JP Ricciardi? O no.

JP Ricciardi

The colorful site, Drunk Jays Fans, is a good read almost every day, but make sure you are not at work as it can be a bit unsuitable.  One of the more comical parts over the years has been their amazing coverage of the J.P. Ricciardi era in Toronto.  Ricciardi at times was a train wreck.  JP said some outright foolish things about Adam Dunn and then bizarrely lied about calling to apologize to Dunn.  Sometimes, he comes off as a slightly less believable version of Jim Duquette.  He doled out crazy contracts to guys like Vernon Wells and Alex Rios although neither had shown consistently solid performance.  As you can imagine, Dan Connolly's inclusion of JP as a potential GM for the Orioles unsettled me a bit.

Mind you, JP has a strong pedigree.  He emerged from the A's system during Sandy Alderson's tenure and become more prominent when Billy Beane took over.  JP was a scout who quickly believed in putting more value in quantitative measures.  He was a trail blazer, a trend setter.  He was a Moneyball guy and he could not let go of the fact that Moneyball was not a static thing.  A few week's back, Keith Law discussed his time with the Jays working under JP.  From that account, JP comes off as a bit of a zealot.  Maybe failure has chilled him out some and he has become more aware that statistics is not Moneyball, but rather finding undervalued commodities.

Here is the entire list Connolly reported:

Jerry Dipoto, senior vice president, Diamondbacks
Gerry Hunsicker, senior VP, Rays
Dan Jennings, assistant general manager, Marlins
Wayne Krivsky, former special assistant to GM, Mets
Tony LaCava, assistant GM, Blue Jays
Damon Oppenheimer, scouting director, Yankees
A.J. Preller, senior director of player personnel, Rangers
Scott Proefrock, assistant GM, Phillies
J.P. Ricciardi, special assistant to GM, Mets
Scott Servais, senior director of player development, Rangers

I have reported on many of them in the past. If I were to rank them in order of preference, it would look like this:

Preller>LaCava>Jennings>Dipoto>Hunsicker>Oppenheimer>Krivky>Proefrock>Servais>JP