Thiel: yay continuity
His PI column today
Which argues, pretty much, that firing Bavasi & Hargrove wouldn’t have helped
Unless it can be established that a manager/GM is incompetent or lazy, sports-franchise firings usually, but not always, are PR stunts for hapless organizations (that would include at one time the Yankees, who went without playoffs from 1981 to 1995 and fired so many managers and executives that the final total awaits confirmation from the archeological record, like Pompeii).
Makes a weird stop in the middle to make an error:
The Mariners are owned by a Japanese billionaire, who in 14 seasons has never seen his team play, takes serious interest only in his countrymen and never has been personally accountable to the Mariners fan base.
The Mariners aren’t owned by a Japanese billionaire and haven’t been in some time. Majority ownership is Nintendo of America. You could argue that amounts to the same thing, but he is not the owner.
And ends up with
They each made mistakes, the team made some progress, and both guys have a guaranteed year on their contracts that would have been Mariners money out the window had they been fired.
In the end, a third consecutive last-place finish for one of the game’s wealthiest franchises is the fault of everyone in general, and no one in particular. So the bosses chose to stick with a direction, because the other choice was to get back into the hamster wheel.
I disagree that you had to fire both of them.
I disagree that being under contract should confer any kind of job security.
I disagree that Hargrove didn’t particularly contribute to the problem.
I disagree that going 20-15 after an eleven-game losing streak proves anything about the team, much less Hargrove.
I understand the point that firings are often pointless scapegoating. But if you’re going to raise that question, and Thiel does make some kinda anti-Lincoln statements, we shoud be talking in some detail about how they’re the root cause, not shrugging our shoulders and going “mehhh”.
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He does point out with some detail just how futile Bill Bavasi’s track record has been during his ten year effort at being a GM, here and in LA. Which should not be cause for hope.
Bavasi, I feel, mostly just has bad luck. Sure, there were times that he should have sold high and didn’t (Guardado, Meche, anyone?), and signed a veteran too many (….), which trickles down from higher power most likely.
He’s made some good pickups, some good signings, dealt people that he had to, which deals just didn’t work out. Often times the kind of talent he’s had to deal away hasn’t been premiere talent anyway, you can’t expect to get a lot back for that.
Most of which deals, I’ve agreed with. There just hasn’t been enough creativity.
Unless it can be established that a manager/GM is incompetent or lazy, sports-franchise firings usually, but not always, are PR stunts for hapless organizations (that would include at one time the Yankees, who went without playoffs from 1981 to 1995 and fired so many managers and executives that the final total awaits confirmation from the archeological record, like Pompeii).
I’d argue in this case that our 2007 manager has indeed established his incompetence. If Hargrove really was doing the best that could be expected (or hell, average would be good enough) with the level of talent supplied to him, then this argument washes. That’s just not the case…
Thiel:
Rather than deal with a spell of serious badness to develop kids, they’ve had three mediocre seasons of incremental improvement and growing skepticism that the franchise doesn’t know what it is doing.
Um, what the hell does he think two back-to-back 90 loss seasons are if not “serious badness”, considering that even the 1980’s Mariners never did that?
I sort of touched on this in the season ticketholder thread, but if you think that a 75-ish win team is adequate for Bill Bavasi to keep his job, it’s not THAT much of a stretch to think that he, as the General Manager, gets to pick the manager, and Bavasi’s MO has been to back his manager pretty strongly- plus Hargrove’s his hire, as opposed to Melvin (who got tossed from the bus pretty quickly after Bavasi showed up)- and then, we get to the question of how is a 75 win season acceptable performance for a GM in this organization but not acceptable for a field manager? Is Hargrove’s contribution to this year’s failures THAT much more than Bavasi’s?
Carlos Guillen, Freddy Garcia, Rich Aurelia, Speizeo, Beltre, Washburn, Sexson, Perez, Broussard, Everett is a lot of bad luck. To paraphrase Sometimes a lousy GM is just a lousy GM.
