Two cornerstones of the Blue Jays franchise, Cito Gaston and Roy Halladay, are likely leaving after 2010. And who can blame them?
2010 will prove to be a watershed year in the history of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Roy Halladay's contract runs out after that season and the likelihood of him signing on again is dwindling by the day with Gold Glove third basemen and All-Star right fielders being sent to other cities in what appears to be a salary dump... Sorry, to give the franchise more "financial flexibility". It will also be the final year, contractually, for Lyle Overbay, Scott Downs and Jason Frasor. And it will also be their final year of paying B.J. Ryan to sit at home and yell at kids to stay off his lawn.
But, as we found out during his pre-game chin-wag with the media on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, 2010 will likely be the final season for manager Cito Gaston in a Major League uniform with his current contract also running out. He'll be 66 after next season and is more than within his right to want to spend more time on the golf course and with his grandchildren. I'm almost two decades younger and those are two things that I wish I could do more of so I know where he's coming from.
Cito's stealth-like return as Blue Jays bench boss in June of 2009 brought a measure of dignity back to the job after a trio of men - Buck Martinez, Carlos Tosca and John Gibbons - all had their turn despite having never managed in the Majors before. And the team responded to Gaston, going 51-37 the rest of the way in 2008 and 27-14 over the first 41 games of '09. It had Blue Jays fans dreaming of a return to the post-season for the first time in 16 years. But injuries to the pitching, an annual rite, coupled with a serious drop in offensive production from Vernon Wells and Alex Rios saw the team moonwalk back through the division and the team now seems to be cemented in 4th place.
Quite frankly, why would Cito want to stick around and be the custodian of a rebuild? The franchise is still looking for a President and CEO to take over from Paul Beeston, general manager J.P. Ricciardi, whose contract also runs out after 2010, is on thin ice and unlikely to keep his job after the curtain comes down on this season, and ownership, with all the cost-cutting, may be sowing the seeds to sell the team. And apathy from the ticket-buying public is currently at unprecedented levels.
For all the hoopla of the Back2Back weekend to celebrate and reminisce about the Blue Jays World Series titles in 1992 and 1993, the play of the current team on the Friday probably cost them a lot at the box office. My guess would be that a significant chunk of the 30,795 that showed up to fete the returning heroes were at their first game of the season. When the Jays jumped out to a 3-0 lead, two of the runs scoring on back-to-back home runs by the under-achieving Wells and Rios, there was the type of positive electricity flowing through the Rogers Centre that hadn't been felt in a couple of months. And the fact that they were finally wearing their old home uniforms and finally looking like the Blue Jays again, it was all good. But then they were outscored 7-2 from the 6th inning on, the grumbling and booing returned.
In the end, a lot of the first-time fans were turned off by what they saw and unlikely to come back again this season.
In the end, I ask the question once again: Why would Cito and 'Doc' want to sign on for more duty when their current deals expire? The answer to me is quite obvious.
WHAT TOOK HIM SO LONG
I really have to question why it took so long for Randy Ruiz to finally make his way to Toronto. On a team devoid of power hitters, using a .236 hitter with just 27 RBI into the second week of August to hit clean-up on some days, and a team that just can't seem to hit with runners in scoring position, they had Ruiz, at 31 not exactly a prospect and labelled a career minor leaguer, plodding away at AAA, hitting .320 with 43 doubles, 25 HR and 106 RBI and a mind-boggling .365 with runners in scoring position. In the meantime, the likes of Russ Adams and David Dellucci were combining to hit .111 with just one extra-base hits and two RBI over 16 wheel-spinning games. Now, I realize that hindsight is 20-20 and if Ruiz hadn't hit two home runs in his first two games with the Jays I may not be writing this. But the fact remains that someone with the offensive numbers that Ruiz was putting up should have received a call a couple of months ago to help prop up a flagging offence. Now, if they will just call-up Travis Snider, who is finally feeling healthy and now looking like the slugger that we all believed he'd be (.325, 13 HR, 37 RBI in 45 games at AAA), then I have no doubt that the team hitting will get a serious boost. But the question remains, who was making the call to keep Ruiz down?
