With appologies to Cito Gaston

Well, I don't know if you remember from my earlier post, but you can scroll down to when the Jays fired John Gibbons last year and put Cito Gaston back in the position of management I called the Jays management out for a lack of guts. Here they were, a team put together by J.P. Ricciardi. The bright young assistant to the golden boy Billy Beane, the creator of moneyball. If anyone could help us contend against the evils of the behemoths the Red Sox and the Yankees, it was him.

Well his experiment seemed to have faild. He fired scouts and hired analysts. He went from claiming that small market teams could thrive to complaining about payroll difference, then when he got the big money he spent it on $10 million a year on a player like Frank Thomas. Everything was pointing into one direction. J.P. was going to get fired. The Jays owners forced him to bring in Cito and this move was seen as the last step out for Ricciardi. Cito would take over for the final part of the year after Gibbons was fired, and then at the end of the season Ricciardi would be out the door.

... but a funny thing happend on the way to stadium. The Jays started winning.

With John Gibbons starting of the season 35-39 and getting the axe, Cito stepped in and steered the Jays to a 51-37 record. Now this season the Jays are 18-9 bringing Cito's record to 69-46. That's good enough for the best record in baseball since Gaston was hired. It's especially impressive since the Jays pitching staff this year is one injury away from recieving aid from the World Health Organization. After seeing the effectiveness on the Jays that Gaston has, after seeing how the players respond to him and how he know how to manage them, it's amazing to think that he had 11 seasons between Jays jobs where he was out of baseball. I'm sure that teams like the Rangers, Pirates or Nationals would love to have a manager like him. Well their loss is the Jays gain and I guess I have to say, "I'm sorry." I thought that bringing Cito in last year was a stop gap sollution. I thought it was akin to rearanging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Well, here I stand, hat in hand and appologies to Gaston who has the Jays sitting on the top of the American league. I don't know if they will be able to keep this up for the rest of the season, but after seen what he's done with this team I can start to believe that nothing is impossible.