Current GM Handicapping
DMZ · July 8, 2008 at 8:00 am · Filed Under Mariners, Off-topic ranting
A semi-random gauge of who’s likely to get the job. Based on current press coverage, rumors, substantiated and un, educated guesses, and so on. We claim no insight into front office machinations. Please, no wagering.
For names and brief resumes, check our potential GM candidates post.
| Who | Percent |
| LaCava | 30% |
| Woodfork | 20% |
| DePodesta | 10% |
| Pelekoudas | 7% |
| Antonetti | 5% |
| Avila | 5% |
| DiPoto/Hinch/Hoyer | 5% |
| Ng | 5% |
| White | 1% |
| Evans | 1% |
| Forst | 1% |
| Towers | 1% |
| Field | 10% |
“Field” is everyone not listed.
I approve of this Duquette-free list.
What are the odds that the new hire gets hired before the season is over?
Are they just going to play this year out, let contracts expire, and let the new GM get going in the off-season?
I know making a move just to make it is usually bad, but I am really getting sick with the inactivity of the FO. Guys need to be released, traded and promoted.
I don’t know how many more games I can watch with Cairo, Vidro, et al…
Dang near every name on that list except for Pelekoudas looks pretty attractive to me….
Can you tell me about LaCava
Click the GM link there, then go read the bit there and the linked interviews.
Come on.
Or Google. That’s what I did with Woodfork.
DMZ, does this take into account that the Jays might promote LaCava as their own rising star GM?
Obviously JP is fighting for his GM life in Toronto.
While I’m not as excited about LaCava as some of the other candidates, seeing the top 60% of the list as people who wouldn’t make me cringe is really encouraging.
Along with the fact that I don’t see Krivsky’s name anywhere.
What are the odds that the new hire gets hired before the season is over?
If that happens, it’s probably because they went with Pelekoudas. Nearly everyone else on the list is currently under contract with another team. And doing real work, not just a placeholding consultant’s position, so it’s unlikely their employers would want to let them go before the season ends. Maybe give them permission to interview.
There is one other way the scenario could play out, which is a housecleaning in some other front office that sets one of the candidates free. So the Ricciardi situation in Toronto is a possibility, but as pointed out it might also mean we miss out because that person gets the job as the new GM where they are.
If JP got fired, I’d change the board.
This is the board as it stands now, no more, no less. I’m sure I’ll be updating it as the rumors swirl.
How about Chuck LaMar? After all, he helped build the Devil Rays!
(/sarcasm)
Is Antonetti so low because you don’t think he’ll leave Cleveland, or because you don’t think Seattle will even ask him to?
So what did people think of Ng’s interview on KJR? My co-worker was mighty impressed with her…
Is there a link up? I’d love to toss it out there but I didn’t see one earlier.
Rats, don’t think they had one…but my co-worker was going on and on about her….
the link isn’t up yet, but they are using clips during the updates, so maybe soon.
No wagering? Dang, that takes away all the fun.
I am happy to see that this list is Gillick-free as well. He’s getting a lot of rumor mill press, some as GM, mostly as Pres(ish) roles.
In general, I think they would do well to get someone from outside the organization, and preferabbly no one with more than a year or two with Mariner experience. I think some fresh mind sets would do the organization a world of good (and that would aid in getting a more sabre-metric viewpoint into the organization).
The Ng interview was quite impressive, and in general I agree with the mindset she was presenting as far as how to go about running a team. Definitely would not mind her running this organization.
I’m starting to hope for LaCava just in the hopes that he’ll give the manager job to Ernie Whitt.
