The Danger of Veteran Entitlement
One of the main themes of the 2007 season has been the divergence of opinions on the value of veteran happiness, especially as it pertains to clubhouse chemistry. As we’ve talked about many, many times, we were in favor of putting the best players on the field in an effort to have the 2007 season result in a playoff appearance, while the Mariners were extremely reluctant to make any roster moves that would result in the veterans on the club feeling disrespected.
The Mariners bent over backwards to make sure that Raul Ibanez, Jose Vidro, Richie Sexson, Jeff Weaver, and Horacio Ramirez were given leashes that would cross the Atlantic ocean, despite all having significant struggles for long periods of time that undermined the teams ability to win games.
All the while, the fans were fed a continuous line of defense of this please-the-veterans strategy from most of the local media. They had a track record. They had earned the right to fight out of the slump. The team owed it to the guys who got them in the playoff race in the first place to go the whole season with the same group. You’ve heard all this before.
Well, about 1,000 miles south of Seattle, we’re seeing the danger of an organization enabling their veterans to, essentially, have free reign over the clubhouse culture. The Los Angeles Dodgers have fallen apart in September, and it didn’t take the old players long to start telling the fans why the team wasn’t able to stay in the race:
“I don’t know what it is, especially when you have a lot” of young players, said Kent, whose double Thursday raised his average to .298 to go along with a team-high 20 home runs and 78 runs batted in. “It’s hard to influence a big group. We’ve got some good kids on the team. Don’t get me wrong, please don’t misinterpret my impressions. [But] it’s hard to translate experience.
“I don’t know why they don’t get it.”
Asked what they don’t get, Kent said: “A lot of things. Professionalism. How to manufacture a run. How to keep your emotions in it. There’s just a lot of things that go on with playing 162 games.
“But I think experience can help more than inexperience. And it’s hard to give a young kid experience.”
It’s become increasingly apparent in the last few days that the Dodgers have more problems than their lowly station in the standings, or as Derek Lowe put it, “The tension here is getting to the point where we have two different teams in [the clubhouse].”
Lowe, after spending a good deal of time criticizing his own inconsistent performance this season, added, “The last two or three weeks we haven’t been on the same page as a team, and you can see what happens when that’s not the case.”
The Dodgers’ collapse down the stretch, Lowe said, “wasn’t because of a string of bad luck; it’s just not a lot of people pulling together in here.”
Or, as Lowe put it, “you can’t have young players thinking they are bulletproof. No one should be bulletproof around here, walking around believing they don’t have to listen to anybody.
But “historically teams with a lot of young players don’t win championships right away,” Lowe said. “That’s something everyone around here is going to want to know — are we going to be playing young players so that they can have the time to develop and really be good in two years?
“What about next season? I’m going to be 35 . . . that’s a little unsettling for some guys who are under contract here. Do they already know the team they’re going to field is not going to be competitive next year?”
More than that, Lowe said, when it comes to mixing young players with a new crop of veterans next season, there has to be two-way respect.
“This has to be settled going into spring training,” Lowe said. “If there has to be a knockout, drag-out fight, so be it. But it cannot carry over where we’re having this same conversation. We can’t have the young players believing they are bulletproof.
“We’re also going to have to be very careful as an organization what kind of people are brought in next season,” he said. “If you listen to people here, the vision is to get even younger. You’re going to have to bring in players who are going to be all right with limited playing time.”
“Look at the back of his bubble-gum card, and all those numbers compiled over the years, which tell you how consistent [Kent] has been,” Gonzalez said, “and consistency is what gets you respect in this game.”
The targets of most of this criticism? James Loney and Matt Kemp, both of whom were called in for a closed door meeting with both manager Grady Little and GM Ned Colletti. Earlier in the linked article, they discuss how Kemp showed bad teammate abilities by failing to properly meet Tony Abreu at home plate for a high five after he hit a home run to give the team a 1-0 lead the other day. In their eyes, this was simply more evidence that Kemp and Loney are not doing enough to help the Dodgers win the NL West.
