The person responsible for the players was ordered to enjoy a delicious beer
DMZ · June 4, 2008 at 8:07 pm · Filed Under Mariners
From the AP game report:
Before McLaren went off, Bavasi ordered each of the 25 Mariners
players to sit at his locker immediately after the game to take full
responsibility publicly for having the worst record in the major
leagues despite a $117 million payroll that is just below the richest
in baseball.
One of his few G-rated remarks was: “Got to buckle down and get after it! It’s got to be a total team effort … ”
Then, after 45 seconds, McLaren stomped off into his office and closed the door.
“He could have said that a month ago,” general manager Bill Bavasi said later.
The walls are crumbling.
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Found this gem on the replies to Baker’s Blog, M’s FO is that you?
Two comments on the Silva comment:
One, don’t complain about the offense when you put the team into a first inning seven-run hole, and they actually fight back to within striking distance, like last Friday night. No team in baseball can win from that deficit. And anyone who watched that inning knows it wasn’t defense that was the problem, and Dickey’s performance shows it wasn’t that the Tigers (who were shutout the next night after all) were that hot. So Silva should have kept his piehole shut.
Two, nonetheless, there is a kernel of truth to what he said. A number of times this season, it has seemed like the M’s, after scoring a bunch early, just mail it in offensively, as though getting four runs is their goal and they don’t want to have long at-bats or hit smart, but just get in their swings the rest of the way. Frankly, this whole “you’re likely to see just one good pitch each at-bat” crap, which wasn’t the philosophy of the Boston Red Sox in 2007, or the Mariners in 2001, or the Yankees under Torre or the A’s this decade, is just a losing baseball strategy. Good hitters make good pitchers throw them pitches they can hit. Impatient or guess hitters strike out or ground out weakly or hit cans of corn. The soft underbelly of this lineup strikes out, grounds out weakly or hits cans of corn. That is organizational weakness by getting the wrong players in and then coaching them the wrong way.
Does anyone else feel like they are watching an alchoholic brother destroying his life and about to hit bottom? Thank god for rehab centers. Only if there was a baseball rehab center…
About Ichiro!, you can’t blame him for not being a leader and you can’t say he isn’t worth the money he is paid. He brings so much income and intrest to the team. He is the one true superstar on the team, and he brings international attention to the team that no other team gets. Not even Boston with Dice-k.
Time for a house cleaning and to get some kids in there that don’t care about winning yet. We just need some guys who are happy to be there for the rest of the year so maybe we would have a shot at a winner next year. We have about 5-6 guys to build a good team around. Ichiro!, Lopez, Felix, Morrow, Beltre, and maybe one or two others. The rest, whatever.
It’s getting time to start thinking about an extension for Beltre and some start time for Morrow. And, if Bedard wants a 2-3 year extension, if reasonably priced, I would be ok with that too. But I don’t see that being realistic. I like him less now as an M than when he was an O. It’s like that hot chick you see at the bar, but when you talk to her, not so good.
Somebody needs to tell Bill Bavasi to sit down and take full responsibility for having the worst record in baseball despite having $117 million to spend.
I liked Bill Bavasi a lot when I heard him at the USSM event a couple years ago, and I’ve always agreed with the assertion that despite his flaws he was a classy and well-intentioned human being. But this is a classless move. It’s public humiliation and I can’t see what purpose it serves besides making him feel better about how exceedingly poorly he did his job.
I hope Sexson left because he refused to be a part of it, and I wish other players did the same. The M’s have been depressing to watch, depressing to read about and depressing to love. Now they’ve even managed to depress me over the nature of humanity.
I work in a performance based environment. Every Saturday morning we have an hour long meeting where the manager points his finger and explains how terrible we all are at our job. Frequently, there is a bit of swearing and even our personal lives are brought up. Yup, it sucks. You know how it makes me feel and how it effects my performance? It pisses me off and makes me want to do worse just to spite him. The only reason I don’t is because it would effect my pay too much. Now, if I was guaranteed a huge income despite my performance!!! Screw managment, I’m gonna try my best to make him look bad. I am sure most of the players felt the same way today. I am sure a good chunk of them where looking back at Bill and thinking, “this is your fault jerk.” Thats pretty much what I always think.
This team is not even worthy of a paper bag over my head. Never in the past have I left a game after the first inning down 3-0. I did today and I won’t be back the rest of this year.
Keep Ichiro, Felix, Beltre and Morrow. Get rid of the rest and start over. Shoot, why not bring Tacoma on up here. They can’t do any worse than this overpaid bunch.
Driving this weekend, I had XM on and heard a promo for the Billy Ripken show (not sure what the name really is). Anyway, Ripken was saying something like “some guy with a pen calls someone a leader cause he’s out waving the pompoms when things are going good. Having been in the clubhouse, I can tell you most of the time those guys get on your nerves.”
