I'm going to be there tonight, and I plan on cheering for Dunn.  Is that cool?

It would be awesome if Dunn got a standing ovation, just as our way of saying "Hey JP it would be nice if you had an actual power hitter on this team."

Let me preface this by saying that I think JP probably has to go (and I'm only a recent convert to this idea).

But I think he's taking a bit too much heat over the whole Dunn thing.  Was it stupid?  Yes.  Was it ridiculous?  Yes.  Should it ever have been said in public?  No.

But the truth of the matter is, the guy was clearly preparing to fire 3 people, including a good friend, so let's just take his apology and cut him a bit of a break.

And in the same breath, I think it's time for him to go.

Also - a few people said that Cito wouldn't be the guy to manage and bring up Adam Lind.  What say you now?

from Griffin's column today:

And how about a chance to see future hall of famer Ken Griffey Jr. for the first time at the Rogers Centre? Now that's worth the price of admission.

Which makes me wonder if it was a different fellow named Griffey that used to play for Seattle. For the record, I remember this game well.

Heraclitus:

I was at that game as well. 

Griffey made an error in the first inning and you just knew he was going to make up for it somehow.

I believe his 3 HR performance that night gave him the record, at the time, for most HR in April.

In 1997 Griffey was widely considered the greatest threat to the single season HR mark and I remember standing each time he hit one that night and shouting out how many he needed to set the record.

which makes me wonder if it was a different fellow named Griffey that used to play for Seattle

Yeah, but that was Skydome, not the RC.  Totally different place...........

Yes, but corporate says the Rogers Centre is only a few years old, and huge upgrade on the previous stadium, Skydome (whatever happened to that quaint old stadium?). Technically, Griffey Jr. has never played in the Rogers Centre. Technically, neither did Robbie Alomar, Devon White, Joe Carter, etc.

A big ovation for Dunn would be great to hear, actually. It would show Toronto fans are actively engaged in the team, and have a sense of humour too...

I've been bandying about this idea with friends, but given this discussion in this thread, I think it is appropriate to air this idea :

The curse of the Rogers Centre.

The Jays will never make the playoffs in the Rogers Centre. Why? Because the baseball gods are angry that the corporate shills at Rogers changed the name from the throughly appropriate SkyDome. They got the thing at a discount, could they not maintain the history and have at least named it "Rogers SkyDome"? Nope. Now the gods are angry. We Jays fans, shall pay for their corporate hubris. Be afraid. Be very afraid. If a goat can cause a hundred year curse, how long of a curse can a huge concrete edifice produce?

A big ovation for Dunn would be great to hear, actually. It would show Toronto fans are actively engaged in the team, and have a sense of humour too...

And recognize that Dunn is a better offensive player than anyone in the home dugout.

Yeah, I agree, let's fire J.P Ricciardi!

I mean all he'd done is convince Halladay to sign two major extensions, sign a talented SP like Burnett at a ridiculous $11 million a year, blow money on an all-star closer in Ryan, trade in a hobbling Glaus for a slick fielding, all-star hitter in Rolen, sign Rios and Hill to long term deals, draft Litsch, Lind, Janssen and Marcum....

what a bum, huh?

Oh, and he had the nerve to go out and acquire Tallet, Frasor, Wolfe and Downs in low-key deals!!?

Worst GM ever!

re: Lexomatic - Wrigley Field?

"I mean all he'd done is convince Halladay to sign two major extensions, sign a talented SP like Burnett at a ridiculous $11 million a year, blow money on an all-star closer in Ryan, trade in a hobbling Glaus for a slick fielding, all-star hitter in Rolen, sign Rios and Hill to long term deals, draft Litsch, Lind, Janssen and Marcum....

what a bum, huh?"

Is that you J.P.? Well, if all you do is list positive achievements (and make negative achievements into positives) there probably won't be a bad GM in baseball.

"Worst GM ever!"

Not the worst, but not nearly good enough.

 

sign Rios and Hill to long term deals

I'm actually a fan of JP, but I think those two deals were bad contracts that were needlessly signed.  There is no need to sign someone who is already under your control unless you get major savings beyond what would be expected from arbitration alone.  I remain unconvinced he achieved such savings.

Jevant, you can add the fact that JP is the only GM to do anything like appearing on a talk show on a weekly basis. He has done it for several years now and any time you appear that frequently, you're bound to say something stupid.

I'm excited about the Reds coming to town. They have a sweet group of hitters in Bruce, Phillips, Votto, Griffey Jr. and Dunn. Can you imagine that lineup with Hamilton too? You think they'd give us one? I'm just asking for one.

