Perhaps if we had two hands and a flashlight
Baker, over at his blog, shares the opinion of an unnamed clubhouse insider–the M’s are crummy because they don’t have enough jerks. No, really.
He told me that what the Mariners lack, to put it bluntly, is more jerks. He didn’t use the word “jerks” — more like a word that rhymes with manholes. Anyway, this insider also didn’t mean jerks like the kind who go around getting into bar fights, driving drunk and such. Just guys with a little more edge to them. Put simply, the Mariners “are too nice” is what he conclude
Wait a minute, now. Weren’t the Mariners so good in 2001 because they didn’t have any jerks? I realize Baker wasn’t here then, but still. This whole thing gets back to the argument that winning breeds so-called “good chemistry,” not the other way around. Well not quite that exact argument, but similar.
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so, what, Guillen has suddenly become Mr Nice?
Copied and pasted from the thread below, since it’s now a post of its own:
While I like Geoff, I want to beat my head against a wall when I read stuff like this. It’s like the organization absolutely refuses to learn anything.
The M’s, more than any other team in baseball, make personnel decisions based on a player’s perceived clubhouse intangibles and personality. Scott Spiezio was acquired because he was a fiery clutch veteran with World Series experience. Rich Aurilia was brought in to replace Carlos Guillen because he was a gamer and would play everyday. Eddie Guardado was lauded as being a great leader because he played pranks on everyone and made jokes all the time, and his heart was admired for taking the ball everyday even when his arm hurt. Jarrod Washburn was acquired because he was willing to pitch inside. Carl Everett was acquired because he yelled and cursed and played with fire. Chris Reitsma replaced Rafael Soriano because he was tough and mentally strong. And on and on it goes.
A note to the M’s team insider, and the rest of their management squad – it’s about talent, not personality. Baseball is won on the field by guys who can hit, field, and pitch, not by guys holding team meetings in the locker room and commanding respect in the clubhouse.
The Mariners don’t need more pricks who get mad when they make outs – they need guys that make less outs!
Stop it. Stop your ridiculous obsession on building a certain kind of clubhouse. Stop paying people for what you think their personality is. Stop valuing things that don’t matter.
Bring us baseball players. We don’t care if they are soft spoken polite guys like Edgar or John Olerud or if they’re annoyingly self-absorbed guys like Manny Ramirez. Bring us guys who can play, and let the clubhouse crap sort itself out.
did he mean they need to be more selfish?
rhymes with “manholes?”
Errr, Flan rolls?
Maybe we could bring Jay Buhner out of retirement. That seems to be what Mariner management wants- 1995 to be replayed over and over again.
Hey Bill, I’m a selfish-prick, who grew up in the Seattle area, and can hit a 80 mph fastball, but nothing else, and ohh yeah I’m sure I’m related somehow to WFB, can I play on the M’s?
Yeah, the rhymes with “manholes” part is pretty funny.
To me, this is as much a comment about the manager than it is the players.
Wasn’t Guillen supposed to be this guy?
He needs to re-direct his anger from the division rivals to his teammates, I guess.
You know, just because someone’s a “clubhouse insider”, that doesn’t mean he’s intelligent or worth listening to. I mean, just think about the place where *you* work. Full of idiots who think they know what they’re talking about but who, in fact, don’t, right?
bkd
spam trolls?
it is all over the media, though:
Ted Miller:
“But good chemistry is more than getting along. It’s more than a pleasant atmosphere. There needs to be a spark. There needs to be genuine joy over playing baseball for a living. There needs to be accountability that clicks in at the first hint of complacency or self-absorption. There needs to be somebody whose competitive fire makes an 11-game losing streak in August an impossibility.”
Hickey:
” Are they rudderless in the clubhouse before stepping on the field? It may seem so from the outside. From the inside, the perspective is different.
There are those who don’t believe leadership is something for public consumption, and for those people, the Mariners are the poster team.
“We don’t have a lot of holler guys, if that’s what you mean,” hitting coach Jeff Pentland said. “But we have chemistry, real good chemistry. And that’s the most important thing.”"
Kelley:
“This team of ifs and maybes needs intangibles. It needs the same kind of savvy Stan Javier brought to the clubhouse. The same eminence that Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner had. During this three-year downward spiral, the Mariners’ clubhouse has changed dramatically. The room has been lifeless. The players have been remote.”
Chemistry is the crutch that writers grasp on to because it’s one of the last few things that they can write about and have an experience edge over their reader.
The average USSM reader knows more about baseball than Steve Kelly or Ted Miller. The online baseball world has created a group of tremendously intelligent fans who understand the game better than most of the journalists who travel with the teams.
