The Gillick rings
I’ve been pondering a much longer piece on Gillick and his time in Seattle after this year’s Phillies championship. But I wanted to throw this out: check out his Baseball America executive database page. His GM stints:
Blue Jays, 1978-1994
Orioles, 1996-1998
Mariners, 2000-2003*
Phillies, 2006-2008
In each stint, here’s his playoff teams:
1985, Blue Jays
1989, Blue Jays
1991, Blue Jays
1992, Blue Jays (World Series win)
1993, Blue Jays (World Series win)
1996, Orioles
1997, Orioles
2000, Mariners
2001, Mariners
2007, Phillies
2008, Phillies (World Series win)
What interested me particularly is the way they did it. Looking at their raw ranking, you see some big contrasts. The 92-93 Blue Jays, for instance, had great hitting and decent pitching and defense. That’s a lot like the 96 Orioles. In 1997, though, the Orioles had a great run-prevention year and their hitting was close to average. The 2000/2001 Mariners were amazingly good defensive teams that also hit with the best teams in the league. The 08 Phillies had close to league-best hitting and pitching (but not defense), improving from 07 on the run-prevention side to spark a World Series run.
I’ve always thought one of Gillick’s great strengths is reflected there. He was flexible about where he got his wins in a way that he doesn’t get enough credit for. He played an unconventional outfield lineup to get stellar defense and good production in 2001, and he wasn’t afraid to get his pitchers on the free agent market or the scrap heap (Paul Abbott in the starting rotation!).
It’s also interesting that Gillick’s success disproves all the traditional cliches about “pitching and defense win championships”. Gillick repeatedly won pennants and a couple of World Series with teams that played decent defense, and that didn’t pitch all that well. They beat teams that had better pitching and defense, too: in 1993, for instance, if you put a ball into play against the Blue Jays you’d get a hit 30% of the time — they were the 21st-best team in raw defensive efficiency. But they beat the White Sox (6th in that stat) for the AL Championship and then the Phillies (who were a little better defensive) to take the World Series.
The Gillick aftermath, though, is equally interesting. Here’s the five year post-departure records for the franchises he’s left.
Blue Jays (1995-1999) .477
Orioles (1999-2003) .436
Mariners (2004-2008) .443
Phillies ?
I don’t know that five years is the best measure, but I figure that the traditional turnaround window is 3-5 years, so if Gillick was really cratering teams, they’d be able to climb out after five at most.
It’s strange to look over his career like this, too, because it illustrates part of why it’s so hard to figure out Gillick’s last couple of jobs. In Toronto he did an absolutely stellar job of building an expansion franchise into a powerhouse. It was a success on the same level as the sustained contention run the Braves had in the 1990s, in which Gillick played a key role in developing modern international player development. And now, and with good reason, he’s regarded as a hired gun, someone a team might bring in to take a decent franchise into the playoffs for a few years, knowing that there might be a long hangover afterwards.
It makes me wonder why he hadn’t been approached by owners looking to put together some playoff teams to gain support for a stadium deal. As we saw here, winning helps hugely in lobbying, and once they’re in a new home, it’s a lot easier to keep winning with all the new revenue streams.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to digress there. But I find the career of Gillick, and particularly his swing through Seattle, pretty fascinating.
* I’m tempted to list 2004 here for reasons we hashed over back through that season, but I didn’t want to distract from the larger point.
Speaking as a lifelong Blue Jays fan, I look at this snapshot of Gillick with great interest. One thing that has always struck me was just how unlucky his teams were in the mid-to-late 80s. It isn’t much of a stretch to say that the Jays could easily have made the playoffs three or four more times during his tenure there.
The 1987 season is an obvious, and painful, data point. But don’t overlook 1988, etc.
No offense, but this is exactly why I don’t understand the fact that some people pick on Pat Gillick so much.
If you want to find people to blame for why the teams he worked for did so bad without him after he left, look at the very top.
I don’t know the situation in Toronto post ’93 that well, but I do know that in Baltimore he got into fights with Peter Angelos constantly as Petey started to interfere with his team’s day to day affairs, and well, look at where that has gotten Baltimore ever since.
And then with Seattle, I think we know the story of how around 2002-2003 Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln got their egos in the way of the best interests of the team. That of course led to the messy divorce between the Mariners and Lou Piniella and then later Gillick leaving the organization.
Believe, if the man was told to build a minor league system, he probably would and could do a great job.
It’s just that at some point when he was GM with Seattle, Baltimore, Philly, and Toronto, he was likely told by his upper-most management to WIN NOW instead of later.
This in turn made the man dip into the free agency market, which then cost his team draft picks, and then the downward spiral of those teams in Seattle, Baltimore, and Toronto would begin after those great veteran teams he built would get old or leave after free agency. (Of course, doesn’t success and failure run in cycles in sports anyhow?)
Now, I’m not saying Gillick is the greatest GM on earth.
In fact, personally if I had the choice between Gillick, Billy Beane, and Theo Epstein as to who my GM would be, I’d likely take either Theo or Beane over Gillick.
But at the same time, give the man a break.
Those three rings he has as opposed to the zero rings that Howard Lincoln, Chuck Armstrong and Peter Angelos have combined speak for themselves.
