Scott Carson

Stats man Scott Carson is now in his 17th season as "third man in the booth" during Blue Jays telecasts.

The firing of J.P. Ricciardi on the final weekend of the 2009 season put an exclamation point on eight years of a franchise spinning its' wheels.

In the decade that was, the Jays freefall continued but things are always darkest before the dawn.

When the clock ticked into the year 2000, and the panic was quelled when nothing of significance went down as 'Y2K' dawned, Gord Ash was the Toronto Blue Jays general manager, Jim Fregosi the field manager and the team was in the midst of six consecutive third-place finishes.

Seems like a lot longer than 10 years ago, doesn't it?

After being one of the model franchises from 1985 through 1993, the Blue Jays began a slow decline into baseball's second division. That was never more apparent in the first decade of the new millennium. From the first pitch of the 2000 season through the final pitch in 2009, the Blue Jays overall record was an uninspiring 805-814, tied for 18th overall in MLB with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The win total was a full 160 fewer than the front-running New York Yankees and, on an annual average, they finished 16 games behind the A.L. East leaders. In a nutshell, the Blue Jays have been a below-average team for the decade. And the deepthinkers wonder why the average attendance at the Rogers Centre has fallen to depths that haven't been seen in these parts since the early expansion years.

What happened to this once-proud franchise could spark a long, heated debate among even the most ardent Blue Jays fans. It could be the fact that over the last 10 years the general managers - Ash and J.P. Ricciardi - were miscast as leaders of the team and basically in over their heads. Ash had been a solid assistant during the final years of Pat Gillick's successful run, but when he was given the keys to the executive office the team started to wobble. But the majority of the blame for the fall of the Blue Jays has to land at the feet of Ricciardi.

Arriving in November of 2001 to much fanfare, Ricciardi was cast as a new-age G.M., relying less on scouting and more on statistical analysis to rebuild the Blue Jays. He had come over as a disciple of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, whose revolutionary ideas of competing on a small-market budget were the basis of his 2003 book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. The book created great debate between the old-school scouting community and the new school 'statheads'.

Before he could set his new vision in place, Ricciardi's first order of business was to slash and burn the payroll, which had become decidedly bloated in the final years of the Ash regime. Solid Major Leaguers were sent on their way with little of any substance coming back in return. Over his first four seasons, Ricciardi pared down the payroll from $76.9 million in 2002 to $45.7 million in 2005. Mission accomplished from a financial standpoint, but on the field, the team was now firmly entrenched in third place and never a threat to make the post-season.

But while Ricciardi had the chops to cut payroll, he certainly didn't show a lot of patience when it came to the manager. Under his watch, the Blue Jays went through four managers in eight seasons. When you consider that in the first 21 years of the franchise they went through just five managers, it sure seemed that field manager was the scapegoat for Ricciardi's failure to bring the team back to respectability.

The firing of Ricciardi on the final weekend of the 2009 season put an exclamation point on eight years of a franchise spinning its' wheels. His drafting record and player development, rumoured to be his forte from his time in Oakland, was spotty at best and, in the end, he will be remembered as the man who greased the skids to send Roy Halladay out of town.

They say 'it's always darkest before the dawn' and that is what the Blue Jays dwindling fan base has to hang their hats on. Ricciardi's successor, Montreal-born Alex Anthopoulos has a lot on his plate as the 32-year-old tries to return the team to contention.

His first order of business was to trade away Halladay for three prospects. Now patience must be preached, something that was sorely lacking over the previous eight seasons. The rebuilding of the Blue Jays brand - both in the community and around the majors - has finally begun.

New Year's Day, especially at the dawning of a new decade, has always represented a fresh start, a new beginning. Nowhere does that have more meaning than in Toronto for its' beleaguered baseball fans.