However, those guys get to hang around the clubhouse. That gives them the ability to write about things that the fan can’t see from the outside. So, those things become remarkably important to the journalist, because that’s their unique knowledge. That’s the thing that they have access to that the fan does not. Since it’s their last bit of unique insight, it’s value as a piece of knowledge has become sacred among a large group of beat writers.
The education of the fanbase at large by non-traditional media has led to a reaction from traditional media to overrate the only thing they have left – access to the clubhouse. And so we get ridiculousness like this, where the Mariners can’t win because they don’t have enough guys who yell, rather than acknolwedging the fact that they’re not winning because Horacio Ramirez, Miguel Batista, and Jeff Weaver have pitched like Double-A rejects.
how about we get rid of guys who you might as well just forfeit and out for rather than send to the plate (not saying any names), and then start worrying about whether or not we have enough ‘jerks’ on our team.
what joke.
or, what A joke.
The average USSM reader knows more about pretty much any topic, including journalism, than Steve Kelly or Ted Miller.
Fixed that line for ya.
yup. these guys continuing to write about it make the notion even more pervasive locally, even if there is no basis in reality.
I still don’t understand the take on personality that this and other statistical blogs seem to have. I understand that stats are useful in understanding what’s happening in the game, why and how players are performing, and how they can be expected to play in the future. But numbers don’t say everything. Players get hot, they get cold, they do different things, they get angry, they get confidant, they get discouraged. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m interested in the human element, I’m interested in how these guys are feeling, and yeah, I’m interested in team chemistry. And frankly, I think most fans probably feel the same way. So why shouldn’t Baker and other sports writers talk about this stuff?
#12
Dave, I think Baker has more than acknowledged the shortcomings of this team, the poor pitching, the bad performance by Sexson and others. So why shouldn’t he also consider issues like locker-room chemistry and player personality.
Again, the way members of a team interact and their individuals personalities are part of why people watch sports, it’s part of what they care about whether you like it or not.
I don’t have a sense of if this is a subject that comes up in other markets when a team loses … though come to think of it, in P’burgh Giles & Kendall used to get taken to task by writers and fans for not being the right kind of leaders — that somehow they should be making the team win, and not by ‘leading by example’. There seems to be an equating of personality with leadership, and of leadership with ‘winning chemistry’.
I dunno, maybe the NW is more fixated on leadership and player personalities– after all, this was in a letter to the sports page this sunday: “We would lose trash-talking punks like Gary Payton … I haven’t been to a game since we drafted Payton”
“And frankly, I think most fans probably feel the same way. So why shouldn’t Baker and other sports writers talk about this stuff?”
It’s one thing to write about it and quite another to assume or state definitively that it has something to do with winning.
Do these guys ever think that winning might actually be what creates a great clubhouse chemistry? That the reason you don’t see it on losing teams much is losing teams have a reason to not get along, blame one another, magnify personality conflicts, etc., etc.?
I like the personal interest story as much as the next guy, but the insight it gives me isn’t into why the team is losing. The nice part for journalists is this is an area with no measureable standards. Convenient.
Do you not think that the attitudes of the players have anything to do with how they perform? Because that seems to be the biggest assumption Baker makes, and I don’t think that’s unreasonable to assume.
Dave, I think Baker has more than acknowledged the shortcomings of this team, the poor pitching, the bad performance by Sexson and others. So why shouldn’t he also consider issues like locker-room chemistry and player personality.
Sure – my rant about sportswriters wasn’t about Baker, who I like a lot and have written a lot of good things about since he joined the Times. More or less, I was talking about wastes of newstype like Steve Kelly, Bill Plaschke, Jay Mariotti, and their ilk.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m interested in the human element, I’m interested in how these guys are feeling, and yeah, I’m interested in team chemistry. And frankly, I think most fans probably feel the same way. So why shouldn’t Baker and other sports writers talk about this stuff?
Because it leads to terrible analysis, such as “this team isn’t winning because they don’t yell enough” or “we need to replace Ichiro with a real leader”.
If these guys were just writing articles about their perceptions of a player’s mindset (Sexson’s frustrated, and here’s 1000 words why), great – that’d be an interesting column. But it’s when they start applying cause and effect to nothing more than speculation and start using it to turn players into heroes or villains based on thier perceptions of their personality that I become annoyed.
We don’t know anything about how things like chemistry effects player performance. It’s this nebulous concept that no one can predict. Not the teams, not the players, not the writers, and not us fans. If it’s not predictable, it doesn’t hold any value in roster construction, and there’s nothing in baseball less predictable than “chemistry”.
17, 18 – because “chemistry” and its relative importance is only brought up as an issue in the media when the team’s losing or underperforming. The team and some media would have you believe that a harmonious locker room results in better performance between the lines but I don’t believe that’s the case.
