Yes, and they bought a lot of good ones by a very good and very extensive scouting system, as well as identifying specific things they needed and getting players who fit those roles, who did not have the same value with their current club. Obviously, the circumstances are very very different now, certainly, but the basic plan is a good model; have the best scouting system possible to identify the best players possible for the farm system, and have the best scouting system possible to identify players who provide the most value in a very specific roles for what the team needs, who currently are undervalued by the current clubs/market.

though afterward I often wish I hadn’t. At least this season anyway.

I’m speaking as a fan (25 years if we’re counting) here. I would like to see the Jays win again. I believe they are at a point now where they are nowhere near being able to compete in the AL East. To reach that point it will take time, and a willingness to make some moves that will lead to more losses in the short term (trading Halladay being the most obvious, but by no means the only such move).

I think that over the past few years there have been many opportunities to do exactly what the team is proposing to do now (a moderate, if not full-on, rebuild). In a number of cases the trigger didn’t get pulled because somebody (maybe JP, maybe Godfrey, I don’t know) was worried about the short-term effects (losses, fans turning away, possible job losses in the upper management ranks) if it were perceived that the team was going downhill. Failing to trade Burnett and getting SFA for him in the end being the most obvious, but by no means the only such non-move.

We didn’t capitalize on those opportunities to restock the farm, and what did we get? A team that was never really competitive anyway (we all know that 84-86 wins isn’t going to get it done, though it might look better than 65 or 70).

There are absolutely some moves the Jays could make that would help in the short term. Sign Mike Cameron to a 1 or 2-year deal. Resign Scutaro. Sign Delgado. Sign Chone Figgins, perhaps. The question I find myself asking, though, is will these guys be around when the team is ready to compete for real, and if so will they be producing, or will they be millstones around our necks? Let’s say 2012 ends up being the year when we make a run. Do you really want to be carrying a 37-year-old Scutaro who misses half the season and plays at replacement level when he does play (not guaranteed to happen, but a definite possibility given his age, injuries, and undistinguished resume pre-2009) at $6M/year? Is it worth it for the extra couple of games he might win us in 2010 and 2011 (maybe the difference between 70 and 72 wins, for instance)? Or would you rather have that cash free at the deadline so that you can go out and grab a Matt Holliday type (not Holliday himself, but the type of acquisition the Cardinals made this year) to help you get over the hump?

It’s possible to have different definitions of the term competitive, I suppose. If you’re ok with watching a team year after year that is close, could conceivably do something in September (like if we won 10 in a row and they lost 10 in a row, etc. etc.) and then in the end we finish 8 or 10 games out, that’s fine. Some might say that’s competitive because you don’t get eliminated (magic-number-wise) until mid to late September and you’re a decent enough team that you’re in pretty much every game you play, you don’t get blown out too often. We could have kept JP and most likely continued with that level of mediocrity for another 10 years, and Rogers would probably be ok with it too as long as the books balanced (although they seemed kind of enthusiastic about shedding salary this year, so who knows).

When I say competitive I mean playoffs. And unless Rogers doubles the payroll (which will never happen as they are a huge corporation and therefore risk-averse by nature) a team like the Jays can never be playoff-competitive year after year. AA knows this but it’s the kind of thing you can’t say publicly. What you can do is rip it down, find a core to build around (in this case—Hill, Lind, Snider, Romero), stock the farm, and build things up with an eye toward a 2-year period when the talent should be peaking and before it gets too expensive. Hopefully those 2 years end up being really good, because afterward you’re left with a bunch of guys on the wrong side of 30 who go off and sign with the Yankees for way more than they’re worth, and you have to spend a few years restocking the farm again and letting a young core emerge.

In this case, I believe Hill’s contract runs through 2014 and he’ll be about 32 then, just about to start declining. So expect the summit push in the last couple of years of that contract, especially if we can get out of the Wells deal which expires around the same time. I am almost sure that AA/Beest have already laid all this out for ownership.

So yeah, if we’re not competing until at least 2012-2013 (and I find it hard to think of a realistic scenario that would have us in the hunt before that) I don’t really care whether we win 65, 70, 75, 80, or 85 games in 2010. I would prefer to watch the kids play and develop (it might not be great baseball, but it’s important baseball and can be fun—too bad Cito won’t allow that, and I do expect the resulting Mencherson/Millucci season to be quite painful) and delude myself into thinking that the cash they’re saving on next year’s payroll will be reinvested in a few years when the team has a real shot. Of course I don’t really believe that the saved cash goes anywhere other than into executive bonuses, but I’d rather pass on Figgins and try to convince myself than sign him and win 2 or 3 extra games in a meaningless year.