By the way, before you complain about the Jays underachieving, look at teams like the Braves and Reds who are loaded with talent and they're both under .500 teams. The Mets, Indians, and even the D-Backs have also been disappointing so far considering their talent.

There is no need to sign someone who is already under your control unless you get major savings beyond what would be expected from arbitration alone.

No kidding.  After witnessing the results of the Hinske contract, you'd think he'd be a little less gung ho about locking up guys who are already controlled long-term and haven't yet proven themselves to be worth those numbers.  It's almost as if Ricciardi can't believe any sample of a player's numbers could be a fluke, unless it's bad (ie. this year's hitting, especially with RISP.)

Dunn would fit right in in Toronto: He's hitting .200 with RISP.

He's a good hitter, but Toronto fans would absolutely hate him if he wore a Blue Jays uniform.

Sorry S P I refuse to give in the argument of "so what if we're underachieving, look at all the other teams that are underachieving too!"

At the end of the day JP has been here for 7 years and we have yet to really be in contention for a playoff spot in September, let alone obtain one of those spots.

Sports is a fickle business, it's all about winning and we simply have not done enough of that  under JP.  The way I see it is that he's had more than enough chances to get it done and hasn't.  It's time to see if another path would allow us to be more successful.

My point was just that sometimes we as fans are numb to other team's situations; we naturally only care about our team. Truth is that baseball is extremely unfair, more than any other sport. True, JP has had 7 chances to make the playoffs and hasn't. If you think he deserves to go based on that alone, that's fine with me. But personally I'd rather be fair and consider only what HE can control and that is the team's structure. He has built at least 3 teams that were good enough to make the playoffs (2003, 2006, 2008), and in another division, maybe even more.

He's hitting .200 with RISP.

Luckily for him he can drive in runs when there aren't RISP.

He has built at least 3 teams that were good enough to make the playoffs (2003, 2006, 2008), and in another division, maybe even more

But they didn't make the playoffs.

Are all the people currently calling for JP's scalp really willing to be patient for another 5-7 years while a new GM assembles a new team (this one would be blown up real good), with new coaches and new manager, and many new players?  Or are you expecting instant turnaround?  Even Keith Law suggests that JP's job when he arrived was to cut costs, everywhere he could.  He had no chance, nor even a mandate, to get to the playoffs at the start of his tenure.  So please, stop with the “he's had seven years...” kvetching.  I'm not particularly a JP fan (his people skills especially are pretty fragile); but at least try to put things into some perspective, rather than yelling “fire him!” every other day.   I started out as a Cubs fan:  the last time they even got to the WS was long before most of you were born,  63 years ago.   Assembling a team isn't as easy as making fantasy-league conference calls.

I'm right with Dewey on this one.  And if Rogers decides that there be a better image on the face of his franchise, then I hope it's an internal one.  I think organizational stability is important right now and competant people are already in place to take the reigns, should that be necessary.

But they didn't make the playoffs.

Aaahhh! Did you read my post? I said a GM should only be judged on what kind of team he has built. The rest is up to the players to come through. That's the only fair way to judge a GM, in my opinion. Anything else is 20/20 hindsight and coulda woulda shoulda. On Opening Day 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008, we had teams that were good enough to make playoff pushes.  However, four of the six years, Pythagoras said the team should've won at least 86 games and only did so twice. So who's to blame for that, the GM or the players?

So who's to blame for that, the GM or the players?

As the sample size gets bigger you can have more confidence in blaming or crediting the GM since the variability of factors beyond his control will tend to even out. So we can't judge a GM performance based on just 2003 (say), but maybe if the trend continues, we can gain more confidence in drawing conclusions.

Battle of the Adams! Round One: Lind > Dunn!
What an inning!

Apparently the soap opera continues: Dunn has accused JP of lying about apologizing to him. The plot thickens...

http://toronto.bluejays.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20080624&content_id=2994063&vkey=news_tor&fext=.jsp&c_id=tor

re: mathesond... i have no idea
As for this game.. i would like to take credit for the offensive explosion. it's obvious my presence is what was lacking. I had sweet seats 8 rows back of 3b and fortunately did not need to improvise a glove. Sadly I did not get to see as much Rolen fielding as I had hoped, but i'll take this result any day. The weird thing about Burnett's pitching line is that he never looked great until his last couple of innings when he got 4 of his 7 k. Still a couple of bad DPs and weak ground outs (i'm looking at you Adam GO-1 Lind) ruined a chance at a club record # of hits and a shot at 20+ runs.

