so on. I am now beginning to believe that that was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke - that Pat Gillick, besides being smart and hard-working, was very, very lucky.
As I've often said before (somewhat facetiously), J.P. Ricciardi's biggest weakness is that he just hasn't been lucky enough. For the Jays to seriously contend again, they're going to have to have two or three of their farm guys take those last steps forward into the 99.9th percentile. And none of us know whether that's going to happen - it's up to the Baseball Gods, and they don't tell us their plans.
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