It wasn’t Bavasi’s idea to trade Guillen and Garcia.
I’m still not that worried about this. I hate Hargrove with a bloody passion, more because of his in-game strategies and favoritism of certain inferior players, but seeing as how when he had a bad first couple of months THIS season and the “hot seat” rumor mills were churning, what makes anybody so positive that because he’ll be back for 2007, he’ll be back for ALL of 2007?
I just look at this as “Staying the Coarse” for now. Keep promoting young players, get needed hole filling free agents, and don’t change horses (Hargrove) mid-stream.
I want to stress that this isn’t how I’d do it, but that seems to be what the Mariners FO is thinking. They’re getting “better” so stay with the guy who was in charge when things got “better”.
Carlos Guillen, Freddy Garcia, Rich Aurelia, Speizeo, Beltre, Washburn, Sexson, Perez, Broussard, Everett is a lot of bad luck. To paraphrase Sometimes a lousy GM is just a lousy GM.
Mariners History 101 should be a required class in high school and college. Or at least can we make this shit part of the FAQ?
Sooo, did he trade them or not? I think we’ve seen recently how reliable inside sources are to allow him a pass on some of the deals and not and attribute some of them to Lincoln/Armstrong. He’s the GM or he isn’t. He gets credit for success or failure.
Name some player he’s brought in that doesn’t have a serious flaw in their game. Just one.
If that’s too close to the bone, how did he do in California?
May favorite load of crap is how he’s restocked the minor league system. BaseballAmerica after the Perez/Broussard fiasco said it was the worst in Baseball.
May favorite load of crap is how he’s restocked the minor league system. BaseballAmerica after the Perez/Broussard fiasco said it was the worst in Baseball.
If you take the top minor league talent of ANY system and promote it to the bigs, yes, then any system will look like crap.
Criticizing Bavasi’s farm system skills NOW, after only two or three drafts really IS kind of stupid, because his drafts shouldn’t even be reacing the AAA levels yet.
By the way…
Sooo, did he trade them or not? I think we’ve seen recently how reliable inside sources are to allow him a pass on some of the deals and not and attribute some of them to Lincoln/Armstrong. He’s the GM or he isn’t. He gets credit for success or failure.
Success has many fathers; failure has one–the scapegoat. Very few teams give complete power to the GM; what you’re demanding isn’t rooted in reality.
terrybenish,
Carlos Guillen wasn’t his fault, I think everyone can agree on that. He was under orders to trade him and had no leverage to get anything decent back. Don’t forget also that originally he tried to get Omar Vizquel, which wouldn’t have been awful, and would have negated the Aurelia fiasco.
Beltre at the time appeared to be a good signing. Most people hear thought so. It hasn’t worked out great, but it still could.
Sexson I really can’t defend. He hasn’t been horrible, and if we are able to trade him this offseason, it might turn out to be pretty good.
Speizeo, Washburn, and Perez I don’t like. But only the Washburn deal is a total killer. And compared to some other free agent pitcher signings it isn’t awful. I still won’t try to defend it.
I thought Broussard was pretty good. And if Benuardo had hit the way they did in Cleveland here and the Mariners had stayed competitive this year I doubt you’d be complaining.
It’s pretty tough to have a great minor league system when you have Lowe, Felix, Lopez, Bentencourt and Snelling all in the majors. The core of the team is young, and the majority of the minor league talent is going to be at lower levels because of this. I imagine our prospects in A ball compare highly to anyones.
I forgot to mention the Garcia trade. I can’t name one person who didn’t think this was a great trade for the Mariners at the time. We got one big leagure and two minor leaguers for a rent a player who wasn’t coming back.
Does change your opion of Thiel Derek? Also what about signings/trades/releases like: John Olerud who’s fault wasn’t his but the hitting coach at the time (Paul Moliter) where everyone except for Ichiro struggled. Also when he couldn’t get anyting Visquel he instead traded Ramon Santiago who is like the infielder version of Rene Rivera and Juan Gonzalez who never got to AAA. So Arbeck Carlos Gullien was his fault. And yes he is a horrible GM.
