Home » Sports » Baseball » Money rolls up hill, all else rolls down in case of ’09 Jays

Money rolls up hill, all else rolls down in case of ’09 Jays

If it looks like the Toronto Blue Jays are mailing in the final fifty-odd games of this disappointing season, well, that’s because they are.
Over the remainder of the season fans will have no choice but to watch as the Jays stumble to their worst record since 2004 when the team finished with 94 losses and just 67 wins.
Clearly, most of the team has already checked out and booked their tee times. The mental lapses have already begun as the Jays recently lost their title as the best fielding team in the American League to the Minnesota Twins, a perch they had held since the first game of the season.
But can you really blame the players? While they battled valiantly early on, this team was never truly equipped with the tools to take on the Red Sox’s and the Yankees’ of the league.
They were never meant to contend this year or next, no matter what anyone in the organization said. That’s because Rogers Communications, the sole owner of the hapless Jays, are gearing up to sell the team.
Frankly, over the years this ball club seems to have become somewhat of a nuisance to those in charge.
Take the general manager, who is finishing his eighth term — and eighth year of his five-year plan — by clearing salary and speaking more as an economist than a G.M.
Of course J.P. Ricciardi has always been, first and foremost, working on behalf of the penny-pinchers at Rogers and not the playoff-hungry fans, which feed their coffers.
However, waiving Alex Rios to the Chicago White Sox for zero compensation and justifying the move by saying “cash is king” is not exactly the type of action and stirring rhetoric that makes any baseball fan believe you’re chasing a World Series. At least humour us.
Then there is the president and CEO Paul Beeston, who is about to enter the sophomore year of his second tour of duty with the club. His main objective when he took on the job last fall was to find a new, permanent president and CEO. No successor to Paul Godfrey has been found and, frankly, his supposedly “interim” replacement doesn’t seem to be bothered with searching for one.
Finally, the man who bought outright control of the Jays in 2001 is dead.
Ted Rogers loved this team and his willingness to commit tens of millions of dollars to the payroll led to four straight 80+ win seasons.
Since his death, however, the executives in charge of his eponymous company seem to have realized that an asset that lost $16 million last year is not an ideal property for a corporation’s bottom line.
Thus, the much-maligned Rios — and the $58.7 million left on his contract — was jettisoned to the White Sox, while the Jays also parted with third baseman Scott Rolen, saving the $11.6 million they would have owed him next year.
This coming after A.J. Burnett was allowed to walk away from the final two years of his contract last winter without any struggle from Blue Jays brass whatsoever.
Not to mention the fact the team’s franchise player, and arguably the best pitcher in baseball, Roy Halladay, was shopped around aggressively in the weeks prior to the July 31 trade deadline. Ricciardi has made it clear he will revisit trade talks for his ace during the winter — that is, if he still has a job.
A team that moves this much payroll for so little compensation can only be doing one of two things: freeing up space to make a run at big ticket free agents or clearing house in order to make the team more attractive to a potential buyer.
Only the most naïve of fans would think it’s anything but the latter.
Ricciardi and Beeston both said that while their hopes for 2009 were dim, they planned on taking a run at perennial American League East powerhouses Boston and New York in 2010.
With a healthy crop of young talent, a strong core of veterans entering their prime and perhaps a key free agent acquisition or two, the team was supposed to be primed to make a major playoff run.
Well, that was then and this is now.
Does a G.M. with a “cash is king” philosophy really seem like the type to go out and sign an impact player — hello Jason Bay — this off-season?
Without a committed president/CEO, G.M., and owner, there is no one within the organization with the stones to take the reigns and point this team in a direction that can exhume it from its current grave of mediocrity.
And the way things are going right now, it seems very likely that all three of those positions could be occupied by different forces come 2011. And truly, for Blue Jay fans, those three moves would be for the best.

Follow the Gazette on Facebook and Twitter.