James Loney: .331/.381/.528
Matt Kemp: .333/.367/.515
Loney in September: .395/.441/.721
Kemp in September: .358/.386/.507
James Loney and Matt Kemp have been, without question, the Dodgers two best hitters this year. They have literally carried the Los Angeles offense that was been dragged down by the poor performances of highly paid veterans Juan Pierre, Rafael Furcal, Nomar Garciaparra, and Luis Gonzalez. And yet, when you hear the Dodgers veterans tell the story, the reason this team didn’t make the playoffs is that they had too many young players.
Lowe actually outright states that he’s worried the team is rebuilding by giving so many at-bats to “developing” players such as Loney and Kemp, worried more about the future than winning immediately. Because, clearly, James Loney and Matt Kemp’s presence on the roster is about playing for the future…
Keep in mind that both Loney and Kemp began the year in Las Vegas, having been given no chance to compete for a job in spring training thanks to the offseason acquisitions of veteran players to play the positions they have ended up taking by force after the veterans failed.
The Dodgers, through their heavy pro-veteran entitlement, have enabled bad players to publicly blame good players for the team losing. Think about that – the guys who are actually responsible for the Dodgers struggles are taking aim at the guys who have kept them in the pennant race. And, thanks to the ridiculous gang of writers who cover the Dodgers, the pro-veteran story will be written without challenge, and the 2007 Los Angeles Dodgers will be held up as an example of what can happen when you tinker with team chemistry by promoting kids from the minors in the middle of a playoff race.
Congratulations, Los Angeles – you’ve officially gone from dysfunctional to embarrassing. If you want to unload noted troublemakers Kemp and Loney, there are 29 other franchises who will gladly take those young punks off your hands. Good luck winning with your highly entitled, overpaid, and essentially useless veteran core.
But at least they’ll high five each other at home plate.
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“there are 29 other franchises who will gladly take those young punks off your hands”
Given our front office, shouldn’t this be 28?
50 – I thought that was implied. Aren’t we the team closest to Siberia?
Nathaniel – I disagree that Kent and Lowe are showing leadership. They’re bellyaching in the press. That’s an appalling management strategy and no way to mend the divisions that have hurt the team. Praise your players’ success in public, criticise their failings constructively in private, not the other way around.
The Dodger’s FO should carpet Kent and Lowe for such unprofessional behaviour, much as the M’s FO should have told Jose Guillen to shut up about Adam Jones earlier in the season.
I agree with 17 and 18. It is simply not black and white.
It is also not as simple as looking at their stats (and I love the reference to BA and ERA to prove value of youth or non-value of pitchers despite the fact that both have been discredited to varying degrees on this very site. Or, quoting Kemp/Loney ‘good’ stats while omitting Kent ‘good’ stats from the initial post, expecting (or perhaps testing) how many of the acolytes would even bother to go look them up before weighing in with opinions.
This is one area where the beat reporter does have an advantage, in that they have access to the clubhouse and to the players directly. This gives them additional information to consider, and yes, originating from/relying upon a different epistemology than the empirical, measurable, quantifiable Karl Popper variety.
I’m not saying the reporters are right. I’m not saying youth shouldn’t be served. I’m saying that an organizations’ overall performance is an outcome of more than the sum of its parts (individual stats) but also relies on the interplay between and the culture within the organization itself.
Oddly enough, Derek Lowe was drafted by the Mariners before the whole infamous trade thing with the sox 10 years ago. Kind of ironic, he would’ve fit right in with the clubhouse culture if he was here today.
I wonder how much the MLBPA union has to do with fostering this attitude in baseball. In the NFL every player seems to understand that a younger teammate can come in and take their job at any time based on performance. There also happens to be a much weaker union and the players have fewer rights in the NFL than in MLB. In baseball, many veteran players have pretty cushy contracts, and there’s a lot of entitlement that goes along with that. They’d be justified to ask why the team committed so much money/so many years to them if they’re going to be benched whenever some kid starts raking in AAA? Plus the high embarrassment factor and potential conflict it creates if the manager wants to bench an underperforming player who recently re-signed for big bucks. It’s a total disincentive to manage properly. When I think of the NFL (my favorite team being the Eagles) I am amazed at how ruthless they are at ditching popular veteran players for younger, “unproven” talent. And the players may bitch about it, but it works. Being an MLB/Mariners fan and an NFL/Eagles fan, I can’t help but notice the huge difference in philosophy about how to evaluate, what to pay for, and when to cut loose talent, and the differing results. I’m usually a lot happier during football season than baseball season.
