I would like to begin this article by saying that this marks the 100th article written for this web space, it’s a small but memorable moment as the Blue Jays are the most followed team on the entire Gear Up for Sports website for the third month in a row according to the bosses Brian, Chris & David.

I would just like to thank everyone who reads here on a consistent basis as without readers this would just be dead web space which no one cared about, but instead it has contributed vastly to the Gear Up for Sports network which had a another record setting reader month with in and around 20,000 new readers visiting the site in the month of September.

Thanks once again everyone and now let’s move onto the good stuff.

The Toronto Blue Jays 2009 playing season is over, but the off-season for the Jays is just beginning to get interesting.

With the most recent firing of former general manager JP Ricciardi, the appointment of assistant general manager Alex Anthopoulos occurred.

Let’s start off by taking a listen to an interview conducted by local Toronto sports station the FAN 590’s Bob McCown with Alex Anthopoulos.

Listen to the interview here; the interview is exactly 15 minutes in length:
http://www.fan590.com/media.jsp?content=20091006_180733_9004

Now Anthopoulos used one very keyword numerous times in the interview that already had me excited about this gentleman.

That word being “direction”.

Under the helm of JP Ricciardi one of the biggest complaints from fans over his eight year tenure was the lack of direction the ball club had. Were we contenders? Were we rebuilding? Were we going to sign a big free agent? Were we going to build around the draft?

It all seemed like a mish-mash of all and none at times, especially this season.

Anthopoulos used the word direction numerous times throughout the interview and said he had an idea that was conversed with interim president Paul Beeston, as well as Tony Viner that the two were excited about.

The big question is Anthopoulos going to come through with personnel moves to establish his so called direction?

Well in only his first couple of weeks on the job Anthopoulos proved to his word founding his directional move on Friday.

Anthopoulos has revealed that his top priority are changes to the player development and scouting departments and he began to make those changes Friday.

Anthopoulos relieved Dick Scott, the Blue Jays’ director of player development since 2001 of his position, as well as dismissing Triple-A Las Vegas 51’s manager Mike Basso of his duties.

Anthopoulos stated that assistant general manager Tony LaCava will now oversee the player development department, while Charlie Wilson and Doug Davis have been promoted to director of Minor League operations while Davis has been appointed Minor League coordinator.

On the scouting side, the Blue Jays named Andrew Tinnish the new director of amateur scouting, while Perry Minasian has been given the role of director of professional scouting and Jon Lalonde has been named professional scout. Former Blue Jays player Rob Ducey has also been relieved of his scouting duties.

Ducey served as a scout in the Pacific Rim for the Blue Jays, but Anthopoulos said finding someone new to fill that role is not going to be a top priority at this time. Anthopoulos wants to improve Latin American scouting, as well as the scouting department as a whole before focussing on the European/Asian side of baseball scouting for the team.

These are major moves by Anthopoulos in this very short tenure as Toronto Blue Jays general manager, but the moves are very promising ones as it does show that the Jays are focussing on improving in the future.

What does that mean for the current Blue Jays?

Well as Anthopoulos stated in his interview with McCown, that is to be discussed and based on initial decisions, a domino effect is likely to occur.

When the domino effect is complete the new direction of the Toronto Blue Jays franchise will be clear, which even if not promising at first, is in my opinion a better direction than what we already had, which was none.