I’m not entirely discounting chemistry as being one element of a winning ballclub, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near as high on the list as the Ms front office and many in the Seattle media would have you believe.
Winning is the best way of creating a happy clubhouse environment.
I dunno, maybe the NW is more fixated on leadership and player personalities
My theory is that it’s an extension of the Seattle Freeze and the passive-aggressive insularity of the Northwest. We like guys that are nice, friendly, and play well with others because we consider those to be our core values. We also like people we really know well and are going to ostracize people we don’t think fit with those core values, even a little. If they’re different, they’re from California. Or New York. And they should go home. Most of us chose to live here, you see, and therefore those who don’t fit in can just leave.
The weirdest thing is that “fitting in” here isn’t about how you look or what you do. You can be a pierced, tattooed lesbian who teaches bikram and skates with Rat City, and while you’d be out of place in Oklahoma City, you’re fine here. But if you are in the least bit rude to another Seattleite, well, you and your girlfriend can just mosey on back to whatever NoCal/NYC hellhole you came from, K? Because you’re one of those people.
At least, that’s my theory. It seems in other parts of the country, even in the most socially conservative areas, they put a higher value on performance than on personality, and they’re nowhere near as xenophobic.
17&18
The problem is that the Mariner “insiders” are worried about how many “sounds-like-manholes” they have on a team that has questionable starting pitching outside of their ace, a designated hitter who doesn’t, and a 1B and LF who are showing mileage.
Once again, Mariner groupthink concentrates on “intangibles” over talent, and when the mediocre talent produces mediocre results, decides they need different “intangibles”- rather than just deciding they need better talent.
The bottom line is there’s a lot more evidence that you can evaluate people and teams from statistical performance than “intagibles”- and the past 4 years of Mariner mismanagement and overemphasis on “intangibles” should support that.
I’ll concede that chemistry may simply be a matter of a team winning or losing. But I still think that 1) the blog post quoted above didn’t really make any terrible analysis worth jumping on and 2) looking at player personalities and attitudes is a vital part of sports and can and should not be eliminated from sports journalism. Ultimately you all make decent points, but I just feel like I need to defend the “human interest” perspective since I think it gets a bad rap around here.
The big problem with this whole personality discussion is… any of you seen Master and Commander? There’s this part where they’re becalmed, and everyone starts looking for “the Jonah,” the cursed person who must be the reason they’re becalmed. Eventually the “Jonah” drowns himself and suddenly the winds come back.
And I think that’s the problem with discussion of personality — it’s a “Jonah.” It’s the magic fix that will automatically get this team going again. It never works this way. Sure, chuck the manager and you start winning, but more often than not it’s because the old manager sucked. Or chuck the “clubhouse cancer,” but even then you see very little coorelation between that and winning. The Angels dumped Guillen a few years ago in the middle of a playoff run, and it didn’t hurt them (though it probably didn’t help them when they needed a big bat in the playoffs).
The problem with the “human element” — by which we seem to mean the things we can’t measure — is that it’s always, always used to support opinions one already has, never ever to take a fresh new look at anything. People are fond of saying you can “make statistics say anything you want”, but at least when you do that, it can be refuted. You can make mind-reading and psychological bullshit say whatever you want, too, and odds are you’re just filling column inches with cliches as old as baseball itself.
Gary Payton. Tom Chambers. Ken Easley. Lou Piniella. We like jerks just fine in Seattle when they’re winners.
Post 20, but along similar lines as many others here– by Exiled in CO (of which I am too, incidentally. Arvada area.)…
“And frankly, I think most fans probably feel the same way. So why shouldn’t Baker and other sports writers talk about this stuff?”
“It’s one thing to write about it and quite another to assume or state definitively that it has something to do with winning.”
In the same ilk (and I’m not really supporting the writer here either) I do get a little frustrated by the flip side of this argument– “that winning definitively makes for good chemistry.”
It doesn’t. Sure I have only anecdotal evidence (who has hardline here?), but between playing and coaching I have “in the clubhouse” experience of 10 HS seasons of baseball, and 15 HS/CC seasons of basketball, and I’ve seen winning solve personality issues. And I’ve also seen it NOT solve personality issues and lead to early exits in the post season.
Stats and talent are nice. As are chemistry. Given the chance but forced to chose, I’ll take the pure talent guys and worry about the rest later. But then, on some levels the Yankees have done precisely that and haven’t done much in the post-season category since the days when they had debateably less talent and more chemistry.
I love the USSM (and also understand this article is not directly attacking a relatively solid beat writer here), but sometimes the “statistical fan community” is a little too tooting of their own horn and condemning of the other perspective. Sometimes it feels like a giant daisy chain of “aren’t we smart and aren’t they idiots.” –they being “old school baseball guys,” journalists, the F.O., or any other entity that didn’t do exactly as the USSM authors and crowd perceived as being the correct path.
