FanHouse JohnGibbons

Footprints in the Snow is FanHouse's look at the paths to be forged by MLB teams this winter as they look ahead to 2009.

We're coming up on that crossroads season for the Blue Jays. For years they've had a team that, in the prism of the AL East, was merely OK. And each year they were also the team that was expected to break that Red Sox/Yankees stronghold on the division. But those two teams were also the built-in excuse for the Jays when they didn't break through. They have been pretty consistent with their win total over the last 10 seasons (in the 80s every season except for two), but it was never good enough to approach the upper echelon. "Well, the Red Sox and Yankees are in the pantheon of baseball ... who's going to beat them?"

Umm, it was the Rays. And now that the Rays have busted through, the pressure is on the Jays to finally kick this franchise into another gear and make their move. There's no reason to think they can't do it, as the club went 51-37 after replacing John Gibbons with Cito Gaston as manager ... a pace that would have placed them just a hair short of the Sox for the wild card. That's a significant stride, but not enough to be a playoff team quite yet. And with the imminent departure of A.J. Burnett, there will be some work to do to get there.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Boston Red Sox (74-55) at Baltimore Orioles (67-62) 1:07 PM ET

Daisuke Matsuzaka is the very case study of new breed vs. old guard. The old guard will see Matsuzaka's 15-2 record and his 2.77 ERA and tell you that he's gotta be one of the best pitchers in baseball. The new breed of fan will tell you that his 1.37 WHIP and his 77 walks in 126+ innings tell the future of a man who's been lucky to get out of jams that he created for himself against mediocre teams. Which side are you on?

Today, Dice K goes up against the Blue Jays ... and while everybody is talking about the job that Jerry Manuel is doing for the Mets after taking over mid-season, there's been a similar, quieter turnaround in Toronto, where Cito Gaston is 32-23 this season after taking over for John Gibbons, who started the season 35-39.

With the trade deadline coming up on us quickly, there's been plenty of talk surrounding a certain Blue Jays starting pitcher that may be available via trade this season. That pitcher is A.J. Burnett, who has the ability to opt out of his contract at season's end, and even if he doesn't the Jays aren't sure they really want to pay him the money still owed him on his current contract.

So they wouldn't mind trading him at all, and given the way he's talked in recent months, A.J. wouldn't mind it that much either. Of course, the Blue Jays have another pitcher on their staff who hasn't exactly been thrilled with the way things have gone in Toronto, and he's been letting management know about it too.

Which is why the Jays are calling teams to gauge their interest in 2003 Cy Young winner Roy Halladay.

The whispers just won't go away. Halladay is apparently unhappy in Toronto and has let management know it, and management has apparently responded by doing some quiet surveying of teams (such as St. Louis and the Dodgers) that are far, far away from the AL East in an effort to see what it could get for the 2003 Cy Young Award winner. Apparently, the returns other teams are getting for top-talent pitchers such as C.C. Sabathia, Rich Harden and Erik Bedard has inspired the Blue Jays to at least find out what it could get for one of the best pitchers in the American League. It remains unlikely that they'd deal him, but you never know.

I don't know if there's any way the Blue Jays would actually trade Halladay, but it could be a good way for J.P. Ricciardi to stick it to ownership. With John Gibbons being fired earlier this season in favor of Cito Gaston, and the Jays disappointing again, most believe that Ricciardi won't be the team's general manager next season.

Would there be a bigger "screw you" to the organization and fans than trading away the team's most important player before being fired?

How bad are we really supposed to feel for managers who get the ax? True, sometimes they're fired when they don't deserve it, but it's not as though they're suddenly destitute.

Well, except for in the Dugout universe. In order to conjure up any empathy for recently fired managers Willie Randolph and John Gibbons, I had to manufacture it.

Today's Dugout is after the jump.

"It's your fault. It's all your fault."

Later, Willie, John, John, and not Ozzie. You were all bums.

The news that has come down from the Toronto Blue Jays that John Gibbons and his coaching staff have been relieved of their duties (read: fired) comes as no surprise ... as J.P. Ricciardi had recently been given the go-ahead to fire Gibbons from upper management.

Here's the surprise: Cito Gaston, the man who led the Jays to back-to-back World Championships in '92 and '93, is back at the helm as Blue Jays manager. He was already with the club as a special ambassador and special assistant to the CEO (read: stay around the ballclub in case we need a new manager, maybe) so the transition will be somewhat smooth. The fact that Gaston, who was relieved of Blue Jays managerial duties himself in 1997, has gone this long without landing another manager's gig is puzzling. He's had plenty of success with the Jays, and should command instant respect in the clubhouse ... especially following the somewhat combative Gibbons.

