DePodesta on the Baek trade
If you’re not hitting your head on something while reading the Beane interviews, well…
– Find a nice solid wall. I’ve always found that drywall has a nice give to prevent serious injuries while offering a satisfying crunch
– Put two hands on the wall, shoulder height, elbows out, palms flat on the wall.
– Read this
– Proceed
I’m not saying that the trade’s good, or bad, though I’m obviously not enamored of it — but the Padres are looking to stats like FIP to add information to their scouting evaluation. In the Beane interview, he talks about their use of internal and external defensive stats while talking about Barton.
What do you think the chances are the M’s do anything like this? 0%? Less than zero? Am I allowed to use negative percents? What about curse words?
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I’ve been to several of the feeds and can vouch that this is exactly Bavasi’s thought process. That’s why I can only shake my head with bewilderment when he’s quoted in the local paper saying exactly these same statements…
“Who could have possibly forseen….”
“We thought we were getting…”
He’s a standup guy who is totally incompetent in his chosen line of work.
You know when you go to a Doctor, you can listen in in their thought process and get a decent idea if they have any diagnostic skills or they are clueless fools? I’ve had a few primary care physicians in my life that I’ve walked away from, knowing that they had no idea how to diagnose a patient when presented an array of symptoms. That’s the same impression I get from Bavasi listening to him talk. Stuff comes out of his mouth but it’s really quite apparent that he lacks the ability to gather information and reach viable conclusions from the data.
I was pleased when USSM reported he had at least hired some people to do the heavy lifting for him. I thought they were just being ignored. It’s another significant step backward if those people are no longer employed by the organization.
Well it looks like in 06 someone was already calling for Bavasi’s head … even so much as to purchase a domain and pay for hosting.
Dont know if you guys know of its existence or not but: update this site …
Last blog update Jan of 06 …
This only proves the point that Terry Ryan, Larry Beinfest, Brian Cashman or someone along those lines needs to be the President/GM of this team next year rather than Chuckie and BB.
Most of the media — national and local — reinforce the “who could have foreseen?” viewpoint. It would help if anyone outside of weblogs were holding Bavasi accountable for his stubborn ignorance. I wonder how long it’s going to take for the front-office revolution in baseball to penetrate the media.
It’s Bavasi’s job to do PR, so comments like these shouldn’t be taken at face value. He probably wanted to say, “Yeah . . . this really sucks. Considering the options that were available, I can’t believe we ended up with Carl Freaking Everett. Feel free to thank Lincoln for that one.â€
No.
Bavasi’s entirely willing to discuss their failures, the limitations they work under, and other business concerns quite candidly. This isn’t that.
You realize that the chance of Howard Lincoln hiring a replacement for Bavasi who is even a little bit interested in DIPS is nil, right? The question isn’t going to get asked in the interview, and if the candidate brings it up himself, he’s going to be removed from consideration.
They’re like creationists, I swear.
scraps – I don’t know if you saw this but yesterday in the TIMES ran a story about exactly what you are talking about:
This is something this team/baseball club/organization is lacking very much at this point. So I guess some papers are going to start calling for accountability … but we need to continue to call for it on the web blogs.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Right?
Bavasi has said all along that he’s interested in “using stats” as well as traditional scouting. He said at the feed I went to “we’ll look at everything”.
The problem is, when Bavasi says “stats” he means “splits”. He means leftie-rightie, day game-night game, last week, last month type of stuff. He thinks that “Silva’s had good success against this guy” is analysis.
It’s ESPN Sportscenter-level “statistics”, not real statistics.
Which basically means that he knows LESS than the truly old-fashioned guy who only knows batting average and won-lost, because the vast majority of these splits are fairly meaningless samples of a dozen at bats or whatever. Leftie-rightie has its place, but batter-versus-pitcher stuff is just trivia.
Pretty self evident.
It’s going to take AT LEAST another decade of wallowing before both Armstrong and Lincoln retire before there’s a glimmer of hope for change.
My feeling is that calling for accountability is meaningless unless you also insist that they pay attention to the correct way of doing things. Until you get them to admit that their tools for analysis are bad, they aren’t going to change a bit.
Exactly. Accountability is just another one of those vapid sportscenter words that doesn’t mean anything. Accountability for what? Does it help the club become better if Bavasi says “it is my mistakes that have made this team bad”? What then? He’s not going to change his way of thinking, and if he resigns they’ll hire another guy just like him, probably worse, who they believe also embodies the mystical values of character and accountability that have got us where we are.
