Blue Jays Regular Season Review

The Jays finish another decidedly mediocre plus season and the word in the press has it that changes will not be taking place. A little shuffling of the coaching staff, and that's that.
Mind you, the coaching staff needed some work on it. Especially from the position of hitting coach. He may have helped Aaron Hill maximize his potential, and I certainly hope that Aaron does not forget the lessons that he has learned.
It just seemed to me that most of the other players, from the injured Vernon Wells, to the injured Troy Glaus (well, they were all injured at one point or another, weren't they?). Far too often, a Blue Jays batter would swing on top of a pitch, missing it completely. I know I only returned to Canada towards the end of June and I can't comment on the season's first three months, but outside of Hill and , at times, Matt Stairs, I never saw an actual "approach" taken by any of our men at the plate.
The coaching shuffle will not be enough to save this team. As I understand it, both Gibbons and Ricciardi are in their last year. It's time to bite that bullet and begin afresh.
Gibbons, among other faults, cannot construct a working lineup. We all know that Wells was playing hurt the entire season and that affected his hitting. His power was markedly sapped. Yet his ability to get on base without swinging has never been great - why bat him leadoff? What actual benefit did the Jays glean from having Vernon swing at the first pitch and ground it weakly to 2nd? OK, without power, he had minimal benefit to the middle of the order. But without discipline, he has NO benefit to the top. If he needed to play, he should have been batting around 6th or 7th.
I won't delve more into the minutiae of what went wrong, but I will make some suggestions about what they can start to do right.
Get rid of Glaus, Johnson, Thomas. They bring a marginal package to the table and might be able to bring back more useful pieces if dealt astutely. The Jays could use Lind over Johnson, and Stairs in place of Thomas (Stairs should never wear a glove again, though).
Don't touch the pitching. Don't let Chacin back in unless Litsch bombs.
Work on baserunning. Offensively and defensively. The statistically minded community (to which I have a loose affiliation) preaches the harm a stolen base gives when successful under 75% of the time. I think that is true, but misses a prime element to thievery. When a team is either totally unwilling to run outside tactically necessary situations, the opposing team can safely ignore the threat and focus more on other aspects of fielding, improving their glove game. Stealing bases is a risk with a low payoff, but it is unfortunately a tactical risk to not run either. Aaron Hill, for example, stole home against Andy Pettitte. Yet he only attempted 7 thefts all year. Why not more? Rios was good 17 times out of 21. He should have ran double. Wells' injury was to the shoulder. So why did he only attempt to steal 14 bases?

Conversely, we need to be able to defend against the steal. The Jays only threw out 24 would be thieves in 2007 (least in the AL), while allowing 134 (only 2 behind the league leading Yankees, who also threw out 20 more). That stat alone probably can be said to have cost the Jays a few wins.

If we can't run, they don't need to worry about it and can hold their defensive ground more often. If we can't stop the run, they will take bases at will. Part of the defensive problem lay with Gregg Zaun and his string arm. He is a very good catcher in that he is marvelous at blocking the plate and does a creditable job at handling the young pitching staff. A bit more of Curtis Thigpen next year will probably help out a bit. Pitching coach Brad Arnsberg (who kept his job, last I checked) needs to pound it into the heads of McGowen and Burnett (among others, but especially them) that they need to work on holding the runner a bit better. Their slow deliveries are giving extra steps on the bases to the opponents.

It's hard to talk/write about the Blue Jays without mentioning the two elephants in the division. I say that the Blue Jays, managed properly, can also be a team of elephants. We can do better. We need to do better.