After eight seasons at the helm of the Blue Jays, Toronto general manager J.P. Ricciardi was fired on Saturday morning. The decision was announced in a press release.

“This was a tough decision and a difficult one for me personally as I have enjoyed J.P.’s friendship and his perspective on the game,” said Paul Beeston, acting President, and CEO. “J.P. has put an incredible amount of effort into improving the team and he has brought along a number of great young players. However, I feel that it is time for a change and accordingly we have decided to move on.”

The Blue Jays were 642-651 under Ricciardi, finishing as high as second place in the American League East in 2006 and finishing in third place — behind the Yankees and Red Sox — on four separate occasions. Ricciardi freely admitted to the immense challenge of trying to compete against those two financial heavyweights in what is widely viewed as baseball’s toughest division.

In an interview with WEEI.com’s Rob Bradford in August, Ricciardi discussed “the reality of the division,” which permits only elite teams to survive and enter the postseason.

“There’s a lot of really good things happening [in Toronto],” Ricciardi said at the time. What I think we’ve realized is the reality of the division. We know it, but we’ve come to realize it even more so. This is not a division you can be good in, you have to be great in it to make the playoffs. We’ve been good the last three years. The ownership has been great to us. They’ve allowed us to spend some money over the last three years, and the last three years we were high 80’s in wins. We’re not good enough to win the division.

“What we have to do is take a step back and start looking at ways that we can start building to get great. I think with the [Brett] Cecils and the [Ricky] Romeros and all the young arms we have, along with the [Aaron] Hills and the [Adam] Linds and the players we have coming we have a really good foundation and nucleus to get there. But I think we have to be smart about the fact that right now we’re not great and you have to be great to win this division.

“We have a really good foundation here. Our ownership is great. Our ownership isn’t one that gives into pressure and understands that it’s a long haul and understands there’s a method to the madness. We’re pretty confident we’re going to be OK going forward. Every year brings different challenges and hopefully one of these years we’ll stay healthy to put the right players out there.”

Now, if that does happen, it will be someone other than Ricciardi who assembles that group of players.

This year, the Blue Jays got off to a terrific start, and owned a 27-19 record and resided in first place on May 23 despite a collection of injuries (to Dustin McGowan, Shaun Marcum, Jesse Litsch and Casey Janssen, among others) that seemed likely to torpedo the Toronto pitching staff. But the team struggled over the next four months — with the offense serving as the primary culprit — leading to the team’s willingness to trade ace Roy Halladay at this year’s trade deadline. But the Blue Jays ended up not dealing their ace, deeming the offers that they received inadequate. The Jays recorded a 48-66 record after falling out of first place, resulting in a fourth-place standing in the A.L. East and leading to Ricciardi’s ouster.

Blue Jays assistant general manager Alex Anthopoulos has been promoted to the position of interim G.M.

The headline for the May 19 column was “I’ve just jinxed the Blue Jays”. The first line read as follows: “You know,” I told a member of the Blue Jays’ decision-making team, “by writing this I’m virtually guaranteeing that you plummet in the standings.”

At least I was right about something.

No, my prediction that the team that came to Boston carrying a 2 ½-game lead in the American League in mid-May was going to be in AL East mix for the long haul didn’t quite work out.

Since that proclamation, the Blue Jays have gone 55-61, finding themselves 17 ½ games out, while serving as the poster boys for Major League Baseball’s ‘Wait ‘Til Next Year’ campaign.

They’ve listened to offers for the face of their franchise (Roy Halladay), let one of their young, cornerstone position players (Alex Rios) go for the payoff of financial flexibility, traded a veteran (Scott Rolen) presence in order to gain even more budgetary breathing room, gone over the suggested Major League Baseball slot in signing draft picks more than ever before, yet failed to sign their second-highest selection in this year’s draft.

Through it all, Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi sounds like a man with at least a tint of optimism in his voice when talking about the future of his franchise. He talks about having to be “great” not “good” and how many of these steps are paving the way to find that distinction.

Ricciardi took a few minutes to talk about his team’s lot in life, via phone, Monday night:

RB: Have the challenges of building a team in this division surprised you over the years?

JP: It’s not a a surprise. Nothing has changed. From the day I took the job in Toronto the Red Sox changed, with the new ownership coming in. All of a sudden you didn’t have to worry just about the Yankees, you had to worry about two super teams as far as having to be able to do things. The division has only gotten harder, but it’s a great division in because we like competing against those guys. It’s not easy, but anything you strive to do in life is not going to be easy.

RB: Were the offers you received for Halladay surprising?

JP: I don’t think we were surprised. Everybody values their own players differently. For us, we just didn’t get moved by anything that said ‘This is worth while.’ We weren’t surprised. Who are we to say what other teams should value or shouldn’t value. We just know the value we put on our own player and if it isn’t met we weren’t going to move the player.

RB: How do you view your team after all of this dust has cleared?

JP: We like our team, we really do. We like the nucleus we have in place. We think Hill and Lind are going to be stars and are on their way. We think Snider is going to be a very good player. We like our team. We like our arms on the mound. There’s a lot of really good things happening here. What I think we’ve realized is the reality of the division. We know it, but we’ve come to realize it even more so. This is not a division you can be good in, you have to be great in it to make the playoffs. We’ve been good the last three years. The ownership has been great to us. They’ve allowed us to spend some money over the last three years, and the last three years we were high 80’s in wins. We’re not good enough to win the division.

What we have to do is take a step back and start looking at ways that we can start building to get great. I think with the Cecils and the Romeros and all the young arms we have, along with the Hills and the Linds and the players we have coming we have a really good foundation and nucleus to get there. But I think we have to be smart about the fact that right now we’re not great and you have to be great to win this division.

I think it’s extremely important. You have to realize that we’re a club that had a $20 million cut in payroll this year. So with that savings going into next year, along with the Rolen savings along with the players we acquired for Rolen, we were able to hopefully utilize that money to address some of our needs. I’ll only be able to answer the question over the next five years how that money works in our favor.

I think the most misleading thing about this year is that we were very upfront and honest with our fan base that this was going to be a year we didn’t spend money. This was going to be a year where we take a step back and play a lot of kids. We committed to Lind, we committed to Romero, we committed to all the young kids on the mound. I think we’re probably playing the way we all expected in spring training. The unfortunate thing is that we got off to a really good start and once you get off to a really good start I think expectations went out the window except everybody in the front office. We kept saying we’re still young in a lot of these areas and are going to go through some growing pains. Probably the most misleading thing from our end was that we worried about our pitching but it wasn’t our pitching that was the problem, it’s been our offense and that was probably the one thing that was the most disappointing thing than anything, that offensively we just haven’t been as good as we hoped to have been.

We have a really good foundation here. Our ownership is great. Our ownership isn’t one that gives into pressure and understands that it’s a long haul and understands there’s a method to the madness. We’re pretty confident we’re going to be OK going forward. Every year brings different challenges and hopefully one of these years we’ll stay healthy to put the right players out there.