“teams with a lot of young players don’t win championships right away”
This is sorta true, but mostly because (a) most teams don’t win championships, and (b) most MLB teams don’t have a lot of young players.
If we wanted to generalize from the Dodgers and M’s, we could state that teams with veterans who whine about playing time given to young players don’t win championships.
54- “Or, quoting Kemp/Loney ‘good’ stats while omitting Kent ‘good’ stats from the initial post…”
Huh? This post wasn’t about Kent’s performance. Who said they should play instead of Kent? Was that the point?
Are people just making stuff up that they can be against?
Good stuff.
The Dodgers don’t deserve players like that. They should trade Loney, for one, to a disrespectful orgainization like my favorite team, the Red Sox. I’m sure the Sox can find some good veteran to give them in return.
While this is true in general, this situation is still an example of a failure of leadership from the front office and the manager; that kind of intra-team sniping is a failure of personnel managment from the top. Not that Kent or Lowe are blameless–a true team leader would be a lot more circumspect in their statements. Basically, they burned any bridges they had with the young players—they sure as heck won’t have any influence over them in the future (and with those kind of numbers, those youngsters WILL be with the team in the future).
I find THAT kind of chemistry problem, THAT kind of leadership problem to be more serious than anything among the players. At worst, the rookies could be seen as arrogant—but they backed up a lot of any arrogance with performance. And that sort of performance buys a lot of time for patience.
Are people just making stuff up that they can be against?
I’m starting to get that feeling.
Seriously, no one has said anything negative about Kent’s performance this season. Well, actually, I made fun of him for being a shitty fielder in my previous post, but still, he is and always has been a pretty good hitter. But that’s not the point of the post.
The reason Loney and Kemp’s stats were posted is to show that they are not the ones who deserve to be the focus of Kent’s misplaced ire. Dave didn’t say Loney and Kemp are awesome and Kent sucks at baseball, and neither did anyone else here.
A couple of weeks ago, some people disagreed when I suggested that there was a difference between chemistry and leadership because leadership is a skill. This year’s Dodgers seem to me to reinforce that. The Dodgers of the 1970s had players who couldn’t stand each other, even got into fist fights (not a sign of good chemistry), but they were able to come together and play as a team under Lasorda (though they got to the Series, they could never win it. Sigh.).
This team probably has enough talent to get to the playoffs, but there isn’t enough leadership from players or coaches to get there. Or maybe there isn’t enough talent and that’s why they fell apart at the end. Even so, teams should not be turning on each other in public.
I don’t have a metric to measure leadership, but I don’t see how a group of highly egoistic (a characteristic necessary for their jobs) human beings can coexist without some of it. Sometimes, teams need a manager who’s mostly a coach and supporter, other times, they need someone to knock heads together, and it can be anything in between.
20 years from now, not many people will remember this outburst/split and the Dodgers will be remembered as a team that placed 4th in their division. I’d be pretty surprised if anyone thinks about whether they should have taken the wild card this year if they hadn’t spent so much time bashing teammates in the media. So the lack of leadership kind of shows up in the statistics, but not in a way we can measure it.
58: Sorry, my reply was more about the rhetoric and framing used in the initial post. Rhetoric, framing, overreaching harms the points Dave is trying to make.
It quotes 3 players (Kent, Lowe, Gonzalez) as examples of ‘bad’ players, players responsible for Dodgers failure this year.
“The Dodgers, through their heavy pro-veteran entitlement, have enabled bad players to publicly blame good players for the team losing.”