The Garcia trade was amazing. Freddy’s not worth the contract he got afterward, and in return we got a major-league catcher, a top center field prospect, and a throw-in guy. That those three happened to turn into Olivo, Reed, and Morse couldn’t have been foreseen.
At the time I would have happily made the trade straight-up for Reed.
You can’t judge trades after the fact. You just can’t. Trades need to be judged based solely on information available at the time of the trade. That’s like saying buying real estate in New Jersey was a bad idea because 2 weeks later the entire state was destroyed by an asteroid. It’s possible to make good decisions that just don’t work out.
Remove the everything before Visquel please Derek or Dave.
Yes, “stay the course” as a plan of success always seems to work out splendidly.
Thoughts on the story:
Its exciting to hear that Ichiro has agreed to play center next year. I took this to mean that Ichiro realizes what needs to be done for the Mariners to win something- anything- while he’s in Seattle, playing center and opening the right corner for the proper outfielder. This could mean a corner masher, as Theil implies, OR it could mean that Snelling’s OBP-tastic ways as the #2 man in the line-up under Ichiro is what’s needed and Ichiro understands that.
The number of rookies played this year, and Hargrove’s preference to avoiding playing rookies, makes the end result a topic of discussion. Would it have been preferable for the M’s to trot out a young team all season long and keep their fingers crossed for a similar season as the Marlins’, knowing full well that a 2003-Tigers team result could occur as well? Or was it better to break the kids in slowly (if not maddeningly, as Bloomquist got at least 100 at-bats too many) and ride a record to .500-ish, which may set a trend towards entrenched mediocrity, avoiding a 100-loss season but not sniffing 90+ wins for four-to-five seasons in a row?
And the chart at the end is gagging. Bavasi & Hargrove must be some smooth-talking snake-oil salesmen. How else can you explain Hargrove’s tenure in Baltimore, where no matter how horrible the team collapsed he always returned next spring? And Bavasi appears to be the same way- why is he entrusted with the roster creation of a major league team? Granted, the Angels won it all with a roster he helped put together- but perhaps it took Bavasi’s leaving for the Angels to succeed.
Anyways, my initial reactions…
On Guillen, the correct decision would have been not to trade him – but Bavasi wasn’t given that option. Since his perceived value was lower than his actual value (at the time of the trade there were real doubts that his health would allow him to stay at shortstop), you couldn’t get much for him.
I don’t mind Bavasi as a GM. He’s far from perfect (see Everett, Carl), but he’s also far from terrible. He’s not Bowden or Krivsky or Baird or someone grossly incompetent like that.
#9, Betancourt wasn’t a bad get, for one. We can all take shots at Bavasi or not, but let’s get to the root cause(s) of the problem: Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong. They may be skilled business men and politicians, but their baseball management skills leave much to be desired. They run off anyone with passion and replace them with yes men. They interfere with baseball operations and personnel decisions. They run the Mariners more like a family theme park than a sports franchise. They are concerned about one thing and one thing only: the bottom line. Sure they want to win, because that fattens the bottom line. But in the absence of victories, they will shift their marketing focus to their beautiful ballpark or their community service or their clever commercials or their rosy-cheeked local golden boys. They are selling entertainment, not baseball, and appealing to the masses of gullible, uneducated baseball fans who don’t know enough to be offended by it.
This spring Chuck Armstrong declared that the M’s would win the AL West. Yesterday, along with Howard Lincoln, he sent out a letter telling us they have actually been in a rebuilding process. Hmmmm, which is it today Chuck? Are we contenders or are we rebuilding? Which is the more convenient statement to keep the wolves off your back today?
