Welcome To The Zduriencik Era
The M’s have chosen Jack Zduriencik as their new GM. Despite the fact that he’s the oldest of the candidates interviewed and comes with a scouting background, do not assume that this is just more of the same. Zduriencik has been the best regarded scouting director in baseball for the last few years, and the work he did in building the Brewers through the draft was legendary. If you want to know why the Brewers were in the playoffs this year, it’s because Zduriencik hit home run after home run in the draft. This is a good hire.
Now, Jack Z isn’t exactly the new school analytical type we were all hoping for. His strengths are all scouting based, and he won’t be the kind of guy to come in and turn the Mariners into the next Oakland/Cleveland/Boston/Tampa Bay. With Engle, Fontaine, and now Zduriencik, the Mariners are clearly going to try to win with the Atlanta/Minnesota/Anaheim method of just outscouting everyone else on earth and developing so much good talent from within that they can’t help but be competitive.
Guess what? It can work. It’s not the best possible path, but it’s not doomed for failure, either. If Zduriencik can prove to be as adept at evaluating major league talent as he has been at amateur talent, and the M’s commit to a development pipeline that enables the team to grow a roster of homemade all-stars, they could line themselves up to be a very good team.
If they want to be a great team, they should not stop with Z, but hire a strong analytical department to supplement the scouting strength at the top of the front office. The two can work together, but there has to be a real effort on the M’s part here. If they stop with Zduriencik, it’s not enough – if they let him build a good organization with strong analysts surrounding the Big Three scouting types, this could be a player development machine.
Let’s hope for the best. Welcome to Seattle, Z.
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I don’t know about you guys, but I’m calling his Zathras.
I’ll give the M’s a grade of “Incomplete” on this hire. He’s definitely the least compelling of the ones left on the board, and I really think the M’s should have been able to do much better. Yes, they could have done worse. Kind of like an 88 win season and watching the Angels go to the playoffs…
Anywho, they still need to do some serious hiring to convince me to keep sending my dollars their way. I don’t read too much into the Pelekoudas staying on announcement. That could be the standard placeholder deal until he signs on somewhere else, or he could be there to give
Zuder…,Zedri…,Zdurno…, the new GM an introduction to the existing organization. The real question is whether Zduriencik shows an understanding of the whole problem with the M’s. If all he does is play to his strengths and revamp the development pipeline, it’s not near enough. He’s got to show that there’s more to his game that what he’s done so far in his career.As far as giving him time? Sure. I’ll give him time. But no money. Not yet.
I don’t read too much into the Pelekoudas staying on announcement. That could be the standard placeholder deal until he signs on somewhere else, or he could be there to give the new GM an introduction to the existing organization.
They didn’t have to say anything at all:
Reporter: “So what about Lee P? ”
Ms: “Z is going to have free reign to build the team he needs. This will include some in-house folks as well as outsiders.”
There’s no reason to comment that Lee P is staying. It’s either crappy PR (because they’re going to toss him overboard after making the comment to a reporter) or it’s an indication that they want him sticking around.
I’m hoping for the former but suspecting the latter.
What happened to the new direction? I’m bummed. Howie and Chuckie chickened out. They droned on about a new direction, but when it came time they chose the old white guy, who may ruin or disrupt the one good aspect of the M’s org, Engle and Fontaine. It’s like a Republican talking about switching sides,when when it comes time to pull the lever they go with the devil they know. I’m out. They didn’t really have the stones. It was all talk.
So we’ve got a guy who can build up our minor league system…
and Bavasi’s main skill was getting good prospects.
The difference between the two is that Z hasn’t had the opportunity to waste all the minor league talent he drafted by trading them or letting them sit in the minors or rushing them through the system?
I’ll be happy if he makes 9 out of 10 moves that Dave loves this off-season, but anything less and you start wondering why they still haven’t hired Dave.
There’s no reason to comment that Lee P is staying.
