New coaches, Gillick interviewing in L.A.
The M’s hired Rafael Chaves to be their new pitching coach (replacing Bryan Price) and Jeff Pentland as their hitting coach. Pentland was lately the hitting coach for… wait for it… the Royals.
Royals hitting, by OPS rank
2003: 7th of 14
2004: 14th of 14
2005: 12th of 14
He certainly got results.
Also interesting, though, is that the M’s have let the Dodgers talk to Pat Gillick for their vacant GM position. It’d be amusing, if only because Bavasi came to Seattle from L.A. to take over from Gillick, and now Gillick may go to L.A. to take over that organization from one of the young whippersnapper GMs he has little patience for.
“What’s this computer doing on my desk? Who left all these SQL manuals in here? What’s this CD… Mogwai? Who the heck is Mogwai?”
Comments
88 Responses to “New coaches, Gillick interviewing in L.A.”
I dont understand much of anything the M’s do.
If gillick gets the job the dodgers will make the playoffs this year..ouch thats hard for me to say because i hate the dodgers.Stand pat does know 1 thing at that is how to win.God knows the dodgers have a ton of prospects they can unload if he has to unload some of his other crap and cancer spots he is inheriting.
Wait till stand Pat shows his second half self. I’m sure the fans will love that. Since he will be gone, how much of his influence will go with him. I mean will things be completely different?
BTW, Jojima has officially FA’d himself to be able to start talking with MLB teams. I hope the M’s land him.
I’m sure Rafael is a “quality individual” though.
Anybody guess without looking what team was #3 in BA in mlb (after Yanks and BoSox)?
None other than Lou & Lee’s Devil Rays. Now there are two guys who know how to get hitters to hit.
Ratts of the Capital
“What do all these letters mean? This egghead had the alphabet all wrong? E-Q-A? O-P-S?”
The Mantas down in Tampa would be smart to pick up DePo.
Funny that the day I start reading Moneyball, not only is DePodesta fired, but Gillick gets interviewed for another GM job.
Hope Gillick accepts the position as he will make a better trading partner sacraficing the future for his win now philosophy. Perhaps the Mariners maybe the benefit from that.
Do not recall reading a National League team on his resume not that it makes a huge difference but still the roster construction is abit different with no DH. My money is on him holding out for Nationals job even though Bowden received a whopping six month extention. Yeah I know another NL team. Still amazed when Gillick is regarded as one of the saviest GMs in the game.
I’m sorry…Who the heck is Mogwai?
Scottish Guitar Army. Music for nerds.
Regarding the new coaches hope they help and are great teachers and communicators.
My great desire they get someone who helps with stealing bases and running bases more effectively. As fast as some of the Mariners are they are not very good base stealers or runners. Granted they are young therefore hope Mariners get an exceptional teacher to help learn this skill. Plus it is exciting baseball besides being disruptive to other team.
“What the heck is SQL? Is that some sort of new stat? Slugging Equals Losing?”
Mogwai is great
Mogwai’s “Come on Die Young” (released on the esteemed Matador label) was one of the great indie-rock albums of the late 90′s.
Godspeed you! Young sabermetrician
Wasn’t Gillick the theoretical head of the other camp in that controversial book that begins with an M?
Nice change.
I thought Gillick was going to Philly?
#12,
SELECT Top 1 GM_name
FROM tblGeneralManager
WHERE PompousJerk = ‘True’ AND ScorchedEarthDeparture = ‘True’
1 result(s) returned Gillick, Pat
Very nice, Jeremy.
SQL = Structured Query Language.
It is a method for extracting information from a database. On many websites you probably use an interface of some type under which SQL is gathering information based on your input.
She was quoting fictional confused Gillick there. I’m sure she knows what it is.
You are CORRECT, sir!
…but I do like Jeremy’s query.
Plaschke waited 12 whole paragraphs before mentioning the word “computer” derisively. For him, that’s restraint.
Pat is talking to the Phillies & LA, the Phils are also talking to Gerry Hunsicker, who is also talking to Tampa (who seem to be going for field manager faster than GM) and might also talk to LA who seem to be hiring a field manager based on who Tommy Lasorda wants…
You’re counting those sentences as paragraphs? Sheesh. Plaschke is worse than Finnegan!
