Rating AA's trades (long)

[Tyrone Slothrop]

One heck of a team? Isn't it time to take a little more of a jaundiced view that it was never as good as many of us thought?

It took a whole hell of a lot of bad luck for it to turn out this way. There was no reason to expect Johnson and Dickey to be this bad, as much as people like claiming they all could see it coming.

[Avenger]

Ultimately, it comes down to results

We were a bad team last year, and we're a bad team this year. The future through 2014 looks rather dim, seemingly dependent on Josh Johnson or Ricky Romero finding religion or Brandon Morrow giving us a full season of Good Brandon, a phase that usually last for a start or two.

Why results? He put together one heck of a team this year and nobody ended up doing as advertised.

When you are favored to win a WS before the season starts after finishing sub-.500 the year before; that is a good GM.

One heck of a team? Isn't it time to take a little more of a jaundiced view that it was never as good as many of us thought?

no? Its quite possible for baseball teams to over perform or under perform their talent by ~20% over the course of a season. Other than the Dickey trade which was not completely indefensible i really don't see where AA is at fault here, i mean there are people actually talking about firing him on this forum, i know one of them is a trolling lunatic but what's the excuse for the others?

Even the best laid out plans tend to go wrong and if you go back and look at the prognostications the smart people made they only talk about it in probabilistic terms. Nothing's a guarantee in Baseball and teh Jays case is hardly unique, there are atleast two other teams in Baseball that are wildly under performing preseason predictions, the Nats and the Angels. Many people thought that the Nats were the best team in Baseball and they're now 7 back of the wildcard.

[xAIRNESSx]

I can't think of any other team in recent memory that traded so many prospects in one off-season. It's kind of shocking to look at it now in hindsight. Obviously the ideal way to add players is through free agency, so why do the Jays gut their farm system? Is it because they haven't seen the playoffs in 20 years and/or the whole living in Canada plus taxes plus customs that makes it hard to attract players? Or did AA maybe just jump the gun?

I was happy to get the players we did, but even at the time I felt like we gave up a lot. Combine that with the season the Jays are having and the amount of salary they took on, things aren't looking the greatest.

I especially hated giving up Hech and Syndergaard. D'Arnaud too, but I was hoping JP would step up this year. Obviously that hasn't turned out well at all. Off the top of my head we probably gave up 6 major league players and it's going to suck seeing the ones that pan out.

[killkenny]

One heck of a team? Isn't it time to take a little more of a jaundiced view that it was never as good as many of us thought?

Your right, all of the trades were extremely controversial and Vegas had us finishing last. Everybody expected Dickey to go from a Cy Young season to #4 starter, Reyes to get hurt etc. etc. My bad.

As a GM I don't know what else you can do.

You don't evaluate executives on their effort – you evaluate them on their results. In a year's time, if this team is still a bottom feeder with a $100M+ payroll, AA will probably be fired, because that's just how the business is – it's a performance-based industry. "I don't know what else I can do" hasn't ever saved a GM's job, and it won't save Alex's, either, if the results aren't there – and nor should it. If you did everything right and you still can't get results, then what you did probably wasn't as right as you thought it was.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think AA should be fired this year – he should at least have a chance to see through year 2 of the 3-year plan, to see if the ship can be righted – but you can't claim that everything he did was the right move, if the results aren't there. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

[flatjacket1]

You don't evaluate executives on their effort – you evaluate them on their results. In a year's time, if this team is still a bottom feeder with a $100M+ payroll, AA will probably be fired, because that's just how the business is – it's a performance-based industry. "I don't know what else I can do" hasn't ever saved a GM's job, and it won't save Alex's, either, if the results aren't there – and nor should it. If you did everything right and you still can't get results, then what you did probably wasn't as right as you thought it was.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think AA should be fired this year – he should at least have a chance to see through year 2 of the 3-year plan, to see if the ship can be righted – but you can't claim that everything he did was the right move, if the results aren't there. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I know he should of done more but seriously?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I can't think of any other team in recent memory that traded so many prospects in one off-season. It's kind of shocking to look at it now in hindsight. Obviously the ideal way to add players is through free agency, so why do the Jays gut their farm system? Is it because they haven't seen the playoffs in 20 years and/or the whole living in Canada plus taxes plus customs that makes it hard to attract players? Or did AA maybe just jump the gun?

Because Free Agents don't want to pay high taxes/don't want to play on **** Skydome turf. Plus most free agents don't hit the market until they're past their prime, so that's pretty much the worst way to add players.