Next choice: which printer does resumes best?
For the record, Armstrong says he was the one who blocked the Jarrod Washburn trade to the Twins. Says he wants “value” back, not just more saved money. He feels Washburn has been the only one other than Hernandez getting hitters out the past three months and that the team still needs that to get through the year. He also says, if the new GM doesn’t deal Washburn, the team could still find value in having Washburn stick around.
What good general manager candidate is going to want to work for a team where Armstrong — Armstrong! — blocks baseball moves that would help the franchise? Armstrong says he wants candidates to offer a comprehensive plan for how they’d rebuild the franchise over the next years. Presumably, anyone who says “I’ll extract a promise that I can act freely within bounds set by the ownership group, then give you a cell number that’ll ring an intern I’ll hire who sounds just like me and can pretend to be interested in your opinion, and spend the next couple seasons trying to undo the damage you and yours have wrought here” will be thanked for their time and shown the door.
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Well shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
What was that quote from Ichiro? “Fish stinks from the head down”?
It’s great news when you discover that firing the GM and Coach, both of whom were oblivious to actual results or that crazy ridiculous statistics wizardry, but that the organization is run improperly from the top down. May as well let Al Davis buy the team too, as long as the rest of the organization is filled with incompetent meddlers.
It won’t matter who the GM or manager is if L and A are still in charge…
We won’t be out of the cellar until those two ass-clowns are gone…
Hopefully Morrow is lights-out today help with this shit…
oh wow. I am now resigned to the fact that we will not contend until those two are (Chowie) are out. Well, at least this makes Lee P look a little smarter if him giving away Washburn had to be vetoed. If there was ever a man who I would hope that Anton Chigurh would visit in the middle of the night, its now Armstrong . . .
How depressing.
I say that’s a bit dark.
I just wish him a different career.
Maybe, say, have Jack Welch visit him in the middle of the night.
This surprises me not.
uh-huh.
Goodness there’s some pretty earthy and often uninformed comment over on the PI site. They ought to stop taking comments if they won’t moderate them somewhat. That’s just debasing human dignity.
I appreciated this one though:
“If Armstrong blocked the Washburn trade, and admitted that, you need to nail him to the fucking wall for it… We’re keeping 10 million dollars ON the books, for one of the MOST replaceable pitches in baseball… How retarded is that?”
That’s some robust speech – but with a more enlightened perspective.
What the hell, is Armstrong trying to poison the well so that no decent GM candidate will be interested in the job? So that the only people willing to take the job are yes-men?
His last couple of statements really send the message that the next GM will have a small budget and limited authority. Whoo hooo. Ought to get the resumes pouring in.
In his update, Baker makes a good point IMHO: Pelekoudas is an interim GM and as such has less authority than a regular GM would have.
Sigh….
This sums up the whole problem with team since Gillick and Piniella: no one is really in charge on the baseball side. The resulting activity by consensus, involving people like Armstrong who have no business making baseball decisions, prevents any decisive action being taken to correct the problems with the team. Hence, we get a lot of overaged, overpaid players (Spiezio, Everett, Sexson, Vidro, Silva, Washburn, Batista, etc., etc.) who no one else really wanted and who are living off reputations forged in their age 27-30 seasons. And a lot of people in the front office who don’t know what they’re doing can cover their asses by saying that these guys are underperforming, when in reality their declines were/are entirely predictable. It’s unbelievably depressing, because there’s no real indication that the people in charge understand this or that anything is going to change.
Very well said, Bat. The Cubs in the early sixties used a “College of Coaches” instead of employing a single man as manager, that worked like crap too. This is kind of like that, only at the GM level. Heck, we’ve already made the Brock for Broglio trade.
It’s a preposterous stance to take (only “value” back). In other words, “we’re going improve our chances of becoming a sustainably competitive franchise by significantly limiting he avenues by which we can get there….”
It’s a morality injected into the process that can only be meant to appease fans unless Armstrong really is that incompetent.
At this point, I’m 50/50 on what to assume.
more Chuckness: “Armstrong says his GM candidates list is “in the low 20s” now and will be pared to between 10 and 15 by season’s end. He hopes to have two rounds of interviews and pick a GM by late October.”
makes you wonder just what you have to do to earn a “This message has been deleted” post…
Armstrong’s Candidate List
—
Me! I’m awesome and already make great decisions.
Howie. He’s dreamy.
Gillick. The kids all love Pat.
(doodles)
I’m with Bat Guano. And anyone else who wants to hire a “strong” GM. For better or worse, the GM’s job is baseball. Top to bottom. The ownership group — advice and consent, only. Give the GM a budget and get out of the way.
As I said yesterday —[deleted, duplicate comment]
It’s a preposterous stance to take (only “value†back).
The problem, and we’ve seen this before in just about every aspect of the FO’s incompetence, is their sheer incomprehension of what constitutes “value.” That there may be value by freeing up payroll, that the value of a pitcher might be expressed more accurately in something other than ERA, that improving defense may increase the value of the pitchers you already have, that there may be value in players even when they don’t fit into predefined “roles,” that “veteraness” doesn’t in itself add value to a player, that freely-available talent… oh, you know how this goes. They just keep making obviously bad decisions without understanding why. It’s like watching somebody trying to play a card or dice game with no understanding of probability. They just keep losing and shrugging and saying “I guess it’s just bad luck.” And now they’re starting to play against guys like Beane who’ve figured out how to count cards…
The resulting activity by consensus, involving people like Armstrong who have no business making baseball decisions, prevents any decisive action being taken to correct the problems with the team.
It is very “Seattle” though.
GM candidate’s step by step process to fixing Mariners.
1. Get interview.
2. Lie lie lie lie lie through your teeth and tell Howie/Chuck everything they could ever want to hear.
3. Get job.
4. Hire doppleganger and give Howie/Chuck doppleganger’s phone number. Give doppleganger orders to give Chuck the ‘yessir everything you say sir’ treatment when called.
5. Run team effectively.
6. When Chuck approaches you for insubordination, point out team’s newfound success and depth, and take appropriate credit. Watch Chuck stammer as his feeble brain short-circuits in face of logic and facts.
Caveat: If fired anyway, go to media and bury Howie/Chuck’s closed-minded stupidity. Ownerships with functioning brain cells will not hold this against you.
What did we do to deserve this?
This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard. He blocked the trade? When he asks GM candidates what steps they would take, they should start by shooting him in the face. CHUCK MUST GO.
Wow, another dark comment. The FO has to go, but it’s getting a little macabre in here.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go throw up a little bit.
Gomez, it’s pretty likely the new GM will be required to sign an post-firing-zero-defamatory-statements clause in his contract.
That contract will probably be only slightly less restrictive than his actual working conditions…
If that’s the laughable case, then whatever. Such a GM can still easily land somewhere else.
I figure we are looking pretty good for at least 6 more years of sub .500/3rd or 4th place finishes if Chuck retains his job during this rebuild.
Chuck please step down. The results of your baseball philosophy don’t warrant the privilege of getting to make the kind of decisions necessary to turn this team around
I suspect that Chuck considers that the Theory of Sunk Costs involves treasure ships.
Seriously, both Chuck and Howard need to stfu. They aren’t winning over casual fans with talk like this and they’re making themselves look like the idiots they are among anyone who knows anything about baseball.