The Manager Pool
My lead in the $10,000 Scholarship Voting is under 3,000 votes for the first time in several days. I liked my cushion. If you haven’t voted yet, please do so. It helps me sleep at night.
As we go through the week of interviews, we’re going to read a lot of stuff about the potential managers. We got the obligatory Joey Cora stories this morning, and we’ll probably see more as the candidates finish out. And, honestly, no matter who they hire, I’m not going to have a strong opinion one way or another. Evaluating managers is tough enough even after we’ve watched them handle problems, put together rosters, make tactical decisions, but when you don’t have any of that, taking a stance on whether a guy is a good or bad hire seems a bit foolish.
I will say this, though – I’m encouraged by the process of who they selected to interview. They got two Red Sox coaches after trying for three. They got an A’s coach and a D’Backs coach. More than half of the guys on the list are currently working in organizations that are decidedly forward thinking. Now, obviously, not every coach is going to agree with everything the front office does, so just working for one of these clubs doesn’t make you a genius, but it does mean that they’ve been previously vetted and approved by people who are running an organization the right way.
There’s no real way for any of us to know if these guys will make good or bad managers. We just don’t have enough information to have a real opinion. However, the fact that we have a pool of manager candidates that mostly comes from good organizations, and the fact that there’s not an emphasis on experience and track record, has to be encouraging. It is to me, at least.
I feel like, for the first time in four or five years, the organization is trying to evaluate the future rather than putting together a collection of guys with past success and hoping it perpetuates itself.
I like that feeling.
Quick Edit: According to Baker, “For the record, (Chip Hale) thought the Erik Bedard trade was a good one for the M’s and made sense.” Chip Hale moves to the bottom of the list. Honestly, that should be an exclusionary question – if you think the Erik Bedard trade made sense, you don’t get a position of any authority in this organization. Recognizing that deal as a disaster of player valuation should be a requirement for anyone coming into any kind of power in Seattle.
I was just going to echo the sentiment that I am pleased with the selection prccess thus far, but then I saw your edit concerning Hale.
Down with Chip Hale! I’m uneasy with trading 5 players for 1 in any case, let alone the ones we ended up giving up for 81 innings (thus far) of Bedard. Pelekoudas remains as a token reminder of what not to do in a trade…we don’t need a manager to add to that chorus.
Yeah, this is what is encouraging. If it was only one or two like this, it’d be discouraging. But getting a number of people from forward thinking groups is making me optimistic. Looks like they’re thinking more widely and less stereotypically.
Maybe Chip Hale is going to be the exception, instead of the rule this time around…
Screw Hale.
That guy needs NO consideration. Anyone that thinks that the Bedard trade was good is an idiot. Worst trade in franchise history.
The whole process is encouraging no doubt.
Chip Hale’s comment about Bedard aside, I don’t see much coming from him other than “play the game the right way” which is pretty standard stuff.
For all the talk about whether Joey Cora can manage I did like his “make the other team worry about us” philosophy. He seems like the guy to beat although we’re only two candidates in.
To play Devil’s advocate, I don’t know that Hale is saying the Bedard trade was good knowing what we all know now. He perhaps thought it was good and made sense when the deal actually went down (as did many people). If you’re a manager/coach it would seem to me that your main concern would be what you have to work with on YOUR roster. From a manager’s POV, who wouldn’t rather have a talented, LH SP than a rookie OFer, a (seemingly expendable) bullpen arm and 3 prospects?
Heathcliff Slocumb ring a bell?
The Bedard trade ended up horrible, that’s true. And it was a clear overpay even at the time. But it wasn’t *idiotic*. At the time, it appeared to be an expensive way to get the guy who could put the M’s over the top. If anything, the disaster was the evaluation of the rest of the team as a whole. Hindsight is always 20-20.
I personally think it would be more constructive to look at a candidate from the big picture rather than focusing on one opinion… after all, he liked the Haren deal too. What if Haren had imploded and Bedard pitched up to expectations this year? Would the Diamondbacks be a team of idiot talent evaluators on that basis alone, and the Mariners trade geniuses? Hardly.
Hale is more than an at-the-time evaluation of the Bedard trade. If you’re gonna drop him to the bottom of the list for that by itself… you may miss out on something else amazing that he’s done. He’s not my candidate of choice by any means – the only thing I want to highlight is methodology.
[BBOneFive just made a similar point very eloquently. Kudos]
I was previously 100% against Cora getting a crack at managing the M’s. After reading his quotes this morning I feel a little better about it and feel he may be more qualified that just being a feel good throwback to the glory days. If he truly is the most qualified, I’d welcome it.
