Stick a fork in 'em

The Jays announced their September call-ups today: Dirk Hayhurst, Brian Wolfe, and Joe Inglett. That's it. Notably absent: Jeremy Accardo, who is 2-1 with a 3.10 ERA, 26 K's, and 12 saves in 29 innings in AAA. Kind of a lot of hits given up (32), but not terrible, and only 7 walks. At the major league level, Accardo has a 2.50 ERA with 14 K's in 18 innings. He missed most of 2008, but was awesome in 2007 and seems to be doing better than fine in Las Vegas this year. So given that this season is effectively over for the Jays, why is Accardo still in Vegas? I don't know, and neither does he.

I loved this quote from the article:

"There's really no rhyme or reason to some of the decisions that are made, and that's out of your hands as a player," Accardo said Saturday before the 51s' x-x win/loss over/to Reno at Cashman Field. "All you can do is pitch, and pretty much this whole year I've thrown well. I feel better than I ever have, and my stuff is as good as it's ever been."

Looks like somebody forgot to finish their research before publishing the story.

Anyway, the Jays will finish no better than fourth in the AL East this year, the eighth of Ricciardi's reign. In that time, they have never had a sniff of the postseason, and have only finished higher than third once – and that was when they grabbed second place on the last day of the 2006 season. They were never in contention that year either and finished 10 games back of first. Since Ricciardi was hired as Toronto's GM, every other team in MLB has either made the playoffs at least once or fired their GM. Now, I have questioned many of his moves, but to be fair, he's made some good ones too, and honestly, I think Ricciardi has proven that he's a decent baseball guy. He might have some success in a different division, but being in the same division as the Yanks and Red Sox, the Jays need either a decent baseball guy and bucketloads of money (i.e. $150-175 million), or a great baseball guy. Since they're not likely to get the bucketloads of money, they need to fire Ricciardi and begin the search for the great baseball guy. What's Pat Gillick up to these days?