After firing assistant GM Bart Given earlier this week and being told it was a financial decision, you had to wonder how broke are the Jays? I mean, how much money do you save by firing a GM? What's next? Cut back to one batboy to look after both teams at home games? Pay showers in the visitor's locker room?
But today in the Globe and Mail there is a story about the Jays hiring 4 new scouts. And that the team is going to scout in Japan now.
"We're going to really try to make inroads in Japan," said J.P. Ricciardi, the Jays' senior vice-president of baseball operations and general manager. "Now we've got the okay to go ahead with that. We're going to go over and at least try to make contacts.
It is nice to see the Jays actually spending some, yeah I know not a lot, of money to improve the team. It looks like this was due to the work of assistant GM Alex Anthopoulos:
Anthopoulos said he conducted an informal study in which he looked at the opening-day rosters of all 30 major-league clubs over the past two years. He said he found that about two-thirds of all the players on those rosters were there as a result of the advance work conducted by pro scouts.
JP credits Paul Beeston for getting the money:
Ricciardi credited interim club president Paul Beeston for convincing the hierarchy at Rogers Communications, the owner of the Jays, of the importance of increasing the scouting staff. "In the past, we've kind of been bogged down by head counts," Ricciardi said. "With Paul, we've been able to get around some of that."
So good going guys, it is nice to read about the team doing something positive instead of the usual cutting back on spending stories.