Michael Bradley wrote:The Jays drafted well in the "good to very good" player category (Romero, Marcum, Cecil, Hill, Lind, etc). I wouldn't consider it a very good draft record under JP (I thought Ash drafted "very good"). However, where the team lacked was impact talent. I can't think of one consistent impact bat the team drafted outside of the respective 2009 seasons of Hill and Lind (and they both were average before and after that season....to date). Pitching-wise the Jays have done pretty well, just unlucky with injuries.
No disagreement on the lack of true star talent. However, while it's certainly possible to get stars for slot below the top five, it's definitely an uphill climb. Regardless of who made the decision to stick to slot (and I agree that everything I've heard has led me to believe it was Godfrey, in part because Bud's "you'll never get the All-Star Game!" saber-rattling hit him where it counted), that made it pretty bloody difficult. We whiffed on a couple good-to-very-good players, but there just weren't many stars taken in the first round of drafts that we passed without financial reason, and expecting any GM to find stars beyond that point is a huge ask.
In 2009, this is what BA said about the Jays system: "28. Blue Jays: Toronto would be No. 30 if not for last summer's Scott Rolen trade, which brought needed pitching talent from the Reds." I'm too lazy to look up where they ranked in other years, but I'd imagine it was in the 20's from 2005-2009.
That's true, but I think you are underselling how good the Rays were outside of the draft.
Upton, Young -> Garza, Niemann, Longoria, and Price were top five picks acquired by the Rays since 2002. That is two legit all-star/MVP/Cy calibre players plus some good players (Upton has underachieved a bit). It's not like the Rays were building the entire team of top 5 picks. As you said, they made smart bullpen decisions (which was one of JP's strong points towards the end of his tenure) and acquired good players for cheap. It wasn't all draft/luck related.
I wouldn't argue that it was all draft/luck. However, I think that those things were wholly necessary to get them over the top...subtract Longoria, Upton, Garza and Price and they are a very solid team, but probably peak with wins in the high 80s and fail to make the playoffs. As we did, really.
I think this was the major reason why he was never able to get over the hump. None of his moves, even his good ones, were franchise changing moves. He didn't have that Escobar or Morrow type trade where he got a high upside player for nothing. It was always "he turned a bad starter into a solid reliever" or "he turned minor league relievers into a decent everyday player". Those types of moves, while not bad, certainly won't be enough to win a division where the Yankees can sign CC/AJ/Tex in a span of two months.
Yeah, but that's again the product of the division; anywhere else in baseball, those moves would have made us a playoff team.
In the team's best seasons under JP, this was their wins rank:
2003: t-6th in AL, t-11th in MLB
2006: 7th in AL, 10th in MLB
2007: 7th in AL, t-14th in MLB
2008: 7th in AL, t-11th in MLB
Outside of those three seasons it was 78, 67, 80, and 75 wins.
I don't know, out of those seasons I only viewed the 2006 and 2008 teams as legit playoff calibre teams. I never got that sense in any other season.
Last year we were seventh in the majors in third-order wins. Two years previous we were (if memory serves, as it turns out that I can't look at previous years on BP, or can't figure out how) fifth. We'd been among the better teams a number of times, and if not for our division -- actually, that and a maddening tendency to underperform our run differential, an oddity on a club with excellent 'pens -- we'd have made the playoffs at least once, possibly as many as three times in JP's stead. Anywhere else, it wouldn't be considered a dominant team by any stretch, but certainly a very successful one.
What were your thoughts on the league set-up (two divisions, four playoff teams) prior to the Wild Card implementation? Because the Jays teams (2002-09) in that set-up probably finish 4th or 5th in the East every year. Back then you had to be elite to make the playoffs. Maybe I'm still using that criteria here. To me, being a playoff team should involve being elite. Sure I would not complain if the Jays were in the Central and beat the crap out of a bad division, but unfortunately we are not in that position.
On the old system: something close to ambivalence, owing to competing favourable/unfavourable thoughts. I find it invariably silly when a team makes the playoffs with a .500 record, but no less silly than the '93 Giants missing the playoffs with the second-best record in baseball (by a game, and six games clear of the third-best).
On oddity of that system vs. the one now: probably owes to the growth in payroll disparity (and possibly expansion to boot), but the AL always featured a tonne of mid-tier mediocrity. From 1983-1993, there wasn't a single season in which you had 3+ teams with 93 or more wins, as far as I can tell. By contrast,
every season from 2005-2010 featured 3+ teams that reached that threshold, and it hasn't been uncommon to see four or five in the same year. So I'm not sure that it required more elite play in many years, unless you got royally screwed, like the Giants. And as we've been to a less profound extent over the past half-decade.
JP would be a great AL Central GM, and I think that was his main problem.
He'd have been a very good AL Central, AL West, NL West, NL Central, and probably NL East GM. And therein lies the problem: we're playing an entirely different game than at least two-thirds of the teams in the league.
That is where we disagree. I think if the Jays were a highly ranked farm system and had at least one 90-win season during that time then I'd sway to your side, but we weren't even close. A good team some years, a playoff team in the Central or NL some years, but ultimately not close to the level it takes to win the East. That is why I don't like the division argument. It seems like an easy excuse to justify bad decisions.
The paradox is that our farm system did suck under JP, but it produced a lot of above-average major leaguers. Some top-tier guys would have gone a long way, but we neither sucked enough nor spent enough to make it a reality.
All in all, while I think that we were a good and competitive team under JP, I'm certainly more on-board with AA's philosophy. But that's largely due to the division: there's a good chance that AA does all the right things and this still goes down in flames to a far greater extent than any Jays team since Ash happened. Conversely, there's also a chance that everything comes together and we actually see the playoffs.
Call him the Three True Outcomes General Manager: either he'll hit a home run, or he'll strike out...in which case he'll walk.
