This guy works for the Mariners
If you have a subscription, run over and check out this Baseball Prospectus interview with Tony Blengino. Loooooot of great stuff. If you’re looking for interesting stuff to talk about at our event next week, this is a gold mine.
News on what they’re doing building a stat analysis organization (Tom Tango’s consulting!)
Here’s my favorite quote
But we want independent opinions, and we want people in our office to disagree. We want some degree of conflict. If everyone agrees, and says the same thing about each transaction, you have too homogenous of a group together. You need to have people coming at issues from different angles, and I think that we’re in the process, in the short time we’ve been together, of having that.
This one is just as good, though:
DL: Among established defensive metrics, which do you feel are most meaningful?
TB: I like the Hardball Times revised zone ratings [RZR] and out of zone plays [OOZ]. I think you can take their statistics and couch them a certain way, and get some really good indicators. There are a lot of other ones out there as well, like the Plus/Minus and the UZR, and I think they all have value. I think it all comes down to being able to come up with a measure where you have a baseline that you’re comparing to, and I think that with the Hardball Times metrics you can come up with a baseline fairly easily and know what you’re talking about, whether a guy is above or below average at a certain position, and watch trends over the years fairly easily. So I think that there is value in a lot of the different metrics, and I think they’re being advanced on an annual basis. It comes down to the user and what he’s most comfortable working with, and that he has a logical premise that his analysis is based on.
It’s a great in-depth interview, where you really get a sense of the team’s direction. It’s also a really good example of how asking quality questions can get good answers.
Also, he talks about how defense is undervalued right now, how… look, there’s like forty pages of goodness here, and it was unthinkable someone like this would be in the organization a year ago.
A week from now, he’ll be answering your questions at the USSM/LL event. You’re going to want to be there.
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That is pretty awesome. Flat out amzing how much the organization has change in such a short amount of time.
I think this is worth mentioning…
I happen to be acquainted with gentleman who formally worked for the Brewers in the minor league scouting department. He was there for the two years when Zduriencik came aboard. I asked him what he thought of Zduriencik and he told me he is an “extremely impressive individual and very qualified to be making decisions for an organization”. Only he said it in a very cold and unenthusiastic manner. After prodding a little further I got the impression that my acquaintance really didn’t care for Z personally. I asked why I was getting that impression, and he said, “he’s the type of person that works 25hrs out of the day and has unbelievably high expectations for his employees”. He didn’t suggest there was anything wrong with being that way, he just said that Z upset the apple cart of complacency that had existed with the Brewers for years.
He went on to say that his only concern about Z doing a good jobs for the M’s was that he might not be tactful enough to be a head of an organization. He said you can expect Z not to give a darn about the status quo and that he isn’t going to make decisions based on people feelings or loyalty to the organization.
Formally as in “he was part of the organization” or did you mean formerly as in “he’s not there anymore?”
Interesting. So you know a guy who doesn’t like Zduriencik and didn’t like working for him because Z wasn’t comfortable with complacent mediocrity and wasn’t willing to let people slide to avoid hurting their feelings? Sounds like a pretty strong recommendation to me — and not just for Zduriencik, but for anyone else he considers a worthy employee (such as Blengino and McNamara).
It’s times like this I really wish I were back in western Washington . . .
Coasty….
That sounds like a PERFECT recomendation for the Mariner organization in 2008/09, Honestly….
(and the tech people part of the ownership group have got to like that work ethic).
Like lying on a beach in the Caribbean…this sounds amazing, if true. Why would I want him to be anything other than this? None of the feelings or loyalty (a factor in some Bavasi transactions that drove me crazy) makes/acquires good players that win games.
Thanks for sharing Coasty, like most folks here I think upsetting the “apple cart of complacency” is exactly what this organization needs. I don’t think anyone is worried about a gm with tact right now (how about competence?).
If this is true though, I could see this being an issue down the line. I seem to remember Churchill speculating that Zduriencik could be a guy who gets “the M’s about halfway home”. For now though (and the near future), I couldn’t be happier about what Z’s done–or care less if he rubs a few people the wrong way.
I thought that was supposed to be hush-hush?
Right, but remember why Churchill thought that. He was contrasting Zduriencik with Tony LaCava, whom he described as
The funny thing is, while Churchill was assuming that that was the sort of thing we would have gotten from LaCava but not from Zduriencik, it is in fact what Zduriencik is giving us.
Sooooo if it was in the bag, it’s out now.
It’s perhaps the biggest piece of news of the winter, too. Wheeeeeeee
Right. It deserves its own post. I’ll put it on the list for tomorrow.
Holy balls!
I am developing a serious “Man Crush” on GMZ!
This is nuts!
This Front Office went from completely backward and outdated beliefs to right in the thick of statistical analysis and forward thinking mentality.
Amazing!
“Formally as in “he was part of the organization†or did you mean formerly as in “he’s not there anymore?—
Formerly. Sorry bout that. It is my understanding he worked with the Brewers for 15 years (ish) and left circa 2002-3.
This is very exciting, considering what the responses would have been from the M’s front office to questions like these over the past few years:
Q: Among established defensive metrics, which do you feel are most meaningful?
A: What the hell are you talking about?
What WHAT WHAT??????
They brought Tango on board?????
Holllllllyyyyyyyyy…..
Man-crush indeed! It seems like every time I read something about Zduriencik I like him more.
Tango Tiger? Really?!!?
It’s so nice to have a reason to care about the M’s again. Between this and Sounders FC kicking off, 2009 is shaping up to be a great year for Seattle sports.
“2009 is shaping up to be a great year for Seattle sports”
Just compare 09 to 08 and I think you will enjoy it.
The Huskies have already beaten the Cougars in basketball for the first time in ages. The Huskies’ new football coach was given most of the credit for the USC Rose Bowl win. The M’s are suddenly an organization that thinks sophisticated fielding statistics are critically important.
Cmon, Jim Mora, Jr., do something just as positive. This thing is starting!
Knowing that the Tiger is on board may just be the greatest news we’ve had all winter, and that’s saying a lot.
Tom Tango on ‘Fielding Aging Curves’.
Wow. Just…wow.
Hmmm. Yuni just completed his age 26 season. Looks like he should have been peaking in fielding ability, and should start declining soon. [shudder]
Well, it’s going to be hard to get any worse!
I loved Blengino’s response to the Bedard trade question.