Jays Throw in the Towel, Fans Are Pissed, Confused

I'll be the first to admit that I've been pissing on fires all season-- though mostly in April and May, when the it was retarded-- whenever anybody has suggested that the Jays season was over. So maybe it will sound strange for me to say this, knowing that at the time I would have said, "Sure, they could still possibly turn it around," but why the fuck has Dustin McGowan been pitching with a sore shoulder? What fucking universe does that make sense in, except one where people are mortgaging a guy's future to save their jobs?

OK, that's probably way too cynical. And yes, I'm always the first to jump to the defense of the Jays' front office when people make ridiculous suggestions that they're rushing guys back and flagrantly ignoring medical advice. So maybe I'm just being a hysterical asshole here, but it really does strike me as very odd and pointless that through his last few starts, anyone would have allowed McGowan to pitch hurt-- assuming he even told anyone about it.

Maybe I'm way over the line here, but it's not like nobody saw an injury coming. Back in February SI's Tom Verducci wrote that "the unofficial industry standard is that no young pitcher should throw more than 30 more innings than he did the previous season," as he included McGowan on a list of seven young pitchers who could be injury risks.

His reasoning? "The Jays pushed McGowan to 191 2/3 innings last year, a leap of 80 1/3 innings from 2006, when he pitched out of the bullpen"-- though he did qualify that by saying that the risk was diminished because McGowan was older and had more innings under his belt than the others on his list.

Still, I don't know, maybe a little more caution could have been exercised? I guess that's really easy to say now, as we cross our fingers for his MRI.

It's Over, It's Over, It's Oooover. . . IT'S OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-VER!!!
So, Ricciardi and Gaston pretty much threw in the towel last night. OK. Cool, let's do it. Sounds like Snider, Cecil and Arencibia might come up in September. Nice! Burnett, Zaun, Stairs and Eckstein will probably (hopefully?) be gone in a month. Super! That's really all I have to say about it. Except, well... not really sure why Ricciardi should be the guy deciding who the Jays are getting back in whatever deals they make-- but maybe he really isn't.

And, you know, as shitty as it is that the Jays are out of it, it's almost refreshing that, for the first time in years, there's no ambiguity as to whether the Jays are buyers or sellers. JP obviously didn't learn from Billy Beane-- who just traded his best pitcher, despite being 4 games out of the Wild Card-- how to figure out when the time is right to throw in the towel. How many times has Ricciardi held firm that he team could make a run at a playoff berth, when they really should have known better.

Of course, I guess I've always felt that standing pat at those times had more to do with the Rogers suits than Ricciardi-- or more correctly, JP's understanding that it was in his own interest not to deflate the fanbase by raising the white flag. Even the failure to trade Vernon Wells-- which, in hindsight, probably would have drastically improved the Jays' fortunes-- likely had as much to do with Godfrey as it did JP.

So... ? I don't know.

Smokin' Poll
Like any number of other outlets, the Globe and Mail runs a daily poll on their GlobeSports.com website, which allows visitors to the site to weigh in on whatever happens to be going on that day in the world of sports. Also like all these other outlets, the Globe's polls are almost always pointless and boring.

The past couple of days, however, we seem to have an exception, as they asked: "Does Jays GM JP Ricciardi have the franchise moving in the right direction?" And as of 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, through over 600 votes, eighty-eight percent of the respondents said No.

Holy shit! Sure, it's not a scientific poll, and I know it's a really small sample size, and that this ought to be seriously fucking obvious, but, uh... but people are fed up.

Honestly, though, it still surprised me how low his approval was-- did the Gord Ash era ever get so bad?-- mostly because, well... as much as I'm ready as anyone to flush this front office for the sake of a new perspective, it's actually pretty hard to argue that this team isn't moving in the right direction. They're just kind of not doing it fast enough.

No, seriously.

The way the Jays have setup both their movable parts and the ones they're locked into makes sense.

No, seriously.

True, the Wells contract looks awful. And, OK... the Rios contract looks like it could quickly go south too, if Alex doesn't get his head out of his ass. But Wells is still a valuable player-- if not as valuable as his salary might indicate-- and Rios can't possibly be this bad, can he? And, while that's not much for a fan to hang his hat on, I don't have a problem thinking of it the way Alex Anthopoulos put it when he was on the Fan 590's Bullpen earlier in the week. His spin on it was that, even though a gigantic chunk of the budget is heading for Vernon's pocket in the coming years, the Jays have guys like Lind, Snider, Arencibia, Cecil and Purcey who should be cheaply occupying roster spots in the majors sooner than later-- along with pitchers like Marcum, McGowan, Litsch, League, Accardo, Janssen, Wolfe, etc., who are already there and under control for a long time.

Kind of a best case scenario, I know, but as much as people bemoan the farm system, and as much as they think that this team is only built to "win now", that's just not true. Wells, Rios and Hill are the least movable hitters right now, because of their contracts, and they're also the ones you'd least like to move-- apart from some of the prospects. With the Thomas money and the Burnett money coming off the books next year, there really ought to be a creative way to plug the holes at shortstop and DH. No? (I think (hope?) they've got enough catching prospects to find a solution internally.)

Does this like a gigantic fucking contradiction compared to everything else I've said? Well... these are confusing times. These are confusing times...

Oh, and hey, Ken Rosenthal has reminded us (via MLB Trade Rumors) that AJ can block trades to 15 teams. Awesome.