Washburn new team leader, other ephemera
DMZ · February 18, 2007 at 4:02 pm · Filed Under Mariners
(photo by ms.Tea, generously licensed)
From an ESPN spring training article:
“I’ve always been on teams where someone said what needed to be said. Last year, we didn’t have that,” Washburn said. “Now, I’m more comfortable [doing that].”
Really? Wasn’t that Ibanez’s role? Or Bloomquist’s role? Or even Hargrove?
Teh Times: “Ichiro’s next step subject of speculation“
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57 Responses to “Washburn new team leader, other ephemera”
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Anyone else want to show Washburn Terry Tate, Office Linebacker over and over until he “gets it”. It would just be priceless to see Mateo walking off the field after a craptastic outing and watch him get lit up by “The Wash”.
c’mon now, every one knows you have to have a pitcher-leader as well as a real player-leader.
oh, and hooray Brad Lefton.
Larue talks Weaver and Jo; Kirby Arnold has his Felix story.
Cool! I figure Washburn saying what needs to be said will be good for 10 wins. 12 if he uses a fakey french accent.
Ah don’ know, MickayZeh… Ah pectsure Washburn more weeth an Eyerash ahccent, mahsehlf.
Buht tha toppan’ ona cahke es Wee Willie B’s Swahdish uccent. He geevesm Valhalla en thu lockah room, doncha know?
I did like Baker’s piece on Felix, with the fine Batista quote:
woohoo– Beltre & Ibanez in camp early, sez Baker’s blog. He also has an interesting ramble about Doc Halladay.
Best teams I’ve ever coached had no “leader” who stepped up and “said what needed to be said;” instead they simply played hard, played together, and won.
Best teams I’ve ever played on–6 league championships in HS, in hoops cut nets once at districts with state hardware, 1 college league championship and 2 NWAAC trophies– nobody ever “stepped up and said what needed to be said.” Hell, I won 2 league MVP’s– yet I never “said what needed to be said.” 99% of the time, nothing needs to be said, everyone just knows to work hard and play hard.
Most overrated thing in sports is somebody who needs to “lead” his teammates by talking to them — or should I say at them. WAY overrated. As a player, I always hated those guys anyway. I’d prefer the leaders to simply lead by example, the rest will follow.
Sorry, but no. It’s just not the same in any pro sport. These are teams where every player is a former “MVP” of some sort, and were probably the best players (or one of the best) on their respective high school or college teams. Not just a bunch of guys who are happy to be there, and are ready to be “lead by example”, which is a nothing phrase. That’s the common label given to guys who should be the leader, but don’t want the responsibility (see Suzuki, Ichiro). Good clubhouse leadership is especially important on a team like this, where the manager isn’t a leader of any distinction.
That being said, it’s scary that Washburn has to be “the guy” on this team.
Would someone, anyone, please provide me with any kind of evidence that any kind of leadership has any kind of significant impact on a team’s performance, good or bad? Anything.
Otherwise, we should stick to the default belief, which is that if it’s out there, it’s so unimportant as to be meaningless.
I’m on the look-out for this year’s Hargrove “I’ve been around the game 100 years” approach adjustment du jour, like we saw with aggressive baserunning for the sake of aggressive baserunning last year. We also saw that in his desired approach for Jose Lopez. I’m convinced he’s got to have some “mission” to focus everybody, and it scares me – a lot.
I don’t know enough about pitching to know what Grover means here, but should I be concerned about this throw-away line in the Arnold Felix piece?:
“One of the catchphrases at spring training this year is “pitch to contact,” and Hargrove said he wants his starters to “make something happen” in the first four pitches of an at-bat. … ”
Can anybody put me at ease?
No! No one re-start this!
Derek,
I assume you are referencing a discussion that must have come up in another thread? I don’t have time to read all the other threads before commenting, so let me know if this has been done to death somewhere else, and I’ll give it a look.
Of course there isn’t, but the Mariner fanbase has been brainwashed by the local media that you NEED a Jay Buhner/Bret Boone type in every clubhouse in order to succeed.
The close cousin of this myth is, of course, that notion that you need a manager who needs to “show fire” by yelling and screaming. It’s hilarious how Hargrove’s recent mini-rant has caused an uptick in his approval rating amongst casual fans. The M’s PR Dept probably gave Hargrove a calendar showing which days to yell at someone, just to keep the fans happy.