These men are baseball idiots and don’t know it. Their massive egos prevent them from being honest with themselves. After all, they led the team that averaged 100 wins a year for 4 years. Forget the fact they didn’t act at the deadline and thus missed the playoffs the last two of those four years. “Staying the course” isn’t their mantra; it’s a way for them to keep from admitting their mistakes. Bavasi does some good things and some bad things and is at best mediocre, and Hargrove is pretty much a joke as we all know. But they both do their most important job – being yes men – very well. This is why they are being retained. As long as employees make no waves, fans are still flocking to Safeco and the M’s make money, we’ll just “stay the course”. Life is good.
I don’t mind Bavasi as a GM. He’s far from perfect (see Everett, Carl),
Sounds like we need an Evaluate the GM post.
Some people are talking as if signing free agents is the most important or the only part of the GM job. Are we sure about that?
I think evaluating talent might be the most important part of the GM job.
I often wonder why it’s one job? There are so many different parts of it; why not have a team?
We can all take shots at Bavasi or not, but let’s get to the root cause(s) of the problem: Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong. They may be skilled business men and politicians, but their baseball management skills leave much to be desired. They run off anyone with passion and replace them with yes men.
Um, if this is about Lou, you do realize he didn’t turn Tampa Bay into a winner, right?
fans are still flocking to Safeco
You do realize attendance is down in 2006 from 2005, 2005 from 2004, and so on, right? So it’s not like they’re partying like it’s 2002. The Mariners are leaving a LOT of dollars on the table that they would be picking up if they were, you know, actually good.
My guess is that season tickets will be flat from 2006 at best- and a decline from 2006 probably likely.
I think the problems the M’s have right now are systemic, and don’t pigeonhole nicely into “that damn Lincoln/Armstrong/Bavasi/Hargrove, if we just got rid of him, we’d be fine”. The organization has decided that it’s not the time for systemic re-evaluation of everything, because their record’s improved from last year. If you want that and lots of severed heads tossed from the Kremlin walls of the Mariners front office, you probably need the 2007 Mariners to crash and burn badly (ala 2004-2005…or the 1999 Angels, to take an example from Bavasi’s last gig).
Not that I actually advocate reading this column, but Steve Kelley seems to think that keeping Grover and Bavasi was a bad thing. Which raises an interesting question: If your only ally in the media is Steve Kelley, should you give up all hope of ever educating the unwashed masses?
And while we’re engaging in wailing and gnashing of teeth, your 2006 AL West Pythagorean Standings:
Oakland 85-74
Texas 85-74
LA Angels 83-76
Seattle 76-83
Basically, the gap between first and last in this division isn’t huge. We have no reason to be incredibly pessimistic about 2007.
EC, Lincoln clearly makes an example of people who speak truthfully yet negatively about the organization. Ken Griffey Jr. – traded and grudge held. Jeff Nelson – traded. Lou Piniella – traded. Dan Rohn – fired. Mike Cameron – not re-signed. Dave Niehaus – gag order over the repeated mention of 15 straight losses to the A’s. I understand this to a degree, but when you fill your organization with clones and yes men you lose a certain objectivity that is necessary for success.
I’m not one who is clamoring to have Lou or Junior back. Just making a point.
Uh, except that Griffey/Piniella wanted to get out.
To put it bluntly:
Oakland’s philosophy = Moneyball
(exploiting inefficienices in the market)
Seattle’s philosophy = Willieball
(overvaluing of intangibles, conservative decision-making, no innovative thinking in roster construction or player evaluation)
[error/sentence ratio > 1]
Uh, except that Griffey/Piniella wanted to get out.
I thought that Piniella had the exit way cleared out and the skids greased for him….
OK, well, I’ll put it this way: I don’t think Bavasi’s a dispassionate yes man. There’s a difference between having a collegial attitude towards decision-making (allowing your field manager, scouts and so on say in personnel decisions) plus not ripping people a new one in the press, and being a yes man.
The problem as I see it is the decision-making process on an organization-wide level is flawed for the Mariners, which is what led to some poor results (see: Everett, Washburn, 2004, etc.), kept us from contention in 2006- so in THAT sense I suppose I agree with you, that there needs to be some objective re-examination of the organization and how they are achieving goals, and thinking “yay! we didn’t lose so many games! everything is fine!” just kicks the can down the road another year.
