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Saturday, May 05, 2007
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Ricciardi, the Blue Jays’ general manager, told the Fan 590 that the club fabricated the nature of closer B.J. Ryan’s injury during spring training.
Back in March, Ryan was shut down for two weeks with what the club said was a lower back injury. But it wasn’t his back. Ricciardi told the Fan 590 it was Ryan’s elbow that was bothering him, the same elbow that currently has Ryan on the 60-day disabled list because of a strained ligament.
...“We didn’t want the media to bother Ryan every day asking him ‘How’s your elbow? How are you feeling? Are you going to throw today? Are you feeling good?’ ” Ricciardi said.
“And it’s the first thing we’ve ever kept from you guys. It’s not like we tell you guys it’s an upper body injury (which appeared to be a shot at the Maple Leafs).”
Repoz
Posted: May 05, 2007 at 01:35 PM | 59 comment(s)
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1. Dudefella Posted: May 05, 2007 at 01:45 PM (#2355100)i've never heard this, can you elaborate?
Whatever he said, the Prospectus 2007 team essay on the Blue Jays summed up the correlation b/n the Blue Jays team salary and Rogers stock anyways.
I'm much more mad that I traded for Ryan on his false information in my roto league.
are you serious?
maybe i just have a different take on situations like this. As a fan, i dont feel entitled to intimate details of players bodies and injuries. It probably applies more in football strategically, but I would want the management of my favorite team to be misleading about injuries if it helped the player or the competitive edge at all.
WTF?! You traded for a pitcher who was announced to have a back injury? I'm not really sure that it's JP's fault you f*cked up there...
but I would want the management of my favorite team to be misleading about injuries if it helped the player or the competitive edge at all.
That's the hockey mentality right there. "Upper Body Injury" is not only a good band name, it's the most common statement made by hockey coaches/trainers/GMs.
The core is a bunch of amazing, but expensive injury prone veterans
Halladay is "injury-prone" like someone is a "guaranteed lottery winner".
B.J. Ryan was fine until this year.
Wells isn't injury-prone.
Overbay isn't injury-prone.
Glaus is injury-prone.
Reed Johnson isn't expensive or injury-prone.
Rios got sick, not injured.
Hinske just plained sucked after the big signing.
Glaus, Thomas, Burnett, Ryan (there were points when he signed his contract and was overworked last year that with his awkward delivery would eventually run into problems. And this is why the 5 years lucrative offer was so shocking). That's about 40 milloin right there, about half the team's payroll this year.
Another point: When they said League had an "over developed lat muscle" I knew that was a lie too. He has a rotator cuff tear, but they BS'd about that also. C'mon, lies coming out of everywhere is ridiculous.
But to lie about this to no point and purpose....
He had no plan "B" and if his arm was sore why the heck was it not treated? They still let him pitch? Whose asinine idea was that?
(shakes head)
Best Regards
John
I think it's important to be honest about this kind of stuff for reasons other than betting. It's important to me as a fan to know that my team is being straight with me. If they're lying about an injury, what else are they lying about? Are you really rebuilding, or are you simply rearranging the deck chairs? Did you really make an effort to sign that free agent, or are you blowing smoke? While I suppose smart fans -- especially those of us who read BTF/Prospectus -- will know if we're being hoodwinked, having the GM blow smoke still bothers me.
The fact that Ricciardi is the one doing the lying here strikes me as even worse in that he (more or less) comes from the sabermetric tradition which, if anything, seeks to take the bullshit out of baseball. And here he is adding to it.
You thought Beane was a paragon of virtue and honesty in Moneyball?
If anything I think the preoccupation with efficiency at all costs can be bad for the menschness of the spreadsheet warriors...
Good heavens no.
If anything I think the preoccupation with efficiency at all costs can be bad for the menschness of the spreadsheet warriors...
Since you put it in terms of "efficiency: there's another reason to slam Ricciardi over this: misinformation detracts from efficiency, it doesn't enhance it. Lying may aid expediency, of course, but that isn't what Beane and Ricciardi's reps are built on, is it?
Thinking about this even more, I'm not even sure how this lie was expedient. He says he did it so the writers aren't constantly bugging Ryan and asking him how his arm was doing. Why wouldn't they then just have constantly bugged him about how his back was doing? Indeed, it could have increased the problem because writers generally know that arm problems can be serious and may lead to a lot of time off. Back problems may come and go, which would encourage far more questioning about day-to-day status.