15. I’ve always had this impression that teams played inspired and either closed the gap or won the game after a manager gets ejected for arguing. Is there any way to research that?
Ms fan in CO exile: It is in the thread below this one. Also worthwhile is Lookout Landing’s take on this (see link on the left).
I’ve always had this impression that teams played inspired and either closed the gap or won the game after a manager gets ejected for arguing. Is there any way to research that?
Go to retrosheet.org, download the play-by-play data for the last four decades or so, learn the appropriate tools to analyze the data, and figure out how teams do in situations after manager ejections compared to similar situations without manager ejections.
The data’s there to be analyzed, but it can take time to master the tools needed to sift through the data.
#15,18. or just watch the Mariners the last 6-8 years for the opposite effect. Anecdotely, I can’t recall any come-from-behind win after Lou or Bob or Mike got tossed.
“Would someone, anyone, please provide me with any kind of evidence that any kind of leadership has any kind of significant impact on a team’s performance, good or bad? Anything.”
Of course you can’t provide statistical evidence, but why would baseball be any different than any place you or I have ever worked? If all your co-workers are out for their own success, you hate your boss because he’s an ass that doesn’t “get it” and the high-level leadership is piss-poor, unable to present a vision and keeps making bone-headed moves that inhibit success, that’s going to take a toll on the people on the ground (cubicle or baseball field). We’ve all left situations for better ones.
We can pretend athletes in pro sports somehow have different natures than the rest of us, but I think any such argument is bull. Team sports have an incredible amount in common with team-built business, and people are people no matter the context. Young kids need mentors. Experience can always bring along inexperience (as opposed to the “find your own way in the dark” approach). People who have achieved certain levels of success are valuable tools to those who wish to attain it (or, as I like to say, if you have a goal, start talking to the people who have done what you hope to do).
I suspect, Derek, that your life experience supports the fact that leadership is important in most every area of life – Were the publishers and editors of your first book morons who were interested only in how much they could make off of you? If not, did that help you in the process? If so, can you imagine the experience if they had helped educate you about the process so you could simply focus on writing a quality book? Why is baseball different? People perform at higher levels when they have adequate support, a clear goal, and, if in a team context, people around them help push one another toward that vision. That all comes from leadership.
thanks vj.
Would someone, anyone, please provide me with any kind of evidence that any kind of leadership has any kind of significant impact on a team’s performance, good or bad? Anything.
Jim Leyland. When a team improves that much, and every single one of the players seems to attribute a large part of the team’s success to Leyland, I have to think that there is something to it. It certainly wasn’t his in-game managing that got them that far…
Ever wonder exactly how old Dave Niehaus is? I did some Googling a while back, and I found that his age has been kept under wraps. However, persistance pays off.
Today is Dave’s 72nd birthday.
They beat Pedro for the first time after Sexson got tossed. I was at that game but I can’t remember if they were ahead or behind at that point.
But even if it was true that a team frequently rallies to win after a manager got tossed, it would be a mistake to conclude that the manager being tossed is the reason for it. A manager usually gets tossed because of a perception that calls aren’t going the team’s way; if this is actually the case, it’s possible the umps will (perhaps unconciously) give the team more of the benefit of the doubt after they’ve tossed its manager. And that might be all it takes. Or the tossed manager might have been making so many bad decisions that tossing him frees the team to actually win (normally I wouldn’t advance that theory, because there’s plenty of evidence that managers don’t make much difference in a game, but Hargrove has demonstrated that a determined manager can run his team right out of a game, both literally and metaphorically).
But really, this is no different than “clutch hitting” or a “closer’s heart” or any of the other pseudopsychological bromides that get trotted out regularly. If a team can “get fired up to win” after losing a manager, why can’t they get “fired up” like that in any game? They are professionals, and this is what they’re supposed to be doing, right?
Would someone, anyone, please provide me with any kind of evidence that any kind of leadership has any kind of significant impact on a team’s performance, good or bad? Anything.
Jack McKeon with the Marlins in 2003? I don’t really believe it, but that’s the first one that jumped to mind.
To the extent that it matters, common sense suggests that it will matter more with young teams. With the kind of veteran players the M’s roster typically, uh, features it’s hard to believe that any kind of “leadership” is necessary. Unless, with every guy showing “veteran leadership” you’ve got a ship with 25 captains.