Actually, Gillick has made his disdain for first-round picks very clear, viewing the loss of first-rounders as almost an additional benefit of signing free agents.
I’m curioius as to why his teams cratered after he left. We know the M’s roster was aged and the farm system somewhat bare when he left, but how did that happen (and was it the same with his other clubs. How does Philly’s farm system look)?
How much of it was losing compensation picks, how much of it was trading prospects, how much of it was bad draft picks, and how much of it was poor player development?
Because to the extent it was bad draft picks and player development, those can be fixed. If better scouting and player development could be grafted onto the rest of Gillick’s toolset… hmmm.
But if it was a case of FA signings and trading prospects, well, that would seem to be an unavoidable trade-off, inherent in the strategy.
Either way, you can put me in the “Hurrah Gillick” camp. I think he was a pretty good GM.
A lot of it was having very few high picks in the system, due to the signing of free agents and the failure (or better, refusal) to sign picks.
“Pitching and defense are what win games” may be a cliche, but Baseball Prospectus has done a pretty good job showing that it’s generally true. Their “Secret Sauce” regarding what their analysis showed to be the three most important characteristics of a successful playoff team (which I have a hard time believing hasn’t been covered on USSM before):
1. Pitchers that strike out batters.
2. A stud closer.
3. A good defense.
The fact that Gillick won without always following this formula doesn’t somehow disprove the cliche; it just shows that it’s not the only way to win.
With Bavasi’s Majot league player/trade evaluation skills Gillick gets a absolute pass,in my book, on what happened in Seattle after his departure. Anyone who would blame Gillick seems to me to be missing the point of Bavasi’s legendary ineptitude. I can see the link between losing high draft picks and the difficulty in continued success, but in the case of his Seattle tenure there were more eventual Major leaguers in the minors when he departed than when he arrived. He also set up the international scouting to the point that it’s supplemented the draft about 1 for 1 (in future Major leaguers) and the quality of the international signings have been higher on average than the draft picks. How do all these factors stack up in his other Gm tenures ? (replacement GM, quantity and quality of future MLB players in the farm at onset and departure, international supplementation to the draft, etc.) ?
You realize that Bavasi was handed several roster moves from Gillick that he had no choice but to carry out, right?
I wonder, did those (e.g. dump Carlos Guillen) come from Gillick, or our favorite Front Office suits?
Sign Beltre? That would explain how some of the early moves were actually decent…
I believe HowChuck have said that Beltre & Sexson were brought to them by Bavasi.
Jeff Nye, that’s saying that a few moves in one year of Bavasi’s 5 were influenced by Gillick…Bavasi’s choices over his career here can not be excused so easily.
When it comes to international signings the M’s have done very well since Gillick was hired as GM. I would personally like to thank Gillick for bringing in Bob Engle and being instrumental in restocking the Farm with Felix, Lopez, Betancourt, Balentien, Triunfel, Martinez, Liddi, Halman, Chen, Valbuena, Navarro, Choo, Blackley, RR-S, Oliveros, Campillo, Jiminez, Carvajal, Juan Ramirez, Kuo Hui Lo, Peguero, Dotel, Luis Nunez, Juan Diaz, Escalona, Benitez, Eddy Fernandez, Jair Fernandez, Leury Bonilla, Jesus Guzman, Mendez, Dilone, Bruno Meredes, Asdrubal Cabrera, etc., etc., etc….
I didn’t even include 2007 and 2008 signings.
International signings before Gillick? Snelling, Soriano, Baek, Mateo, Ortiz. Not so many.
This proves beyond any possible doubt that you have no idea what you’re talking about and are unwilling to make the effort to think (much less research) before you post.
I would agree to an extent…though, IMO, I don’t think the Jays in those days were unlucky by design. Having grown up in Michigan, I can tell you that Tiger Nation lived through that same period of frustration when, despite winning an AL pennant and WS (1984), it seemed like there were a number of seasons where they played well enough that they probably could have made the post-season — had the AL East not been the tough seven-team division it was at the time.
I’d direct you to The Book blog for discussion of the Secret Sauce.
It’s the same game in the regular season as in the postseason, and it still boils down to runs scored and runs allowed.
I have to say, I love it that Adsense apparently feels the title of this thread deserves a lovely new ad of its own, over on the right.
Gillick was held / tied down by Nintendo ownership. We could have had Championship rings if they let Pat do what he wanted.
I know no one will officially say it, but Gillick left because of the ownership group.
Gillick was held / tied down by Nintendo ownership. We could have had Championship rings if they let Pat do what he wanted.
No “we” couldn’t. I’m not on the team, and I doubt you are (or were then). Unless they gave out rings to the entire Seattle area and beyond, “we” could not have had rings. Excessive identification with the team often betrays a lot of things, only a few of them good.
But even beyond that, there’s no guarantee of anything. Gillick was in charge in 2001, when the team with as many regular season wins as any in AL history couldn’t get a ring. You would think Gillick could’ve built from there, after coming so close, but the 2002 team was even further away. What evidence do you have that the trend wouldn’t have continued down under Gillick just as it did under Bavasi? Gillick built that team to win at the end of the 90s, and it didn’t. He took his shot, and failed. Wishing doesn’t change that.
I know no one will officially say it, but Gillick left because of the ownership group.
And your proof of this is what?