We don’t need accountability. We don’t need character. We need knowledge and understanding, and we need flexibility. An accountable creationist is just as wrong as a shifty-eyed creationist. We will never get what we need as long as Lincoln is there.
Someone just needs to hijack Bavasi’s daily stat report and replace it with a USSM altered version. The “ERA” column would actually be FIP, EQA could be disguised as batting average, and we could somehow correlate “Errors” with actual defensive ineptitude (based on some of the advanced defense metrics).
Then someone would just have to convince him that young players are actually grizzled veterans that have been through the wars, and that below replacement level 34 year olds are immature young rookies who will walk all over his lawn.
Even if we don’t get someone with knowledge and understanding, hiring someone who realizes they don’t have THE ANSWERS and is willing to entertain multiple perspectives (particularly opposing viewpoints) would be an improvement.
That’s another thing. Statistically, the peak year of a ball player is at 27. Say that the peak years of players are 25-31. The bias for vets, the bias for proven players and free agents pretty much runs counter to the actual data.
Yeah, creationists all over….definitely not part of the reality-based community…
So: the FO doesn’t believe in DIPS theory — that is, they don’t think defense has an impact on their pitching staff — and that’s clearly and evidently not true (even if you didn’t read the theory, you could point to any number of incidents just in the past week’s games to make the case). Yet they also think defense is a strength of the team (why do they care, if it doesn’t matter?), and that’s obviously false also. The Mariners truly are on the wrong side of the Looking Glass
Honestly, for those of us still following the Mariners, the collected works of Lewis Carroll are a far better companion than those of Bill James and Tom Tango. The FO’s guiding philosophy:
And for the rest of us at USSM:
Lewis Carroll, and his spiritual brother Yogi:
“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.â€
“We’re lost, but we’re making good time.”
Maybe we can write a new chapter to the story where Bill Bavasi is incarnated as a blind squirrel…
“Goodness, Bill Squirrel, it seems it’s been an awful long time since you found a nut…wait a minute…is that a blindfold you’re wearing?!”
They know defense matters, but they underestimate how much. And they think defense means not making mistakes. Few errors means good defense. More errors means bad defense. Balls the fielder can’t get to are the pitcher’s fault.
they think defense means not making mistakes. Few errors means good defense. More errors means bad defense. Balls the fielder can’t get to are the pitcher’s fault.
Stop it, stop it. You guys are killing me.
BAVASI — are you reading this?? Will someone send it to you if you are not?
Mocking sarcasm means you have to change your ways, Bill. Bill, please, please, for the love of god,
all day yesterday I kept hearing the vsrious show hosts putting the blame on the players, as they should be playing at least as well as they did last year, and there was no way to know that they might not do as well this season ….
just to be pedantic, that was a column, not a story.
The only stats the M’s front office cares about is this one:
$$$
and DePo is polite about others:
Paul DePodesta said…
There have already been a few comments regarding our analysis versus the Mariners, and they’re not exactly fair to the M’s. There were reasons for both of these teams to do this deal, which is how deals get done. I’ve already given you part of our analysis.
On the Mariner side, they were caught in a bind that happens to all of us once in a while, and there’s really nothing you can do about it. They had back-to-back days early last week when their starters weren’t able to go deep into the game (2.1 ip and 4 ip). They used Baek in both of those games for a total of five innings, and then the bullpen needed a fresh arm the following day just in case something happened to the starter again. RA Dickey was called up, and Baek was the odd man out. It’s not as though we knew something the M’s didn’t. They simply ran into a tough stretch, which has happened to us a few times this year as well.
#74
I thought that was a funny comment from Depodesta. So the Mariners liked Baek enough not to trade him when the Padres inquired before the start of the year. The Mariners liked Baek enough to use him in those games to “wear” him out. But the Mariners didn’t like Baek enough to keep him. Paul certainly isn’t going to show up other organizations on his blog but wow are the Mariners idiots.
Translation: let me take this opportunity to publicly state that the M’s are NOT mis-managing this, in order to ensure that we keep the lines open so that we can continue to improve the Padres at the expense of the M’s.
Softy (yeah, I know, KJR) is at least calling Bavasi out. His club, his roster, his blame. I guess someone has to play the foil on the homerwaves.
On the DePo front, why would he want to reinforce the growing chatter that this trade was symbolic of everything Bavasi and the M’s do wrong? If you’re playing poker and your opponent tips his hand in one fashion or another, are you going to criticize his bet and then admit later that you figured out his hand? Not if you want to keep taking his money (even if it’s pennies at a time).