Managing in the A.L. East has become an exponentially tougher challenge with the Yankees and Red Sox having become perennial beasts, and the Rays emerging this year as a legitimate winner. Gaston may be taking on an impossible chore. We wish him well much the same.

I'm sure many of you are confused as to why Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi would go ape-nuts on Adam Dunn out of the blue, as am I. The incident, for which Ricciardi has apologized for (coincidentally after the Jays were no-hit by Dave Bush for seven innings and Ricciardi realized he might need to trade for Dunn after all and wants to make sure Adam isn't still a bit ticked off), seemed a bit odd.

But perhaps, if you will give me a little leeway to speculate (all right, maybe more than a little), something written at the bottom of the Globe and Mail article gives a bit of insight as why Ricciardi irrationally attacked Dunn. He had some stuff on his mind:

Ricciardi will rejoin the team today in Pittsburgh for a three-game series against the Pirates, under increasing pressure to sever ties with manager John Gibbons. Ricciardi would say only that "the team is not playing well" and would not tip his hand beyond that, but sources say he has already been given the go-ahead from club president and chief executive officer Paul Godfrey to fire Gibbons.

The last time a blurb like that came out, it was the beginning of the end for Willie Randolph. So could it be, and it's a stretch, that Ricciardi, faced with the decision to fire his manager, let some bubbling emotions boil over? After all, firing a manager can be stressful. Let's just hope that if the deed is done for Gibbons, at least it's done at an hour that the press can still make their deadlines.

With a quarter of the season in the books, it's now clear which teams stumbled out of the gate and which teams never left the blocks. As such, jobs are officially on the line. In today's FanHouse Roundtable, we took a guess at which manager will get the ax first, and which one deserves to be on a hot seat.

The overwhelming consensus? Where there's smoke, there's fire: we think it's nigh time for Ned Yost to find a good real estate agent in Milwaukee. He shouldn't feel too bad, though; no fewer than eight other skippers were mentioned in our lengthy email conversation.

Mullet: I'll say Ned Yost will get fired first, only because I think Willie Randolph bought himself some time with the team meeting, and sweeping the Yankees which ... even though it's only two games ... counts for a little more here [in New York].

Andrew Johnson: Why do I think it's likely? Because the Brewers are floundering and entering a perilous stretch of seven games on the road against the Pirates and Nationals (perilous for Yost). There's no shame in getting swept at Fenway Park, but if Milwaukee can't go at least 4-3 or 5-2, the door will be wide open for Yost to get fired. No one's as close as Yost, especially after the Mets got the two-game sweep at Yankee Stadium this weekend.

The problem with Roy Halladay losing a one-run complete game in Boston last night isn't just that the offense failed to score runs for him, it's that those kinds of losses just keep on happening. The Jays have lost 11 of their last 15 games and aren't scoring nearly enough runs, 12th in the AL, to make it clear that there's an end in sight for their slide.

That usually means that the seat under the manager, John Gibbons in this case, is getting mighty toasty. He's not immune to thoughts about his own mortality and neither, it seems, is his 96-year old grandmother. Gibbons visited her on Monday's off-day for a little encouragement but got something else.

"She's still pretty sharp," Gibbons said of his mother's mom prior to yesterday's game against the Red Sox. "She asked me 'What's wrong with your team'? I said that's a good question.

Gibbons hasn't done a terrible job this season. He's been better about abusing his pitchers, has tried to run more to spur the offense and hasn't punched out any of his players yet. In fact, if anyone should be feeling unsure about their future, it's J.P. Ricciardi, the general manager.

The Royals snapped a seven-game losing streak last night and they owe a big debt of gratitude to Toronto manager John Gibbons. The Blue Jay skipper made a bizarre decision in the eighth inning that helped spur a rally that turned a one-run game into an 8-4 loss.

With runners on second and third and one out, Tony Pena Jr. came to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning. Pena would be the league's worst hitter if he qualified for the batting title. In fact, Pena's so bad that Joe Posnanski calls him the worst everyday hitter he's ever seen. That's saying something when you've watched every Royal game for more than a decade.

Anyway, Pena steps in and I'll let Posnanski take it from there.

And John Gibbons, after pitcher Scott Downs fell behind Pena 2-0 count, had him walked.

I'm just telling you ... I'd have fired somebody. I'm just telling you that intentionally walking Tony Pena Jr. or any other light-hitting middle infielder hitting .150 would be a fireable offense on my team. I'd have that written on a clubhouse sign.

David DeJesus singled to plate two runs and break the game open one batter later but that's besides the point. How do you pitch around the worst hitter in baseball to face anyone? Downs and DeJesus are both lefties and you set up the double play and so the hell what. These aren't theoretical situations, they're actual ones and Gibbons managed the game terribly.

(H/T Baseball Musings)