On blame skipping two levels
How do you blame the players if you’re a GM? They’re your players, each of them the product of a long series of decisions that resulted in them being on the roster over a hundred other possibilities. No matter what the cause, either you’re responsible or the manager’s responsible.
I gave the manager the wrong players: my fault
I gave the manager the right players and they’re not doing well: manager’s fault
I gave the manager the wrong players and created a losing atmosphere where they underachieve: my fault
I gave the manager the right players to put together a winning, yay-chemsitry team, but they act like losers and lose: manager’s fault
If the players suck and the manager’s doing a great job, then the players sucking is the GM’s fault. If the players all looked like they’d do great but it turns out they’re all head cases who can’t work together, the GM didn’t do a good evaluating them (and the manager didn’t do a good job coping). There’s no way that an entire roster of 25 players came together spontaneously without intervention of the front office and decided to play horribly without management noticing or having some chance to influence the outcome.
And even if the GM put together a perfect team and the manager screwed it all up, the GM hired the manager.
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Maybe it’s Bavasi’s California background but all this clubhouse navel-gazing is getting on my nerves. Call in a feng shui consultant to determine the sources of karmic conflict and be done with it.
No Organization For Old Men.
It really depeneds if the GM thought that the players he hired would do a much better job than they are curently doing. Would it be the GM’s fault if he signed A-Rod and, for some reason, he hit like… Vidro? So it is possible that it could be the players fault. Not likely, but possible.
In our case, did the GM evaluate talent properly and pay his players accoring to their talent level?
The bottom line, is that Bavasi did not effectively evaulte the players’ talent that he hired. He STILL thinks they are better than how they are currently performing. Therefore, it’s his fault that the team sucks.
Bavasi’s recent rant is completely nonsensical. Nonetheless, I can understand a certain degree of his frustration: He built a team that he (and shallow thinking analysts) felt was a solid contender. Even those who disagreed with him felt the team was a slightly below .500 team at worst. Now, during a season he sensed was make or break for him personally, the team is performing far worse than the most pessimistic projections.
Bavasi can’t blame injuries for this freakish vomit of performance, he can’t blame it on the growing pains of a young team, he can’t even semi-privately gripe that the ownership won’t give him the resources to compete. The cold truth is that the team is far worse than anyone expected it to be. Bavasi will probably get fired and never have as good a job again. On a personal level, this must hurt quite a bit.
I suggest we view Bavasi’s statement as the angry mutterings of an embittered man. Nothing more.
This is all nice, but can you picture yourself in his position? Sure there might have been mistakes on the way, probably a lot, but be honest, at the start of the season no one believed that our guys would suck that much.
I disagree, Vlad.
Did anybody credible think Richie Sexson had a huge bounceback season in him?
Did anybody credible think Jose Vidro was actually a good DH relative to the rest of the American League … and would continue to be so?
Did anybody credible think Jarrod Washburn was anything other than a left-handed Ryan Franklin?
Did anybody credible think Raul Ibanez has a valid role beyond playing DH against right-handed batters?
Did anybody credible think Yuniesky Betancourt’s worsening defense should be ignored?
Did anybody credible think signing a no-longer-young, non-strikeout sinkerballer to top free agent money was a good idea when it was obvious that the same quality of player could be plucked out of a league-minimum-salary grab bag?
I take it you see the operant word here ….
On the other side, Ichiro, Beltre, Kenji… These guys play under their limits and you have to admit that on paper, this team is not be at the cellar.
I say fire McLaren, get rid of Vidro, Cairo, Ibanez, Richie, Washburn and come with young guys who would be at least fun to watch and will become better players than those professional hitters
AND did anybody credible think the M’s actually have a good defense?
Why do all of the M’s so-called baseball people think Ibanez is still a so-called good Leftfielder? He costs the M’s runs EVERY game!
Ichiro is fine, and will continue to be fine.
Beltre is fine, and will continue to be fine. (You have a problem with 10 home runs and All-Solar-System defense?)
I’ll grant you Kenji (so far), but I also think he’s getting royally jerked around. And that he’s a better bounceback candidate than Sexson.