Sure, there is. It’s a way of letting everyone know that when they ask loyal, long-time staff to take on a new, totally thankless responsibility, they don’t kick them out the door as soon as the task has been accomplished. Whether Pelekoudas will be an important part of the new regime, or this is the prelude to a graceful retirement or different assignment, doesn’t have to be answered today.
I agree with Mike G. What this hire says to me is that the FO believes the Bavasi era has made it impossible to contend in the next 2-3 years, despite ideas such as Dave’s plan posted a week or so ago. They believe they have to tear it down and rebuild from the ground up. So they went with the candidate that appears from here at least to best fit that strategy. I think that many of us here don’t agree that that’s the case, and while I don’t think Z was the best pick from the final four, none of them was a bad pick.
and Z, as a scouting man, will have no idea how to negate The Magoo Effect. Ng was the only option for me. Instant credibility, the ability to do deals everywhere. Why do we never make deals with any of the big teams? because we keep having GM’s like Bavasi (and now Z) Here comes the stream of crummy deals with Milwaukee. Ng was the only one with the brains and toughness to make it all fly. I had hope,but of course, when the chips were down, Howie and Chuckie made the worst choice. I’ll be watching the Sounders next year
I’ll say it: Hire Dave!”
Sure, there is. It’s a way of letting everyone know that when they ask loyal, long-time staff to take on a new, totally thankless responsibility, they don’t kick them out the door as soon as the task has been accomplished.
Totally thankless? They made him the GM – it’s not like they made him clean the toilets after games. It’s a given that key positions, like AtGM and field Manager are going to be at the discretion of the GM – at least they should be.
Man, and I thought I was cynical.
They could have made a LOT worse hires; Zduriencik isn’t a cutting-edge sabermetric guy, no, but he’s by all accounts not only excellent at evaluating talent, but at developing it.
While I was more excited about LaCava or Ng myself, this is still a significant step forward for this organization.
Pelekoudas being retained at this point means nothing; there’s no way of telling at this point whether he’ll actually have any significant involvement in operations going forward.
Like Mike said, he might be told to just sit in his office and play with a Slinky until Zduriencik brings in his own AGM.
You guys really need to calm down.
a couple of brief blog notes on Zod from Milwaukee here and here, and a blog note about what Melvin is looking for in a new field manager
In all of Dave’s “How to fix the Mariners” posts he’s had trades with the Brewers as a centerpiece of his plan. Does hiring Zoidberg make it more likely to see one of those trades, or some variation of them, actually happen?
Part of me is excited about this hire. The guy is the ONLY non-GM to win Executive of the Year. He’s known for having a great eye for talent. So there’s some real positives.
The other part of me is wondering if he felt compelled to take this job despite Chuck & Howies’ promises of them ‘being fully involved in all decisions’. After all, he’s 57 and may be running out of time to get a GM gig. He may have been a little more desperate to take the job and that scares me. As posters said, ‘more of the same’. I hope my first paragraph turns out to be the case!
No, I wouldn’t read much into the Lee P. comment yet either. First of all, AFAIK, there was no definite statement from the M’s that he was staying. The quote was just from Jim Street, who said Lee
The quote from Lincoln was simply that they
“Interim” label or not, he was the guy presently holding the position, and was also “considered” one of the candidates – even though everyone, including Lee himself, likely knew that his candidacy was for show. From a PR standpoint, they would be remiss not to say anything about him. I’ve never gotten the idea that Lincoln/Armstrong are very loyal to Lee P. or any other front office personnell besides themselves. I’m sure if Big Z wants to hire his own AtGM they won’t have any problem with it.
How about a “Zduriencik” button for the comment editing box?
Calm down, people.
The big differencse between Zduriencik and Bavasi (since people are determined to bring them up) are that a) I’m pretty sure Z’s daddy wasn’t part of baseball’s management royalty, which gave Bavasi a HUGE advantage in the old boy’s club that is still around in MLB, and, b) Z didn’t have a record of bad decisions and poor performance in his LAST GM job (keep in mind Bavasi signed Mo Vaughn to a deal paying him $Texas, and couldn’t win out with Anaheim, either, despite the Rangers and Mariners not exactly being world-beaters. I remember being HUGELY skpetical of Bavasi, for precisely those reasons).
