shabbs wrote:Holy moly...
http://www.tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=287338
Was placed on waivers (which is common in MLB - not like the NHL), White Sox claimed him and the Jays let him walk for nothing.
This team is truly messed up. Rios' contract wasn't that bad and he was playing OK... he was not a candidate for being let go for nothing...
What are the Jays doing?
The issue here is that Alex Rios had hit a horrendous snag in his career. He can't hit consistently, he's a .265 with an average number of homers and an average number of RBIs. His right field is average as well, the Sox think he's better suited to center field, we'll see.
Would you want to pay an average player 11 million per year for 5 more years? It's bad enough that we have Wells in center having a below average season - and we can't waive him because he's got a NMC.
What Riccardi should be fired for is giving a young guy with potential, the amount of money he did. That is just a crap contract and Rios couldn't live up to it, so the Jays walk away from his contract.
Beautiful. And don't blame Riccardi for the Giants trade not going down, it was San Fran that walked away from that trade.
Lind - Wells - Snider. Or Lind goes to first base and Overbay is traded (if there's any value as well), and we buy one Diddle of a DH, or we buy a solid fielder, or we buy a pitcher to back Halliday up and hope our young guys can come to play next year.
We have the best 2nd baseball IMO in the majors, we have an awesome LF in Lind, one of the best pitchers in the game - and Snider is going to be sick. We have the nucleaus, and now we have some $$.
Riccardi should be fired after the season (or now seeing as how he can't do anything else), but I will say that this was an excellent move. Salary dump? Sure, if you call dumping an average player being paid elite money a salary dump.