Anytime I look at Vidro´s stats it makes me wanna puke. These are just NOT the numbers for DH in any league
Hire June Jones… we’ll score in the fifties.
By the way, at the start of the season I created all Mariners, only with Pujols line up on my fantasy team, guess where I am at the standings…
When McLaren goes (and whether Bavasi stays or not), it would be good if the new manager was given the direction that the goal is to prepare for 2009. If that means dumping players who won’t be around next year (Vidro, Sexson, Rhodes, et al) in favor of getting in a few kids and giving them playing time, great. The worst thing that would happen would be if the new manager thought he had to win now to have a job next year (where have we heard that before?) while at the same time buying into the Bavasi gotta have aging veterans with clubhouse presence myths.
Dave listed the predictions of a number of analytical sites. They were mostly seeing a below .500 team. The .500 prediction was optimistic, and, unsurprisingly, was the one that was grasped by Ms fans.
And be careful before jumping on the few good players – Beltre, Ichiro – for example. I think it is very hard to outperform when surrounded by garbage teammates. No other threats in the lineup doesn’t help you get pitches and less lineup turnover and fewer baserunners reduces counting stats.
It saddens me that it looks like we’ll see McLaren and only McLaren canned, if anyone. His issues are well documented here, but so is the fact that MLB managers just don’t usually have that great of an impact on the fortunes of their team, far less than the impact of those who carefully choose most of the players on the roster. It’s like pruning a dying branch off a tree with a rotting trunk. Chuck Armstrong, you are that trunk rot.
What about the role of chance?
The team is going through the season they should have had last year. Bavasi shouldhave been fired after last season, along with the ‘interim’ staff of McLaren et al. Last year’s aberration set this team back 3 years.
The Oregonian’s Brian Meehan had a column today that pretty accurately defines the suckitude of the 2008 Mariners and the disastrous approach over time (he’s covered this before) in trading away good talent for crap. But he entirely buys into Armstrong and Bavasi saying it’s not management that’s at fault, the players are and that the team was “built to win”.
I wrote him a letter. I wonder if he will bother to examine the inherent and blatant contradiction in his column.
Absolutely 100% dead on.
But this is Seattle. We don’t fire football coaches who go 11-25 and baseball executives who lose year after year.
If you want to read an interesting contrast of both styles in a GM, and how the fans perceive their respective front offices….take a look at Athleticsnation.com. They have an interview of Billy Beane, as well as fan reaction to the interview.
It is real clear that Billy Beane is “Da Man”, and that A’s fans have both confidence and respect for the job that the A’s do in fielding a competitive team. The M’s would be so lucky to have a front office like the A’s, and their team and the $48. million dollar payroll that comes with it. Instead we have the suckitude that is the M’s frontoffice. What could Billy Beane do with a $117 million payroll?
Everything goes back to the GM, of course. The reasons the manager is usually the first one fired are:
1) The GM is being given a chance to try and fix his mistakes
2) Of the options for attempted fixes, changing managers is much easier than overhauling the roster
3) The GM is in charge and gets to decide which one of them goes
Bavasi’s reluctance to blame McLaren fits nicely with his sense of honor and ethics elsewhere (like not holding back Clement over service time). The way his final season Angels season played out has some similarities, backing Terry Collins over player discontent in a collapse season that followed high expectations. Like then, I think Bavasi knows he’ll have to be on his way out at the end of the year.
I have three managerial scenarios I would like to see play out, to maintain my interest in the Mariners this summer.
1) Miguel Cairo usurps McClaren as a player-manager and we win the pennant
2) Bavasi and Armstrong make a public apology to the people of Seattle for trying to undermine the club, then pull off their human masks to reveal they are actually reptilian alien cast-members of the long-canceled television show “V”. They follow this up with a short speech about how they will conquer the world. Submit.
3) Armstrong has a near-death experience, realizes error of his ways, fires Bavasi, hires somebody with a clue (whose name I cannot imagine) and this person hires Dave Brundage back from the Richmond Braves. Mariners win the pennant! Mariners win the Pennant!
Bavasi says “the buck stops here” — he’s said it at least twice now — but he doesn’t know what it means. He’s blaming the players. Blaming other people for your mistakes is EXACTLY what “passing the buck” means.
