This is the first I’ve ever heard of this, but here’s an interesting tidbit from a Q&A with Keith Law that concerns the Toronto Blue Jays drafting of Ricky Romero instead of Troy Tulowitzki in the 2005 amateur baseball draft. Law was working in the Blue Jays’ front office at the time, and had, according to him, pushed for the team to draft Tulowitzki.
5-What are you going to do to the next person who asks you in a chat why the Jays didn’t draft Troy Tulowitzki while you were there? {Ed. - The Blue Jays famously picked pitcher Ricky Romero over their expected - and Keith-Law-recommended - choice, shortstop Troy Tulowitzki in the 2005 amateur baseball draft. Last year, Tulowitzki helped lead the Colorado Rockies to the World Series; Romero struggled in the minor leagues.)
Oh, that never gets old. It’s a textbook example of a managerial failure. The consensus of the people who were hired to evaluate players was to take Tulowitzki over Romero. (It wasn’t unanimous, but it was the majority opinion.) The GM substituted his own evaluations, based on one observation for each player and a flawed one at that for Tulowitzki, who was just coming off of a wrist injury. Several of us made the case for Tulowitzki over Romero, myself included, but Ricciardi is not one to change his mind, and I always thought he rather enjoyed digging in his heels when anyone questioned a decision. There had to be a million dollars in salaries sitting in that draft room, and the GM overruled them. If you’re going to hire talented people and pay them all that money, let them do their jobs. The fact that the decision has backfired so spectacularly just justifies that point - if the Jays had Tulowitzki at short, they’d probably be one of the top four teams in the AL.
Not sure of what I think about Law laying this out for the public, but it’s an interesting look at one of those make-or-break-your-team calls that all GMs certainly face throughout their careers. J.P. Ricciardi has made plenty of good moves with the Jays and it wouldn’t be fair to judge him on this single instance. However, if this is perfectly true Law makes a good point about letting people do their jobs.
The piece is from the blog of Richard E. Dansky, which I found via The Baseball Think Factory
3 responses so far ↓
1 brent // Mar 25, 2008 at 9:39 am
Keith Law has been taking shots at GM JP for a long time. Ricciardi has been classy enough so far and not got into a shouting match with him. What’s so bad about taking the best left hander in the draft? How about waiting until the entire results are manifest rather than one season of MLB success for Tulo? Also, the Jays had drafted two shortstops in the first round previously. Drafting is essentially luck; merely look at some of the articles written about that at Battersbox.
2 Shinsano // Mar 25, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Well, I’m guessing Law doesn’t forsee himself making a return to an MLB front office. He may have been turned off enough by the whole thing, and doesn’t care what other people think at this point.
I think you’re right Brent…drafts are subjective and the Romero pick wasn’t all that off the wall at the time.
3 Gary Garland // Mar 31, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Sam Bowie, Michael Jordan, etc. It happens. Mike Piazza was a 65th rounder. You know how that goes. At the end of the day, talent evaluation is just one big hedged crapshoot. Now if Ricciardi, who doesn’t strike me as the easiest guy in the world to get along with (though I only know him by what I have seen on tv), bombs in his next three or four drafts and the Jays become the Orioles, then okay. But It would be better to wait and see.
After all, I was a fan of a team that thought that Danny Goodwin was a can’t miss prospect and that Rick Reichardt was the next Mickey Mantle. The Yankees did the same about Kevin Maas and Roger Repoz. So there you go.
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