The authors are mostly right, most the time. And sometimes wrong (Ryan Howard, AAAA player will never hit ML pitching. Jeremy Reed, potential superstar.”)
Writers are the same. But when the writers of the USSM are wrong, often the dissenting voice is silent. But when the beat writers or FO or whoever else are perceived as wrong, the mob
gets out pitch forks and torches.
Oh. And I too HATE Mariotti, and don’t see how any discerning sport fan cannot.
And you know what, I like all of those guys. Why? because they’re great baseball players.
Edgar worked hard and quietly, and was one of the best hitters in baseball. Olerud was so quiet he was almost a mime – but he was a great player. And Manny’s a lunatic who annoys basically everybody, but because he’s an amazing hitter his antics are amusing foibles rather than reasons to DFA a guy. Do you think Julian Tavarez would let Manny pet his head if Manny weren’t the best hitter on the team?
Ultimately you all make decent points, but I just feel like I need to defend the “human interest” perspective since I think it gets a bad rap around here.
We’re probably a bit overly defensive about this subject due to how we’ve been browbeaten by this crap the last few years. John McGrath has an annual offseason “Trade Ichiro” column that he rolls out every winter, berating the team’s best player for not acting like McGrath wants him to in the clubhouse and blaming the team’s lack of leadership on the guy who is doing more to help the team win game than anyone else on the roster.
When 150 of us stood in a room and asked Bill Bavasi what the hell he was thinking when he signed Carl Everett, we were told that he had the kind of personality that would work hitting in the middle of the order, and that the team couldn’t take a flyer on guys like suggested USSM pickup Carlos Pena (check out what he’s doing for Tampa this year, by the way) because he lacked the mental toughness to be an RBI guy.
We’ve watched the Mariners get rid of high quality players such as Carlos Guillen and Rafael Soriano because the organization didn’t like their personalities, and we’ve watched them overpay for useless veterans because they give good interviews and say the right things in public.
Above all, we just really want to root for a Mariners team that wins baseball games, and we’re tired of dealing with red herrings such as clubhouse chemistry as the reason for the failures of the team on the field. The team just needs better players, and all the other stuff that distracts from that doesn’t serve to help the Mariners field a winning team.
Gary Payton. Tom Chambers. Ken Easley. Lou Piniella. We like jerks just fine in Seattle when they’re winners.
Even then, they’re either quirky jerks (”Oh look! Lou is throwing a base! HOW CUTE!”), or so good it really doesn’t matter.
The authors are mostly right, most the time. And sometimes wrong (Ryan Howard, AAAA player will never hit ML pitching. Jeremy Reed, potential superstar.”)
Without turning this into another discussion of USSM’s flaws, I’d just like to point out that my position on Howard was never that he was a AAAA player and my position on Reed was never that he was a potential superstar.
Did I underrate Howard? Yea, definitely, though 2006 is certainly going to be his career year and might look like a collossal fluke when all is said and done. Did I overrate Reed? Yea, probably, though to be fair, after he hit .400 in his Mariner debut, I was the one trying to convince everyone that he wasn’t the #2 prospect in baseball, and I stuck with my Mark Kotsay comparison whether Reed was hitting .360 in A-ball or .220 in the majors.
We definitely have our fair share of swings and misses, but for the most part, I think we do a pretty good job of owning up to them.
The Quirky Jerks! What a great name for a band.
#32
Makes sense. I think I might be too new of a fan (started following the Ms and baseball seriously last year) to have been really jerked around by such things, so I still don’t quite comprehend just how bad the front office is.
I think the Yankees have failed to win it all in recent years more because of their bad defense than anything else.
Right now Ryan Howard is looking kinda like Roger Maris in 1962.
Perhaps if Baker had phrased his (and his ‘insider’s’) point of view differently, he might have found a more receptive audience at USSM. He’s basically saying, “Nice guys finish last,” isn’t he? Seems I’ve heard that before from someone with a relatively high-level knowledge of baseball.
On the other hand, you might consider that Baker (not to mention Steve Kelley and others) don’t really write for the audience at USSM. If they did, they wouldn’t last very long in their business.
Larry Stone does a hell of a job writing terrific, insightful articles without relying on analytical crutches like team chemistry.
Yeah I gotta agree with most of you on this one. I don’t think being a jerk helps or hurts you in baseball at all. I think chemistry is actually important in some sports and having some “jerks” can be good, particuarly in basketball but not in baseball. You go to the plate and try to get a hit, or you pitch and try to get the guy out, or you field…etc.etc. Team chemistry really doesn’t mean too much in baseball. It might help a shitty team win a couple games late in the year instead of rollover but it won’t help a team win 90 + games.