Dan-
It’s been beaten to death, so I won’t go on and on about it. The Bedard deal is much worse than the Slocumb deal.
Uh-oh….
From Ryan Divish (Mariner Insider/Tacoma News Tribune) who has more details from the Chip Hale conference
Abort! Abort on Hale!
For a moment I was thinking the same way, but then realized that the manager needs to be forward-thinking enough to realize Adam Jones would’ve helped his defense immensely, not to mention Sherrill in the bullpen and the guys in the minors we gave up.
If the manager can’t see how distastrous the Bedard trade was from the outset, then we probably don’t want him managing the team. We need someone who values defense and younger talented players, not the need for a top-of-the-rotation starter over “a bunch of rookies who haven’t proven themselves on the major league level”.
I’m not quoting him directly, but that was the sentiment for anyone who favored the Bedard trade.
Dobbs-
I understand your point and agree. Like I said, I’m just giving Hale the benefit of the doubt. Piniella is held in the highest esteem amongst the M’s faithful…which outlook do you think he had?
Bedard good trade: No
Yuni good defense: No
Pitching is there: No
Either he is just saying this to kiss ass, or he really believes it.
Either way, he should be given no consideration.
Horrible.
I think it mostly has to do with saying the “right” thing and going off of perception. I doubt highly that Hale knows much at all about Yuni’s defense. The perception around MLB is that he’s a slick fielder.
If that’s the case, he should have done his homework before the interview instead of making comments based on perception.
The Bedard trade ended up horrible, that’s true. And it was a clear overpay even at the time. But it wasn’t *idiotic*.
Yes it was. If you supported the Bedard trade at the time, you had a massive flaw in your evaluative process. This isn’t some kind of gray area where opinions may differ. This is a 2 + 2 = 4 kind of thing.
Seriously, if you think that Adam Jones, Chris Tillman, George Sherrill, Tony Butler, and Kam Mickolio are “a rookie OF, an expendable arm, and three prospects”, then you have no business working in baseball.
Really. It was one of the worst conceived trades of all time. It was so monumentally stupid that arguing for it is evidence of a lack of understanding of how to build a baseball team.
Before the year even started, we were pretty sure that Adam Jones was a +2 win outfielder, and Erik Bedard was a +4 win pitcher. George Sherill was a +1 win reliever. Assuming everyone stayed healthy and played near their true talent levels, the Mariners were adding about 1 win to the ’08 team, and doing so at a cost of about $6 million to the payroll.
You can buy one win in free agency for between $4 to $5 million.
Even ignoring the Tillman/Butler/Mickolio portion of the trade and ignoring the team’s ability to have Jones from 2010-2013, the trade was still stupid, because the Mariners were spending $6 million on one win. Once you factor in the future value forfeited, as well as the total misunderstanding of the marginal value of one win to the 2008 Mariner roster, you’re forced to conclude that this trade was the definition of idiotic.
Seriously, you cannot build an argument that the Bedard trade ever made sense. If you supported it then, you were wrong. If you still think it was a good idea, then you’re beyond stubborn.
I agree with Dave above. Well put. Even if Bedard had pitched like a Cy Young contender, the trade would have been miserable.
But to be fair to Hale, he might simply be trying to please prospective bosses. I doubt that he or any managerial candidate is going to say “Man, you guys were a bunch of dummies. Now I have to manage this group of no talent losers.”
And now we have this from Wakamatsu:
and
Ruh roh…..
Hey Dave,
I have a question regarding management of the team that I think kinda plays into this conversation:
Would it be in the best interests of the M’s if our GM and manager were to field the best defensive team possible even where we sacrifice runs offensively, so that we make our 3 overpaid pitchers look better in an effort to trade all 3 by the deadline?
I get the feeling that 80 games of pumping up their value with great defense and no hitting would have a longer lasting benefit than any other method of playing out this season…
Look, I am not disputing the idiocy of the Bedard deal. I thought so at the time (and Dave’s nice analysis above is spot on).
But the Slocumb trade was, at the time, incredibly stupid and, in retrospect, even worse. When all is said and done, Varitek and Lowe will probably have more value than Jones/Tillman/Butler/Sherrill/Mickolio. And Bedard, even with the injury, will probably end up having more value to the M’s than Slocumb did.
So, I disagree that the Bedard trade (whether viewed at the time or in retrospect) was “much worse.”
But, the point of the post is that believing the Bedard trade to be a good idea should disqualify you from being hired. On that, we can all agree.
