Toronto Blue Jays general manager J.P. Ricciardi said he was speaking from frustration late last week when he criticized the team's play.
"I'd probably do it in a different way," Ricciardi said yesterday from his home in Worcester, Mass.
He said he had not talked to any of the players or manager John Gibbons about the comments. "But I will, though," Ricciardi said. "I was frustrated and I shouldn't have said what I said. . . . I let my frustrations get the best of me and I shouldn't have done that."
In a newspaper article on Saturday, Ricciardi called the Jays' 6-2 loss to Kansas City last Thursday a joke and cited specific players as culprits.
"Right now, our 3-4-5 guys [Vernon Wells, Troy Glaus and Shea Hillenbrand]are killing us. They're absolutely killing us."
The Jays lost the next game to Kansas City 13-3. Before yesterday's 11-3 Blue Jays victory, the team had lost five of its previous seven games.
After a 7-5 victory on Saturday, Wells, in a postgame television interview, expressed anger over Ricciardi's comments and took issue with the GM's claims that the team wasn't showing effort.
As a general manager, Ricciardi has limited avenues in which to let his players know his feelings during the season.
"It's not my place to call a team meeting," Ricciardi said. "It's not my place to go up to them individually and say I'm not happy with the team. It's hard from a general manager's standpoint because you don't get one-on-one time as much as you'd like.
"There [are]expectations of us this year and we have expectations of ourselves, and when you don't meet them, you get frustrated."
Wells said yesterday that what's done is done and that it's time to move forward.
"We were all frustrated with the way we were playing," Wells said. "It happened, it's over with, let's move on."
Ricciardi continues to defend one of those who has played poorly, second baseman Russ Adams. "I think Russ is going to be a good player, he's just going through a tough thing right now," Ricciardi said.
"He's starting to swing the bat now. We'll just see. We'll see if it becomes a problem."