Part of that is about adapting to a new offensive style. That takes time. On the other hand, having Rajai Davis throw way over umpteen cutoff men, night after night, is not major league baseball. By now, it's time for the initial offensive experimentation and adjustments to be over. And the defensive issues never should have persisted. As manager, it's Farrell's responsibility to find an approach that does work, so the mistakes diminish and then stop.

In fairness, he and his coaches aren't the only element in the equation.

It's the front office's responsibility to work with them to highlight the need for more professional play to the players, even if it means sending some people down to get their acts together.

The players also have a responsibility here, and this is an area where Jose Bautista can improve. His pouting and attitude with the umpires at the plate were actively unhelpful to the team this year, to the point where the manager had to call a meeting to deal with the problem from this spreading example. That can't happen again in 2013.

The team gets a bit of a break from me this year, only because lack of depth and injuries have meant that sending people down hasn't always been an option. That weakens Farrell's position a lot, and makes his teaching strategy a defensible choice in a "no other options" situation.

BUT -  it's the front office's responsibility to ensure that this is not the case next year, and that players understand clearly that they won't be regular players, or in some cases even major league players, unless the professionalism improves.

It simply has to improve, and if it doesn't, the team WILL need a new manager. If it doesn't improve, the scrutiny AA faces will also ratchet up, sharply.

When Toronto fans say they want a major league team, they don't mean "like the movie." In the real world, the scriptwriters can't save you, and you just lose. A lot.

It should be noted that the club is 13th in the league in OBP, 8th in the league in slugging and 8th in the league in runs scored.

I'm not disputing that baserunning was a component of the team's overachieving, but there was a clutchiness factor (repeatable or not) as well. While the average AL team got a 40-point OPS bump with RISP, it was a 60-point bump for the Jays meaning they were able to better take advantage of their high leverage situations as compared to the their own personal baseline. I can't say how much of their overachieving can be specifically attributed to this.

No one on base (60% of the PA): 701 OPS (AL 712 OPS)
RISP (23% of the PA): 760 OPS (AL 751 OPS)

And then this.  The Cardinals seem to have had the longest tradition of finding talent where others do not see it. 

While I certainly agree with this (Dave Duncan was an underappreciated genius), Lohse's case is a little different. He was a successful Cardinals reclamation project in 2008 and then after signing a 4-year contract, immediately returned to stinkland for the next two years. In the two since, including this year, he has logged 400 innings of 122 ERA+, just in time to hit the FA market. Fangraphs gives him an xFIP of around 4.00 during this 400-inning stretch so his next team may end up being quite disappointed.

They were doing OK up to July 28 (51-49, which isn't bad considering the pitching woes), but Bautista and Arencibia were out, while Lawrie and Rasmus were both fighting injuries. With the offensive difficulties of Johnson and Escobar, they were down to a 2-man offense (Encarnacion and Lind's replacement, Cooper) and it showed (.616 August OPS). Unless we're talking cheap lightning-in-a-bottle style replacements, I'm not sure what the front office could have been expected to do to paper that over. In fact, they probably should have sold off a few of their FA's-to-be for pieces potentially of use in '13.

Jen Royle, who works for WEEI in Boston tweeted the following tonight:

Source: The Jays are willing to let Farrell go Boston as long as they're compensated due to friction btwn JF and GM Alex Anthopoulos

That might explain why Farrell reacted as strongly as he did to the Vizquel comments.

Did Farrell really display a lack of 'common sense', if no one else that holds the same position (or at least the vast majority) would have done the same thing?

I view using your best reliever when the situation warrants it as being such a plainly obvious thing to do that it would be, in my opinion, the common sense approach to bullpen management. If saves didn't exist, I strongly suspect that managers would use their bullpens in this manner.

I see the overvaluation of saves as being similar to the near-universal undervaluation of on-base percentage years ago. The fact that every team undervalued John Olerud in 1996 shouldn't prevent Gord Ash from being criticised for making the trade with the Mets. Similarly, if John Farrell uses his bullpen in an inefficient manner, he deserves criticism for it even if other managers handle their bullpens in similar ways. A manager is supposed to help his team win ballgames, and if Farrell had employed a better approach to bullpen management, he would have given his team a better shot at winning today's game.