Running any venture on the premise of “you must win right now” is a terrible business approach. Kind of like walking into any Vegas casino and putting your life savings on one roll of the dice. Doesn’t work well.
Shouldn’t a GM be looking longer term…not only the right now but the next 5+ years? It’s the manager who should be more concerned about the right now (I have these players so how do I wring wins out of them).
23 – I totally agree. Saying one thing and doing another is part of the MO of the FO.
The USSM predicted this future for us when Howard Lincoln hired Bavasi. Lincoln thought he’d improve on the record he made in California, and now we know who was right. I wish the site had archives by year so I could link to the posts.
Personally, I think it’s time to blame the batboys an ballgirls for their lack of clubhouse leadership. Perhaps Geoff Baker will write such a column.
No, it doesn’t. It goes up higher, to the president and ownership, who establishes the philosophy on how to run a team and how to construct a team. They are the ones to hire a GM that fits their philosophy, the Mariner’s way of running and building a team.
OK let´s play a role of a new named GM for a moment. what are your first steps? Are you going to try to save the season or are you going to try to win back the hearts of a faithfull fans by firing everybody to change this mess into a healthy club?
It is ridiculous that there is even a debate about this. OF COURSE it’s management’s fault. The M’s payroll has been in the top 10 since Bavasi took over. And that’s being very conservative. They are and have been one of the most profitable franchises in baseball. The M’s record during the Bavasi administration: 316-383. That’s just awful, and there’s no excuse for it. None. There is no other franchise that has displayed as much ineptitude over the past 5 years, when you look at it in terms of dollars spent per wins. It is a broken organization.
Collective underperformance of this magnitude speaks of bigger problems. It really sucks, because (despite my rants about the M’s needing changes all the way to the top)I still find myself hoping: That Wash can pitch like yesterday half the time, that the other players…etc etc, in short, I keep hoping for a miracle, even though my rational mind tells me it would be the worst thing in the long run as it will enable the perpetual mediocrity to continue. Sigh
It is stupid that Bavasi is blaming the players. It is his job to get players that perform. We may (for good reason) disagree with how Bavasi chooses his players. Nonetheless, it doesn’t matter how he selects his roster. He can ask Ichiro’s dog who should be our 5th starter and if it works Bavasi is doing a good job, if it doesn’t than he’s not. Bottom line Bavasi is accountable for the Mariners poop like performance.
The way I see it, Lincoln and Armstrong have a tough choice ahead. Admit that their baseball philosophy is based on quantum bogodynamics (run by suits ie: completely wrong if winning is the goal) or keep going the way they have.
Admitting they were wrong is gonna be tough, because a change in philosophy will mean an entirely different approach. Lots of people would be let go. It’s a hard sell. Imagine Ghandi winning an argument with Heinrich Himmler.
Much more likely they’ll make some superficial changes, sacrifce Mac and maybe BB but not change their way of doing things.
Was reading firebavasi.com and saw he even wanted to pay Zito over 100 million. Ridiculous. The guy has to go. Tired of the blame game.
#18 – I read that this morning, he was also advocating trading Beltre and Ichiro.
Actually, I believe, Mr. Bavasi is doing his job . He picked the players and it is his job to do anything he can to motivate them (no matter how absurd). Management probably also expects him to put himself on the line.
Really the only hope I see is shown by the brilliant Mr. Washburn. What he has started with his personal catcher needs to be continued. He needs to be able to pick his personal LF: Jeremy Reed. He needs to be able to pick his personal DH: Raul Ibanez. And he needs to be able to pick his personal 1B: ummmm. I guess he also needs some more personal roster spots also and the authority to make trades.
This will also save Mr. McLaren from the wrath of his players since each starting pitcher will make out the lineup card for that day and the player’s sitting will not be Mr. McLaren’s fault.
Speaking of blame/responsibility for ones actions, has anyone seen Tillman’s stats this year after he won his 6th straight last night for the O’s AA team?
6-0, 2.59, 48.2 innings 44 K’s
[button term violations]
An addition, if you did pick up those expensive players and they don’t preform better, wouldn’t their large contracts mean you are more likely to keep them on the roster longer to see if they can turn it around? If you’re paying peanuts to a bad player, you can simply dump them without a second thought.