Hopefully a few of you gents and lasses went to BP to behold the raw power that is Adam Dunn.  I've seen a few people hit Windows Resaurant during Batting Practice, sure, maybe one guy a series does it.  However, i haven't seen someone hit a 65mph pitch that hard off Windows.  When someone throws you a high 90s heater its pretty easy to hit 'er hard, assuming you make contact.  But watching Dunn belt those BP balls was a sight to behold. Instead of hassling Edison Volquez for an autograph, i stopped to watch him crush the ball.  Vladdy's great to watch in BP, so is Ichiro -- but gosh darnit Adam Dunn appears to be the best.  Unless you want to watch someone exhibit line drive skills then, wow, does Mr. Jay Bruce have some ability.  He belted one, after another, after another into the gaps with a whole lotta umphh.

In other news, Griffey belted far too many balls straight into the dirt.

Apparently the soap opera continues: Dunn has accused JP of lying about apologizing to him. The plot thickens...

You really have to feel for JP here. First, because he's upset about having to fire his manager friend, his guard goes down and he gratuitously trashes another team's player. Then, right after he tells reporters that he's spoken personally to Adam Dunn, it turns out that it was a 'mystery caller', who not only got his telephone number and set up this prank, but also knew that he would tell reporters about the call, all to make it look like Ricciardi has been caught in a foolish and degrading lie. I'm willing to give JP the benefit of the doubt here. After all, if Hillary Clinton could 'misremember' arriving at an airport in Bosnia under sniper fire with her young daughter, and being inexplicably allowed by armed forces personnel to dodge bullets with her daughter on the tarmac, surely there is a prank telephone caller out there who goes around calling GM's on their cellphones to say he's Adam Dunn, in order to set up an intricate hoax to make the GM look like a childish liar. I'm sure that's something that happens more than we think.

I'm pretty sure the folks at Rogers Communications will see it that way too. I doubt they're much worried about the organization being publicly represented and embarrassed by someone who in the space of a week has been called out as 'a clown' and now a liar. Especially with the guy's solid track record of results. No way they're wondering whether to pull the plug now or to wait until the season ends.

I'm not entirely clear what Ricciardi was apologizing for (not why he apologized, but for what specifically). Having revealed true feelings about another team's player that could be hurtful if made public? Or having made remarks which he didn't truly believe?

The latter seems entirely implausible, no matter how much stress he was under. So, I have to believe it's the former. And if so, how does a phone call go? "Adam, I don't think much of your abilities or your devotion to your profession. I apologize for saying so publically."

As for the phone calls back and forth and who really made them, what's more likely? The Adam Dunn call never happened, by either Dunn or an impostor? Adam Dunn made the call and then lied about it? An impostor made the call? I'm thinking that occam's razor has to rule the day here. The simplest, least complicated and least conspiratorial answer seems the easiest to believe. Of course, we may never know the truth.

And to make it even harder to figure out, JP for reasons unknown, deleted the telephone number 'from his cellphone', including it appears the logs. The dastardly 'mystery caller' no doubt knew that JP, having received a call from Adam Dunn, would obviously delete the number not simply from the first record but would also go into the logs to delete it. And poor JP gets made to look like a silly liar because of this. You just have to hope that fans will see how easily this set of circumstances could happen, especially to someone as 'unlucky' as JP, and don't leap to the conclusion that it's a silly, bare-faced lie.

I'm beginning to suspect that it was someone from the baseball media who did this. We know that there's a lot of 'bias' against JP out there, with the conspirators running from the Globe and Sun, through rotoworld, Baseball Prospectus and Keith Law over at ESPN. I'm guessing this may be part of a media plot to exploit JP's 'bad luck'. My other thought is Richard Nixon's secretary. Remember she 'inadvertently' erased 18 minutes of White House tapes just when Tricky Dicky and Bob Haldemand were discussing 'something' three days before the Watergate break-in. Maybe she erased that entry in JP's cellphone logs. Oh wait, Rosemary Wood is dead. Never mind.

Well there were witnesses to the call.  Unless you believe that a bright star like Alex Anthopolous would tie himself to a sinking ship.  Or perhaps JP set up the hoax call himself, knowing that witnesses would be present.

This whole ordeal is unbelievable.  Fortunately, privacy laws be damned, Rogers has the ability to get to the bottom of it.  We have the time and date of the call, Uncle Ted can figure out the rest.

(Or maybe, in the unlikeliest of twists to the story, it is discovered that JP is not a Rogers subscriber.)

