Given the Mets’ absolute dearth of minor-league talent, the best way for them to add a player would be to flex their financial might.  If they offered Toronto a crappy non-prospect to take Vernon Wells’ contract off their hands, the Jays would have to do it, right?

Matt Wieters killed baseball in Toronto. He decided he didn’t want to play in Canada, and Matt Wieters gets what Matt Wieters wants.

Point the fingers at the fans, or what is termed as “fans” in the great white north. When attendance was up it was because of a boom and a subsequent height in popularity (two world series championships and a playoff caliber team will do that to even the smallest market - see Cleveland). However, when things began to go a little north, the “fans” turned on the organization, from the players, to the ownership, to the front office. Keep in mind that over the last decade this has been one of the more successful teams in baseball (posting a winning percentage well south of .500).

So for me, it is the “fans” that have killed baseball in Toronto.

In response to Kevin, no, they would not. Again, this goes back to the fans who would suggest that a move of that size would signal the beginning of the end. Attendance would drop even further and the team moving (something I have predicted within the next decade or so, once the property the Jays are on becomes too valuable not to sell for condo development) would become inevitable.

While Vernon Wells was a very good player a few years ago, at this point, he is a lesser version of Carlos Beltran in the same way that Mike Jacobs is a lesser version of Mark Teixeira.

I’ve lived in the GTA for years now, and if you ask people around here, they’ll say what killed baseball here was the ‘94 strike.

If the ‘94 strike killed baseball in Toronto, then baseball was never very alive there in the first place. All I can add is that I watched Expo and Jays games in their home stadiums. I always felt that the fans were waiting for a hockey game to break out, and were disappointed when it didn’t. Maybe getting to see games on real grass fields would have helped.

I am a Chicago Cubs fan and thus, I know what it is like to be the financial powerhouse in my division.  Current ownership juggling aside, I know that my team has the best resources available to squash a Brewer/Cardinal/Astro uprising.  Any credit given Jim Hendry for anything he’s ever done doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to $$$$$$.  The Cubs have been a playoff team two years running for the first time in my life and it would never have happened if the Cubs didn’t have the wherewithal to overpay Soriano, Zambrano, Fukudome, Lee, etc.  (Seriously, how many bad contracts are on the Cubs?)

As a result of being raised a Cubs fan, I will never know the despair that Orioles, Blue Jays, & Rays fans must feel (And yes, congrats to the Rays last year, they had a good run while it lasted).  How depressing must it be on a daily/monthly/yearly basis to have to hear talk about the Red Sox & Yankees being the only two players in a free agent sweepstakes?  How depressing must it be to know that for your team to have a sustained run of success, they must be able to beat Goliath & Goliath on a year-in/year-out basis? 

If you’re a Blue Jay, Oriole, or Rays fan, how do you feel knowing that the deck is stacked against you in a way that makes it immensely difficult to compete for a playoff spot and that the system ain’t changing?  You saw the Cardinals win the WS a few years back with just 83 wins, and you know a season like that will get you third place in the AL East every single time. 

I know Craig & guys like Keith Law like to cherry-pick stats to show that there’s as much competitive balance in baseball as anywhere else but seriously:  Is there any way you can say that the O’s, Jays, & Rays have it fair?  In the micro-cosm of that division, there is no competitive balance, THAT’S what’s killing baseball in Toronto.

“JP has done a horrendous job, there is really no doubt about it.”

Horrendous? Because his team has been a .500 club for the last decade plus?

Let’s not get too excited about the Rays single season of success. Yes it happened, but a team that is currently 4.5 games out of the playoffs mid way through the season does not look to be on their way to revisiting the postseason this season.

Another point I don’t get is claiming that the Jays were big players in free agency. Over the last handful of years their big free agent signings have been Frank Thomas, AJ Burnett, and BJ Ryan. Aside from that trio, the Jays have been made up of home grown, or traded for players.

Rolen’s contract is JP’s fault? And that is being said as a bad thing? According to FanGraphs WAR Salary calculator Rolen was worth an additional $1.3M over what he would have been projected to make as a free agent in 2008. This season, in a more typical healthy Rolen season, he is poised to be in the $6-8M value gain range.

So if JP is to blame for Rolen’s contract, then he is to blame for doing a good thing.

It boils down to people not fairly evaluating the job JP does. People still harp about his failure to draft Tulowitzki, taking Romero instead, but with the configuration of the current Jays, Romero is the more valuable asset.

Tim Kelly’s hit the nail on the head: the Blue Jays had a phenomenal run prevention year last year and were judged by Baseball Prospectus to have been a top 5-7 team overall for all of MLB. In virtually any other division, their record would have skyrocketed on strength of schedule, and culminated in a trip to the playoffs (at least potentially) with the concurrent revenue & attendance spikes that could have fueled more player aquisition and development.

But instead they played in the same division with three of the only 5-6 better teams in the game and barely sniffed a playoff run.

People slag all over JP, and that’s fine to some extent. Slavishly drafting college hitters didn’t work out. Neither did signing/trading for depth above all. But he’s really grown on the job: their best hitting prospect is a high school pick, and they’ve had the internal talent to ward off 1,700 (+or-) pitching injuries this year. And again this year, they look as dangerous as any NL team save the Dodgers and any AL team save the Rays, Sox, and Yankees.

The strike was coincidence. The Jays went from perennial playoff studs to also rans that year when Ward went down and trading the farm finally caught up with them: that was a team for whom the success cycle rang true.

Problem is, the success cycle’s been “repudiated”. Why? With the Sox and Yanks buying up CC, Bay, Teix, Burnett, and all others, plus having good management teams, where’s their down cycle?

The Jays were born and flourished during times during which collusion and mismanagement kept the big spending Sox and Yanks in the tank. They tanked when those two teams got it together. Unless something changes, I fear for MLB overall. As the game’s currently constructed, those two teams can buy their way into the postseason year in year out for a heckuva long time, and only runs as phenomenal as the Rays from last year can stop one.

And on this great site of John Brattain (whose name I fear sincerely I’ve misspelled), I won’t let anyone blame the fans for what MLB and the team’s own ownership did to the Montreal Expos. To say it was the fan’s fault is ignorance to an extreme. I’m sorry for being harsh and rude on this, but I’m used to hearing that on lesser sites. I’m shocked to hear it here.

Jack said: “I’m sorry, but if your appreciation of baseball rests on whether your team is going to make the post-season or not, then you don’t really like baseball all that much. Toronto has had good teams playing good baseball most of the time for close to 20 years now. If the fans won’t support that, I think it’s a stretch to blame the Red Sox and Yankees.”

Is it really too much for fans to ask for their team to make the playoffs every once in a while?  Or how about just being a serious contender in September every now and then?  I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.  Sure, anyone has an inherent disadvantage when compared to NYY and BOS.  But, as discussed, Toronto is a huge market, and the team is owned by a hugely successful international corportation.  Money shouldn’t be an issue - and, given the contracts actually given out, hasn’t been one.  The issue has been to whom those contracts were given.

But I digress.  To say that fans should be happy with a periennially .500 teams is to say that winning doesn’t really mean that much.  Winning - that is, winning divisions and/or playoffs games - isn’t everything, and Toronto certainly isn’t Baltimore or Texas or Washington.  But winning is a big part of keeping fans happy, and teams that don’t win don’t draw.