It’s not like he’d offend anyone being that Bavasi is gone.
Dobbs-
The only problem is, our “best defensive team” still isn’t very good.
I admit that was in the category of thinking the Bedard trade was a good one when the M’s made it. I thought it would give us one of the top 1-2 starters in baseball and help put us over the top. Being more educated over time about what we gave up and the impact of the trade short and long term…yea the trade was idiotic!
Except the fact you can sign or trade for all-defense, no-hit players for next to nil in a lot of cases.
Your point is mine, would changing our team’s defensive complexion to rid ourselves of anchoring contracts be a good idea?
Obviously JJ Hardy would be a step in this direction.
As Tek said –
I think we should lay off the guy just a bit. There’s an amount of politics involved in any hire and I doubt he wants to trash the management (former or not) of a prospective employer.
I guess it’s fine to not want the guy hired because he said that, but lets not go off the deep end about it.
The biggest problem is that the team was not what Bavasi (and others) perceived it to be. This is a team that was thought to be a couple moves away from serious contention. The fact that they were actually an aberration in 2007 and nowhere near contention makes the move especially painful. Some of the pieces that were traded away are exactly the types of guys Z is looking for to fill some gaping holes in the current roster.
Well, wrongly, and likely for the wrong reasons, a lot of people did think last year’s team would win 90-something games.
I know that virtually everybody on USSM was against the Bedard trade, but many people in baseball called it a “good trade” at the time. I’m not saying I agree with them, but that was the general consensus as I recall. I don’t how much scouting experience you expect a coach to have. I would be MUCH more concerned if Jack Z said he thought the Bedard trade was a good one at the time.
I’m not saying I agree with them, but that was the general consensus as I recall.
The general consensus among the mainstream is consistently wrong. The talking heads at ESPN and most major newspapers don’t understand how baseball teams win.
[ot]
Thanks for the report, that’s very intriguing. As with everything else, it’s still early so who knows what this Dept. of Baseball Research will amount to, but it’s positive news and something that I hope this blog and the Seattle media can keep us informed about.
While I agree that the Bedard trade was bad from the get-go, to call it “idiotic” seems way over the top. Dave’s own figures say that the M’s acquired one more (prospective)victory, at a cost of $6M, when they could’ve gotten that victory for $4 or $5M.
Surely there have been worse transactions, by the M’s and by other teams, than overpaying by $1 to $2M. The Dodgers alone e.g., paying $8M for Juan Pierre and $9.5M for Nomar.
Overpaying by $2M, while certainly undesireable, is such a common thing that we’d have to call most of the teams idiots.
Except the Dodgers didn’t also pay a cost of five talented young ballplayers in addition to the excessive cash values.
You missed the “ignoring the future value…” part, which of course, you can’t ignore. I was just proving how obviously terrible the trade was, even from the perspective of making the ’08 team better.
In terms of real value, the M’s probably punted about $50 million or so.
Dave Cameron, Jan 8, 2008
Adam Jones and Erik Bedard, Quantified
Regarding Chip Hale. I think it’s likely that Hale doesn’t have detailed knowledge of Jones. He certainly knows Jones as a valuable prospect, but not as the elite prospect that some one in a scouting role would be expected to know. He might logically consider Jones to be about the type of player that would be swapped for a starter of Bedard’s caliber. If so, it’s not unreasonable if he would consider that as a valid trade.
Even Dave in the quote above said he would give up practically the whole farm system for Bedard, as long Jones wasn’t included. So if Hale doesn’t know Jones as an ultra-elite prospect then his comments make perfect sense.
Hale’s answer doesn’t bother me that much. Just because he said it to Baker doesn’t mean he believes it, or said the same to Zduriencik.
From the Hale’s perspective, Bedard, Yuni, Washburn, etc are all probably going to be on the roster next year and he’ll have to worry about dealing with them on a daily basis. So why throw either under the bus before he’s even hired, or provide a beat writer with a quote that’s going to make the front page?
All this talk about the BEDARD trade. Are we sure that it wasn’t the JONES trade ?
[The GUILLEN trade.]
Oh Hale no!
BTW, what’s not to like about this–especially if you’re from Baltimore.
Feb. 8 • Seattle Lands Bedard, Third Ace To Switch Teams This Winter
Acquire:
LHP Erik Bedard,
Baltimore Acquire:
OF Adam Jones, Seattle
LHP George Sherrill, Seattle
RHP Chris Tillman, High Desert (Hi A)
RHP Kam Mickolio, Tacoma (AAA)
LHP Tony Butler, Wisconsin (Lo A)