#37
Ok so lets say the ownership puts a gun to Bavasi’s head and forces him spend $112mil. That doesn’t mean Bavasi get a free pass to contruct a bad ball team. $112 million dollars has got the Mariners a .691 OPS at first base and .646 OPS at DH and we are trying to compete in the American league. That is what we call a bad baseball team and the GM is responsible.
#38
“An addition, if you did pick up those expensive players and they don’t preform better, wouldn’t their large contracts mean you are more likely to keep them on the roster longer to see if they can turn it around?”
While that is understandable its a horrible way to conduct business. Are you familar with the term sunk cost?
I think the real challenge is if Bavasi doesn’t hold himself accountable for his actions then he himself is not showing leadership of this club. His own actions directly reflect what his values are and what the values of people in his organization should be. He has no room to ask people in his organization to hold themselves accountable if he cannot demonstrate it himself – the main premise of leading by example.
This is the crux of what irritates me about his comments this weekend. Pointing his finger down the organization first and placing blame for the team’s issues directly on the players demonstrates a complete absence of leadership on his part. Yet he faults the players for not demonstrating leadership, and this is the exact quality that he is proving he does not value.
From ESPN.com, average home ballpark attendance rank for the Mariners from 2001 to 2008:
2001: 1st in MLB — 43,300
2002: 1st in MLB — 43,739
2003: 2nd in MLB — 40,351
2004: 10th in MLB — 36,305
2005: 12th in MLB — 33,619
2006: 15th in MLB — 30,626
2007: 16th in MLB — 32,992
2008: 19th in MLB — 27,090 so far, on pace for an average of 25,496 over 81 games at home.
You’d think Chuck Armstrong, if anybody, would remember the bad old days in the Kingdome when the Mariners put a poor product out on the field and the attendance reflected the fans’ disinterest in paying money to go to the ballpark to watch that poor product.
Re: CHRIS TILLMAN (See # 36.)
IIRC, Oriole management wanted to get him out of the Spring Training Major League camp for fear that they woud not be able to resist the coaches’ pleas that he be kept with the big club.
BTW, the trading of JONES and SHERRILL, and TILLMAN for BEDARD were classic cases of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
(TILLMAN was in Short-Season A–with the Mariners–last year. This year he’s in AA, a promotion of three levels. Hmm!)
Adding 6 more bobblehead nights should get us back into the top 15.
There’s an article you can Google entitled “Internet critics aside, Bavasi gets high marks” by Seattle PI reporter David Andriesen. What is ironic about this? It’s dated Wednesday, March 31, 2004!!
“Adding 6 more bobblehead nights should get us back into the top 15.”
Unfortunately, there’s only 4 more bobblehead nights left in this season…
June 13, Adrian
July 18, Felix
August 3, Dave Niehaus HOF
August 8, Yunieski
The OTHER 45 promotion nights ought to bring that average up to, say, 29,500 or so. I’ll bet it doesn’t change the ranking one whit, though.
That’s a great comment with the attendance numbers, Karen. I hadn’t looked up this year’s gates in a while, and that’s just… shocking.
It’ll go up with the Red Sox series, of course.
I have read some national publications that blame the current failure of veteran teams on the steroid era. GM’s were spoiled by older players magically extending their careers due to the rampant use of steroids in MLB. Now that the steroid era is over older veteran players are not able to extend their careers by 3-5 years. Bat speeds slow, guys with bad knees become liabilities in the field, Pitchers lose 5-10 mph on their fastball and turn into batting practice pitchers. Meanwhile less veteran dominated teams are relying on youth to win. It is obvious to me that Bavasi is just trying to cover his own ass by blaming the players. I mean seriously does anyone really expect him to say “wow I totally screwed this one up” of course not he is going to go down with the ship all the while exclaiming that the Titanic is unsinkable.
Sorry Karen, but I was thinking to add 6 more to the remaining 4 bobblehead nights.
