SHEA YA LATER: JAYS DUMP HILLENBRAND ... IS THE DREAM DEAD?

Ted Rogers has his wish. The Jays are water-cooler talk today. Better to be despised than ignored, right?

Some will call disgruntled DH Shea Hillenbrand everything under the sun in the wake of last night's incident which got him fired from the Blue Jays. Others -- not to name names, but the double standard in the Toronto media means you never pull a punch where the Jays are concerned, even if it's a sucker punch -- are going to try to spin this as being 100% the fault of John Gibbons and J.P. Ricciardi for trying to make Hillenbrand the fall guy for their own failings as manager and GM, respectively.

Digession: It's almost fun, in a twisted kind of way, to watch your first, truest, longest-lasting sports obsession go from being on pace for its best season in years to being on the brink of completely unravelling.

In 72 hours the Jays have gone stoking plaintive hopes to looking like a total gong show. Naturally, this comes just before a weekend where the Evil Empire is in town and myself and good buddy Neil Acharya have tickets for the Saturday and Sunday games. But of course...

Here's some of the anticipated takes on the whole mess, with rebuttals.

Hillenbrand is a traitor, a baseball Benedict Arnold, an ingrate. If he doesn't want to play for us, to hell -- or Kansas City -- with him.

No, not really. He's just the latest in a long line of ballplayers who have overvalued their own abilities and reacted to a reduction in playing time in somewhat less than heroic fashion. No one should think that he should have gladly sat on the bench and collected his money. However, his big mistake was losing his temper and not saying, "No comment," when his cellphone rang in the Jays clubhouse during the game last night. If he had kept his cool for 24 hours, he would still be a Blue Jay this morning.

The Jays should have shown more class in the days leading up to this outburst.

Who are you, Emily Post? The Jays didn't owe Hillenbrand anything other than what's required in his contract and the basic collective agreement. Ricciardi probably shouldn't have called out the players a couple weeks back -- especially since it apparently didn't make Vernon Wells any more eager to sign a long-term deal with the Jays. Wells apparently took Hillenbrand's axing harder than most; if that's the legacy of L'Affaire Shea, that's a pretty big anvil hurtling toward J.P.'s head.

The only quibble is whether the Jays' reaction to Hillenbrand's absence from the lineup last weekend differed from what it might have been if the new arrival in his family had been a biological child rather than the baby girl he and his wife adopted. Sure, that's a side issue, but if that's the case, then shame on the Jays for such backwards thinking.

What a dumb move -- cutting a .300 hitter.

News flash: batting average is meaningless, and .300 ain't what it used to be. Yes, Hillenbrand was batting .301, but with limited secondary average (i.e., walks and extra-base hits). In fact, according to the Hardball Times, Hillenbrand has earned zero Win Shares Above Bench this season, meaning he was no more productive than any average bench player(s) would have been. This from a guy who's notoriously less productive in the second half of the season. Maybe the Jays shrewdly gauged his expendability.

This wrecks team chemistry, and thus, ruins the Jays' chances in an AL East race the Yankees and Red Sox.

Chemistry is one of things that holds a lot of fascination to fans, but many columnists will actually level with you and saw that chemistry is way, way overemphasized. Players pull together because they win, not the other way around; they find ways to bury their differences and mutual dislike.

Gibbons should have just put Hillenbrand in the lineup, and been done with it.

That's only assuming the decision came from Gibbons himself. If that's the case, well, this space has noted the similarities between Gibbons and his former manager in the Mets organization, Davey Johnson. Strategically, it means going with the lineup you thought would work on a given night, whether it means Troy Glaus at shortstop, or sitting out Hillenbrand when Glaus and Alex Rios are already sidelined with injuries. If Hillenbrand didn't like it, tough. He is what he is -- a player who fills a role.

Johnson wasn't an ego-stroker -- that's why he got fired everywhere he went -- and he certainly wasn't hesitant to sit someone who wasn't performing. He also understand that in a clubhouse of very large egos, the manager's has to be the largest. (It must be a Texas thing.) From afar, it seems Gibbons, who's only in his second full season, felt his authority was being challenged, so he "reamed out" Hillenbrand after an incident he saw as insubordination.

It's worth noting that 20 years ago, when Gibbons played for the '86 Mets, Johnson fired veteran George Foster after he publicly criticized the organization. The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

The Jays brought this on themselves by not trading either Hillenbrand or Eric Hinske.

That's revisionism. Very few people expected Rios (before his injury) to win the right-field job outright and make Hinske the odd man out. By the same token, Hinske had almost become the forgotten man; back in the winter, when it became known the Jays were going to bring him back and switch him to the outfield, all the know-it-alls made jokes about his "so-called bat."

Meantime, it was assumed the overrated Hillenbrand would be pencilled into the lineup every day, since he had good enough first impression early in '05 that most people overlooked his low on-base percentage and penchant for punchless second halves.

Ricciardi is making Hillenbrand the scapegoat, since he hasn't done enough to give this team a chance at contending.

Well, hard to argue with that, but what would you expect the GM to do if a player started throwing stones from a glass house, going on about how management was the reason for why the team doesn't win?

Not to play shoot the messenger, but when did Shea Hillenbrand become the big expert on what it takes to win at the major-league level? Here's a guy who played on a couple mediocre Boston teams, got traded, and saw the Red Sox reach the playoffs three straight years (and win a World Series) without him. The Diamonbacks had won 95 games in 2002, the season before he arrived, and went from there to 84 wins to 51, got rid of Hillenbrand and rebounded to post 77 wins in '05. So in other words, while there were many other contributing factors, both of Hillenbrand's previous teams he played for improved after he went elsewhere.

The Jays are toast.

In and of itself, losing Hillenbrand doesn't ensure that, but it means that any lingering possibility of deadline deal for pitching help -- possibly one involving Hinske, as touted here since May -- is completely kaput. Without that, the Jays won't have the pitching to stay in the race, or to spare their overworked bullpen.

So yes, it's about 95% likely the Jays are toast, but not due to getting rid of Hillenbrand. It was happening already.

The Jays are toast, since this whole distraction is coming right as the Yankees come in for four games.

It seems almost ridiculous right now to talk about a split, let alone taking three out of four against the Yankees this weekend. From here, it looks like everything has turned to mud. As for distractions, well, let's concede that the tension might have played a small part in the bullpen blowing the last two games.

However, this is baseball, where you're only as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher. On that note, fortunately for the Jays, it's Roy Halladay and A.J. Burnett pitching these next two nights.

And that, sports fans, is the very thin thread the Jays are hanging by today.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.