I have to wonder why Ricciardi would lie about something that's so easily verifiable, and that reporters would almost certainly follow up. And while you can cite the BJ Ryan injury as precedent, that was different - if BJ's injury hadn't been as serious, no one ever would have found out about the lie.

My guess is that JP has been duped.

Which would make this one of the rarest of circumstances: JP told a lie!  See, it's not a lie if JP knows the truth ... but in this case, he didn't.

Geez what's next? J.P. gonna get caught telling fibs to the team about his tours in Vietnam?

My guess is that JP has been duped.

Sounds like that might be the case.

Sounds like that might be the case.

What on earth does that article prove? That someone with a webpage jokes that it might have been Howard Stern?
In my line of work, I get to cross paths with liars. The easiest ones to expose are the guys who have very unlikely stories ("e.g. some prankster somehow got his number, called his cellphone and identified themselves as Dunn"), coupled with the absence of any supporting objective evidence, mixed with credible explanations of how the supporting objective evidence 'disappeared' that are not credible (like inexplicably deleting the cell's call log, or at least that one call)

Some very smart people are liars and try to lie convincingly when their conscience is supposedly bound by oath. JP's concoction about the coincidentally deleted cell log of the alleged conversation, suggests he's of the more garden-variety type.

Finally, someone says there were 'witnesses' to the alleged conversation. According to who? Ricciardi? Alleging the presence of witnesses (family members and subordinates are usually favorites) evidences nothing. What I do hear instead, is a deafening silence from the Asst. GM who was allegedly present for the alleged conversation.

Jeff Blair's read on it says "prank", too:

I don't believe Ricciardi is lying, because there's no percentage in it. He's called Reds G.M. Walt Jocketty. He's asked for Dunn's cell phone and he's apologized profusely and publicly. Dunn, I don't know. But he sure comes across as someone tired of it. Ricciardi's right: if it's a prank, it's some kind of prank. Reminds me of the kind of thing that used to happen almost daily on some of Montreal's French-language morning radio shows.

I'm not saying for sure it's not a prank, but wouldn't a more typical prank have involved an Adam Dunn impostor feigning outrage at Ricciardi's comments rather than accepting his apology? Where's the prank value in that?

I have really enjoyed this...thanks all, especially DeanCBC

It's simple really: JP says he talked to Adam but he doesn't know if Adam accepted his apology. I guess JP left a voice mail.

Dunn says, "If he said he talked to me, it's a lie." Oh, he must  have talked to Adam's machine. Of course, they're both...something. What confection.

 

"The men later met outside the booth but Brennaman was properly outraged and Malone, to his credit, was deeply embarrassed.
So are we at the bottom of all this? Ricciardi says he deleted the incoming number from his cell phone, but that he noticed the area code was something like 519. Thing is, that's a southwestern Ontario number and with the Reds in Yankee Stadium ...."

It wasn't me.. I swear!  Though I kind of wish it was....

Us Londoners have way too much free time.

The prank value lies in what ended up happening: Ricciardi says he apologized, Dunn denies it, everyone assumes Ricciardi is lying. If you pretend to be Dunn and get offended, Ricciardi doesn't make the exchange public.

Admittedly it's more of a mean-spirited "screw you" thing than a "ha ha" sort of joke. Does it make sense? I don't know. But lying about talking to Dunn doesn't make sense, either. If Ricciardi wanted to get out of it, it'd be easier to say he tried, but was unable to get ahold of Dunn. It's much harder to verify.

OK.  I think I'm losing it.  A certain Jays' blogger thinks that Rios/Lind/Zaun for Crawford/Upton is "close"  (a fair deal)  I think it's laughably lopsided and the Rays wouldn't consider it even for a millisecond..

Which opinion is closer to reality?

PS   What did I ever do to upset somebody in a previous lifetime that resulted in me having to listen to Rod Black discuss baseball and baseball strategy?

Which opinion is closer to reality?

Oh, maybe a millisecond. Just long enough to be sure they heard it correctly. Then, you know, comes the giggling. And then the laughter. And then the hysteria, and the falling on the floor and rolling around.

Which opinion is closer to reality?

Oh, maybe a millisecond. Just long enough to be sure they heard it correctly. Then, you know, comes the giggling. And then the laughter. And then the hysteria, and the falling on the floor and rolling around.

I dunno. was there a period of time ... say 2 years ago when Rios was hitting and Lind was still considered a prospect and maybe Upton was looking like a bust... I mean if those things coincided, then maybe the blogger was confusing now with 2 years ago. Then there might be serious consideration. It still wouldn't ever happen if only for Crawford's amazing contract