It's getting really hard. I'm a huge homer (am for all my teams) and so I pretty much at every opportunity defend the team, but the Rios thing (he was my favourite player since his rookie year) is just making it a lot tougher.

You can defend the Vernon deal by saying it was a move to prevent alienation of the fan base. You can defend the Rios deal by saying he was a 2-time All-Star. The Thomas deal... I guess we needed a DH? I guess we needed a closer and signed BJ for way more than even a good BJ should ever cost?

Anyway this is mostly motivated by TSN's recent comments that while JP is certainly good at some things - he has an uncanny ability to make something from nothing (Scoot, Accardo, even Richmond to an extent though that was a signing) and he's maneuvered quite well through smaller contracts (the Hill deal jumps out) but he has yet to sign a good big contract. Likely that's a lot of fan criticism which makes a large contract harder to defend (yeah he's good, but is he worth $___?). Anyway, I just need some evidence one way or another. Should I just stop defending him? Get some pleasure out of anger towards someone else? Or is there something I'm missing here...

Please help!