The Other Fifteen

Sorry J.P., wearing shades and trying to look cool doesn't distract from the fact that you throw like a girl. Also, you are probably the worst Gm in baseball. Sorry, worst FORMER GM.

Two baseball GMs got fired today, J.P. Ricciardi of the Blue Jays and Kevin Towers of the Padres.  Ricciardi probably got fired for years of complete and utter incompetence, while Towers probably got let go due to how awful his team is with the exception of, literally, one lone bright spot.  Let’s go over the records of these to fellows so we can see how they meandered their way to unemployment.

We’ll start with Towers.  The Padres made consecutive playoff appearances in ‘05 and ‘06.  During that time, Towers made a killer trade with the Rangers for both Chris Young and aforementioned bright spot Adrian Gonzalez, who has since gone on to be one of the best players in baseball.  Since those seasons, however, he’s had a string of bad luck.  His ace, Jake Peavy, imploded with injuries and poor pitching when he was healthy, and was traded for close to nothing to the White Sox as a money saving move.  The same goes for former rising star Kalil Greene, who was given away after his potential failed to show up.  A major mistake Towers made this past year was re-signing woman-hitter Brian Giles for $9 million.  This is despite cheaper and much more productive options for right field who also don’t hit women.  But from what I can tell, most of the Padres failures stem from the fact that their owners are going through a nasty divorce and need to save money in the short term and eventually sell the team in order to be able to split their assets 50/50.  But you can’t blame your team’s failures on, “sorry, it’s not working out between me and the wife,” so instead you fire someone to shift the blame.  But as far as I can tell, Towers didn’t do a bad job with what little he was given.

Now, on to J.P. Ricciardi.  He was the number three guy in the Oakland A’s staff in the early part of the decade behind Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, respectively.  The Jays thought they could use some of Beane’s “Moneyball” magic to compete with the large payrolls of the Yankees and Red Sox in their division.  However, Ricciardi showed absolutely ZERO understanding of how to get lots of production for little money, as he made two of the worst signings I’ve ever seen.  The first was giving Vernon Wells the SIXTH RICHEST contract in the history of baseball back in 2006.  Now, I realize that Vernon Wells had two very productive seasons prior to that signing, but not historic years.  So why would he get a historic contract?  Well, Ricciardi decided that those two good seasons were a trend that meant that he would continue to put up better numbers every year until he was one of the greatest all-around players ever.  What happened instead?  Wells has been absolutely TERRIBLE in the three seasons since.  He’s not even the 6th best center fielder in the AL, and might not even be the 6th best player on his own team.  Way to base your team on only the absolute best possible scenario, J.P.  As if that contract didn’t already handicap them enough, Ricciardi also signed Alex Rios to a HUGE contract based purely on overinflated projections of future production.  How did that one turn out?  Rios has been so bad that the Jays had to give him away for free to anyone who would have him.  He was also ranked as the worst player in baseball today by Jason Stark.  Nice one, J.P.  Way to use your team’s limited resources wisely.

And though the Jays have a couple young stars that should be the center of their team in 2B Aaron Hill and OF Adam Lind, it won’t be enough to compete in the AL East.  And the only chance he had to add multiple pieces for the future, by trading ace Roy Halladay at the deadline, he completely botched by asking for two much and overestimating the market and the number of teams willing to part with enough to bring Halladay in.  His reasoning was that Halladay could lead a healthy pitching staff next year and they would be able to compete again, but he’s delirious still.  Even with their injured starters returning they wouldn’t be able to compete with the Sox and Yanks.  In the end, Ricciardi spent a ton of money and didn’t make his team better in any way, but did manage to saddle them with a few completely indefensible and crippling contracts from which it will take years to recover.