Leadership is important in HS sports all the time. I’d say its biggest value is showing the younger kids how you are suppose to do things right. If everybody sees somebody giving 100% then they realize how hard you can actually be working.
I don’t really know how valuable it is in pro sports. I imagine it is similar. The leaders on the team are probably showing the other players that they can’t just sit on their ass and expect to be good. The leaders are probably in the batting cages or watching film. For some people, I think just seeing others work hard motivates them to do more.
How would we prove this leadership ability??
If you are arguing that leadership is not an important quality in the clubhouse are you aruging that leadership in general does not exist?
If you are not willing to argue that leadership doesn’t exist then why would it only not exist in baseball?
If you feel that it needs to be somehow proven then I am assuming that none of you believe in “God” considering there is no tangible way to prove that a “God” exists…
I do think leadership is important in a wide variety of ways, in most sports at least, and that extreme lack of leadership can cause talented teams to underperform. We will never be able to meaningfully measure or proove that, but I think we can accept it on some level. We’ve seen our fair share of situations in sports like basketball, soccer, etc. where it seems to make a large, if unquanitifiable, difference.
The question here is how much that matters in baseball, and I think it’s clear that it matters less. Performance is so much more individual, and teamwork is virtually a non-factor. Cancerous clubhouse environments could certainly contribute to people losing motivation, and I imagine a great clubhouse environment would contribute to confidence, and players probably play better (though who knows how much better) when they’re feeling confident.
But I think you have to point to very specific things that you expect leadership to affect in a given situation in order to make a case about it. To me, in order to convince me that better leadership could make a meaningful difference on the 2007 Mariners, I would have to see people I felt like were underperforming in some way due to a lack of leadership. And honestly, I’m not seeing that. The most “underperforming” players were probably Felix and Lopez, and I think we have much better explanations at hand for those problems. I just don’t really see who could benefit from better leadership in a meaningful way. Would Reed be learning to hit ML pitching better with a better leader around? Maybe, but I wouldn’t count on it.
That’s not to say it’s not important for the players. I’m sure, experientially, the whole situation feels a lot worse if you are actively experiencing a lack of leadership. So I understand why Washburn might want to say that, why he might believe that. You could say maybe that with better leadership, maybe Soriano would have seemed happier to take the ball whenever the manager wanted, maybe kept himself better liked by the management in that respect. But whose fault is that, really? I mean, I think a manager who could really handle those situations intelligently and carefully could mitigate virtually all of those problems, without an outspoken team leader, or whatever.
For the Mariners, the one aspect of actual necessary teamwork, defense, is a team strength. So where would the additional production come from? I’m not seeing it. Unless it could inspire Lopez to hit like an even better version of his not-infected-by-Hargrovian-thinking self, or Felix to throw his curveball and change more…and is that really what we want? Or do we want a manager who actually knows how to maximize the potential output of individual players instead of trying to make them all fit some cookie-cutter mold of what he believes good baseball is? I’ll take a latter over any constellation of inspiring leadership any day. I don’t see a cancerous clubhouse, and I don’t see many players (Beltre maybe?) who would be playing better if they felt better about themselves. I’m not buying it.
I love it. Awesome. I guess it is a good comparison since Hernandez is such a good groundball machine.
You don’t know us.
In terms of the leadership question, its a matter of necessary and sufficient conditions. Leadership and chemistry is necessary, but not sufficient. It can’t all be talent. I’ve always thought that an element of major league GM’s that goes so unnoticed is actually dealing with the players themselves. Have you rewarded them sufficiently for past performance, but not at too much of a cost of future performance? Are they happy playing in your city, for your manager, with Player X? Do they get along? Its addition by subtraction: happiness won’t make your team better, but it will stop unhappiness from impeding success.
Here’s my point, w/r/t leadership: I’m entirely willing to accept that a team could be better, or worse, with a manager who fires them up or lets them play. For instance, we can go back and see that hard-ass managers who take over for players managers tend to get temporary improvements, and when the hard-ass managers get fired, the team usually goes the other way, you get the same effect.
But there are two factors at play there: one’s the it’s-the-change effect. Like in the Mythical Man-Month: If you’re trying to study the effects of lighting on productivity and you turn them down, productivity goes up. If you turn them up, productivity goes up. It’s the study that’s having the effect, not the lighting.