Meantime, when I pull up stats on the Dodgers, I’m shown that Jeff Kent leads the team on batting average, home runs and is 2nd on the team in RBI. I’m shown that Derek Lowe is 2nd on the team in wins, 2nd in ERA and 1st in strikeouts. Luis Gonzalez is 3rd in HRs, 3rd in RBIs. That Kemp and Loney have played in over 40 games fewer than Gonzalez and Kent (so the implied but unstated assumption is that the smaller sample size just extrapolates, right?) That Kent has an OPS that’s 10 points lower than Matt Kemp’s, but over the course of 40+ more games.
To say that they are bad players is incorrect and overreaching. To imply that the Dodgers would be better off, still in the race, if they weren’t so reliant on vets, when some of the vets have been pretty stinking valuable to the success they did have this year is false.
“teams with a lot of young players don’t win championships right awayâ€
Baseball Reference gives the ages for position players and pitchers separately, and weights them according to their appearances (so the rookie who shows up for a couple of the games at the end of the season has much less effect on the average age than the vet who is there for most of the 162)
Average age (position players, pitching staff)
2002 Angels: 28.3, 30.2
2003 Marlins: 27.7, 26.3
2004 Red Sox: 30.5, 32.5
2005 White Sox: 29.2, 29.6
2006 Cardinals 29.6, 28.6
2007 LA Dodgers: 29.8, 31.1
So, of all the WS champions over the last 5 years, all but one of them (the ’04 BoSox) was younger than this year’s Dodgers. And in the case of the ’03 Marlins, quite a bit younger.
Nice find, Joser.
16. Why people take Simers seriously for this kind of thing is beyond me.
They don’t take Simers seriously. Simers’ column exists for just one reason: to make ridiculous comments that get a rise from readers who write or email furious tirades. If the LA Times was the internet, Simers would be a classic example of a troll.
In his few non-trolling columns, Simers reveals that he’s actually a reasonably intelligent guy, and he occasionally even writes stuff that is positive rather than insulting or sarcastic. But that’s only maybe 5% of his writing.
One of the more interesting baseball postings that I’ve seen on the web was one several years ago from a contributor to I think it was BaseballPrimer.com (now part of BTF), who’d won some sort of contest to have a date with one of Simers’ daughters. (Simers looks like the stereotypical past-his-prime sportswriter, so readers of the LA Times were blown away when the Times showed a photo of one of his daughters competing in a celebrity 3-point basket shooting contest, which she won — she was actually pretty attractive.) It turns out that Simers in person is a lot like Simers the columnist, always wisecracking and needling. But they got along fine.
Wow, these two Dodgers kids must be real assholes if they’re the best players on the team and everyone STILL hates them.
I mean, let’s not confuse “Veteran Leadership/Consistency” and “Chemistry”. There can be now doubt when the guy is talking about “two clubhouses” there is definitely no chemistry going on. Also, I think we can add guys like Felix, Ichiro, Beltre and Guillen as guys who were given trans-atlantic leashes.
64: Okay, I’ll play. I’ll even throw in 4 more years for comparison (all 4 of which the WS winners were older than this years’ Dodgers).
’98 NYY (30.4, 30.2) beats SDP (31.2, 29.8) (younger batters beat younger pitchers?)
’99 NYY (30.8, 31.2) beats ATL (29.6, 28.6) (oops, older wins series)
’00 NYY (31.3, 32.0) beats NYM (30.4, 31.0) (oops, older wins series)
’01 AZ (31.9, 30,9) beats NYY (31.1, 30,9) (virtual tie, both teams older than this years’ Dodgers)
’02 LAA (28.3, 30.2) beats SFG (32.1, 29.2) (again, younger batters beat younger pitchers?)
’03 FLA (27.7, 26.3) beats NYY (30.3, 33.6) (youth triumphs)
’04 BOS (30.5, 32.5) beats STL (30.7, 30.1) (again, younger batters beat younger pitchers)
’05 CWS (29.2, 29.6) beats HOU (30.2, 30.3) (youth triumphs)
’06 STL (29.6, 28.6) beats DET (29.3, 28.8) (older batters beat older pitchers?)
Also, 2007 Seattle Mariners (29.9, 28.1) – hey baby, why aren’t we in the WS, we are SO young….
Wait, 2006 Seattlel Ms (28.6, 28) – whoa, we ARE getting ancient in a hurry, but wait, our W-L last year was worse than this year.