…and that the team couldn’t take a flyer on guys like suggested USSM pickup Carlos Pena (check out what he’s doing for Tampa this year, by the way) because he lacked the mental toughness to be an RBI guy.
Oh, yeah, and he was also available before 2007, too. Lefty pop? Check. But, no. Bill had to have his shiny Turbo…
Yes. I can see it in baksetball and football. There are a lot more interaction effects in those sports, I think, where working together is a lot more integral in team performance than it is in baseball. In baseball, individual performances can dominate over group actions (ya don’t need THAT much teamwork to whack the ball over the fence). I wouldn’t discount it, but individual talent predominates.
And, again, the Mariner organization puts an emphasis on chemistry, but they’re just HORRIBLE at finding people who contributes this aspect that they;re so interested in. You would think they’d catch a clue–if they’re bad at finding it, then perhaps they shouldn’t emphasize it so much in player evaluation…
What I’ve never understood about this “chemistry” junk is that it’s supposed to be “not reflected in the numbers” — but the numbers describe what actually happens in the field. If Weaver sucks because his arm is gone, or because he isn’t getting enough chemistry from Ichiro and the gang, or because he can’t remember which team he’s on, I don’t care — I’m looking at the results. All I want is results.
Objectively, if chemistry mattered that much, there would be variation in performance that could be attributed to it. There isn’t.
We had a case study in Team Chemistry from the Seahawks. Tom Flores was always calm during games and interviews. No small number of sports pundits blamed his team’s failures on his personality – including his seeming inability to “light fires” under players. Jump forward to Dennis Erickson, who was vastly different from Flores and was extremely good at lighting fires under players, even players who were already in flames. One of the alleged reasons for his team’s failures was that he was too excitable and emotional, and that the team need a coach who was calmer and more professional.
Team Chemistry: the all-weather excuse.
I suspect that the Seahawks’ recent successes have less to do with Mike Holmgren’s fire lighting skills than with the presence on the team of a number of players with above average talent.
I don’t know about the Miracle Asshole Cure, but clearly attitude plays some part in performance. The M’s have a history of players dogging it in losing seasons — two years ago it seemed they barely showed up much of the time. It’s not hockey, where team attitude is huge, but if you’re in an environment where people are unhappy about half-hearted performance, it couldn’t hurt to have players who are unsatisfied with that.
Of course, it doesn’t matter when a clubhouse is constructed of players whose full-throttle performance is equivalent to the half-hearted efforts of replacement level players.
Back in The Day of Alvin Davis and Harold Reynolds, the Mariners had a reputation as chalking off all game misfortune to God’s special message to the team. They didn’t win a lot of games (not that they had the talent to do so).
Anyway, if sphincter-centric roster construction is the goal, they should have kept Ryan Franklin. He cares, dammit.
46: How do you distinguish between players who are dogging it, and players who just aren’t very good?
J-U-N-I-O-R!! DH problem solved, chemistry problem solved! Sell the farm and throw in the Moose.
47: Obviously I’m no expert. Batters hacking at the first three pitches, batters jogging to first on groundouts, fielders letting the ball bounce in front of them needlessly, throwing to the wrong base. You see these things, you draw conclusions.
Hendu was quoted years ago as saying that in essence that he dogged it while with the Mariners, but that was what the Mariners deserved. He was trying to slam Mariners ownership and management, and while they were clearly slamworthy targets, I think he came off looking worse.
There are far better ways to fix team chemistry than wasting a roster spot on a lesser player with team chemistry. I thought I’d name a few
sports psychologist, manager and coaching staff, former ballplayers, Zen-masters, motivational speakers, etc.
Anyways, you get the point. I think the overall point is have the players play and have the support staff do what is necessary to maintain positive attitudes and good clubhouse atmosphere.
Batters hacking at the first three pitches, batters jogging to first on groundouts, fielders letting the ball bounce in front of them needlessly, throwing to the wrong base. You see these things, you draw conclusions.
Here are some conclusions I would draw:
1) They have been aggressive hitters from childhood
2) They aren’t very fast
3) They were afraid of risking a bad hop
4) They thought they had a chance to throw out the runner/prevent the runner from advancing by throwing to the base they chose
There just isn’t any reason to think this particular team ‘dogs it’ any more than any other.
I am of the opinion that the best way to address the “chemisty” issue is to find someone and make an example out of them. When Billy Beane blew a fuse and traded Jeremy Giambi for John Mabry, it was a good trade because it showed the players what was what. The only way to get that pyscho Beane off their back was to play well. It certainly will make a player think twice about mailing in a game.
With a little planning a good scapegoat can go a long way towards improving a teams fortunes.
Hm. As other people elsewhere have posited, maybe the reason why the team doesn’t have chemistry, why it doesn’t have a passion for winning is that the front office doesn’t have it. How can a team possibly have it if the top echelon has no clue about it?
