For a team that's accustomed to flying under the radar (partly because they're a Canadian team in an otherwise all-American league, partly because they're perpetually mediocre, and partly because they're in a division with two of the most self-absorbed franchises in professional sports), it's been an unusually eventful year for the Toronto Blue Jays so far. Last weekend they announced that Frank Thomas—the team's best slugger, #18 on baseball's all-time home run list and a surefire first-ballot hall-of-famer—was no longer their everyday designated hitter. Twenty-four hours later, after Thomas predictably raised a stink over the issue, he was given his walking papers. It all went down with head-spinning alacrity.

Demoting Thomas—let alone getting rid of him—was a strange move. The slugger's early-season "woes" were well-documented in the local media, which frequently cited his .167 batting average. We've got two problems with this. One, batting average is an overrated and outmoded statistic; two, Thomas had a whopping sixty at-bats when he was benched, which isn't even close to being a big enough sample size to justify the Blue Jays' actions. The logical verdict, then, is that the team simply wanted to jettison Frank Thomas—or, more accurately, Thomas and his hefty contract. If Thomas had reached 376 plate appearances for the club this season (which would've been likely), the Blue Jays would've owed him $10-million next year. Clearly, they thought $10-million for a forty-year-old slugger was excessive...which is fine, except it doesn't explain why they offered him all that money in the first place.

Besides, Thomas is a notoriously slow starter who usually turns things around. In 2006, for instance, he parlayed a moribund April into an MVP-calibre season, finishing with 39 home runs, 114 RBIs, and a .926 OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage, both of which are much more salient statistics than batting average). He had a similar start last season—then wound up leading Toronto in numerous offensive categories, home runs and RBIs among them. Yet when the team got off to a sluggish start in 2008, the knee-jerk reaction was benching (and then releasing) a struggling hitter with noted turnaround ability. Has it worked?

In a word: no. The Blue Jays just got swept by the Tampa Bay Rays, and are currently mired in last place in the ultra-competitive American League East—and while twenty-three games probably isn't enough to draw meaningful conclusions, we've already established that this is an organization which apparently thrives on small sample sizes. Getting rid of Thomas smacks of desperation, of a team without any sort of plan; for us, it confirms that there's a leadership vacuum down at the Rogers Centre. Yesterday, meanwhile, Thomas was picked up by one of his former teams, the Oakland Athletics. They'll be paying him less than $340,000 this year; the Blue Jays will therefore be spending the better part of $8-million for Thomas to be wearing another team's uniform. If you're looking for a reason why the Blue Jays won't be competitive in 2008, we'd invite you to re-read that previous sentence. We don't like hating on one of our favourite teams—but right now, we're struggling to find many reasons for optimism.

Photo by Angel_Blue.