29. What are you talking about?
Criticism of players brought to Seattle by Bavasi in the last few years is a pretty constant theme in many of these threads, for good reasons. Cirillo (pre-Bavasi), Aurilia, Spiezio, Everett, Beltre, Sexson, Broussard, and Perez have all underperformed relative to career numbers, to varying degrees. Others, such as Ichiro, Ibanez, and Johjima, have been fine. Do the busts really outnumber the successes as much as it seems? I believe so. Is there something about Safeco (other than the ‘death to RH power hitter’ dimensions) that is a real contributing factor? I wish our GM was talented enough to figure out this characteristic and to acquire players more likely to be successful in our park.
Or maybe it’s just the curse of ‘01.
It’s not that Bavasi or Hargrove are dispassionate, it’s that they are so corporate and PC. The whole organization is. This is baseball, not Nintendo.
The problem for me with “staying the course” is very simple: They are where they are largely because of poor talent evaluation. How exactly is that going to change?
I’m not too sure it’s fair to add Beltre as an underperformer compared to career averages. Last year his OPS was down, .712, but this year it’s .778 compared to a career mark of .782.
Home Safeco (and league?) adjusted it’s fair to say this year would be above his average, and even last year’s would close the gap somewhat.
As for Perez and Broussard, I think more than two months would be beneficial for judging how well their performances turn out here, at least assuming they are given that chance, which may not be the case.
The rest of the underperformers you named I can’t really argue against.
Messed up, last year’s Beltre OPS should be .716.
The thng that strikes me here is that Grover is the target while Bavasi seems to get a little pass. I note above that Bavasi is starting to get some attention. I found it curious and interesting that the 2006 version of “The Letter” ties Grover and Bavasi together. I was a big Hragrove fan until I saw his work product close at hand, however, firing Grover and leaving the rest alone does nothing. Torres would not have won with that team. The real target and the one that always matters at the end of the season is the GM. While Hargrove should have been fired because he managed poorly, Bavasi should be gone because he has not done the job and has shown no sign that he has the talent to improve it in 2007. More free agents, no please, not his type, trades? We cannot afford his idea of a good trade. The field manager matters only a little, the GM matters a lot. The angst last night should have been targeted at Bill Bavasi. Art Thiel missed the point (again)
It’s easy to point to all the failures, since we have 20-20 vision in hindsight (also in foresight I might add, in a few notable cases). I was not happy to see Hargrove retained, but I do not believe he had a huge negative impact.
His ‘crazy lineups’ during late August and September, so roundly critized, occurred during (contributed to?) a fairly successfully win-loss period. He often went to Putz in the 8th inning. Yes he platooned Snelling too much but said he was doing it to give him regular days off (he HAS been injured once or twice, in case we’ve forgetten). Why not do it when a left hander is pitching if his sub is right-handed? Use of Mateo and Pineiro in high leverage relief situations was not fun to watch, but late in the year, when Pineiro was giving up about 1 HR/batter, there was no Lowe, Soriano, or Mateo to go to. Overall I thought his bullpen management was not that bad. Too many PAs for Bloomquist? Yes. How many losses did this really create? Arguable.
There were accusations here that after the August 11-game death march, that the team would continue to tank. It did not. He would have been roundly thrashed if it had, yet he gets no credit (except from his bosses I guess) for avoiding an ‘02 Oriole-like curl-up-and-die finish.
There are other shortcomings that are valid and which I don’t care to defend, but add it up and he was not the worst problem we had.
Bavasi brought in guys that he and everyone else had a perfect right to expect to perform in many, but certainly not all, cases. Maybe he is learning and we are due for some positive breaks.
I do not subscribe to the theory that incremental improvement has no value. I am anxious to see the USSM off season plan, and eventually the projections. I am pretty sure we will see some good reasons for optimism.