“There just isn’t any reason to think this particular team ‘dogs it’ any more than any other.”
Watch a team like the Minnesota Twins everyday and I think your opinion will change. Some teams play harder than others.
I still affirm that a key reason they don’t get better players to sign here is because of the geographic distance from the rest of the country, let alone the families and homes of the league’s Latin players. Sure, they draw some free agents like Beltre (Sexson already is from the PNW), but when it comes time to sell top FAs on Seattle, it’s still farther away from home for many than LA, NYC, Chicago, Houston, etc. Not be a winning ballclub certainly doesn’t help, but it’s not the only factor.
This ‘So-and-so is a good clubhouse guy’ is one of 1000 smokescreens the org uses to mask the fact that they guys they sign are the best guys they can convince to come up here to play.
The org has its fundamental philosophical problems, but the Seattle Mariners will always be at an inherent disadvantage in luring free agents, no matter who’s in the front office.
As for the likes of Carlos Pena, that could be the case of the M’s never making an offer… but could that be because he never had any interest in straying from the East Coast?
I want a team that plays hard and smart. I see no evidence — and I watch plenty of baseball — that the Mariners play less hard than they should, though I see a fair amount of evidence that they could play smarter.
I hardly know what to say to someone who thinks it’s a good idea to “find” somebody to make an example of. Jeremy Giambi didn’t need to be found: we was a problem. Random scapegoating would do nothing more than create a culture of fear, and while fear can be a short-term motivator for some people, long-term it’s been shown over and over again to be a lousy way to try to get groups of free people to accomplish things. This isn’t news; the business leader who tries to create a culture of fear these days is viewed as a sorry dinosaur.
Watch a team like the Minnesota Twins everyday and I think your opinion will change.
No it won’t.
55: How many times have the Mariners made the top offer and had a free agent spurn them?
The Seahawks get free agents they want. The distance of Seattle no doubt works against us, but Seattle’s widespread reputation as a great place to live probably helps. Inasmuch as non-baseball and non-financial considerations matter at all.
Dave, I’m not bashing your calls there, as I’m sure you picked up by my saying you are “mostly right, most the time.”
That alone puts you above the majority of the world on pretty much any subject… and perhaps I slightly overstated your position both on the low of Howard and the high of Reed.
More or less my comments were pointed toward the USSM readership, not you. I just get tired of the self-congratulatory perspective they seem to take in regards to your opinions, which they will often agree with and immediately take for their own whether after one article by you.
Do I think beat writers should be better? Certainly. But when they fall short, this site becomes loaded with commentary about how deplorable they are. It is your right (and duty) to point it out. But 100 posts of “yeah, your right!” in various veins get frustrating. And when the 10-30% of us that may disagree add our honest (and ideally intelligently) written disagreement sometimes the mob attacks get at some levels comical.
But when you are flat out wrong (as you readily admit in the Howard case) I don’t see the same mob mentality brow beating you down.
I love the submit comment button you used to have. Quirky, humorous and with the goal of eliminating some of the “noise.” I just wish more of the posters took it to heart, added more thoughtfulness to their comments, or declined to post if their opinion didn’t add anything truly useful to the discussion.
Not that it is always the case. But at times it is.
And I’m just getting to post this now, with 37 comments on.. a lot may have changed since I first read your response and posted this. But such is life.
The org has its fundamental philosophical problems, but the Seattle Mariners will always be at an inherent disadvantage in luring free agents, no matter who’s in the front office.
As the past few years should illustrate, building your team on free agents has downsides- because of how free agency works, you’re going to be paying for the 30+ years on the downside of careers.
Even the Yankees have that- their best years correspond nicely to the peak of their hoomegrown talent (Jeter+Williams+Rivera+Pettitte+Posada).
“Jeremy Giambi didn’t need to be found: we was a problem.”
If Jeremy Giambi was a problem (on the field), then why was Depodesta trying to talk Beane down when he went to make this trade. Why did he have a 125 OPS+ at the time of his trade? I wish the Mariners had a player with a 125 OPS+ that was a problem (on the field).
I didn’t say he was a problem on the field. He was the kind of problem you appeared to be talking about. If there’s an equivalent on the Mariners who needs to be shipped out because of their attitude, who is it? If there isn’t one, the only thing you do by finding someone to make an example of is show that you’re autocratic.
I would say that Mike Hargrove is that kind of a problem, but that’s just speculation from my seat in front of my computer.
A new manager would be able to redefine the roles of certain players without having to keep promises to them. It’s a clean slate.
The distance of Seattle no doubt works against us, but Seattle’s widespread reputation as a great place to live probably helps.