I don't mean to turn this into Watergate, but I've found in my career as a litigator that when someone readilly cops to a lie, and the reason for the lie doesn't make sense, there are often far more sinister reasons for the lie.
"I would want the management of my favorite team to be misleading about injuries if it helped the player or the competitive edge at all."
In spring training? Besides, I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of this strategy because Ryan wasn't performing well in the regular season.
I was thinking the exact same thing but I couldn't come up with a motive.
A couple off the top of my head (though they may not stand up once I think about it some more):
Season ticket sales: If the star closer has elbow trouble in spring training, many fans may assume (not wrongly) that he could be lost for extended periods, hurting the team, and thereby lowering ticket sales.
A** protection: If it's known that Ricciardi has a serious problem with his closer's elbow in the spring, there is an expectation among fans that he could still possibly make a deal to cover for the loss. If the elbow problem isn't known until a month into the season, he can say "hey, it's hard to deal for a closer after the season started! What can I do?"
Insurance/contract/payroll ramifications?: I don't know as much about this sort of thing, but it's possible that there are different payroll ramifications for a player hitting the 60-day DL in the spring as opposed to the regular season. I'll admit this could be a stretch, but if anyone has any insight here, please enlighten us.
Trying to throw Ryan under the bus?: This is more of a stretch/conspiracy theory than anything, but maybe he's somehow hoping that the story will come out with a spin that Ryan was the one not being straight about the injury, changing the story from "$47M bust" to "stubborn player deprives team of services." This probably doesn't make sense, but the motive -- deflecting blame from Riccardi -- seems a natural one for an embattled GM.
This could be fun! Anyone else have any other theories?
Whatever the motive, as deepthroat once said, it's best to follow the money.
I can't believe ANYONE thinks he has an obligation to the media over his obligation to the team and the players.
He did the right thing.
What I don't udnerstand is why he 'came clean' now? What is to be gained?
I imagibe that other execs have lied like this, but not ever fessed up.
Probably 6 consecutive posts at a time.
Aside from wading into whether JP is saberrific or not, the A's have built themselves quite the reputation regarding injury updates. I wouldn't necessarily call it misinformation, and it's certainly not outright lying like JP did, but most A's fans have a healthy distrust for the team's injury announcements.
I'd say you were fighting the straw man here, but I don't even see that in this thread.
As much as the glorification of JP as a new sabermetric GM was undeserved, so too is his current vilification. As a Blue Jay fan, I wouldn't rate as him more than middling as a GM. Unfortunately, that's largely my opinion of Ash, too. A great move followed by a great weakness. But that's not someone you turf aside callously. If his drafting strategy has changed for the better with Thigpen and Synder, great. If it hasn't, so long.
First of all, lying in general to the public without a sufficiently compelling reason is NEVER a good thing (i.e., always a bad thing). I hate to bring up "the children," but is that the kind of example we want to set for them?
Equally (or additionally) importantly is that baseball is an entertainment industry which is paid for by the fans/public. That public and those fans rely on the media for information about their passion. If those in baseball are "allowed" to lie to the media about fairly inconsequential things like a player injury in spring training (or really about virtually anything), the there can be no trust in the media by the fans and that aspect of the game becomes a travesty. Millions of fans rely on information from the teams/media as part of their enjoyment and experience of the game. That enjoyment of the game and trust in the media and the spokerpersons for baseball is what pays the players's salaries and puts money in the owners' pockets.
I cannot see ANY justification for this, and personally with all the lying (and cheating) that our politicians do, when I see ANYONE lie to the public about just about anything, it makes my stomach turn. If you can't tell the truth, just keep your mouth shut.
Of course, I have thought that J.P. was a moron before this. This just solidifies my opinion.
We can argue about whether he has an obligationto talk to the media, but there is an expectation that if he does choose to talk, he's going to be honest.
He did the right thing
What, the lying or the coming clean? What did he gain by bullshiatting about Ryan's injury? Please explain how what he did was right.
You're just an idiot then. Fraudulent injury or real injury, the man wasn't doing well in Spring Training. If he's struggling in Spring Training and it's announced he has an injury (let's assume that's all we know), why the hell would you consider paying "top dollar" for him in a fantasy league auction?