Steve Kelley is king of the one-sentence paragraph.
I was shocked to hear how much power Lasodra still weilds in LA, but then I remembered… he’s the Dugout Wizard, after all.
Steve Kelley looked at his column.
He only had one sentence so far, so he hit the “enter” key and described it.
Then he did that for the second sentence, and he was three paragraphs in. Soon, his column-inch target would be met.
But not soon enough for Kelley.
Well, if the goal is to win NOW, then isn’t Gillick your guy? And if you’re an owner who is fighting for market share and fan interest against several teams in your geographical area, shouldn’t you be looking for a GM who will help you win NOW?
Afterall, it’s not like there is PROOF that keeping DePodesta (or any of the other 5 GMs that the Dodgers have had since 1998) would have eventually turned them into a winning organization either. Where was the outcry for the previous 5 GMs the Dodgers ousted? Clearly they didn’t get a chance to prove much either.
If only there were stats on GM’s, something that breaks down their performances better than a W-L record does – something that would, empirically and not just anecdotally or by presumptive hunch or personal prejudice, indicate what you could expect AFTER they leave an organization. We can do it for pitchers (runs scored after they leave are still charged to them if they put them on base) afterall.
No one’s arguing that Gillick may not be a fine fit for McCourt’s goals.
We can do it for pitchers (runs scored after they leave are still charged to them if they put them on base) afterall.
Which is, as it turns out, not that great, because pitchers can be punished unjustly for awful bullpen support and rewarded unjustly if the relievers save their bacon over and over.
I’m curious as to the collective opinion of the authors and contributors here. How much do we owe our 2001 success to moves made by Pat Gillick?
Yea… a 6 month extension. That one puzzled me too. On the other hand, why would you give Bowden any more than that. Hee hee.
Guarantee Aaron Sele would be in Dodger Blue
this morning a writer for one of the Philly papers also opined that Pat’s unwillingness to make in-season moves wouldn’t make the NOW-minded Phillies Phans happy….
have there been any studies done on the impact of major league hitting coaches? my instincts tell me that veteran players especially will tend not to listen to them at all- while most of the things they say are common sense facts that the hitter himself will figure out over time. things like keep your lead shoulder in, youre pulling your head, etc. how much value can those obvious observations have? couldnt the players just watch taped versions of espn broadcasts and get their coaching from joe morgan for free? at best, i would guess that they do as much harm as good and their effect levels out over the course of the season. molitor asking ichiro to be more patient and drive the ball more, for example. it hurt ichiro, but the same advice may have helped someone else at another point in the season.
hitting coaches could be very important for developing players, but at the major league level most players have developed pretty fully. and if the hitting coach changes every year, how could that inconsistency help development anyway? what is the average term of a hitting coach? 2 years? if you have someone who aspires to be a hitting coach and only a hitting coach they might be more effective, (like leo mazzone but for hitters) but they mostly seem to take the job only as a gateway to bigger things.
even taking all of those thoughts into account, i cannot imagine why the mariners would bother hiring someone who presided over such consistent failure, whether it was his fault or not.
#32– I assume the extension was so they someone in place to handle the off-season & spring-training while getting a new owner in place drags on…
Yes, admittedly ERA is not perfect, but the same can be said for evaluating GMs. How much of Bavasi’s problems have been because Gillick left the cupboard bare, and how much of them have been because Bavasi hasn’t been able to effectively use and/or evaluate what Gillick DID leave him? Could it be that Gillick got taken out of the game with runners on, but then Bavasi came in as a really lousy reliever and let all those runners score, while another guy could have come in and left them stranded?
It’s another one of those areas in baseball where the average fan doesn’t have anywhere near enough data at hand to really come up with a well-founded opinion one way or the other. There are too many pieces of the picture we don’t see at all, and too many of those pieces are subjective and/or relationship-contextual in nature (just like pitching coaches who work well with one pitcher but not another, GMs work well with some but not others).
It doesn’t mean, of course, that we shouldn’t TRY to come up with good (objective, repeatable, testable) ways of evaluating their performance. I’m just saying that it shouldn’t come down to sheer prejudice or presumption. (I.e., Harvard degree versus not, old versus young, publicly expounds upon stats versus doesn’t, once worked with Billy Beane versus didn’t). I mean, if y’all are going to assume DePo is some sort of genius, what about JP Ricciardi? Has he not had enough time to turn the Toronto ballclub around, and is he not a young, publicly quoted Beane acolyte?
