Goat Gate - Day Two

JP Ricciardi has long realized that he should only speak when he has something to gain. Yes, he does go through the excruciatingly dull motions of taking calls from fans, but he has a rather obvious tendency to clam up-- or "forget" the question-- the rare few times he's asked to wade into a topic that he'd clearly rather not. It projects a great image that JP goes on the radio to do that, but there's hardly any substance to it. Of course, it's that idea of projecting a great image that's important, and that underlies so much of what this organization does; which is why I'm finding the way they've handled the Brantley situation more than a little puzzling.

It seems almost pathological how they've immediately taken the "no comment" route, typically treating the fan-base with disdain, trying to make this a non-issue by sticking their heads in the sand, saying nothing to nobody. But unlike, say, the Glaus situation, this is a time where JP would be better served by opening his mouth.

Throughout the season the Jays have been careful to insist that injuries are not an excuse for their problems. The Brantley dismissal could have easily been spun as an affirmation of that insistence, but instead they sit idly as Brantley questions the decision, calls it superficial, a "raw deal", and then explicitly blames injuries for costing him his job.

For a front office with such an established hard-on for the wonders of tightly controlled PR, to let him do that without retort just doesn't make any sense. And what really gets me is the fact that there are even more ways to explain Brantley's firing.

The hitting this season was pitiful, and maddeningly inconsistent. The team has scored three runs or fewer in sixty-eight games, and injuries or no, that's fucking budget. I think you can very reasonably say that, taking injuries into consideration, the hitting this year was still awful enough to warrant a change. You don't have to agree with that, but you could get away with saying it. You could also reasonably say: "We're sending a message to our players. Injuries or no, the way we hit this year was unacceptable."

A message like that would go a whole lot farther towards "strengthening the brand" than whatever the fuck it is they're doing-- which right now isn't so much keeping themselves out of the fray until the heat dies down as it is allowing Brantley to go around calling himself a scapegoat.

They're definitely not naive enough to misunderstand the presumption of guilt that comes to anybody going the "no comment" route-- and in this case, they may very well be guilty of scapegoating-- but these guys have already heard the accusations of there being a "culture of mediocrity" and a lack of accountability within the organization. Why not point to this firing to help dispel those criticisms? Why let Brantley's accusations make the organization look like a bunch of panicky idiots trying to save their own skins when it would hardly take much to diffuse them?

I like to think that I can usually figure out what the hell is going on with Ricciardi's front office, but this I seriously don't get...