More on Butter from Mike Ganter in the Sun:

The Blue Jays third base coach and spring training co-ordinator is pulling into the parking lot at the Bobby Mattick Training Facility at Englebert Complex every morning no later than 4 a.m.

That's so he can get his own workout in before looking after his team. Unbelievable dedication; I can't wait to see the results.

It's time we made a list of all the good things the New York Yankees have done for the Blue Jays over the years.

1. Firing Brian Butterfield
2. Adopting Raul Mondesi
3. Giving away Fred McGriff
4. Trading Dave Collins for Dale Murray
5. Giving up on Damaso Garcia
6. Overvaluing Jesse Barfield
7. Ron Hassey's weak pop fly to left, September '85
8. Having fans who buy lots of Dome tickets whenever Yanks visit
9. Beating the Braves every World Series (okay, that's just a bonus)

Of course, we have to balance these against the negative:

1. Homer Bush
2. David Wells v. 2.0
3. Al Leiter v. 1.0
4. Marty Janzen
5. Being insufferable

Looks like a 9 to 5 victory in favour of the Highlanders. Unless anyone can add more bullet points to either list....?

I have one. I heard this story, I think, just before the '90 season.

After the Jays fired Jimy Williams 36 games into the '89 season, they named Cito interim manager and went out searching for an actual permanent manager. One of the things Gillick did was to ask Steinbrenner for permission to talk to Piniella, then working, as I recall, in the Yankee front office. Steinbrenner either denied permission or demanded that the Yankees get Todd Stottlemyre or some other top prospect in return for this permission, and Gillick declined.

Cito had the 'interim' taken off his title, the Jays turned the season around and won their second division title.

After the season, Gillick called Steinbrenner again and read him a list of three low-level minor leaguers in the Jays system, and said, "Pick one."

Steinbrenner, suspicious, said, "What for?"

Gillick said, "A token of our gratitude for not letting us talk to Piniella."

Steinbrenner swore and hung up.

I don't swear that it's true; I'm just saying I heard the story.

You are being way too easy on the Yankees. Here's some more negatives:

6. Acquiring Denny Neagle, Glenallen Hill and David Justice in summer 2000, which made it possible for the Yanks to overtake the division-leading Jays.

7. Being able to wave big bucks at Roger Clemens.

8. Being able to wave big bucks at everybody.

9. George Steinbrenner.

Looks like it's now a 9-9 tie.

"Hinske has Matt Williams feet at third," says Butterfield, who played a big role in the development of (Derek) Jeter in the Yankees organization.

What kind of a fielder would Jeter be without having an excellent coach to help his development? It's not talked about all that often but I'm certain that having an excellent coaching staff can have noticeable, tangible results for a team. How have the Jays coaches stacked up over the years? With the exception for a few famous pitching coaches, a teams coaching staff is rarely mentioned. Are there any noticeably great hitting coaches? Other important 3rd base coaches? What is the role of each coach on a team - does the 3rd base coach always handle fielding work, or is that duty spread around?
It seems that winning organizations are more than just a collection of excellent baseball playing talent. You need a savvy front office and good coaches, both at the major and minor league level, to teach the players what they need to be able to do to win ball games.

A further comment - over on Prospectus, they have the Team Health reports, many of which discuss the impact of having a top-notch trainer and medical staff. It seems that this is another crucial area for a team to excell in.

It seems to me that the "behind the scenes" parts of the team are not parts to skimp on in the budget. That having excellent, knowledgable people working on everything to do with your team, except actually play the game, can have a significant impact on the teams performance.

How have the Jays coaches stacked up over the years? With the exception for a few famous pitching coaches, a teams coaching staff is rarely mentioned. Are there any noticeably great hitting coaches?

The guy who's invariably mentioned as a great Jays hitting coach, not that that means a whole lot, is Cito Gaston. I remember when Ash hired him back for his second go-round in that position, under Jim Fregosi, right before Shawn Green essentially wrote himself a ticket out of town. Gordo kept talking about what a great hitting coach he was. I wasn't so sure.