The other thing is that managers tend to get fired after particularly bad or unlucky seasons, and the team probably will fare better the next year.
My point on leadership is this: if there’s no way that we can reliably measure a player’s leadership ability, or the different effects that having someone “speak up” or “lead by example” have, if we can’t find a way to show that some player, well-regarded by his peers, makes his teams better in some tangible way, than this isn’t something we should worry about or consider significant.
And if we’ve learned anything from the last years of Mariner ineptitude, there’s no way to reliably evaluate or hire for clubhouse leadership, much less ensure that bringing any player in will help with those things.
My point on leadership is this: if there’s no way that we can reliably measure a player’s leadership ability, or the different effects that having someone “speak up” or “lead by example” have, if we can’t find a way to show that some player, well-regarded by his peers, makes his teams better in some tangible way, than this isn’t something we should worry about or consider significant.
What?! Just because you can’t measure something, does not mean it doesn’t exist. That’s what the problem with my major is (Psychology). They try and measure everything and deny the existence of intagibles, which is hilariously ironic since the mind is largely an intangible thing.
The Mariners are desperately in need of that magical clubhouse elixir, Fiery Leadership. They were only a one post-game spread- flipping tantrum away from making the playoffs.
Re-read DMZ’s post. Nowhere in there does he deny the existence of leadership.
In a functional way, yes he did. We can’t measure it, so we should act as if it doesn’t exist. I’m not arguing for some existentialist argument here.
How is it, in a functional way, a denial of the existence of leadership?
That is at best a simplistic and fatuous summary of my argument.
This thread makes me sad.
Again, I would say, “Who do you think leadership might impact? In what way? Why?”
Once you answer that question, you can debate about whether or not it’s a reasonable expecation, but if you’re just arguing about it in the abstract, the fact that it can’t be measured–and more importantly is so often manipulated by old-school baseball guys to pump up the reptuations of players they seeing as playing the game the right way–creates a real problem.
Success in baseball is basically aggregation of individual contributions, so if you can’t map how changes in leadership are going to impact individual players, you have nothing, in my opinion. Statistics aren’t the only way to make that case, by any means, but standards of rigorous argumentation about baseball that aren’t statistically-based seem lacking to me. If the alternative to statistics is either 1) common sense, whatever exactly that is, or 2) the reputation of the individual making the claim, there’s going to be an awful lot of difficulty deciding when to accept that kind of evidence and when not to.
Yayyyy.
How embarassing. This is a website about sports, right? I’m going to go out on a limb and say that even people who have never played team sports can recognize a leader when he or she sees one. It’s almost as easy to see when someone is trying to be a leader, and isn’t very good at it. It’s usually the whiny, emotional type who thinks that talking is leadership, or the introverted type who is trying to be a leader because it’s expected of him for whatever reason (skills, paycheck, etc). Real leadership is as plain as the hand in front of your face, and you don’t have to be in the clubhouse with the team to recognize it. A real leader knows what buttons to push, and what it takes to motivate each guy on the team. This is no great revelation either. I’m surprised that it has to be stated at all, but it seems to be the case.
It’s just as true that bad leadership is worse than no leadership at all, and I don’t think I need to go back too far in this team’s history for examples of that either.
Thanks for the condescension, I was way under my recommended daily allowance.
Also: that’s not evidence. It’s you arguing that it’s obvious. What I’m asking is this: if it’s so obvious, if leaders are so easily recognized, why can’t we find them and measure their effect? Or why is it that sometimes teams bring in a leader and it doesn’t work?
Ralph, why don’t you use less energy trying to say other people are out of touch with reality and more energy trying to describe the ways in which you think improved leadership might improve the performance of people on the Mariners? You say true leaders are obvious to everyone and they just know how to push people’s buttons the right way to motivate them. Is there anyone on the Mariners who is worse than they would be if they were more motivated? How? Why?
Suppose the Mariners signed the best leader in baseball, but he just happened to hit exactly like Jose Guillen will this year, and plays right field? How much better would the team be? Who would benefit most? How many extra runs would the Mariners score, or prevent, in that scenario? In what situations would that happen? Is that all because the team is insufficiently motivated currently? What standards do we use to evaluate when a team is unmotivated to an extent that it’s hurting their on-field production?