In ‘07, with DM and Felix at the head of the rotation, a new left-handed sock, Ichiro! in center, an awesome relief corps, our core youngsters (Lopez, Betancourt, Snelling) reasonably productive vets (Beltre Ibanez, Johjima), plus Sexson’s replacement(s), Mariner fans will once again experience meaningful September, and maybe even October, baseball.
#36 – I disagree with the sentiment that the angst should primarily be focused on Bavasi and not Hargrove. I acknowledge that both Bavasi and Hargrove have made their share of mistakes. I am personally more harsh in my assessment of Hargrove’s mistakes than Bavasi’s for one simple fact: Bavasi has shown an ability to (eventually) learn from his individual mistakes (even if he takes a while to pick up on it), whereas Hargrove has shown little (if any) ability to learn from his mistakes.
Bavasi may make mistakes by signing C-Rex, Aurilia, etc, but he eventually gets a clue and cuts bait. In contrast, Hargrove *never* got a clue about the useless of Julio Mateo and didn’t stop using him until he was injured.
I could cite other examples, but those are the ones at the forefront of my mind.
I take it no one on this site will reccommend reading Steve Kelley’s “go jump off a cliff” article?
Thiel is welcome to be completely unconcerned if he wishes, as many fans who have put up the the bullshit he is unconcerned about are welcome to find better things to do with their time and money than support a franchise that is so casual is dissing their enjoyment of the game.
It’s a pity that sportswriter’s jobs are not dependant on some combination of their quality as news and entertainment. Thiel is at the Mendoza line, and might be demoted to cover the Inuit Leagues in such a world if he didn’t improve his averages.
Any chance Broussard’s doing okay because he’s a lefty, but Perez is getting killed by the park in the same way that Cirillo and Spiezio were (psychologically)?
I think Thiel’s Yamauchi statement isn’t so much and error, and a literary choice in order to make a sweeping statement…..
#26–and Nelson was on the block and the deal mostly made before he shot his mouth off (as he always does, and everyone pretty much expects)
#33– yes this is baseball not a business, except baseball IS a business, and it is going to be treated as such by pretty much every organization involved….
Broussard’s doing okay? He’s got a .688 OPS since joining the M’s, which is worse than every other starter on the team, and slightly above Everett’s .658. Not exactly what you hope for in a DH.
#42. that would an and as, not andand and.
So for those of you who are so good at pin-pointing blame…when Felix goes down with an injury this weekend, who’s fault will it be???
It’s not that Bavasi or Hargrove are dispassionate, it’s that they are so corporate and PC. The whole organization is. This is baseball, not Nintendo.
Well, honestly, so were the Dodgers back when Buzzy Bavasi and Walter O’Malley ran things. Branch Rickey (a great GM who they ran off) got the title “the Mahatma” out of sarcasm from reporters who were tired of his moralizing, not because of respect. George Weiss (Yankee GM) was notorious for being a cold bastard.
And they ALL won buttloads of games.
So I’m not convinced the problem is being corporate and PC. I don’t think having Lou Piniella or Sparky Anderson turns this organization into a winner. The thing is that Weiss, Bavasi and Rickey were all great GMs who did a good job of evaluating talent and building good baseball teams. The evidence that this organization has the skills to build an outstanding MLB organization capable of consistently winning, year in, year out is mixed at best.
I have a real hard time labelling Sexson and Beltre as busts.
This site does tend to give Bavasi a pass, while ranking on Hargrove.
Thing is, the articles today that I read pretty much say that it was Bavasi who went to bat for Mike Hargrove, to keep him on. That Bavasi chose to stress THAT point with Lincoln and Armstrong, even while not stressing the point that he (Bavasi) should necessarily be back.
So, I think giving Bavasi a pass is wrong, and that this, HIS CHOICE of manager, is perhaps one more example of his hit/miss record with regard to talent evaluation. Apparently that hit/miss thing doesn’t stop with players.
So for those of you who are so good at pin-pointing blame…when Felix goes down with an injury this weekend, who’s fault will it be???