As a non-local, I believe Seattle’s reputation as a greta place to live is vastly overestimated by the locals, quite possibly due to a bubble mentality. Seattle doesn’t really stick out in the PsOV of the rest of the nation: to many it’s just the rainy city that gave the world Starbucks and grunge.
There are a lot of great places to live in the US, many closer, more culturally diverse and with more to offer (or at least perceived as such) than Seattle. It’s about as much of a negotiating advantage as ‘Dallas has great supermarkets.’
Also, a good manager benches players who are sucking and/or moves them down the lineup until they begin to produce again. The ‘psychological factor’ behind having a certain lineup spot is as silly a notion as the ‘X-player makes the team better because of clubhouse chemistry’ notion. Bat Sexson 7th until he starts hitting.
Gomez, Seattle’s reputation is probably overestimated by the locals, but I’ve lived in New York for twenty years and virtually every time I say where I’m from, people either say it’s a great town or they’ve heard it’s a great place to live or something along those lines, and I get asked with some frequency why I wanted to leave. My experience is people believe Seattle is an even better place than it is these days.
(Um, in case it wasn’t clear, I’m from Seattle.)
I live in LA. The reputation from what I hear down here is that people would love to visit, but definitely would not want to live in Seattle because of the rain. I was originally from Seattle but moved a couple years ago.
The issue for me with “chemistry” is not that any given writer chooses to raise it — but that they fail to actually do any analysis about it. What is enraging is not their crutch of resorting to the topic, but their failing to think and analyze.
It is far too easy, and we too often allow them, to say “we need jerks” or “anger and passion are critical”. But, by saying on ly this, they have failed to help us, failed to provide any insight. Because there are 100’s of teams of jerks and passionate “idiots” who have won — and 100’s who have lost. And 100’s of calm guys who have won, and 100’s who have lost.
So, do some freakin’ digging: when does which type of chemistry lead to what? Joe Torre is calm and won. Carl Everett is fiery and for the most part failed. Olerud and Edgar, Jeter and Alston, Cox and LaRussa, all are calm and won. Pittsburgh was a freakin’ “family” and won. Tons of calm guys lost. Tons of fiery guys won. Clubhouses fought and won (Reggie, Cincinnati, Martin); clubhouses fought and splintered.
Explain how and why a boston or a st louis or a 2002 angels worked — what are those elements? Don’t just toss off “we need more fire”. THAT is what annoys me — not the topic (which is deeply fascinating, in part because it is so complicated and difficult to elucidate and understand) — but the failure to analyze.
There is no correlation between chemistry and winning not because there is no relationship, but because there is so much noise that whatever the relationship is is obscured. Someone figuring out how to extract noise and illuminate relationship, now THAT would be a good couple of column inches….
Yeah, scraps, but anybody will have an opinion on a city if you bring it up. It probably does not come to their minds on their own.
I think the beginning of the end was when the minority owner’s daughter luuuuvvved Joey Cora, and so the team kept him on a year past his “sell by” date.
69: Right on, well said.
68: Well, in New York we actually get more inches of rain than Seattle does, so the rain thing may not be the killer issue here that it is for Angelenos.
Chemistry being overrated is said best by Cito Gaston, referring to his playing days for some terrible Padre teams in their inaugural years. Paraphrasing, it went something like this:
We went to dinner together, went to the movies together, had fun together and finished in last place together.
69: Exactly. But it’s not just a failure of beat writers. It’s a failure on the part of the sabermetric community as well, who often assume that if it’s not measurable in some concrete stat, it does not matter – in the same sense that work done for no pay (a primary measure) does not contribute towards the economy.
It’s another case of lived experience versus eyeballing stats. Most of us do not work in a sport environment, where winning and losing is so clearly definable, but we know from our lived experience that companies can be more profitable and productive with certain kinds of leadership in place, or certain kinds of office morale indicators. Equally hard to define in the office world, and terms thrown around like ‘walk the talk’ or ‘value and invest in their employees’ or ‘takes responsibility for getting the job done’.
We recognize the value and contribution of such qualities in our own lives, yet dismiss it on a sporting team simply because nobody has come up with a good way to capture or measure it?
We recognize the value and contribution of such qualities in our own lives, yet dismiss it on a sporting team simply because nobody has come up with a good way to capture or measure it?
No – we dismiss it’s value as a decision making tool in building a roster, because no one has come up with a good way to predict its occurrance.
No – we dismiss it’s value as a decision making tool in building a roster, because no one has come up with a good way to predict its occurrance.
Key point, really.
The team THINKS it can implement chemistry through player selection. Yet, they fail, time after time. The RATIONAL thing to do is to stop trying to do that; if you can’t implement it, stop wasting time and money doing it.
You think this crew will get a clue?
