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Originally Posted by Ziggy Lidstrom
Moon, there is so much wrong with what you have said. first the contradictory comparative analysis you offer. the Jays are not, contrary to the early part of post, competitive with the Yanks and Sox. Those two are teams like St Lou, LA(before the divorce), and the LAA to a degree, in that they are always able to spend on their farm systems and land big time free agents. We have a competitive budget for a team, but all those teams have or had comparable budgets to the jays, but those teams all spend a lot on their farm teams. This was the first year the jays have had this much to spend on the draft and international talent in a long time. They have had to go overslot on numerous deals. the dickie thon bonus is first round money for a guy drafted in the sixth round. Under JP's reign he never saw the value in a strategy like that. That is the other issue I have with your post. Trying to criticize so, seemingly, vehemently about JP's shortcomings but fail to notice this.
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The Jays should easily be able to out spend a team like the Cardinals.
Sure they aren't Boston or New York but there is no reason they can't spend as much as the top 5 other teams in the majors considering the market size.
Nothing was stopping the Jays from spending money on their farm system but the Jays.
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Also, Ryan wasn't a terrible deal. That kind of proves your intentions. He was an all star closer his first season. You can't predict injury or regression like with hill and lind, so it kind relates to what Gozer said, where he stated it in a more succinct fashion. And choosing to compete as you say, is kinda what AA is doing, so perhaps you be less caustic of him than jp since you have similar ideas.
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It was a bad deal because outside of a few guys for the most part closers have a. fallen off and b. been easy enough to replace with cheap guys. Much better to spend that money on areas that are hard to fill then on a closer whether Ryan is healthy or not.
Also not sure how I have been "caustic" towards JP.
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And the Division excuse is not garbage. The only reason the NL has a division with 4 50 win teams is because the NL is generally weaker and all those teams beat up on basement dwellers like the dbacks and the pirates. Our cellar dwellars are the indians who sweep us after four games and the orioles can surprise. So the jays are in tough with 3 teams superior to them.
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The Jays have finished behind teams in the Central and West routinely over the last couple of years so just moving divisions is not getting them into the play-offs.
The fact the Indians swept the Jays says more about the Jays then the quality of the cellar dwellers.