Doyle: Ricciardi makes move from front office to studio

Ricciardi, 50, plans to draw upon his 30 years in professional baseball as a player, coach, scout, director of player personnel and general manager.

“As soon as a trade is made,” Ricciardi said, “there are 50,000 people blogging about how the general manager did a bad job, and they don’t understand what he was up against from a standpoint of what the ownership wanted to do, what kind of money he had to work with, how he was putting his team together based on a four- or five-year deal, what the player wanted.”

...The Blue Jays didn’t make the postseason under Ricciardi, but they did post four winning seasons. Ricciardi was most proud of his trades for Troy Glaus, Ted Lilly and Shea Hillenbrand, and his drafting and developing of Aaron Hill and Adam Lind, both of whom hit 35 homers and drove in more than 100 runs last year, and Ricky Romero, who won 13 games as a rookie. Ownership, however, cut payroll last season from a planned $100 million to $66 million and the team won only 75 games after a strong start. Ricciardi was let go in early October.

“I’m not saying you have to have money to be successful,” Ricciardi said, “but if you don’t have money you’d better be willing to go seven or eight years of bad baseball before you start seeing the fruits of those No. 1 picks getting up to the majors. I’d go into another job with my eyes a lot more open and probably do a little more homework on who the ownership group is and what their expectations were because that’s what ultimately controls everything.”

No wonder I couldn’t get on Bennack’s Muckety page!