C’mon, hasn’t Dave taught you how to make better arguments or at least how to frame what you’re arguing better?
64 – You know as well as I do what Dave’s point was… and it wasn’t that you should fire anyone over thirty.
68 – Aren’t you in a mood today.
And again, you seem to be making up arguments to be against.
No one, not even the post you replied to, said a younger team always beats an older team.
The point was the quote ““teams with a lot of young players don’t win championships right away—
A quote your stats did nothing to support.
Come on.
Really doesn’t have to do with anything, but I am such a huge James Loney fan. They should have given him the job out of spring training and kicked Nomar to the curb.
I’ve been a Nomar fan for years. It was so sad when the media talked about his getting hurt was the best thing he could do for the team because it let in a youngster to replace his aging, nonproductive self. Sad because it was true. You can hardly argue the Dodgers put the kids ahead of the vets for no reason this season.
69: Yeah, in a mood. Let’s just say my current assignment at work stretches my patience beyond thin, and by the time I come home, I’m on a zero tolerance rampage for miscommunication or poor process because I’ve dealt with it all day long, in countless areas.
Apologies.
Still, it is interesting to note that baseball reference age weighting (measurable, quantitative) shows a result of a fairly young team, when there’s been an assumption all year that we are, in fact, a fairly old team.
72 – Cool, man. I’m taking work out back and shooting it today myself.
“Who said he [Kent] was a leader?”
Classic. Being a leader and being around a while are not the same thing.
BTW, if you’re really just missing Dave Sims’ voice on this off-day, you can hear him calling MNF on KJR right now…
I used to read Simers when I was in college because he made me laugh. Not much of a sports expert or anything, but he has his moments. He’s one of those guys who I like to read here and there, but sometimes I’m stunned that they he has a job at such a large paper.
I work at The San Diego Union-Tribune. Simers was a sportswriter here long before I arrived, and I still hear stories about him occasionally. Obviously it’s all hearsay to me, but to summarize: He was fun because of his smartassness, but obviously not everyone got a kick out of his personality.
The Ken Rosenthal on the Rockies shows a sharp contrast to what is happening in Seattle and LA.
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/7260534
It is just disgusting to see a bunch of never really have been veterans with their hands around the throat of an organization. I believe that that the M’s as an organization need a complete and total house cleaning. It is obvious that from Howard Lincoln on down the corporate philosophy is broken.
For an example of how things should work please see , oh my god, the Yankees. I believe Melky Cabrera is a rather young player who came in and supplanted a veteran. But I haven’t heard anyone on the team complaining.
Seriously Good franchises put the best players on the field. They would never let the fate of the franchise be controlled by a 35 year old outfielder who has never been a contributer on a winning club.
Gosh what a wonderful piece of writing. It was thoroughly enjoyable….
Is anyone really surprised that this mentality has taken over the Dodgers clubhouse now that good ol’ boy Ned Colletti is the GM?
FWIW, recent elaboration from the LA Times
Well if we are going to get all excited about baseball in Southern California then we should also consider how the Angels are getting it done. Check out what Ross Newhan has to say:
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-angwin25sep25,1,6631787.column?coll=la-headlines-sports
Remember that the Angels took off as a franchise after Bavasi left. Bavasi loaded the team with young talent but also presided over one of the most divided clubhouses in team history. Scioscia rewards production and shuffles players around to achieve wins. The GM is not afraid to move players if a better one is available and they no longer need the Disney Corporation to approve trades. By the description, the Mariners are very much like the Angels of the 1990’s. Will the Mariners be able to improve while being run like a corporation?
I think you have it all wrong. THey vets in the dodgers article are complaining about attitude, not preformance from the young guys. Nice try though 😉
Does that excuse the Mariner inability to sit down a slumping player because he is a veteran, no.
I don’t care who you are, if you don’t preform you sit. WE got lucky with Ibanez and Somewhat with Weaver. Sexson still blows, Ramirez still blows, and Lopez still blows.
The Mariners have problems in there roots and this is own of them. Things need to be fixed
Howard Lincoln = most unsavy baseball moron
Do us a favor and quit