People should reread this point from Dave…
With Engle, Fontaine, and now Zduriencik, the Mariners are clearly going to try to win with the Atlanta/Minnesota/Anaheim method of just outscouting everyone else on earth and developing so much good talent from within that they can’t help but be competitive.
I’d like to point out that in addition to what Dave pointed out, that in Minnesota’s case, they have accomplished every bit as much as Oakland and Saint Billy Beane have from 2001-2008: multiple division titles, solid teams, producing talent, sharp trades, while keeping the salary budget somewhat low and having to shed players as their salaries balloon. People really need to get over the idea that there’s only one way to run a railroad when it comes to being a MLB GM.
Disappointing, but whatever. The disappointment had already set in when I realized Chuck and Howard got to keep their jobs.
Also, and I’m going to be completely unfair to Dave here… This support/endorsement/optimism, whatever, feels like exactly the same tone used by this site to occasionally praise/defend Geoff Baker. Since that praise never meshed with what I actually read from Baker, the similarity doesn’t make me feel fuzzy about Zduriencik.
What evidence is there that he cares much about sabermetrics or, just as an example, defense?
b) Z didn’t have a record of bad decisions and poor performance in his LAST GM job (keep in mind Bavasi signed Mo Vaughn to a deal paying him $Texas, and couldn’t win out with Anaheim, either, despite the Rangers and Mariners not exactly being world-beaters.
Sure, that’s a huge point in his favor but ‘Better than Bavasi’ isn’t exactly a high bar to clear.
What’s really frustrating is that the team had a massive blind spot (under BB) when it came to evaluation of MLB level talent.
So the hiring of Z could fix this…if he’s willing to hire some other people (analysts) to help him with MLB level talent.
If they had learned their lesson, why the runaround – why wouldn’t they start with the analytical background?
That’s why the Lee P comment irritates me – it just screams out that they don’t see anything wrong with their approach.
Classic. 🙂
I also think Z-Man’s getting a bad break here because he was such a late-entry dark horse candidate. He never really rated a mention all year until recent weeks. If Dave and Derek had been following his chances and emphasizing his strengths, he would be much better received.
No, he’s probably not the best they could have done, but he’s light years ahead of their previous hires. Plus, it’s just unfair to make assumptions about exactly what kind of GM he will be, when he has no GM track record for us to base those assumptions on. Although just from my limited knowledge of him, I’m going to say that trades like the Adam Jones debacle probably wouldn’t happen under his watch. And that is something to be excited about.
If he turns out to be incapable of major league talent evaluation, and somehow manages to screw the organization up worse than it already is, I’ll be just as pissed as anyone. But I think he represents progress, and I’m willing to give him a chance.
I think y’all are reading way too much into the fact that Lee P is returning to his previous position. For now, this only means that his temporary gig as GM has ended. To make any other changes should be up to the new GM, and I would have been surprised if they had been announced today.
What evidence do you have to support the position that Zduriencik can’t evaluate MLB talent?
What evidence do you have that Zduriencik can’t evaluate MLB talent?
Okay – I worded that poorly. I’m still hung up on this part of Dave’s intro:
Maybe I’m misinterpreting Dave’s point here but I think he’s saying that there’s no reason to expect that he brings any particular MLB-level talent evaluation to the table. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t – it’s an unknown.
Andriesen on the to-do list, Larry Stone has a general piece, and Baker blogs about it
Even more than waiting till Z’s first move, can we at least get to the press conference?
I actually like their move of giving a press release and then planning the news conference a couple of days later. I know it was dictated by Selig (which, btw, wasn’t he supposed to ‘step down’ after this year?) because of the World Series, but it gives the media a chance to collect their opinions and hopefully ask some decent questions.
I don’t see how this could be in any way – at this point – be considered a bad hire.
