Back to the future

(On a completely irrelevant note, this is the 152nd post in the history of this blog. We now outnumber the original batch of Pokemon. Unless you count Missingno.)

The Toronto Blue Jays, who have allegedly been underachieving for the past month, made a surprise move on Friday. They fired manager John Gibbons, and replaced him with Cito Gaston, who managed the team from 1989 to 1997. Moreover, he brought back former early-90s Jays coaches Gene Tenace and Nick Leyva with him.

To say this was surreal would be an understatement. Looking at the reactions from Batter's Box, I find it hilarious to see how many of them mirrored my own. "Gibbons fired? About time. Cito's back? That's weird. Leyva and Tenace? It must be April Fools' Day in some part of the world."

All in all, I suppose I'm in favour of this move. The team wasn't playing well, and whether it's Gibbons' fault or not, conventional wisdom is that the manager is the first to go. This is especially true in cases where the team is doing much worse than expectations (despite generally being predicted to finish the year in second or third, they were in last place).

As for using Cito as the replacement - well, why not? The other obvious candidate was coach Brian Butterfield, and the outside perception of him is that he wouldn't be much different from Gibbons. Cito has plenty of upside - the two biggest parts being the obvious PR boost, and the fact that he's done this before. When he took over from Jimy Williams in 1989, the team was underachieving quite a bit - players clashing with the manager, and nobody able to explain why they weren't winning more. Sound familiar?

The really interesting thing here is this: there is no way JP Ricciardi decided to replace John Gibbons with Cito Gaston. Ricciardi has shown that he likes managers he can control, managers who will generally do whatever he tells them. Cito is not such a manager. This means two things - JP is feeling enough pressure on *his* job that he's willing to do what his superiors tell him, and Paul Godfrey is feeling like HE needs to start doing something.

Although the JP Ricciardi era in Toronto started with promise ("I can replace half your roster with guys you've never heard of, and get the same level of performance for half the cost"), the last few years have been more like Gord Ash: The Sequel. Overpaying for average free agents, poor trades, and the emergence of the "if you throw enough at the wall, something will stick" philosophy. It didn't work for DHs in the late 90s (Geronimo Berroa? Ruben Sierra? Dave Hollins?), and it's not working for starting pitchers for JP. Despite the fact that he's signed several veteran pitchers in the last couple years (Burnett, Thomson, Ohka, Zambrano, Benitez, etc.), the Jays' best pitchers are the ones who have come up through the minor leagues - many of whom were around long before JP.

Changes are coming to the Toronto Blue Jays. It's about time. Until then, welcome back Cito.

--Ryan

P.S. I can't make a post about the Jays without including this. The video's not important, just the song.