Paul DePodesta said… There have already been a few comments regarding our analysis versus the Mariners, and they’re not exactly fair to the M’s.
Can ANYONE put together any kind of rationale or argument that even theoretically can defend this move as being of equal value for both teams, let alone that the M’s got the better of the deal? A legitimate major league 5th starter for a minor leaguer with declining skills and worse minor league numbers. Please, someone tell me, how can Lincoln and Armstrong defend this deal? How can Bavasi justify it if he were simply asked: Bill, please explain how this deal, this set of moves you made with CSB, makes good sense for the Mariners?
This deal is small and who cares, but Bavasi just continuously shows he is flat-out incompetent at the GM job.
Baek is a replacement level pitcher. Seriously, giving him away doesn’t matter – you can get another Cha Seung Baek whenever you want. They’re everwhere.
Jared Wells sucks, but this trade doesn’t matter.
Steve:
I do agree with the statement that we need knowledge, understanding as well as flexibility.
However, there does need to be accountability. The accountability should be from the very, very top –
IF Howard Lincoln said (in better wording): “We have really messed up, we are replacing Bavasi with a ‘new school’ GM who understands the new ways to analyze talent, rate on field performance and rate future talent” wouldn’t this appease you?
I for one believe that USSM’ers would be thrilled. Not only would it prove that they recognized their mistakes but that they are taking steps to fix the problem.
You are right, if Bavasi says only: “boy did I mess up, I am sorry” we are in for a long next few years.
Accountability for actions is always the first step in starting fresh.
Whether this will happen or not is up in the air… I personally believe that it is only a matter of time before they understand the new ways of analysis.
It is eat or be eaten.
Of course in the scheme of things, this one trade doesn’t matter, but it is yet another in a long string of inept moves by Bavasi. Throwing away $5 on a stupid blackjack bet after losing thousands by playing bad poker doesn’t make or break the night, but BB shouldn’t be in the casino at all.
Baek is a replacement level pitcher – you can get another Cha Seung Baek whenever you want. They’re everwhere.
For example, the M’s just happen to have 3 more right on hand — for a mere $30 Million a year, they’re all yours….
Baek isn’t $5. He’s a penny. Bend over, pick up another one, move on.
We’re all just way too emotionally depleted to perseverate on this, but don’t sign Silva and instead keep CSB and then it’s true, Baek is not $5 — he’s $12 Million going on $48 Million.
The point is … big deal, small deal, virtually any deal you examine … Bavasi seems to display a singularly poor skill set as GM.
Point well taken, Baek is easily replaceable. It’s just the gratuitous bending over in your example that gets me.
Dave or DMZ- Is DePodesta an attractive GM candidate (for team looking) who got a raw deal in LA or is he better suited to be an asst type? Any insight would be great.
#85: It’s just the gratuitous bending over in your example that gets me.
Who ever said the bending over was gratuitous??
I find it hard to believe that the Ms are that ignorant of statistical measures. However, they seem to be well below the curve in that regard. Decent statistical analysis must be a prerequisite for a job like this. Even first year psych students how to do some basic stats… surely the Ms front office has someone who did psych101.
Not that I had any sort of insider’s view of things, but I was following the Dodgers pretty closely at the time, and near as I could tell, his “poor people skills” included the following:
a) Not returning an LA Times columnist’s phone calls rapidly enough
b) Not realizing that said LA Times columnist was lobbying his team’s owner for his ouster, or realizing it and not believing that said lobbying could possibly be successful
c) Not feigning emotional attachment to players who were regarded as sentimental favorites in town, and being willing to trade said sentimental favorites (even at the risk of hurting the team’s “chemistry”) or allow said sentimental favorites to leave as free agents if their price tag was way too steep
The M’s could really, truly use a GM with those sorts of “poor people skills.”
Please, Howard Lincoln and/or Chuck Armstrong, please hire Paul DePodesta.
I understand why we should believe that, and as far as I know it’s even true, but…
…employers who’ve just fired someone often tend to hire, as that person’s replacement, someone who’s the polar opposite of the just-fired guy. It’s for that reason that I allow myself to entertain the faintest sliver of hope.
And so I beg again: Howard Lincoln and/or Chuck Armstrong, please hire Paul DePodesta.
Patrick Meighan
Culver City, CA
Well, that disqualifies him for the Ms right there….