This is not only an asinine statement, it’s offensive. You sound like you’re wishing for an injury. Do you really think pitching, what, 203 innings rather than 200 will result in an injury?
And coincidentally, in one of my SABR listserv digests today, a member refers to a great article discussing how ego makes people refuse to admit bad decisions, and stick with losing strategies far too long. In this case, the wrong manager. An interesting read.
Ego traps us into costly mistakes
Graham wrote:
“I have a real hard time labelling Sexson and Beltre as busts.”
I’m not sure they are accurately described as “busts” either, but it is fair to criticize the moves on a performance relative to contract basis. Also, I think the Sexson contract is more subject to fair criticism than the Beltre deal, and was at the time the deal was made.
Sexson was coming off a bad shoulder injury, caused simply by swinging a bat, and some thought it difficult to assess the risk of it being (or becoming) chronic. He had already turned 30 by the time he signed with Seattle, for a ridiculously high ($50M), too long (4 years) and back-loaded ($44M of the $50M, including pro-rated bonus, over the last three years of the deal). If you look at Sexson’s “most similar” player comps at B-R.com, all of the players who have already hit 30 on that list fell of a cliff at an age when Richie will be right in the middle of his contract, making $14M a year. Although Richie has basically been a productive hitter in all but two months of his Seattle career, there is still plenty of reason to think his will be a huge albatross contract sometime over the next two seasons.
In contrast, Beltre had not yet had his 26th birthday when he was signed, and was coming off a year in which he finished #2 in NL MVP voting. There was (and remains) plenty of reason to think Beltre was just coming into his peak years, which should last through the life of the contract he signed.
Though both players have played well this year from June on, Beltre is probably the better bet to sustain it over the course of the next couple of years, simply based on an expectation of age-related decline for Sexson. Though they signed for roughly the same average annual salary (including bonus), Beltre was (and is, even though thus far Richie has been more consistently productive) the far more likely bet to produce throughout the life of the contract than Sexson.
This site does tend to give Bavasi a pass, while ranking on Hargrove.
I disagree, and for a couple reasons. Because Hargrove’s in front of us 162 games, we rightfully have much more frequent opportunity to observe his actions and criticize them. So I understand that in raw terms of words expended, sure.
But we’ve given Bavasi the same hard time when we disagree with him. Our reactions this off-season were pretty clear: we hated the Everett signing, we hated the Washburn signing, and we weren’t happy about the Ibanez extension (though that’s not a Bavasi thing).
There was no pass there, and if we haven’t been particularly critical in a while, that’s the cyclical nature of the GM’s work. I’m sure before the season starts it’ll look like we beat on Bavasi too much and Hargrove gets off easy.
It’s not that Bavasi or Hargrove are dispassionate, it’s that they are so corporate and PC. The whole organization is. This is baseball, not Nintendo.
What’s funny is that in the videogaming industry, Nintendo is the team always looking to do things differently — the road less traveled, so to speak. It’s too bad they’ve opted for the status quo approach in baseball instead.
I understand giving him somewhat of a pass on typical GM stuff. As with evaluating the manager (the other thread), it’s a very hard position to find reliable methods and measurements from which one can objectively evaluate success or failure in relative terms.
But…on the issue of his advocating on behalf of Hargrove’s return, he’s getting a pass. Or, maybe people commenting just haven’t read whatever article(s) it was that I was reading this morning (perhaps Larue in the TNT…) that talked explicitly about how Bavasi advocated more fiercely on behalf of Hargrove than he did for himself (not at all).
From comments last year and earlier this year (inclusive of Bavasi’s seeming disgust with Hargrove’s 12 man bullpen thing, though he said that was Mike’s decision), it seemed like Bavasi was never really on Hargrove’s side. But perhaps that was incorrect (perception on my part, or others as well).
I was right. I said in April or May that the things Hargrove was being criticized for here are the very kinds of things that ensure his survival with the brass. More recently I said again that there was no way he would be fired this year or afterwards. Maybe next year, midseason, if we are floundering. Unofortunately, I think we are likely to be doing just that.