Guarantee Aaron Sele would be in Dodger Blue
And Pat Borders. Don’t forget Pat Borders, Pat Gillick’s personal catcher.
I’m curious as to the collective opinion of the authors and contributors here. How much do we owe our 2001 success to moves made by Pat Gillick?
Go look at the 2000 free agent signings (Olerud, McLemore, Sasaki, Sele, Rhodes, Nelson). Not exactly a bad haul- we instantly had a good bullpen, a deep rotation (top 3 of Garcia, Moyer and Sele), and a couple of quality infielders.
The problem was we ended up blowing our top draft picks- and the ones we did make were pretty incomprehensible. The drafts of the M’s this decade until Bavasi got here are pretty awful- and once those veterans went pfffft the rot in the farm system showed up.
If Gillick takes Frank Mattox with him I’ll be thrilled. We should hope and pray he does this…
Eponymous – Thanks
Does Gillick get some of the credit for Boone and Ichiro as well? Perhaps the skill set is completely different – making trades for or signing proven players versus evaluating raw or undeveloped talent. It’s one thing to trade away draft picks on proven veterans, it’s another to waste draft picks when you have them.
31. Haven’t you heard? Pat Gillick is the worst general manager in the history of the Seattle Mariners. He committed at least seven deadly sins:
1. He did not make the moves he purportedly made in 2000 (Olerud, Javier, McLemore, Rhodes, Sasaki, Sele)and if he did make them, they came at the expense of the farm system because he was trying to win now (I guess the 2000-03 run wasn’t worth it after all).
2. the ones he made in 2001 should not be credited to him (Boone, Ichiro)
3. He traded Ken Griffey Jr., who did not want to be here, and didn’t get nearly enough in return (of course, Junior limited his options to one team).
4. He did not re-sign A-Rod, who got $25 million a year elsewhere.
5. He got lucky with performance from Bret Boone (no other GMs benefit from this)
6. He failed to develop the farm system (much truth to this; he also didn’t trade away talent that probably was overrated before it got injured)
7. And, most importantly, the most grievous sin of all, he did not get the power bat Lou wanted at the trading deadline. The player, whose name I have never been able to recall, was just sitting out there waiting to make the Mariners World Series champions. A win now move that wasn’t made (I guess Joe Carter wasn’t available).
In other words, Gillick is a win now guy (bad) who didn’t win enough (also bad), despite winning 393 games in 4 years. The most vilified GM in Mariner history, and he wouldn’t know a stat sheet from his checkbook to boot. He is a roster constructor who should get no credit for the rosters he constructed, whether they won or not, because his methods are those of a clueless dinosaur. Rest easy Lou Gorman, Hal Keller, Dan O’Brien, Woody Woodward, Bill Bavasi and all the rest. Your reps are safe because you just plain lost a lot.
Blogmasters, are we still forbidden to get excited about AFL stats?
Firova. What are you smoking?
Does anyone know if Danny Rohn’s “administrative” coaching position will be in-uniform or more, uh, administrative?
#44– out of uniform; he will apparently spend the games in the stands or charting by a monitor… a trade-off he may be willing to make to get back to the majors.
from the TNT: “For Rohn, the major league job will be his first – and it’s a position the Mariners created for next season. Adminstrative coach? “The NFL has them, a few other major league teams have them,†Bavasi said. “We get a lot of advance information before each series, and it has to be distilled. We wanted a solid guy to do that. “Before games, Rohn will work with players. During games, he won’t be on the bench. He’ll probably be in the stands seeing if the advance information we’ve gotten is accurate by watching.â€Â
the Times said: “A primary responsibility of Rohn’s will be to take the M’s advance scouting reports and distill them for players and the coaching staff”
41: I have a lot of trouble detecting sarcasm on the internet, but I hope to God that you are being sarcastic.
