I was going to make a smart-a$$ comment about how the teams "above" TOR in that table haven't exactly won any World Series recently, and while that's true ... DET has been to one, CLE is good every year and MIL looks like a playoff lock (?) this year.

Never mind. Good study!

Baseball prospectus used love J.P Ricciardi and would apologise for everything he did, until he started splashing out on big budget items like A.J. Burnett, and then he started hosing him down with gasoline whatever he did. They were so down on Ricciardi, Chris Kahrl attributed the sale of Erik Hinske's contract to collusion between the Jays and the Red Sox to try and beat the Yankees! I mean, I like Erik Hinske as much as the next guy, but please! Baseball Prospectus tries very hard, and mostly succeeds, in putting cold hard facts ahead of opinion, but they are human, and it would be a pretty dull site if they didn't give their colour commentary sometimes.

To follow your point about the number of contributers from the farm to the major league club, it may be a bit of a stretch to include Thigpen, and Vermilyea who have done little for the major league club so far, but then again you could include players like Zack Jackson who was traded for major league talent.

Since, I don't have the evidence to back it up, I would speculate that it is the quality of the players that come through the farm system rather than the quantity anyway. So far, the impact players from now in the majors from the blue jays farm system have come from the previous regime (plenty of fairly obvious examples), but perhaps its still too early to tell. I do have the suspicion that getting rid of farm director Tim Wilken was one of Ricciardi's worst moves.

He also refers to the Jays as an "aging roster."

Our outfield is set for at least another 5 years and Lind/Wells and Rios are all under 30.

Halladay is only 30 and Marcum and McGowan are 25/26. That's 3/5 of the rotation right there.

 The bullpen is set for a number of years and is very young as well.

Since, I don't have the evidence to back it up, I would speculate that it is the quality of the players that come through the farm system rather than the quantity anyway.

Is this analysis not a qualitative one?  Does WSAB not attempt to measure the quality of contribution from a player?  The evidence is right in front of you, n'est-ce pas?

You may be right with WSAB. I'm no expert these measures. But if my understanding is correct, doesn't it mean by this measure that two players with WSAB of 1 are equivalent to one player of WSAB 2 if they play the same number of games? But fairly obviously, two players take up two slots in your lineup, a major difference. Furthermore two players of WSAB 1 may take up less salary than one of WSAB 2, which may itself have side-effects. Therefore the two situations are not equivalent. So I don't know if I can answer the question whether quantity is better than quality using WSAB alone.

That said, I may have completely the wrong idea of how WSAB is computed.

I have a subscription to Baseball Prospectus and have been buying their book since 2000.  In my opinion, they have been very pessimistic towards the Blue Jays for several years now - long before Keith Law left the Jays.  I actually thought their was some animosity between BP and Keith Law (or BP was trying to not show any favoritism and was thus especially critical of the Jays).

I couldnt believe the article  - I was irate.  I immediately went to review the draft history of the Sox and Yanks.  Granted they both may have players with more upside but overall impact to-date at the major league level to-date? Jays.

They were very pessimistic going into 2006 but really didnt have any reason for the solid season.  The Jays were continually ranked as one of the top 10 teams all season...

Earlier in the season Joe was hoping the Jays would throw McGowan, Marcum and Janssen in the rotation and not waste time with Okha/Zambrano/Thomson.  Well, it appears he got his wish but still isnt happy...

I may have to rethink extending my subscription.

C.

In comparing Toronto's success since 2002 to New York's and Boston's, I would not count Hughes as a "success" since he was one of the high school pitchers that many other teams could not afford to take a risk on. It would be akin to giving kudos to the Tigers for drafting Rick Porcello - someone that came their way not because of quality scouting but because of signability concerns.

That being said, your methodology leaves out Tyler Clippard (9th round, 2003) and Jeff Karstens (19th round, 2003) as recent draftees that have played on the Yankees. And, for the Red Sox, you didn't mention Jon Lester (2nd round, 2002).  These guys are just as relevant as Vermilyea.

I also wonder whether a guy like David Murphy, the 1st rounder for the Sox in the '03 draft, would have been called up to the big leagues by now had he been drafted by the Jays, given that the Jays are, as a smaller budget team, going to have to dip into their farm system more readily than the Yankees or the Red Sox.

What are your thoughts on Dominican players as it pertains to this analysis?

Good chart and good research, Leigh -- thanks. Looking at Jason Frasor, it's interesting to remember that the Jays acquired him for Jayson Werth, a player whom I and others thought (incorrectly, as it turned out) would be a real big-league contributor. Turning Werth and Shea Hillenbrand into Frasor and Jeremy Accardo have been two examples of very smart dealing by the GM.

My take on Ricciardi is that sometime around late 2004, early 2005, JP stopped listening to people who didn't fully share his views on the ballclub. And not just within the organization, either. Maybe The Year From Hell hardened him, or the local media finally got to him, or maybe he always fully believed in his vision to the exclusion of others. He is, as Magpie says, the archetypal traditional GM, and I'm not deeply enamoured of traditional GMs.