Gaston actually had a pretty amazing record of longevity with the Jays -- he took over as batting coach in 1981, became manager in '89 and served in that capacity through '97. Here are the team's AL-rankings (out of 14) in BA, OBP and SLG with Gaston on the roster as hitting coach or manager (not park-adjusted):

Year---BA/OBP/SLG
1981---10/8/11
1982---8/11/10
1983---1/2/1
1984---3/6/3
1985---2/4/3
1986---4/7/5
1987---5/5/2
1988---3/5/3
1989---8/9/3
1990---4/6/1
1991---7/10/6
1992---4/6/1
1993---1/3/1
1994---7/8/9
1995---12/12/11
1996---13/13/12
1997---14/14/14
2000---7/10/4
2001---10/10/9

In his first go-round as hitting coach, Cito's boys posted numbers about which he ought justifiably to be proud. After the first two seasons, in which the last of the expansion placeholders were moved out and the new kids learned the ropes, the team consistently finished in the upper half of the league in the three offensive categories. For all he has a reputation as working better with older players, it's worth noting that between '83 and '89, the Jays' hitters averaged between 27 and 29 years of age.

Interestingly, though, after he became manager, those numbers appeared to slip. Aside from the World Series years, the Jays fell towards the median and lower half of offensive rankings (with the exception of slugging percentage, in which Gaston has long been considered a specialist, at the expense of average and on-base). One could infer from this that despite all the talk that having Cito as manager was like having a second batting coach, it was actually the reverse: the team hit more poorly with him in the big chair.

Now of course, this is correlation, not causation -- you have to give credit and blame to the players themselves, and to the GM who assembled them, in each case. Cito had an effect, though to what extent, no one knows. But it was pretty clear by his last three seasons as manager that Gaston's charges couldn't hit a lick. Despite that terrible last impression, Ash hired Gaston as hitting coach again, and though the team's rankings rose slightly from the cellar he left them in, they were still pretty bad. Whatever Cito did that worked in the '80s largely didn't work in the '90s -- the Cyndi Lauper of batting instructors, if you will.

"Are there any noticeably great hitting coaches? Other important 3rd base coaches?"

Well, Cito was certainly a noticeable hitting coach; he was either hitting coach or manager every year from '82 to '01 except for a little gap in the late '90s. I don't think it's possible to overstate his influence over the organization, for good or for ill (and I think it was both).

When Cito wasn't there, Gary Matthews was, and Matthews did, I think, a fine job. The Jays had better walk numbers under him than they ever did for Cito, and it showed up in the runs-scored column.

I don't know a lot about third-base coaches, but after the '01 season, on the Official Site message board, I put together a series of posts in which I studied the question, "Do the Jays do the little things?" (My answer: 'yes, more or less, but who cares'.) One of the things I looked at was how well they advanced runners. I got data from the Bases Produced website (which was cool; too bad the guy's not updating it anymore), and found, to my surprise, that the Jays were totally terrible in the area of baserunners taking extra bases on hits - i.e. going first to third on a single, second to home on a single, first to home on a double. They trailed the league in the number of bases they gained this way. One must presume that the third base coach was largely to blame for this. Anyway, the coach in question, Terry Bevington, was given an invitation to the world during the offseason, so it looks like somebody was paying attention to it.

For what it's worth, I think that playing on turf would be a drag on the Jays' ability to take two bases on a single. The ball gets to outfielders faster and truer. Matthew, do you recall how the Twins did, or how visitors to the Toronto turf fared, in baserunner advancement?

Having said that, I liked the job Butterfield did coaching third compared to Bevington. Meanwhile, if the Jays want baserunning inspiration, the '02 Angels pretty much achieved the gold standard in intelligent, timely aggression.

"Matthew, do you recall how the Twins did, or how visitors to the Toronto turf fared, in baserunner advancement?"

Absolutely no idea.

http://www.basesproduced.com/cgi-bin/teambat.pl?type=AL&stat=BAP
Okay, I went to www.basesproduced.com (you guys should check it out; there's some cool stuff there, even if it's only for the 2001 season) and hunted down the data I was thinking of. It's the Bases Advanced Produced list, and the link to it is in the Homepage field. As you can see, Minnesota is near the top of the list, suggesting that turf wasn't the problem. I still blame Bevington.