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I am a Blue Jays fan but this is utterly ridiculous. We have now given away a player for nothing - where we could have easily attained some assets in return. This move is absurd and clearly was probably not just the doing of J.P. Rios has struggled and compacted with Wells' contract does create some problems, but no team SERIOUS about contending would place a struggling young bat on waivers simply because he is due to take a decent pay raise for the years to come. This team is an absolute joke of a franchise and I am embarrassed as an individual who has bought tickets and merchandise supporting this team.

Considering we have to compete with Boston, New York and for the next several years the Rays - we have some serious problems. And being honest, Baltimore is not that far back behind us. Romero and Cecil this year have shown promise but this team is turning into an epic disaster and is a team that clearly does not want to dish out money to win. I feel especially bad for a guy like Roy Halladay who will probably walk at the end of his deal without us receiving anything but compensatory draft picks.

Ironic this has all come to fruition on the passing week after we celebrated our back to back world series wins. Rogers has pretty much closed the door on us completing the feat again for anytime in the near future.

no.

Yeah...no. I'm too big a baseball fan and a Toronto sports fan in general to boycott any of our teams.

The only circumstance where I'd willingly force myself to not watch or support a Toronto team would be if management intentionally assembled a team of one specific race. Otherwise...I don't see myself living without Toronto sports, regardless of how sh*tty or how poorly run our teams may be.

Nope. I can count ten teams whose fans have it worse or have traditionally had it worse.

I found myself watching the game tonight and enjoying it. Loved how Frasor shut down the Yanks in the 9th. I'd actually rather have a $70 million ball club with the Linds and Hills and hopefully Snider, Romero, Cecil and other young players who care/hustle/try than watch Rios bat 7th and deliver such awful value for a $100 million team. I'm the opposite of the OP. I actually like this young core better, and while I'm not likely to spend more on the team, I'm not going to cut back my viewing either.

Not gonna happen man, I'm too much of a die-hard to turn my back on the Jays. Beside's I'm not as angry as most of you guys regarding the Alex Rios loss

You must be higher than me if you think that if there was something to get in return for him. Common sense tells me that he would have been traded a week ago if someone was willing to take him, or 2 months ago or last year.

It's baseball, so I'll never be able to not watch. But I hate this ownership...with a passion.

Fans have been half boycotting this team for over a decade now. It's why we're a small market team.

i like how the OP blames the owners.

you should probably blame baseball. its put itself in this position where only the rich can compete along with one annually-rotating dark horse that has a low payroll and lots of young talent. the baseball annual firesale and offseason free agency orgy really make it tough for me to follow baseball. each year, i care less because the financial unreality makes it tough for me to like a team.

basketball has a really cool concept - a salary cap and a tax. when you trade a player, you need strategy (Fruitman!!) to make the numbers work. in baseball, you just trade talent for prospects. so 80% of the teams are treadmill teams. very boring, very frustrating to follow. even the rich NFL has a better cap system.

so don't blame Rogers for ruining this team. a $70 million dollar payroll doesn't even make you competitive nowadays. increasing the payroll, as we did this year, last year, etc, doesn't bring fans.

you need luck and some timely spending to keep up with the Sox and Yankees. until we have that bumper crop of players - still a few years away - there is no reason to spend close to $100 million on a payroll, especially when there will be zero return for the owners

We could not have attained another player, because then the White Sox would have likely not wanted Rios. They knew we didn't want to deal with his contract, especially with Wells locked up long term as well; one of them had to go.

JP has a great eye for talent, no doubt; he's a master at drafting. We've had solid records the last few years.

For all the people who think the Jays suck, we would have been in the playoffs in other divisions, that's to being stuck with the Red Sox and Yankees in the same division. We can't compete with such high pay roll teams and expect to dominate. TB has become very formidable to boot.

Anatomize wrote:JP has a great eye for talent, no doubt; he's a master at drafting. We've had solid records the last few years.

For all the people who think the Jays suck, we would have been in the playoffs in other divisions, that's to being stuck with the Red Sox and Yankees in the same division. We can't compete with such high pay roll teams and expect to dominate. TB has become very formidable to boot.

i wish people would stop blaming the fact that we are in the AL East.

Note: right now, if we were in any other AL division, we would still be 4th there.

zilby wrote:

Anatomize wrote:JP has a great eye for talent, no doubt; he's a master at drafting. We've had solid records the last few years.

For all the people who think the Jays suck, we would have been in the playoffs in other divisions, that's to being stuck with the Red Sox and Yankees in the same division. We can't compete with such high pay roll teams and expect to dominate. TB has become very formidable to boot.

i wish people would stop blaming the fact that we are in the AL East.

Note: right now, if we were in any other AL division, we would still be 4th there.

This season? yes

past few seasons? we would have been a solid team in some other divisions.

we had a few 10-12 games above .500 seasons, in the NL, these land you in the playoffs.

San Diego made the playoffs last few years with a sub .500 record.

How could you not blame the AL East? we're competing with the 1 and 2 best teams in baseball.

Bottom line is Jays need to cut payroll. Had the Jays worked out a trade with the White Sox after the claim was made, and we got a prospect that no one's heard of, and is not ranked, wouldn't you feel the same way? Probably.

JP is a puppet right now. He's been told he needs to trim payroll right now, that's what he's doing. If anything, blame Rogers ownership for this move, not JP. They're making room right now so the new off season GM can do his thing.