As many of you have doubtless noticed, our old chum and Bauxite Emeritus Craig Burley posted a piece on the Jays over at The Hardball Times that might be described - well, that can only be described - as a venomous screed:
It was Beeston who installed the recent office gofer in the GM's chair, in a move which reminds one of nothing so much as The Hudsucker Proxy. Beeston (long a courtier of power and a close friend of Bud Selig) seems to be doing nothing more complex than driving the market value of the club down, and the way he dominates the conversation with a lickspittle local sports press (with his general manager nodding furiously in confused assent beside him) is depressingly familiar to this erstwhile Montreal Expos fan.
Now, Craig. Don't be coy. Tell us what you really think.
Incidentally, some of you may remember when the Toronto Maple Leafs really did put the office boy in charge. That would be Gord Stellick, whose tenure running the Leafs will always be remembered for his trade of a pair of 23 year old forwards: Russ Courtnall (297 NHL goals) for John Kordic (17 NHL goals.) Courtnall was still playing in the league after Kordic overdosed and died. Hey, it's the Leafs. We've come to expect that sort of thing from them.
Anyway, as you can imagine, a lively discussion ensued. And one wag (not me, but one of us nonetheless!) mischievously suggested that Craig had assumed the role of Richard Griffin to Anthopolous' Ricciardi.
That struck me as rich indeed - Craig wrote fairly regularly on this page about Griffin of the Star in a manner which was... um, less than complimentary ("too much Richard Griffin rots the brain.").
But here's the the thing - wasn't Griffin right, in the end?
The Ricciardi era was a failure. Griffin called it from Day One.
Granted Griffin was wrong, often egregiously wrong, about about pretty well everything else along the way. He mistook Ricciardi for a Billy Beane disciple, and assumed he would attempt to duplicate what Beane accomplished in Oakland... geez, it was a long time ago, wasn't it? As it happens, Griffin actually understands Billy Beane about as well as I understand quantum mechanics. Not that it should have made much difference - Ricciardi would turn out to be an extremely old-fashioned sort of general manager, enamoured of scrappers and dirtbags, and generally flying by the seat of his pants most of the time. The man actually traded for Shea Hillebrand. To this very day Griffin remains blissfully oblivious to these fairly obvious traits about our former GM.
Griffin was found of propagating two semi-mythic tales about Ricciardi: 1) that he had said he could build a winner in the AL East on a $50 million budget, and 2) that there was a five-year plan. The actual veracity of both of these propositions is difficult for me to assess - but I think it was certainly possible for a team to win the AL East with a $50 million budget in 2001, back when Ricciardi was actually hired. The Yankees payroll had climbed into six digits for the first time that very season. The heights they would hit in subsequent years were not dreamt of in our philosophy, Horatio.
As for the five-year plan, it is indeed a matter of historical record that Year Five of the Ricciardi Era was the year when he rolled the dice and went for the Brass Ring. He threw all the money he could find at two free agent pitchers (Burnett and Ryan), traded from the depth of infield talent he had been accumulating to bring in a Big Scary Bat (Glaus), and traded from his excess of collegiate pitching prospects to bring in a fine complementary hitter (Overbay)...
He went for it, and he finished second.
John Towers, so outstanding in the second half of 2005, had a couple of rough starts early on and then completely and utterly imploded. Gustavo Chacin's arm began the long and painful process, now complete, of falling off. Burnett rejoined his old Florida pitching coach, and perhaps figuring it was just like old times, promptly went on the Disabled List. Russ Adams, coming off a promising rookie season, struggled early in the field and at the bat - at which point the team suddenly decided that he was not really a young player going through a tough period but rather a completely useless piece of crap. Their subsequent handling of him effectively destroyed his career, which may or may not have amounted to anything, but he certainly never had a chance after that.
So the 2006 Jays finished second, 10 games behind the Yankees, and whatever plan Ricciardi may have had simply hadn't panned out. Was there ever a plan? I remain agnostic on the subject. I know Beane's other ex-assistant, Paul DePodesta, is always talking about "process" - you can't control what actually happens, but you can follow the best process and method you can devise. Of course, that done, it's still the case that all you can do is hope for the best. Which may be all you can ever do anyway.
But I myself think Ricciardi was generally winging it, making it up as he went along.
Which, by the way, is quite fine by me. Process is fine, but I believe in magic. I'm an artist, not a lawyer. Magic works. In the winter of 2004-2005, Kenny Williams made a bunch of moves that impressed absolutely no one at the time - they had the apparent, and as it turned out, quite real effect of gutting his team's offense - yet the whole thing worked out more perfectly than Williams himself could have possibly imagined. He and his team have a championship. One season is a very small sample size, but a championship is still forever. That was magic, though, and that's the thing - you can never depend on magic. So you really do need to trust the process. There's no alternative.
Yet another reason I could never be a GM.
At any rate, Ricciardi spent his last three years here... what's the word... floundering. To anyone not sure of that, let me just say these words to you: Royce Clayton.
And yet... it really could have worked. I sometimes think that if the 2006 Jays had played the same forgiving early schedule enjoyed by the 2009 edition, things might have turned out quite differently. Who knows, right? Towers and Adams may have been able to fight the league to a draw, and thereby work through their problems rather than be destroyed by them. A way would still have to be found to prevent Burnett and Chacin from going on the shelf.... but, you can't have everything.