He’s obviously leaps and bounds above Bavasi, Gillick, and Woody. Let’s see what he can do.
“On January 17, 2008, Selig’s contract was extended by the MLB through 2012, at which point he plans to retire.”
I think it’s reasonable to assume that if someone can evaluate amateur and minor league talent well, they have a good chance at being a skilled evaluator of major league talent. It’s the same notion we constantly push about players, that minor league performance is a perfectly good indicator of major league performance. Apply it to player evaluators, whether they’re inclined to scouting or statistics, and the principle is entirely the same.
Now in either situation, there will be those who don’t successfully navigate the transition. Or the performance may have been misleading in some way. That seems to have been the case with Bavasi – surrounding himself with talented guys like Fontaine made his player development skills look better, but evaluating major league talent on his own without that support, it’s a disaster.
He wasn’t my favorite, but among ones that fell off the list in the last few weeks I like him better than Hahn, Beattie, Evans, White, a Duquette or 2 and who could forget Pelekoudas?
I’m hopeful but will be watching. The #2 pick is important to be made correctly as well as the fact that the team could have up to 5 of the first 50 or so picks (I think #51 or so will be their Second rounder). Don’t forget the Rule V draft either, this team is prime to be carrying a prospect all year. There is a pretty good possibility that Zduriencik was the best possible guy to handle those factors. It’s not like they were even able to consider some of the guys I would have preferred with so many backing out, not being allowed to interview and choosing not to interview. I think he’s an excellent choice for the moment and if in 2 years he’s proved to have a handle on evaluating Major League talent, trades, implements more advanced stat use and not being handcuffed by slot money picks (while continuing to show his strengths of prep/college/minor league/front office talent evaluating, leadership) he’s probably on his way to being the best GM we’ve seen here. I’ve read good things about his assessments of peoples talents inside the front office as well. Maybe he won’t get all those balls rolling, but if he doesn’t hamstring the team with bad moves and signs like Bavasi did the team should have a strong core of young players on the way for a GM that knows how to build around them once they’re up. I think this was the right hire after all the dropouts for the situation the team is presently in.
Someone linked this article in an earlier post:
Top 10 GM Prospects
2. Jack Zduriencik (Scouting Director, Brewers)
The first non-GM to ever win Baseball America’s Executive of the Year Award, Zduriencik doesn’t have to pronounce his name for owners anymore; they know who he is and what his track record has been. His drafts for the Brewers are not just legendary to scouts, they’re now producing results on the field for the Brewers. The knock on Zduriencik is that he doesn’t have much experience dealing with the media or in managing an organization. I don’t think this is an issue at all. First, he has managed one of the best scouting systems in the league, as well as growing several employees into scouting directors—Tom Allison in Arizona, and Bobby Heck in Houston. He’s also made a concerted effort to be more accessible to the media. Zduriencik would be a perfect candidate for an organization needing to rebuild from the bottom up and working without the budget to go after big-name free agents. Several people have indicated that Zduriencik’s hiring would help in another way: “That team would get flooded with resumés. People love working for Jack,” said one NL exec.
Try this link again…
Baseball Prospectus Top 10 GM Prospects
Not a sexy pick, but sexy doesn’t win games. I like the likelihood that win-now is tabled for a rebuilding period.
But lest I appear to like the choice, I fear that Chuck and Howard picked the guy most like themselves, or the biggest yes-man.
We’ll see.
Wow, what a terrible hire.
Wow, what a terrible post.
Zartan isn’t ideal, but it could’ve been a million times worse. I’m just thankful they didn’t hire Randy Smith or Cam Bonifay.
This pick is not the “dare to be great” pick I was hoping for.
Bottom line: Lincoln and Armstrong are still with the M’s. Thus, we are still doomed! We can talk all day long about Zduriencik’s scouting ability and about what he brings to the table. It’s all irrelevant. In the end, Jack still reports to, and runs decisions by men who have a fundamentally flawed view of how players are evaluated.