Ng struck me as very media savvy in the KJR interview — she knew she was talking to Softy and his audience, who are not sophisticated thinkers, so she came across as mature, seasoned, bright, and middle-of-the-road: scouts plus stats, rely on your staff, do your homework, leverage your experience. She talked about the key being WINNING the world series (not just making the playoffs). No one (not Softy or Jeff Nelson) asked her the hard question (“how specifically would you approach turning the M’s around”), so she stayed just at the level of humble confidence and sophisticated smoozing that speaks to her ability to handle the media, but around the edges there were definitely some exciting asides (“we are working on metrics to understand intangibles” “the key is refining your prediction models”). Her experience base in NY and LA, plus 17 years of working hard directly on GM-type tasks, really give her a foundation to counter any “she’s a girl” or “she’s not a baseball person” concerns.
it’s up now
Interestingly, I thought she had some very striking similarities to the way Jackie Robinson carried himself, in tone and manner….
doubt she would have answered such a question.
She would be violating her contract if she did, so there’s no chance she would have.
Given how she had conducted herself in the interview, she likely would have said something along the lines of “That’s an issue I would have to look at at the time of being given the opportunity to do something about it, as a lot can change between now and then.”
Might fall under tampering rules, too.
It would be tampering if she talked about individual players, yes. She could get around that rule by being a little more general – talk about whether you want to upgrade the defense or the bullpen or what have you – but as pointed out, even that would be overstepping because of her obligations to her present employer.
That’s what I meant, just couldn’t think of the term for some reason 😛
If JP got fired, would he be on the board for the Ms? Would the whole Adam Dunn bonehead move doom him?
Anyway, I reread the candidates post, and I’m wondering – are you guys willing to slap a grade on each candidate? I’ll go out on a limb and say you might give Antonetti an A+. Where do the other’s fall?
I think her honest response to that would probably be “everything”, though.
She’d be fine as long as she didn’t talk about any specific players, just an overall approach — and she would not have answered that question in the KJR forum because of Softy and the audience — she phrased things in ways that were true to herself but customized for the audience. But if she were in something like a USSM forum, she very well might have talked about her approach, and there were hints in the KJR interview about the kinds of things she’d be thinking: she talked about her 1998 Yankees scoring over 900 runs, and their defense holding down opponents (i.e. under 700 runs), for example. It certainly would be fun to talk with her in a context where she could be candid, even though such a context may not exist. The core sense underlying her comments was definitely that she would aggregate a ton of data and inputs and do a ton of analysis and develop models that were as sophisticated as any out there.
If the rest of the candidates are at least this good, then I’d say we’re in OK shape….
I thought she came across great on the interview. I especially liked her “dodge” of the how to quantify intangibles question.
Dang, I missed the Ng interview on the radio. When Bavasi got canned I made her (on USSM) my longshot prediction, and I’m sticking with it. It would take some serious guts from Howie and Chuckie and Mr. Y, but I would really like to see her get the job. I have a feeling she’s even tougher than she is smart.
So that means we have like a 21% chance of getting one of the people the blog community actually wants. I call that good news!
51% if you count LaCava (see Churchill, Jason….).
But this team seems to defy the odds….
Man, I would love to have it be Ng, not just because she’s a near-perfect candidate, but because it would make all the testosterone-poisoned meathead KJR types’s heads explode.
Good of a reason as any…
10% seems a bit high for DePodesta. DePodesta owes a large amount of his career to Beane, it would be hard to trust him fully in creating a team better than the Athletics.
That is the most ridiculous statement against DePodesta I have ever heard, and that’s saying a lot. There is absolutely no reason to believe that DePodesta would do anything less than his absolute best in competing against the A’s, and I’m a little shocked that you’d even consider that he — or anyone who has worked so hard to become a general manager — would compromise the position to repay old favors.
…What?
Yes. Beane vouched for him when he was hired by the dodgers.
Even if that’s true, I’d say that “owes a large amount of his career to Beane” is a massive overstatement.
Maybe DePodesta has a career because he’s smart?
Professionals aren’t as upstanding as you make them out to be as evidenced in the veteran player behavior.
Yeah? That’s more of a letter of rec than anything else.
Yah gots nothing, dood. (Or a pretty distorted idea of how business is done)(same thing when you come down to it…)
Being smart doesn’t necessarily land you a job in mlb. In fact some would say that it hurts. 😉
Okay, all the vague insinuations/conspiracy theories are really weird and not really appropriate for this thread.
Yeah. Way to kill a thread.