Anyway, it didn't work. That was their best chance, and they didn't make it.
I blame Josh Towers, myself. Doesn't everyone?
It was Beeston who installed the recent office gofer in the GM's chair, in a move which reminds one of nothing so much as The Hudsucker Proxy. Beeston (long a courtier of power and a close friend of Bud Selig) seems to be doing nothing more complex than driving the market value of the club down, and the way he dominates the conversation with a lickspittle local sports press (with his general manager nodding furiously in confused assent beside him) is depressingly familiar to this erstwhile Montreal Expos fan.
Now, Craig. Don't be coy. Tell us what you really think.
Incidentally, some of you may remember when the Toronto Maple Leafs really did put the office boy in charge. That would be Gord Stellick, whose tenure running the Leafs will always be remembered for his trade of a pair of 23 year old forwards: Russ Courtnall (297 NHL goals) for John Kordic (17 NHL goals.) Courtnall was still playing in the league after Kordic overdosed and died. Hey, it's the Leafs. We've come to expect that sort of thing from them.
Anyway, as you can imagine, a lively discussion ensued. And one wag (not me, but one of us nonetheless!) mischievously suggested that Craig had assumed the role of Richard Griffin to Anthopolous' Ricciardi.
That struck me as rich indeed - Craig wrote fairly regularly on this page about Griffin of the Star in a manner which was... um, less than complimentary ("too much Richard Griffin rots the brain.").
But here's the the thing - wasn't Griffin right, in the end?
The Ricciardi era was a failure. Griffin called it from Day One.
Granted Griffin was wrong, often egregiously wrong, about about pretty well everything else along the way. He mistook Ricciardi for a Billy Beane disciple, and assumed he would attempt to duplicate what Beane accomplished in Oakland... geez, it was a long time ago, wasn't it? As it happens, Griffin actually understands Billy Beane about as well as I understand quantum mechanics. Not that it should have made much difference - Ricciardi would turn out to be an extremely old-fashioned sort of general manager, enamoured of scrappers and dirtbags, and generally flying by the seat of his pants most of the time. The man actually traded for Shea Hillebrand. To this very day Griffin remains blissfully oblivious to these fairly obvious traits about our former GM.
Griffin was found of propagating two semi-mythic tales about Ricciardi: 1) that he had said he could build a winner in the AL East on a $50 million budget, and 2) that there was a five-year plan. The actual veracity of both of these propositions is difficult for me to assess - but I think it was certainly possible for a team to win the AL East with a $50 million budget in 2001, back when Ricciardi was actually hired. The Yankees payroll had climbed into six digits for the first time that very season. The heights they would hit in subsequent years were not dreamt of in our philosophy, Horatio.
As for the five-year plan, it is indeed a matter of historical record that Year Five of the Ricciardi Era was the year when he rolled the dice and went for the Brass Ring. He threw all the money he could find at two free agent pitchers (Burnett and Ryan), traded from the depth of infield talent he had been accumulating to bring in a Big Scary Bat (Glaus), and traded from his excess of collegiate pitching prospects to bring in a fine complementary hitter (Overbay)...
He went for it, and he finished second.
John Towers, so outstanding in the second half of 2005, had a couple of rough starts early on and then completely and utterly imploded. Gustavo Chacin's arm began the long and painful process, now complete, of falling off. Burnett rejoined his old Florida pitching coach, and perhaps figuring it was just like old times, promptly went on the Disabled List. Russ Adams, coming off a promising rookie season, struggled early in the field and at the bat - at which point the team suddenly decided that he was not really a young player going through a tough period but rather a completely useless piece of crap. Their subsequent handling of him effectively destroyed his career, which may or may not have amounted to anything, but he certainly never had a chance after that.
So the 2006 Jays finished second, 10 games behind the Yankees, and whatever plan Ricciardi may have had simply hadn't panned out. Was there ever a plan? I remain agnostic on the subject. I know Beane's other ex-assistant, Paul DePodesta, is always talking about "process" - you can't control what actually happens, but you can follow the best process and method you can devise. Of course, that done, it's still the case that all you can do is hope for the best. Which may be all you can ever do anyway.
But I myself think Ricciardi was generally winging it, making it up as he went along.
Which, by the way, is quite fine by me. Process is fine, but I believe in magic. I'm an artist, not a lawyer. Magic works. In the winter of 2004-2005, Kenny Williams made a bunch of moves that impressed absolutely no one at the time - they had the apparent, and as it turned out, quite real effect of gutting his team's offense - yet the whole thing worked out more perfectly than Williams himself could have possibly imagined. He and his team have a championship. One season is a very small sample size, but a championship is still forever. That was magic, though, and that's the thing - you can never depend on magic. So you really do need to trust the process. There's no alternative.
Yet another reason I could never be a GM.
At any rate, Ricciardi spent his last three years here... what's the word... floundering. To anyone not sure of that, let me just say these words to you: Royce Clayton.
And yet... it really could have worked. I sometimes think that if the 2006 Jays had played the same forgiving early schedule enjoyed by the 2009 edition, things might have turned out quite differently. Who knows, right? Towers and Adams may have been able to fight the league to a draw, and thereby work through their problems rather than be destroyed by them. A way would still have to be found to prevent Burnett and Chacin from going on the shelf.... but, you can't have everything.
Anyway, it didn't work. That was their best chance, and they didn't make it.
I blame Josh Towers, myself. Doesn't everyone?
