Bad GM or Worst GM Ever? CONCLUSION

Parts 1-7 can be found in the July archive.

Just to try and sum things up here.

TRADING

Nothing spectacular here. A few decent trades, most of the time it seems like he got the better end of the deal, but no trade that jumps out at you as a total fleecing.

FREE AGENCY

His biggest signings haven't really paid off. Having to release Thomas and Ryan and eat their money stings, and the Burnett opt-out clause really hurt the team this season (although I realize it's very possible they never sign Burnett in the first place without it). A few good scrap heap pick-ups like Catalanotto, Downs, and Zaun look pretty good though. A mixed bag, definitely.

KEEPING HIS PLAYERS

The Wells contract is awful, however, it appears that might not have been all Ricciardi. The first Wells extension was good, however, and the Hill one is looking very good right now. Both Halladay deals were excellent, too. The Hinske contract, while not terrible, didn't work out and my opinion on the Rios contract changes almost daily (but, generally, I think it's not too bad).

DRAFTING

Another mixed bag here. While the farm system is basically seen as in the middle of the pack when compared to the rest of MLB, his only real flop so far has been Russ Adams. He's drafted a bunch of good-to-very good pitchers and some impact bats like Aaron Hill, Adam Lind, and (hopefully) Travis Snider.

WHO HE'S TRADED AWAY

No Michael Youngs here, at least. Jayson Werth is probably the best player on that list and while he maybe didn't get full value for guys like Paul Quantrill or Felipe Lopez, neither of those guys could be considered franchise cornerstones at any point in their career.

WHO HE'S LET WALK

While Chris Carpenter and Carlos Delgado would both have looked real nice in a Jays uniform in the past few years, budget concerns were mostly the reasons that those 2 were let go. While some of the other guys who've left this way have shown occasional flashes, none of them have really had any prolonged success.

COMPARED TO OTHER GENERAL MANAGERS

While this is a little difficult, I'm not sure that Ricciardi is necessarily any worse than a lot of the other GMs who have taken their teams to the playoffs. He's in a situation where he needs basically a perfect storm of everything going right for his team while having at least one or two other teams falter enough to give him a chance. Put him in a different division or give him some more money to work with and I think a lot of people would see him in a different light.

So, to wrap things up, I figure Ricciardi is, at worst, an average Major League Baseball general manager. He might try and play it safe too often (especially with regards to trades and the draft) and his biggest splashes in the free agent market haven't really panned out, but he's put together some solid baseball teams that just haven't been able to push themselves over the top for one reason or another.