I can’t believe, really just can’t believe, the “sit in front of your locker and take responsibility” crap. In general, though I question his baseball sense, I have a lot of respect for Bavasi as a person, but that stunt lowered him a notch or two in my eyes. I hope to hear him apologize for it soon – he’s under a lot of stress and I can certainly understand a momentary lapse of judgement. But he really does need to apologize to the players, they are not children.
I heard that Sexson was the only player who didn’t do it – well, good for him. He can’t be real happy with how the last couple of years have gone, and no matter how much he’s struggled, no matter if the fans were booing him or if he was being benched for Miguel Cairo, I’ve never heard him say a bad thing about a teammate or point fingers anywhere except himself.
And then there was this part from the PI:
Right. I’ve been in dysfunctional organizations. Losing your job in an organzation that can’t evaluate talent to save it’s ass is a mark of pride, not embarrassment. Being benched by a team that bats Vidro 4th and DFAs Norton and Baek but keeps Cairo and Washburn, is frankly nothing to be ashamed of. Roster and playing time decisions on this team might as well be done with a dart board. Or a pachinko machine.
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How the hell are you supposed to fear for your job when you have a guaranteed contract? Oh no, don’t fire me! I’ll make 10 million a year doing nothing. More idiocy by the front office.
Speaking of office..wasn’t it Office Space that had the line, “The only incentive I have for doing my job is so management doesn’t hassle me…well that and being fired, but you know what, that’ll only get you to work so hard.”
Ahmen, RustyJohn. i would love to spend the rest of the summer fishing rather than working.
Maybe it’s time to start a letter writing campaign to Paul Allen. The Blazers have had their issues but the Seahawks’ front office seems like a pretty well-oiled machine to me. 🙂
Maybe it’s time to start a letter writing campaign to Paul Allen. The Blazers have had their issues but the Seahawks’ front office seems like a pretty well-oiled machine to me.
Doesn’t MLB have a prohibition
against owning both an NFL and MLB team?
Or do you propose that Allen sell the Seahawks ?
Guaranteed contracts are the way things are done in MLB. It’s not like the [MARINERS ITS MARINERS NO APOSTROPHE ARRGGHHHH] are the only organization doing this. I don’t like guaranteed contracts but the rules apply to all teams in the Majors.
I work in a performance based environment.
Fine. But is your performance quantified and recorded for all time? Can anybody who knows how to spell your name look up exactly how you did your job on any given day? Are your performances totalled at the end of the year, added to your career totals, and compared to all your peers who have ever done your job over the last hundred+ years? If you do really, really well over the course of your career, is there a place that thousands of people visit every year where they’ll put up a plaque with your likeness and accomplishments? In short, are you working for just a paycheck, or are there larger forces at work that might cause you to strive and take pride in your performance even on the worst days, and the worst years?
But apostrophe and castastrophe are so close. And clearly the catastrophe key is stuck in the down position on Bavasi’s keyboard.
This moderator was so blinded by no-apostrophe rage that he left one out of “it’s.”
I find very interesting that after McLaren went off on his tirade, Bavasi tells the press that “he could have said that a month ago.”
Why in the world is Bavasi telling the press that? Why did he have to make it public? And why is he saying that a month after he supposedly wanted to McLaren to drop a bunch of F-bombs to give the illusion that things are going to change around here, %&#*$^@&*!
While Bavasi may have been a nice guy except for that bumbling idiocy that is his baseball managing, I think he’s finally getting to the point where he has to throw McLaren under the bus to save his job.
This may bode well for the purging of the front office (Bill does it, then Chuck does it, etc.) but it makes Bavasi even more of a delusional jerk still running the team. Not only do the players have to “take responsibility” for his mess but geez, guys, Mac could have said that a month ago and that’s the real problem here! Swear up a storm earlier in the season, Johnny! Come on!(â„¢GOB, Arrested Development)
If Bavasi, McLaren, and the Mariners players think the press here in Seattle being a witness to all this dysfunction is burdensome, just wait ’til they get to Boston. Reading some of the articles in the Boston Herald and the Globe online ought to be interesting, to say the least. They usually are brutal to their own hometown team if that team is anything but spectacular — they won’t hold anything back writing about the Mariners…
Blatant appeals to racism aside, does anyone really want an extremely hands-on owner, such as Charles O. Finley?
Fine. But is your performance quantified and recorded for all time? Can anybody who knows how to spell your name look up exactly how you did your job on any given day?
Yes, ever week numbers are sent out to everyone in the company to show every employees performance for that period. It also shows your pay and where you rank among the other 175+ employees of the company. But I think you missed the point. The point is it doesn’t help anyone to point fingers of blame at them. It helps to coach them to do a better job. This stunt was very unperductive and won’t help the moral of the club one bit.
The events of the last few days have been extremely depressing. The solution to having such a terrible team is not for the management to create a unprofessional environment where even the good players feel demeaned and unappreciated. It’s to take a more sensible approach to roster construction.
Can we start a thread on some intelligent moves that the team could take to improve the defense? The most obvious moves are to move Ibanez from LF to DH, play Reed regularly, and find a better first baseman. However, the defensive problems go deeper than just LF and 1B.