Firova is smoking the same thing I’m smoking – which is the thin doobie of public knowledge. I don’t know much, but it seesm like 2000 to 2003 was a good run – yes the farm system suffered. It’s like the Bryan Price bashers – 2003 with 5 starters going the whole year, doesn’t fit into their view of the world. Which leads us full circle – performance measures for a GM or a pitching coach are lacking. But the big bat missing for 3 years at the trade deadline still irks me. Was this Pat or Ownership?
Thanks msb! Hmm, I thought those were called scouts. Good and bad I guess. Sad to see a very capable field general like Rohn whom I really liked and respected relegated to said role, but also nice to keep him in the organization should we further sicken of Grover in 2006.
Loki, I feel that Nintendo frugal zealotry was far more to blame than Gillick – remember when they actually called him “Trader Pat” with the Jays? Bavasi is a double whammy because he’s even less creative within similar financial constraints…
We’ve talked a lot about Gillick on the blog. Read this, for instance (you’ll note that I was a year early on my Gillick leaving timeline, however).
You can appreciate what Gillick did while still being aware of what some of those moves did to impact the team down the road.
According to the Toronto Star he was christened Stand Pat because “On Aug. 31, 1987, he sent a couple of righthanded pitchers, Oswald Peraza and Jose Mesa, to Baltimore for lefthander Mike Flanagan. There was not another deal for 608 days, until Stand Pat budged and shipped Jesse Barfield to the Yankees for Al Leiter on April 30, 1989″
At some point, if you have enough scouts, I think you need someone to compile, collate, integrate and analyze the information. If not Rohn, then it’s another one of the coaches…There might be a value in this, or there might not be…It depends on how it’s implemented.
So that means that if Gillick had never traded Barfield, Griffey wouldn’t have made that great catch to rob him of a HR in Yankee Stadium.
Thank you Pat Gillick!!!
You can appreciate what Gillick did while still being aware of what some of those moves did to impact the team down the road.
Exactly.
Look, I tend to take a mixed view of his tenure- but the M’s farm system has been wonky for a while, PREDATING Gillick. This is the first year we’ve produced a regular out of the farm system since Jose Cruz Jr. in 1997 (and to be fair, Felix and Jose Lopez go on Gillick’s side of the ledger as well- our international scouting has helped save our ass from having such awful drafts, and that’s something Gillick knows from his time with the Blue Jays, who were good at that).
Gillick enhanced some problems we’ve had for a while by his emphasis on veterans and accceding to Mattox’s bizarre draft strategies, but was able to paper it over for a while with good FA signings and doing a decent job on the Griffey trade. It’s to his credit that an organization that lost THREE HOF-caliber players in 3 years was able to be good for years after those players left, and in some senses improve. A lot of organizations could have imploded after that.
I think the problems we’ve had since 2003 are a result of organizational issues that transcend Gillick. He’s part of them because he didn’t fix them and acceded to them, but he’s not the sole problem, and I don’t think Moneyball particularly treats Gillick or Jongewaard fairly.
Oh, and by “regular”, I mean “regular position player who starts as a rookie as an M and sticks around for a while”.
#41 Firova said “The most vilified GM in Mariner history”…
Gillick the most vilified GM in Mariner history? No way Gillick comes close to being vilified as much as Woody Woodward (for good reason). Now if you’re just counting this site, perhaps you’re correct as it wasn’t around in the WW days, but seriously, Woody was way more vilified than Gillick has ever been.
Yes, since this site has been around, there has only been a choice of two GMs to vilify. Not much of a list.
On topic: What sort of a pickup is Jeff Pentland Squire? It doesn’t sound like he lead the Royals to greatness.
Do hitting coaches make a blind bit of difference?
mmm… Mogwai.
Screw Pentland. Surely Edgar is bored in Bellevue and ready to take over as hitting Coach.
How many hitting coaches have we been through in the past 10 years?
Here we go with the Edgar for hitting coach thing again. What? No mention of Moyer and Wilson?
Fair enough- I had forgotten about that. I think he might be someone we could pick up as a starter who might be more feective at Safeco than you’d think.
And yeah, picking up a batting coach from a team equally as pathetic as you are offensively is basically saying you don’t think batting coaches have much to do with results. Maybe he interviews well or something…
#64–
Lee Elia (1993-1997)
Jesse Barfield (1998-1999)
Gerald Perry (2000-2002)
Lamar Johnson (2003)
Paul Molitor (2004)
Don Baylor (2005)
Pentland….