Great work, Leigh.  One missing element here (Sheehan may or may not be missing it, too) would be the farm products since 2002 that have been used as effective trade bait to help the club. 

Granted, this might overstate the value of the Red Sox, Yankees and Mets' prospects, since those teams are attractive trading partners primarily for their ability to absorb salary.  It's not like the Phillies traded Abreu because they were blown away by C.J. Henry.

I have my own sore points with the way the team is constructed relative to the rosters of Ricciardi’s early years, especially with regard to patching holes. Jason Phillips is not the new Greg Myers, Royce Clayton is not the new Mike Bordick, Jason Smith is not the new Frank Menechino, and Howie Clark is not the new Howi… oh wait.

Amen.  Ricciardi has been a horrible hole-patcher over the last four seasons -- surely one of the very worst in baseball.

Hill, Janssen, Marcum, Thigpen, Vermilyea, milk, strawberries, cheese, lettuce...

Which begs the question ... do you want the rookie 20-game winner who doesn't make the bigs until he's 33? Or the HOF-talent OF with the attitude (and substance) problem(s)? Or the light-hitting OF who sounds like he might be quite a philosopher?

Conundrum wrapped in a riddle within a mystery ...

You are what you are:

02: 78-84

03: 86-76

04: 67-94

05: 80-82

06: 87-75

07: 33-36

Total: 398-447

They have a barren farm system when you exclude the 07 draftees.  They have committed hundreds of millions of dollars in the near future.  They have made no progress since 2004. 

It's time for a whole new direction.  JP Riccardi is not the guy to topple Boston and New York.  That guy might not exist, but it's time to try and find him.

They have made no progress since 2004.

Like Sheehan, you picked a lousy time frame to prove your point. Going from 67-94 in 2004 to 80-82 in 2005, and 87-75 in 2006 sure looks like progress to me.

If there are any Bauxites who live out Ajax way I have a pair of very good tickets to tonights game that can be had for free. I get home from work about 5:30PM so they could be picked up then.

you picked a lousy time frame to prove your point

It hasn't been quite as unlucky as 2004 was, but 2007 sure feels a lot like 2004 to me.  They peaked last year and still never threatened for a playoff spot.  At least we still have Baltimore to kick around.

I wonder if you do an all-philosopher Hall of Names.

Back in July of '03 ... been there, done that!

Not only that, but if you search BBRef for "Phil" you get 135 returns, including 27 guys with the family name "Phillips" and more than 100 with the first or middle name in some form.

A team of them would be the "Phil Awe, So Fars" of course.

Right now, I'm calling it "horribly bad luck",

In this case I'm leaning towards luck being the residue of design.

Ooh, Jim -- quoting Branch Rickey? That's an impossible standard to hold ANY GM up to.

Jim included the 2007 losses but not the wins

The 2007 season has been very frustrating but not that bad!

The 2007 season has been very frustrating but not that bad!

My bad.  The fact that Howie Clark has come back into my life makes me no longer want to pass on the benefit of the doubt.  It's a tough job beating the Yankees and Red Sox.  JP hasn't been awful, there is some good and some bad.  I just don't see why anyone would have any confidence that he's going to ever get this team over the hump.  Why waste any more seasons hammering this home?

The fact there are still JP defenders out there (I’m not just talking about this site) amazes me. Can anybody here say with a straight face that the JP era is clearly better than the Gord Ash era? If so, why?

Blue Jay fans have been conditioned to accept mediocrity and it’s sad to see. JP is out of excuses and like I said before, he and Gibbons should have been fired in the off-season. I’m waiting any day for JP to say the Jays can’t contend in the AL East because he doesn’t have the same payroll that Brian Cashman has to work with. If by some miracle JP gets fired after this season, I feel sorry the new GM will have to take on the Wells and Thomas albatross contracts.

But with that said, I’m not really disappointed in the 2007 season. I said the Jays would be a sub .500 team all season and that’s what they have been.

I've felt more optimism for the club over the last few years than I felt during the Ash years.  However, that is a Rogers-Interbrew thing more than an Ash-Ricciardi thing.  Ash and Ricciardi have both been average GMs, neither clearly better than the other.

I think Ash is much more likeable though, which probably plays a role in the Ricciardi bashing.

Ricciardi has an interesting split personality when it comes to making decisions. Most of the time, he's willing to cut bait when a player isn't working out, and he won't stick with a guy just because he had a good season last year, or is making more than a million bucks. Sometimes he does it prematurely - Chad Gaudin, for example - but he'll usually admit when a player isn't working out.