June 18th, Bloomquist (Dirty cap edition)
July 5th, Bedard (It gives 1 to 4 word answers)
August 4th, Dave Sims (non-HOF edition with enormous forehead)
August 26th, Ibanez (The head won’t bobble that fast)
September 6th, Vidro (Professional bobblehead edition)
September 28th, Bavasi/McLaren 2-pack (each carrying suitcases)
I love baseball and I have been a Mariners season ticket holder for 8 years. But I’m sick of Bavasi and he can’t leave town soon enough. I’ll always go to the games. But tonight I’m wearing a Red Sox jersey and from here on out, I’m pulling for the visiting team. After that last pitiful road trip, I figure the more losses that pile up, the higher up the chain the firings will go. Maybe even Woody.
If managers and general managers were never culpable for on-field performance, it is curious why they are paid so much.
I think you can divide a manager’s performance into three parts:
1. The really visible part: lineups, onfield strategy. I’d give McLaren a D for that.
2. Team preparation. This shows itself in different ways, but you don’t see everything. Missed cutoff men or ill-advised throws, players not on the base they’re supposed to be on. Pitches made to the batter’s hot spot. From what we can see, I’d give McLaren a D for this, too.
3. Team cohesiveness. Baseball is not an individual game, despite all you read about it. The only players who don’t have to interact with each other in the field are the right and left fielders. Pitcher and catcher must be in synch. First basemen must know which infielders have a tendency to bounce throws in the dirt and which ones have a tendency to sail throws high. Cutoff men must line up and outfielders throws be made to be cutoff. This is supposed to be taken care of in spring training. When it’s done well, the players play together like a well-oiled machine, and make plays that make you go wow!. I’d give McLaren a D on this, too.
The last bit is hard to see on most teams. But you can see it on the M’s by the way someone like Washburn will complain to the press about his catcher, and neither the manager nor a single player does anything about it (other than for McLaren to give the baby his rattle). I can’t imagine anyone on a Lou Piniella team making a press statement demeaning a teammate’s performance; he’d know he’d have Lou to answer to and so he’d never make the statement. All those incredible plays we saw Erick Aybar make: that’s a hallmark of a Mike Scioscia managed team–they’re always in position. Notice how the Braves’ prospects always seem to blossom: that’s a hallmark of a Bobby Cox managed team (Lou never caught on to that one). Different managers have different strengths. Different managers are the right person for a team at a particular point in time (Joe Torre sucked managing the Mets, Braves and Cardinals; Lou couldn’t have been more wrong for the Devil Rays). And some managers have to get fired to learn a lesson (Bob Melvin being the most obvious example).
All of which is a very long way to saying that it might not be McLaren’s “fault”, but that is completely the wrong question to ask. The right question is: given where the team is today, is there someone who is the better person to turn the situation around. That of course requires one to have a goal in mind. Clearly, 2008 is not a playoff year here. So the goal, imho, would be to determine what the future should look like. If a manager is still running out Sexson, Vidro and Cairo, none of whom will be active major leaguers when this team next makes the playoffs, then that is the wrong manager for this team.
I hate to see Mac be a scapegoat.
I would rather see Bavisi eat it, and the current roster be gutted first. Give Mac a chance with some young players in their prime (instead of over the hill–best years behind them “experienced” players)and see what he can do.
Every talking head had the M’s contending for the title.
Every serious stat-based website had the M’s contending for the cellar.
It’s apparent M’s management based their efforts on the talking heads instead of looking at objective stats. They decided to overlook last years RS/RA and inflated win totals and felt 2 new pitchers would be the push them over the top. Every website I read that looked beyond wins and losses had the M’s in trouble.
So it’s not like the research wasn’t out there that this team was going to suck. It’s apparent that Bavasi feels each of the 25 men on the roster are collectively sucking, and, instead of taking ownership for some of those problems, he feels the need to dump on the guys going out every day and trying?
Do I think that players like Vidro (who I really, really think should be DFA’ed) aren’t trying? No, I don’t. I simply think they’re usefulness as players is gone. But Bavasi thinks that a magical leadership dust would turn this disaster around?
How did this guy get to run a team again?
53 – His Dad.
These are examples of basic baseball fundamentals, instincts every professional baseball player should have incorporated into his DNA by the time he finishes watching Tom Emanski’s instructional videos.