75:
The majority of this thread (and others that have dealt with this issue) don’t do what you succinctly captured and phrased in focusing on its’ value as a decision making tool. Instead, there are many rants dismissive of its ‘value’ at all, or implying that ‘wins’ will somehow create the inherent value of a well-run, functional (in terms of interaction) team. Which is every bit as ridiculous as saying that just stock and profit at Exxon is up, the employees are happy and productive and functioning at peak.
Neither the win/profit or the leadership/morale issue is the chicken OR the egg. In the best (or perhaps, most sustainable for win/profit) they go together, working in complementary fashion.
And, you’re completely right that it’s hard to identify and make decisions based on something that’s really hard to predict. You’re thinking of hiring for a new position; one of the things you take into consideration is whether the person’s personality is a good ‘fit’ with your existing unit. The degree to which ‘fit’ is given weight varies and is dependent not only on whether you have all the pertinent known facts about the interviewee but also that you have a good understanding of the overall capacity/needs of your work unit and your organizational direction.
The problem with the Mariners is multi-fold. They don’t have a solid knowledge of organizational direction even at the smallest level (like valuing OBP) – rather, they shift it seemingly randomly and it’s not apparent.
They don’t have a good understanding of their capacity or needs for different skill sets inclusive of leadership qualities.
They don’t do a good job evaluating skills (tangible or not) of their interviewees.
I’m not sure the failure to look at chemistry is a failure of the sabermetric community. I believe the driving principle of the sabermetric community is to analyze, to assess causal relationships, to predict, to determine probabilities. Chemistry gets tossed out there by people as an explanation, but it is horribly analyzed.
2001 M’s — calm, steady Olerud-Wilson-Edgar.
2004 Boston — insane idiots.
“Chemistry” comes in all shapes and sizes. So the question is, can you analyze it to determine causes, to build it, to predict success from it.
My sense is “chemistry” gets used when people cannot explain failure. I believe the truth is that high-performance teams — in real work or in baseball — need some fundamental elements. Some things ARE critical and look the same across all good teams — maybe things like talent, insights and understandings from “coaches”, clear expectations, feedback on performance, control over your work, a sense from each team member that they and their role are critical.
But many, many other things can vary and can look wildly different from team to team — and you will still have a high performing team. I believe these writers aren’t thinking hard enough — they are too worried about these irrelevant, superficially different things that have no relation to performance, that inherently have nothing to do with causing or undermining effectiveness.
Screaming and breaking bats is unrelated to success. Being calm and not caring whether the fans like you is unrelated to success. As long as teams do the critical things — like get talent, coach it well, let the talent operate, provide feedback — that team will perform — regardless of superficial differences, or similarities.
So, I believe that the sabermetric community is correct here in not looking at “chemistry” — not because it can’t be measured, but because the superficial things people call “chemistry” have nothing whatsoever to do with performance. You have Edgar as a leader, and you have Manny Ramirez as a leader. Arguably, Carl Everett and Jose Guillen are the same guy — is one a leader or someone who builds the right chemistry and the other not? I would venture to say that in your work situations, you have had different-looking situations that worked well. MS, IBM, Apple all look different, all work. What matters — they have in common — what does not matter, they let vary and it does not matter (to performance).
The M’s failures are a result of the critical aspects of high-performance teams: talent and effective management. The non-critical areas: yelling or not, stand-up guy or not, cares what the fans think or not, “good” chemistry or “bad”, simply have nothing to do with performance.
So, why even talk about them? Sabermetricians haven’t failed to look at something important. They have correctly concluded that blonde or brunette, long hair or short, rah-rah or zen-like … it doesn’t make a difference.
Which is every bit as ridiculous as saying that just stock and profit at Exxon is up, the employees are happy and productive and functioning at peak.
What’s funny is that’s a pretty good description. You can look through historical press accounts of corporate cultures, and you’ll find that they’re described depending on the stock performance of the company at the time.
Company does well = daring, employee empowerment creates initiative
Company does badly = directionless, without vision
Examples of that abound. It’s exactly the same thing for teams. If teams do well, coverage finds reasons they did well. If they do badly, reasons are found for why they did badly. Players hate each other?
Team’s doing well: they’re playing great to spite each other.
Team’s doing badly: they’re divided and not playing as a unit.
Not that that’s exactly the point here.
If you can’t reliably measure, predict, hire for, manage or manage to any player or combination of player impacts, it’s pointless to use that as a factor in personell decisions, or even really to consider it.
This is a good thread, especially Derek’s point that the same clubhouse atmosphere is held out as the source of both joy and woe.
One final thought I had thinking about this is that I can’t buy the premise of Baker’s informant — no assholes in the clubhouse. If true, they should bronze the benches and enshrine them in the Hall of Fame. It would be a first.