A GM's primary responsibility is to put a winning team on the field within the constraints of the organization. If a team decides that maintaining an honest and up-front relationship with the fans and local media is a desired value, whether related to ethics, finances, or some other reason, that's of course defensible. But in light of that responsibility, in my view it's also defensible to conceal or mislead about the nature or scope of team injuries to the extent that it generates a possible strategic advantage for the team.
Without getting all Rule 4.1(a), there are of course ways that this can get problematic, and a part of me gets frustrated when I don't know the full story on my team. But I'd prefer to sacrifice that personal right to knowledge -- which in any cases is rather limited anyway -- so as to give the GM as much leverage possible to improve the quality of the team on the field.
Well, that's fine, but how exactly did lying about Ryan's injury help the Jays on the field? As it stands, there is a possibility that more than just lying about the nature of the injury, they trotted Ryan out there to begin the season knowing that he had worse problems than they were letting on. I think that when a GM is going to get into the disinformation business (and then fess up and get out of it) there had better be a compelling case for it. What is it here? The "protect Ryan from the press" argument seems thinner than my hair at this point.
Better leverage to trade for a reliever.
- He's a liar? I've found when people lie for no good reason, that means they just lie an awful lot.
- Worrying about his job? He's not lying about his baseball team for the team's sake but his own. He's afraid that the injury might turn into something big and make him look bad. But if he lies about it, and the problem goes away, he's safe. It's like William H. Macy in Fargo.
My own guess, and I'm seeing articles on it on The Hardball Times these days, too, is that riskier players are now undervalued. The Jays are hurt substantially by Ryan's injury, but the knock on him at the time of the deal was that he was inexperienced, not injury-prone.
Yeah, but the risky-players-are-undervalued theory means you should be able to sign risks at a discount. Was Ryan's contract really a discount?
J. P.'s a fraud you pooped your plans?
Best Regards,
Dag
Exactly. JP lied because he is more of a self-lobbyist who says he's a good GM than actually being one. He also probably lied because it would negatively effect ticket sales, and perhaps player's morale (not sure if the players knew the actual injury, probably not, except for the trainers, JP, GIbbons, and Ryan. But he's tried to keep together good clubhouse guys who aren't distractions or poor morale and your all-star closer that is a team leader going down would hurt their confidence, especially since its a relatively young team.
What about under your other usernames? Under El Laberinto de Overbay you must have posted 4 or 5 times in a row a couple times.
I don't really care about why JP lied, what suprises me is that he confessed to lying about an injury. By confessing to covering up the injury in order to protect Ryan from the media, JP makes himself and Ryan look bad.
That was a long long time ago. If you seriously care about some random person posting too many times on the internet and you remember their past name and bring up cases from months ago, I think you have to give your head a shake.
Not really. When somebody continually floods a site that I usually enjoy reading, and then changes their username and keeps doing it, and then changes it a third time and keeps doing it, it's pretty easy to keep track of. I don't devote any effort to it or anything.
I thought he said he could turn the Jay's into winners while saving money. No?
In regards to my post, I wasn't making a moral judgement about Ricciardi's lying. But when you lie to the public about injuries, you tend to diminish your credibility on such matters. Whether or not this (Machiavelli?) strategy is a "good" thing is a separate discussion.
Well he did lie, because they aren't competitive.
May 5 pitching line, Roy Halladay:
IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA
5.1 12 9 9 2 3 0 3.59
So now he's a liar AND a jinx!
It was right in my original post, which, ironically, you quoted. At the time fo the signing, Ryan wasn't seen as an injury risk.
As a Pirates fan, I can tell you that it is perfectly possible to enjoy baseball without believing a single word that is delivered by the organization. I'm honestly more surprised these days when something that David Littlefield says is true rather than when it turns out to be lie. In fact, I'm pleased merely when he puts apparent effort into the lies. Sometimes he just mails it in, saying something that is so obviously untrue that he's going through the motions.
As a fan, you just learn to orthogonalize your feelings for the management and your feelings for the team. I can think that David Littlefield eats live babies while at the same time enjoying watching the Pirates in their valiant (although ultimately futile) annual attempt to get to .500.
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