Of course, sometimes he seems to stick his fingers in his ears and pretend he can't see anything wrong - Royce Clayton, the lack of a real fourth outfielder, a bullpen with one or two guys who pitch once a month...  (Speaking of which: Why on earth did Gibbons feel the need to use Casey Janssen with an 11-run lead last night? That's what the Wolfe's and De Jong's of the world are for.)

Anyway, there's making a mistake, and then refusing to admit you made a mistake, or at least that things aren't going as planned. I'm not convinced signing guys like Ohka, Thomson, and Zambrano was a black-and-white mistake -they were all cheap, all had some up-side, and it wasn't clear that Marcum and Janssen would be significant upgrades prior to spring training. But Ricciardi adapted to the way things unfolded, which isn't something all GMs would do.

While it may look like the signing of Thomson, Ohka and Zambrano didn't work, in a larger context it did.

Going into the season, we looked to have an above average number 1 and 2 starter and a below average number 3.  The plan seemed to be to have a number of starters that statistically project to an average number 5 starter and hope that one of them exceeds expectations and settles nicely into the number 4 role.  Ohka, Thomson, Zambrano joined Janssen, Marcum, McGowan and Taubenheim to battle for those two spots.  The plan worked as three of those seven exceeded projections (at least up until the last start of Dustin's).  It just so-happened that the three FAs didn't meet their statistical projections for the year and the prospects did.

At least, that's one way of looking at it.

The other item of note from last night is that Burnett could start on Saturday, that he wanted to start on Saturday, and that if it was late September and a close pennant race, he probably would.

That's good news - Gibby should be able to march the well-rested Burnett out for a 130-pitch outing on the 29th then.

Ricciardi was very hard on himself on the radio last night for letting Gaudin get away - he said "I blew it" repeatedly, and that he should have remembered why he traded for him in the first place.

Did he say anything else of note last night?

Just a sort of echo of the Gaudin situation: Look at how Ricciardi handled Francisco Rosario this year. Rosario was out of options, so had to be on the major league roster; Ricciardi decided, for good or ill, that he wasn't good enough to make the team, and he wanted the best pitchers on the roster. Which is fine in principle, but then you consider that Victor Zambrano sat in the bullpen gathering dust for a month when he could have been in Syracuse working as a starter; that's a month the Jays could have given to Rosario.

(And as it happens, Rosario's been getting smacked around in Philadelphia, so by the end of the year no one might care. But the Zambrano Experiment had repercussions beyond simply allowing Zambrano to pitch in real games.)

Chad Gaudin, for example

Gaudin is very young and may well have a big future, but there's been a good amount of mirror use the past two seasons.

His success, both last year and this (ERA's of 3.09 and 3.05) has been largely due to his ability to keep the ball in the yard (one homerun per 22 innings). And while his K/BB ratio of 1.5 is unspectacular, it is an improvement over last year's disastrous 0.9. So he is improving. Still, if his homerun rate regresses to something more normal, those peripherals will have him looking a lot like Zito (except to his bank manager).

One specific thing he said was that the team needed Burnett to give them some innings because the bullpen had been used heavily.

In a day and age where teams carry seven relievers, can such a statement be made with a straight face?

Interestingly, he hurt his shoulder when you'd think his elbow was more vulnerable.

I commented on this at the time.  Tired muscles puts extra strain on the joints.  I think it is could be a good sign that the elbow is stronger than ever.

No one really knows a lot about how pitchers get hurt other than "throwing a lot of pitches often is probably bad." Of course, some pitchers get hurt in limited action, and others can pitch forever and not get hurt.

Burnett's injury isn't really what I'd think of from an overworked, injured pitcher. Normally you'd expect maybe a loss of velocity, less control, reduced effectiveness. Not a sudden "Ow, my shoulder hurts" in the middle of a game. (That's the sort of reaction I might expect from a guy who just blew his elbow out) Maybe the injury was coming regardless of how many pitches he threw - last year he went down in spring training, and he wasn't overworked then.

Still, I think "throwing a lot of pitches often is probably bad" is a good mantra to stick with. And Burnett's case is odd, because the Jays generally have been pretty sensible with starters - the temptation to ride Halladay hard must be very strong, but he's only topped 110 pitches once.

Of course, some pitchers get hurt in limited action, and others can pitch forever and not get hurt.

B.J. Ryan, this is Nolan Ryan. Nolan, this is B.J. -- that last sentence was about you two!

Burnett's injury isn't really what I'd think of from an overworked, injured pitcher. Normally you'd expect maybe a loss of velocity, less control, reduced effectiveness. Not a sudden "Ow, my shoulder hurts" in the middle of a game.

Burnett's fastball was sitting at 93-94mph during that game and had me very concerned.  However, after last night's game, I'm thinking it may have been the Sportsnet gun.  Last night Doc sat at 88-91, Janssen's 4-seamer was 90, and Kuo couldn't get one above 90 either....I don't remember seeing any of Broxton's speeds, but I'm sure that gun was aimed wrong and taking 3-4 mph off the fastballs.