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MLB

J.P. Ricciardi: 'The Division Is Not Going To Change'

Posted Sep 25, 2009 1:38PM By Pat Lackey (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Blue Jays, AL East

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J.P. RicciardiWith the season winding down and the Blue Jays headed for their first losing season since 2005, it seems like there's a very good chance that general manager J.P. Ricciardi is going to lose his job when the season ends. His popularity in Toronto is waning and 2009 will mark his eighth season on the job without making the playoffs. The Blue Jays ownership reportedly went over his head in hiring Cito Gaston last year, so the Jays' record this year might be the final straw.

Ricciardi, however, isn't going down looking. When asked about the possibility of being replaced, Ricciardi went on a rant about the difficulties of playing in the American League East before taking a dig at Blue Jays fans for forgetting that the 1992 and 1993 World Series champion Blue Jays both had the highest payroll in baseball.

The quote (with the full version at the link):
"Let me make this clear: It doesn't matter if J.P. Ricciardi is the GM, or Joe Blow is the GM. Two years from now, five years from now, seven years from now, the reality that we face in Toronto is the division is not going to change," Ricciardi said in an interview this week. "The Red Sox and Yankees are not going away. If the Yankees want to, they can take their payroll to $300 million.
There are two points that immediately come to mind when reading this. The first is that Ricciardi is absolutely right; the AL East is ruthless. The Yankees have enough money to fix any problem they have and the Red Sox are both loaded with cash and exceptionally well run. On a year to year basis, it's certainly hard to compete with those two things.

The second thing, though, is that there has been a team that's managed to crack the AL East power structure, the Rays, and they've done it in a worse market than Toronto with a strategy that's not really like anything Ricciardi's tried in his time with the Blue Jays. Toronto tries to compete on essentially the same model that most teams in baseball do: grow talent in the minors and supplement it through free agency. The problem is that it's much harder to make that fly in a division where one team can afford to spend $50 million for the rights just to negotiate with a player and another team can drop a quarter of a billion dollars in one offseason to upgrade its pitching staff. The Rays tried a different route; rebuild the organization from the bottom up and try to beat the Yankees and Red Sox at something they can afford to beat them at - player development.

Ricciardi's certainly got some reason to be upset. He's put together some good teams in Toronto that could've made the playoffs in worse divisions (or, you know, in the National League). The problem, though, is that he was tasked with putting together a playoff team in the American League East. And while that's not an easy task for a team that's not in Boston or New York, the fact is that someone else has managed to do it.

Tags: J.P.+Ricciardi, J.p.Ricciardi

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