On topic: What sort of a pickup is Jeff Pentland Squire? It doesn’t sound like he lead the Royals to greatness.
Do hitting coaches make a blind bit of difference?
The consensus opinion among sabermetricians is that most hitting instructors don’t make too much of a difference, outside the brilliant few (such as Walt Hriniak, I guess).
Pentland’s record with Kansas City doesn’t look good. (Of course, it’s not like he had much to work with. . . . ) However, I believe he is often credited for tempering the hacktastic days of Sammy Sosa’s youth. If he could do the same for Mr. Beltre it would certainly be a boon. . . .
hmm. the Boston Herald is reporting that (contrary to what the Globe said this morning) Theo is walking from the Sox.
It would be wise for the Dodgers to jump on that. haha.
#71 I was just going to post the Boston Herald link too.
Will Theo really just walk away from baseball or will he just go to the highest bidder? I know a team in Seattle that could certainly use a better GM and has the bucks to pay him $2 mil a year to turn the franchise around…
(trimming off-topic FA discussion)
Bombshell on Epstein. I think he was always highly overrated to begin with, but it’s just a personal opinion. Can’t argue with ’04 obviously, but he did a very poor job of filling a gaping hole at closer down the stretch this year, which would have gone miles and miles towards better posturing the Bosox for the postseason – despite all of the other injuries.
Timlin, while fantastic overall, hit a wall from August 1 forward, with an ERA of nearly four. Very dumb not to pull the trigger on something at the deadline. Lord do I wish it had been Guardado for Abe Alvarez or some live arm with a pulse. Apparently, the Bosox would offer Alvarez but nobody else of interest and Bavasi ultimately balked. At any rate, Everyday Eddie and his 6.17 September ERA wouldn’t have been much of a panacea anyway.
Epstein came in with the philosophy that closers were always, by definition, overrated and his closer-by-committee concept killed him in 2003 with the infamous Kim/Lyon/Fox debacle. He then quickly went out and got Foulke for 2004 and the rest was history. If he can get a better gig elsewhere, color me shocked…
As the Boston Herald article points out, Theo had his flops but they were outweighed by the successes. Not trading for Guardado was muddled largely by Eddie’s no trade to the Sox and whatever demands he might have had as far as excercising his option for ’06 and the M’s demands for talents (I’m assuming they were trying to get a couple of arms for Guardado, along the lines of Anibel Sanchez and Jon Papelbon).
The article mentions that he might take a year off — if he does that would make him a perfect fit timewise in Seattle as Bavasi is likely to go if the M’s don’t win in ’06. given how the front office works they wouldn’t be likely to fire Bavasi now to get Theo at this juncture anyway…
Hitting coaches could make a difference, but they don’t know how to teach hitting to big league players.
Most coaches that truly know how to teach a big-league swing are consultants. However, even among the mechanics theorists, there remains significant debate as to what constitutes a perfect swing.
Coaches, unfortunately, are more likely to perpetuate swing myths than to actually teach effective mechanics.
For those that might be interested, try this link to a fun little hitting mechanics IQ test:
http://www.setpro.com/op_ed/op_ed_quizz1.htm
Sounds like the wily Lucchino played the political game much better than the thirty-something Epstein. Surpising though that he was so reportedly unnerved by the press that it ultimately became a dealbreaker. In concert with his desire to now take a year off, it sounds questionable if he has the mental toughness to suceed over the long haul in an increasingly cut-throat business. A Lucchino/Towers reunion from the Padres days wouldn’t be at all surprising…
Somebody tell me why we didn’t hire Stottlemyre. Ugh…
‘cuz he would have cost a lot of dough and likely been no better than Chaves.
Howsthat?
Can anyone see Pat Gillick interviewing with the Red Sox, AND getting the job? …heh… RS fans will be bouncing off the walls more than usual after a couple of years of “Stand Pat”…
Yeah, Pentland couldn’t turn the Royals into hitters. I doubt Charlie Lau would have helped them much either. His work did coincide with Sosa’s great leap forward – I believe the goal for Sosa in 1998 was supposed to be 100 BB / 100 RS. As the story goes, this taught him to lay off the sliders in the dirt and use the opposite field, and he had a pretty decent year. I’d like to see how a similar set of goals would benefit Beltre or Lopez, for starters. I know the going line is that hitting coaches don’t make any difference, but if the BB/PA goes up by 10%, that will put a few more runs on the board, no?