I could get kind of excited about this hire if it was in conjunction with Chuck and Howard being shown the door. Until then, we are just going to have to settle for being a poor to potentially mediocre team.
My previous post may have been lumped in with the negative (contending in 2017). However my only concern with the hire is (surprise!) ownership. More specifically the patience of Lincoln and Armstrong. It took a long time for the Brewers to turn over the talent to get to where they are now.
Arm/Linc maybe saying they want a long rebuild (which previously has been the thing they’ve always insisted they would never do) but will they be able to stomach it?
Mariner nation,
Today, via a press release, we wish to tell you about our latest effort to put lipstick on a pig. Our new hire is not Bill Bavasi! Our new hire is not Wayne Krivsky! We can’t pronounce his name either but please rest assured that though he’s new, he’s every bit as old school as we know in our hearts a Mariner GM needs to be. We just haven’t been trying the approach hard enough the last 5 years. We’re confident that with new found vigor and commitment to a traditional approach, we’ll succeed at succeeding rather than succeeding at sucking at succeeding. All we need is good bodies (our youngsters just haven’t been good enough the last 5 years-in other words it’s clear that we scouted our way in to this mess so we have to scout our way out of it too) and we can take care of the rest at the major league level. Please trust us with the roster-we assure you it’s in good hands.
Thank you and remember we and the Moose hope to see your children at the park next season!
Mgmt
:rolleyes:
Well, let’s see . . . we have an Ng fanboy assuring us that Zduriencik won’t have the credibility she would have had (justification?), a whole lot of people dismissing the man as a hack (justification?), and a whole lot more shorting out because Lee Pelekoudas wasn’t unceremoniously fired, and therefore sure that he’s going to be the puppetmaster or something (justification?). For crying out loud, Pelekoudas was the business-side guy; him sticking around means nothing. (This is especially true given that Zduriencik isn’t a 30-something wunderkind, and thus not subject in L&A’s eyes to any experience bias.) This is a guy who has great credibility around MLB, and who’s earned it the old-fashioned way: by being very good at what he does, and (better yet!) by doing so in a way that makes people love to work with him.
Is he going to be brilliant? Who the heck knows? Who ever knows? When Bavasi traded the Chief, it was a coup . . . until it wasn’t. You make your best predictions, but there are always too many imponderables to be sure. On the percentages, was he the hire likeliest to turn the M’s into a powerhouse? No, I don’t think so. Could he do it anyway? Absolutely. We could become the Atlanta of the AL West. Should we be writing his epitaph when most of us still can’t spell his name? No way. Let’s at least wait until the guy screws up before we bury him, shall we? (And no, Pelekoudas not being immediately and publicly defenestrated doesn’t count as a screwup; Zduriencik doesn’t even know the guy well enough to make that decision yet.)
and just what sin has Pelekoudas committed, other than being a company man
Seriously. Here’s what Lee did in his short, interim stint as GM:
Fired John McLaren (good), released Richie Sexson (double good), Released Jose Vidro (hallelujah), traded Arthur Rhodes for Gaby Hernandez (widely considered a good move), Got RRS and Morrow onboard the starter train (about time), and – from all accounts – tried to unload Washburn but was simply shot down by Armstrong and his intimate knowledge of baseball.
So a reporter – not the FO – mentions that he’ll probably go back to his old job (and that’s assumed to be until further notice)… Big friggin deal.
Lee’s P’s position doesn’t matter right now, and Jack Z’s hiring is a step forward.
Who cares if they’ll be able to stomach it. Can WE stomach it? This hire is Howard and Chuck’s scheme that allows them to keep their jobs with no questions asked for quite some time. “Hey everyone, don’t expect anything for awhile, we’re rebuilding.” It’s a brilliant move for Chuck because he gets to hang on to this great gig for at least another 4 years with no real pressure. And when nothing comes to fruition in a few years then he’ll be back on the famous Mariner’s “hotseat” As it turns out, that seat really never gets that hot.
Amen, brother — that would’ve really been sinking the team down to the level of the Arizona Instructional League!