Toronto is a hockey — make that a Maple Leaf — town. That may be a weird way of wrapping up yet another disappointing Blue Jays season, but general manager J.P. Ricciardi would have been run out of town long ago if he was in a baseball-mad city. As it was, it took eight years of incompetence before fans finally started to stay away, effectively forcing upper management to finally get rid of the one-time wunderkind with one year left on his contract.

Suffering Jays fans certainly deserve better from a team with the 14th highest payroll in Major League Baseball but only the 20th best record. Ahead of them in the standings were such free-spenders as the Florida Marlins (lowest payroll in the league), the Minnesota Twins (sixth lowest) and Tampa Bay Rays (eighth lowest).

Maybe fans stayed with the Jays as long as they did because it doesn’t cost much to attend a game. Just US$167 gets a family of four into a game and covers food, drink, souvenirs and parking. Compare that to the US$411 it costs to see the New York Yankees and the Jays are a relative bargain. Of course, the Jays stink and the Yankees are favoured to win the World Series.

But, ultimately, Jays fans do care about on-field performance. A Rogers Centre low of only 11,159 showed up to watch a Twins game in September, finally showing their discontent with a team that has gone from OK to bad to worse. That the team’s season ended after two throwing errors by relief pitcher Brandon League only cemented how far the Jays have sunk.

The team’s highest-paid player, Vernon Wells, tanked for the second straight season following the signing of a seven-year, US$126-million contract that makes him virtually untradeable. He’s now one of the most overvalued power hitters in the league, according to CBO’s calculations, and could be even more overvalued next year if his stats don’t improve.

“This contract is looking like the biggest albatross in the game, and it’s forcing the Jays to trim costs almost everywhere else because there’s no way they can rid themselves of it,” says Rob Blackstien, who owns fantasy sports site RotoRob.com. “And the really big money doesn’t kick in until next season.”

Then pitcher Roy Halladay was left to twist in the wind by Ricciardi after the perennial all-star decided he would test free-agent waters come next fall.

Finally, manager Cito Gaston supposedly faced a near-revolt from his players as the season wound down. His crime, if there was one? Poor communication and an old-school management style that chafed today’s pampered millionaire players.

All of those problems can be traced back to Ricciardi, who was let go on the season’s penultimate day. He alienated players, made horrendous trades and signings and flat-out lied to fans. But his biggest shortcoming was that he couldn’t win using the moneyball strategy for which he was hired or when his budget was boosted midway through his tenure.

"The reality is that you're not going to win the AL East on a US$50-million payroll," Ricciardi said in 2005. "The price of doing business in baseball is not cheap. We realize the market is expensive, and to get good players sometimes you have to step up." Team owner Rogers Communications Inc. (which also owns Canadian Business Online) agreed and nearly doubled Ricciardi’s budget.

Instead of using that newfound money wisely, Ricciardi resorted to doling out the same outlandish contracts for which he lambasted his predecessor, Gord Ash.

In 2005 he gave pitcher A.J. Burnett a five-year, US$55 million-deal with an ill-advised opt-out after the third year. No surprise that Burnett had one good year — his third — and bolted to the Yankees. That same year Ricciardi gave closer B.J. Ryan US$55 million over five years and he had one great season, one average campaign and was turfed early this season. Ricciardi then locked up outfielders Wells and Alex Rios on long-term lucrative deals that also have not panned. Wells struggled through his second straight crappy year and Rios was waived in a salary dump in August.

It's strange behaviour for someone hired because he knew how to dig through stats to find inexpensive quality players. It worked for the Oakland A’s in the AL West division when Ricciardi was an assistant under Billy Beane, but everyone was in on the secret by the time Ricciardi got to Toronto. And some of those teams, especially the Yankees and Boston Red Sox, were able to cover their mistakes with more cash. Others, such as the Twins and Rays, just did a better job.