Ex-Blue Jays GM Ricciardi: Anthopoulos was "in the corner crying" when Blue Jays fired Gibbons

During his tenure with the Toronto Blue Jays, general manager J.P. Ricciardi didn’t exactly end up with an ultimate track record of success.

Managing the team from 2001 through 2009, Ricciardi oversaw a Jays era filled with plenty of star talent: Roy Halladay, Carlos Delgado, and Vernon Wells, to name a few.

But in an era where American League East opponents in the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Tampa Bay Rays all found themselves in the World Series at least once from 2001 to 2009 (with Boston winning two and New York once), Ricciardi’s Blue Jays missed the playoffs in each of his nine seasons before he ultimately got the boot.

In an appearance on the Deep Left Field podcast with Toronto Star‘s Mike Wilner, Ricciardi recounted his nine years in Toronto and the highs and lows of his time in charge.

“I wish we had a few more bullets to fire that we couldn’t,” Ricciardi admitted. But we had some really good clubs, a lot of good players… I don’t think the division was ever tougher than it was in that 2002 to 2010 period.”

Bought by Rogers Communications in 2000, having a short payroll was a hallmark of the first decade or so of the new ownership as they navigated trying to compete in the AL East. Per Baseball Prospectus, Toronto never had higher than a $98 million payroll during Ricciardi’s tenure in the city, while the Yankees’ payroll touched as high as $222 million in 2008, for comparison.

“When you don’t have a lot of money, you got to be resourceful, and you got to be creative,” Ricciardi added. “A lot of guys really ended up prospering because of those opportunities. So that was great. Like I said, it was just a really tough division.”

Toronto’s best stretch over that time came in 2006, when the Blue Jays finished second in the division behind the Yankees with 87 wins, though they were still some eight wins behind the final wild-card spot occupied by Detroit and 10 wins short of winning the AL East.

One of the most interesting stories Ricciardi told Wilner was the firing of John Gibbons in 2008 during his first tenure with the team, a long-time pal of Ricciardi due to their time together as former roommates in the minor leagues.

According to Ricciardi, his ultimate successor — and then assistant GM Alex Anthopoulos — was quite emotional when the team’s front office decided to part ways with Gibbons.

“The day we did it, Alex Anthopoulos was in the corner crying because he didn’t [want to see Gibbons leave] … first time he’d been through a firing. So it wasn’t like I was surrounded with the greatest support system. It was just… it was hard to do,” Ricciardi recounted. “We really became very, very good friends with a lot of people, and they became like family and obviously Gibby, my relationship goes back so far and wasn’t something I wanted to do…  sometimes you just got to separate your business with just the familiarity of people.”

Since leaving Toronto nearly 15 years ago, Ricciardi’s worked a series of jobs in the MLB, spending time in the New York Mets’ front office before taking on his current role with the San Francisco Giants as senior adviser of baseball operations.

We’ll never know quite how good Ricciardi’s teams might’ve been with a higher payroll, but it seems like it’s clear that, like many fans of the team, he’s left wondering how history could’ve changed had a few more breaks gone the team’s way.

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