Public enemy No. 1 in Toronto is troubled but talented Blue Jays pitcher AJ Burnett. He went and told the Chicago Sun-Times that he’d like to be a Chicago Cub. Oops. Intern Bill examines just how screwed Toronto is because it gave Burnett one of the worst contracts in baseball (it’s more than just the money, stupid).

Breaking with the obnoxious stereotype that only basketball players demand trades after earning max-dollars, AJ Burnett said over the weekend that he’d “love to play for the Cubs,” hinting that he’d rather be in a city/country where baseball didn’t always play 2nd fiddle to hockey. And who could blame him, exactly? The Jays are probably the most consistently mediocre franchise in the modern era of our national pastime. Fans of the club haven’t had any reason to be fired up since the 1993 World Series, when a plucky young US marine had the audacity (read: impish and awesome enthusiasm) to hang the Canadian flag upside-down.*

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened with Burnett, who has proven to be one of the most complex, intriguing, and agitating players in recent memory. He’s the kind of guy who has game-changing talent, but the ancillary issues that he carries with him might not only preclude a team from dealing for him, but will also tarnish the value of Burnett to the Blue Jays themselves.

Let’s put some stuff on the table about Burnett:

* Burnett is on the short list of pitchers with the most righteous pure “stuff” in major league baseball. He has a fastball with late movement that can also gear up to 100 miles-per-hour, and a curveball equal to that of AL East rival and former Florida teammate Josh Beckett of the Boston Red Sox, who is thought to have the best right-handed curveball in the game. When Burnett is on, he is the kind of pitcher who shuts down the opposing offense. These kinds of players are valuable. However…

* AJ Burnett is injury-prone. By an amateur’s count, Burnett has been on the disabled list about 20 times. Many of his injuries have been of the hand, arm, and shoulder variety, (including Tommy John in 2003), increasing concerns of clubs around the league. He’s only pitched over 30 games in a season twice in his career, meaning that he’ll never be the innings-eating horse that teams covet to go deep into post-season play.

* In this era of free agent pitchers getting borderline insane contracts, Burnett probably has the worst contract in all of baseball from the perspective of the controlling team. Let’s explain:

Burnett makes (for this era anyway) a reasonable 12M dollars a season. However, he has a clause in his contract that allows him to opt out of that contract after every year post-2008. That means that even though he’s signed until 2011, if he think he can earn more dollars than he’s making currently, he can get up and leave. Assuming he’s healthy, and knowing that Carlos freakin’ Silva got nearly 50M for four years, he’ll go.

Here’s the kicker - Burnett won’t opt out if he gets hurt. After all, not a lot of guys this side of Carl Pavano (also an ex-Florida Marlin) gets to make 10M dollars a year to not pitch. So at this point, the Jays are essentially on the hook for 30M dollars for a valueless asset (injured AJ), or are stuck with a guy they have to move as a valuable asset (healthy AJ), who would almost certainly opt out anyway. Not Toronto GM’s JP Ricciardi’s best signing.

* AJ Burnett has a bad attitude. When he was with the Marlins in 2005, he called out his teams and coaches, by saying that they were playing and coaching scared. On June 7th of this year, his tipped his hat to a booing home crowd after he gave up eight runs to the Orioles in a losing effort.

So what will the Jays do, exactly? Give in to his demands and lose the confidence of the remaining players, assuming they had any left to begin with? Try to contend so that when (not if) they miss the playoffs and Burnett walks, they have nothing to show for it? Have manager John Gibbons challenge yet another troublesome player to a fight?

Probably none will be as successful as having an American team hang their flag upside down. It would be a fitting symbol to what professional baseball has become up north. Former Blue Jay David Wells stated it so perfectly: “[That's] just another reason, it sucks to play baseball in Canada.€

* Technically, this happened in the 1992 World Series, a series that the Jays also won. But it sounds better considering 1993 was the last time the Jays finished anywhere near 1st place.