A problem with that, now that I’m back home from work and can comment again. What if– and this is a distinct possibility in the major leagues– everyone on the team is/was a leader? We are talking about, in general, a whole hell of a lot of alpha dogs. They don’t want to follow anybody, and saying one is a leader because he knows what buttons to push?!?! c’mon, dawg.
Players at ANY LEVEL beyond high school are at least 2/3:
A) egocentric
B) competitive
C) gifted
D) aware of at least 2 of the 3.
Because of this, do they really want to hear some other guy (who they may or may not deem an equal or superior to them) telling them what to do, questioning their motive, their pride, their ability, their focus. HELL NO!!!! In fact, to paraphrase a great line in a great movie– where they work, I do believe a comment like that just might get your ass kicked.
And to the guy that posted immediately after I did this morning–
As opposed to a “leader in the clubhouse” guy, which is a “something phrase?”
What your premise poses, is that these players are the best, and always have. Suddenly you think the “the best of the best” need extrinsic motivation from some dude that sits across from them in the locker room? That’s pooh. These guys either were born gifted and made good enough decisions to get there, or they were relatively gifted but worked their ass to get there.
THEY DON’T NEED NOR WANT A PEER TELLING THEM HOW THEY SHOULD PLAY!
Do positive peer dynamics help? Certainly. Are they required? No. Sometimes guys hate eachother, but if they can work together, they can survive. But if they do hate eachother (as alpha dogs often do) then it is best to stay out of eachothers’ way and just play, not order or command one another around the clubhouse.
There may be some value in this statement, given Grover. But truth of the matter is, if the team has to look at each other for leadership because they don’t get any from their authority figure, the chances of them reaching their full potential is basically nil anyway— therefore fire the ineffective manager and just sign guys that can play regardless of clubhouse intangibles.
man, we need some games to start.
You measure it by how others react. I really shouldn’t have to explain this. It’s like asking someone to measure love. I guess you just have to experience working for or playing for an inspirational leader to know what it’s like. I’m sure you’ve had employers who you would do anything for, and others that you really didn’t listen to. Was that measureable? No. Leaders can also wear out their welcome. If a team has to hear the same speeches over and over, it could have the opposite effect (think Bret Boone). This also cannot be measured.
When teams bring in a leader and it doesn’t work, it’s usually due to some deeper problems. Lack of talent, lack of a coherent team direction, owners (in NY for example) who treat their teams like a fantasy baseball team, etc.
No, that’s not a possibility.
I can go on and on about your statements, but it’s brutally obvious that you know nothing about what motivates, or can motivate people. Talent alone just isn’t enough, and yes, there are guys who people respond to. Even the best of the best have someone who can motivate them. People who they consider big brothers, father figures, whatever you want to call it. Most of it comes down to respect. If you can get someone to respect you, you can get them to follow you.
Peer dynamics? Do you really think that Willie Bloomquist thinks of Ichiro as a peer? Nothing of the sort.
Another statement that proves you know nothing about leadership. Since when do leaders just “command” others to do things? There are millions of ways to motivate. Like I said before, you just need to know how to push the buttons. Not very complicated.
Yes.
I’ll give you an example. I worked for someone who could call me tomorrow and say “I just formed Cool Boss Enterprises, but I don’t know what we’re going to do, come work for me.” And I’d say “absolutely.”
Now, how do you measure their effectiveness?
They had absurdly low turnover compared to their peers. No one quit.
People who worked for them won awards.
Their projects consistently came in on time, on budget, and the customer was satisfied.
They were able to convince people to come work for them instead of comparable offers.
For the first example, we can measure that. Other teams suffered about a 15% annual turnover, we had 0%.
Where’s the evidence for player leadership? Where’s a player that makes other players choose to go to that team over other offers? Where’s the player who consistently makes his teammates better? Where’s any sort of evidence that we can identify, measure, or otherwise point to that would allow us to say that player X is a leader while player Y is not?
And if there is that kind of evidence, if it is possible for teams to so easily identify them, why are their results so poor?
And please, seriously, Ralph, this tone is… I don’t know why you’re adopting this “you don’t know anything” stance, but it’s frustrating to try and respond do you when you’re couching your arguments in this kind of condescension, and I say that as someone who has to fight to not do that myself.