Of course, I hope this doesn’t mean the M’s are making a FA play for Salsa Sammy. All the cork in Crete isn’t bringing him back to 1998.
I recall reading an article, last year, that attributed Beltre’s great season to a left toe injury. It seems that the front foot injury forced Beltre to keep his weight back. Staying back is key to adjusting to offspeed pitches away. Furthermore, the article speculated on whether healing from the injury would allow Beltre to resume the mechanical flaws that kept him from achieving his potential….
I’ll research that article. It will be quite the exclamation point on the idea that coaching, at the big league level, is essentially a non-factor.
69. And what do we make of The Boston Globe’s article that initially said Epstein agreed to an extension (also reported by ESPN)? Not the Globe sports section’s finest hour, that’s for sure.
check out this series of posts from a dogder’s blog last year:
Howard, you’re saying Beltre OVER-performed because of his bad ankle? I guess we won’t know until next year, but I’d bet he does even better at 100% health.
Posted by: Jerry at December 16, 2004 04:36 PM
Next year when Beltre hits 20 homeruns in Seattle and hits 270 again, you are all going to say how you all knew we should not pay him the big money. Remember this next September.
Posted by: Howard Fox at December 16, 2004 04:36 PM
At 100% health, he tried to pull everything. This year he couldn’t, he went the other way, and voila!! He tried pulling everything the last week or so of the season and during the series with St Louis….check his power numbers during those 2 weeks.
Posted by: Howard Fox at December 16, 2004 04:38 PM
This theory’s been around for a while. Check out this old post at Peter’s and my old blog.
Can anyone see Pat Gillick interviewing with the Red Sox, AND getting the job? …heh… RS fans will be bouncing off the walls more than usual after a couple of years of “Stand Patâ€Â…
Actually, Henry sounds like the kind of guy who’d hire DePodesta, bad relations with sportswriters in LA and all. Gillick’s pretty old-school.
I also would like to mention that, while I think Bill Bavasi’s a good guy and I think it’s justifiable to give him another year, I would happily tell him he gets paid for doing nothing in 2006 if it meant Theo Epstein would be the M’s GM. This front office DESPERATELY needs an infusion of thinking from outside the “conventional baseball establishment”, and while Bavasi’s pretty open, he also isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to exhaustively examine the M’s organizational failures. Frank Mattox comes to mind- he seems to embody the Peter Principle that is the old-boy’s club in MLB, and one I don’t think Bavasi’s going to challenge.
76-
The theory isn’t as farfetched as it sounds. There are a number of players who attribute peak years to changing approach due to injury. Phil Garner, for instance, mentioned in one of Ron Luciano’s books that in 1979 he had a hand injury that made him change his swing, and he had his best year for average and OBP ever, and tied his high for SLG.
So what your saying is all I have to do is “accidentally” pull a Tonya Harding on Beltre and bingo?
Beltre’s stance was a little more closed in ’05 vs the times I saw him playing for LA. I don’t know if that was related to the injury or what. Now this is purely wild-ass speculation, but it seems that if your stance is a little more open, those outside pitches seem a little farther away. And if they seem a little farther away, you might not be as tempted to go after them and fail your way into a strike.
Just a theory.
Also, one of Don Baylor’s beliefs was to be a little more pull happy than not, could have also effected Beltre. Funny thing is Don didn’t encourage Beltre to get closer to the plate like he once did and THEN try pulling the pitch.
#73, Stottlemyre no better than Chaves? I don’t buy that. Smacks of more cheap personnel in Seattle and a continuing slave to the dollar mentality instead of getting the best guy for the job…
#73, Stottlemyre no better than Chaves? I don’t buy that.
A lot of people do. I’m profoundly unimpressed with the job he’s done on New York; I’m not convinced that he’s even good, let alone the best guy….
I can’t agree with that after his long string of team leading ERA’s he put together with the Yanks, but I guess you can always argue that he had a hell of a lot of talent. Stottlemyre not even good though? Don’t tell Aaron Small. That’s a ludicrous statement IMHO…