And now to respond to Magpie as well...

The second reason is that managers have discovered that relief pitchers are far, far more effective when they know what their role is and when they can expect to come into the game.

The issue isn't whether roles should be defined, but how they should be defined. Using your best reliever in the late innings of tight games is a defined role -- it's just not a conventionally defined role. Other roles wouldn't change all that much, if at all. Relievers would still know when they're likely to come into games.

If a manager did abandon the "traditional" closer role and the changes were implemented well, I think you'd see players buy into it. Rallies in the 7th and 8th innings that would have led to losses previously would be snuffed out on a more regular basis. Late-inning losses in general would be demoralizing, and if a different approach led to fewer of them, I can't see there being much of a problem.

I felt that when the club did nothing to improve, and actually weakened LF/DH, a message was sent. 

Except that Sierra has been an improvement on Snider offensively.  It's entirely possible that the Jays thought they were improving the offense in left by moving Snider.  Combine this with the additions of Happ and Lyon, and to me it's clear that the Jays were improving their team at the deadline.  Sure, they were controversial trades that also improve the team long ter - but why trade for a veteran reliever in Lyon with an expiring contract if you are not trying to improve?

I will admit that I shouldn't place all the blame on Farrell. Based on Alex Anthopoulos's moves and public comments to this point, it's clear that he and Farrell are on the same page when it comes to bullpen roles. My criticisms of the team's approach should also be aimed at Anthopoulos.

From a big-picture standpoint, I see bullpen usage as a missed opportunity. People in the sabermetric community have been complaining about the use of closers for years, and leverage statistics are now readily available. The research is out there. A team should always be looking for a new way to gain a competitive edge, and I think it's perfectly fair to criticise the team's management when it fails to take advantage of an obvious opportunity to get more out of its players and win more ballgames. Without a truly established closer on the roster, this would have been a great year for the Blue Jays to try reshaping the roles in the bullpen.

Shi Davidi, who seems to be the best connected writer following the Jays, dives into the friction controversy.

That doesn't mean the two haven't clashed -- they have, as every manager and GM do, dating back to last winter, when Farrell hoped for a mid-to-back of the rotation starter to stabilize the staff, while Anthopoulos aimed higher and either balked at the prices or couldn't complete a deal.

At the same time, Farrell was also praised for keeping players informed on what's happening, playing psychologist, and helping create a good environment for everyone to work in, no simple task given the past two months.

Adam Lind. Adam Lind. What to say about Adam Lind? He's at once incredibly consistent and incredibily inconsistent.

Here are is OPS+s from 2010 to 2012:
90
95
95

So not good, and consistently so.

Here are his half-season OPS's from 2010 to 2012:
640/807
865/589
674/788

He's spent each of the past 3 seasons being useful half the time and the opposite of useful the other half.

Some might argue that he's now "fixed" or that he's healthy and that any crappy half-seasons are specifically attributable to back woes. Others might argue that he's just a streaky hitter. I am in the camp of preferring to cut bait but I am guessing that the organization (Lind under contract, payroll parameters always looming) might elect to roll the dice yet one more time to see which Lind shows up for the first half of 2013.

Locker room leadership may well be in absentia, but isn't a more obvious problem more fundamental than that, i.e., a lack of talent? Or are we to believe that certain players would have performed better under the watchful eye of a leader in their ranks? If so, who specifically? Let's take this from the abstract to the concrete or we're just ruminating over dancing angels and heads of pins.

And if I am a veteran who was well compensated for not having done a terribly good job, I'd think I'd keep my yap shut rather than grouse about the problems being something other than my own performance. That speaks to a lack of accountability and a delusional lack of self-awareness.

When a team does poorly, people on the outside look at the situation and conclude "you guys stink". Internally, one imagines that saying "we stink" isn't at the top of the list of explanations, so nebulous excuses, like lack of leadership, are brought to the fore. Clearly we're talented enough, something else must be the cause of our misery.