Ralph, wow.
Your tone in regards to my words would be insulting if it wasn’t so laughable.
Believe me, I know a little something about leadership and successful competition. I motivated high school kids to read Shakespeare. I motivated players to perform at high levels. To construct your opinion as completely right and mine as completely wrong is… terrifyingly shortsighted on your part.
If you want my resume, let’s just say that I’ve got records that most athletes only dream about, both individual and team. But I’m not trying to toot my own horn.
I’ve coached some very average kids to better than predicted records.
As a high school player (and non-talk-heavy leader) I was part of 4 league championship basketball teams.
My point isn’t to brag, it’s to say that we didn’t have a “fiery leader” who drove us with his words. If that is anyone’s job, it is the coach’s. And at each higher level of competition, I promise you there are more guys like I was than there are guys that need some teammate pushing them with “fiery words.”
Most athletes (and most highly successful people) are intrinsically motivated. Animus facit nobilem. That simply means that they find motivation from within. To them, a teammates words are rather empty in comparision to their own drive.
That is all. Commence with insulting somebody you don’t know, who may just know something.
Moreover, the specific ways in which you expect more motivation to translate into additional hits, walks, strikeouts, power, or whatever is still extremely unclear. And keep in mind that we’re all sharp enough to realize that when you’re saying things like “I really shouldn’t have to explain this,” instead of actually engaging with these questions, you’re avoiding thinking about this concretely.
Cause you know nothing about being condescending.
Leadership may not be quantifiable, but again there are other methods to assess it on besides reputation or common sense. Such as outlining the elements to look for in common sense (kinda like the DSM in psychology), and using objective consensus (like Dial’s defensive awards, I believe thats who does them). Bill James compiled several managerial statistics in his handbook, which is another good place to start, and it outlines different managerial styles; and there are probably tons of correlations you could figure out between how a team did before and after a certain event. To say my argument is “fatuous” at best is just as condescending as you accused Ralph, its not really constructive. Decisions will have to be made either way based on perceived leadership, so you can ignore it, or attempt to make a consensus out of qualitative observations (and I’m not talking, just because it can’t be quantified. I don’t know if there is a logical fallacy named for this, so I’ll just take the quote from a site, but its relevant here. “Science, by its very nature, is never capable of proving the non-existence of anything.” It’s too late for me to wrap my head around this (know, I’m not a super genius like others), but there it is FWIW.
that should be “no”. Ha ha you win Harvard law school graduates.
Or what Ralph was implying, its just pure sabremetric arrogance to think only what is quantifiable is what is important and relevant.
No, it’s not. I made this argument:
and you reduced it to
Which is absolutely not what I said at all. Calling that fatuous – silly, complacently foolish – is not all condescending. You took a substantial argument into something you could more easily mock but which didn’t represent my views.
Why is that okay?
Why is my getting annoyed about it, and pointing out that that happened, arrogant, or condescending?
As to this -
That’s not a logical fallacy in itself, and I don’t know what you’re saying.
My point is not, nor has it ever been, that any of these things – leadership, clubhouse chemistry, whatever – don’t in some form exist. But if you can’t define them, if you can’t identify them, if a player known to be a leader will not reliablly be a leader the next year, if there’s no way to see in any form the effect of something, my question is – what use is the concept? How can we do anything with it?
Or, as James put it, sometimes the fog is so thick that we can’t tell if something’s out there or not. I think that’s the case here.
This is the same argument, in many ways, as protection in the batting order. If it exists, and there are many logical arguments why it should, it doesn’t show up in the statistics. That doesn’t mean we stop looking, or asking questions, or say “there is or isn’t something out there”.
You acknowledge the problem. And the problem, right now, is that we don’t know what the attributes of leadership are, how to find them, or any of that good stuff.
That’s all.
And here’s the other thing – this has come up earlier in the thread, but you don’t know me, or any of the other authors here. You don’t know what we do the rest of the day, or who we love, or what causes we champion, or what drive us.
To imply that I, or really, anyone, thinks that only the quantifiable is important or relevant is making a huge jump from an argument about the effects of player leadership to the personal that is entirely unwarranted.
Actually, after some thought, I’m going to declare that I’ve lost, in one sense if not another, and close this thread, adding customer service to the list. If you guys want to continue complaining about me, or USSM, you have our email. Thanks.