A case for hope
Even after a deeply relieving win like today’s, it’s hard to look at the standings and have happy thoughts about the fortunes of the team. But as I constantly try to repeat over and over, while I’m not at all optimistic about this season, I have faith in the long-term future. Since so many of the recent comments here have focused on the futility of the team, I thought it might be worthwhile to talk again about why in the current circumstances I still hold to that.
First, the front office. Right now, they’re not the worst in baseball, but the gap between the Mariners and the growing number of smart, well-run franchises is growing. But front offices aren’t like franchise locations: you can hire a new front office. The owners, if they decided to make a change after this season (and please, it won’t be mid-season ahead of the draft, there’s just no way), could in one hiring change the fortunes of the team entirely. Having a bad front office is not an indefinite punishment. It can end.
Now, what triggers that is outside the scope of this, and often times changes there have little to do with any defined criteria. But as long as you know that the front office can be changed without the team leaving town, there’s hope for improvement. I’ll talk more about that in a bit, though.
Moreover (and feel free to mock me for this) I have not entirely given up hope in the current front office. I know, it’s like I’m screaming “Learn, dammit, learn!” at Joshua hoping that he figures it out before it’s too late to recall the B-52s, but there I am. The people in charge of the M’s are not dumb. They understand more about player development than I ever will, and they grasp some concepts, like sunk costs, that other front offices don’t. At the same time, if you’ve been here for a while, you’ve seen us make the case repeatedly that they’re too stuck on roles, on intangibles, that they’re not particularly good at talent evaluation or figuring out how to build a roster, and so on.
I was listening to Joe Morgan once, and he was talking intelligently about how to measure a player based on his individual contributions, and then he veered off onto pitchers, where — you know the drill. And I yelled at the TV “No! No! You were so close!” Eventually I gave up on Joe. I’m not there with the M’s, and maybe that’s just because I can’t tune them out so easily.
Bavasi’s a smart guy. He is. If you’ve been to the events, you know that. But he’s burning his brain power on problems like trying to figure out how to acquire a Bloomquist clone, and not processes that get the team a real right fielder to start the season. He goes looking for a (adjective)(adjective)(noun) to fill a perceived hole — he shops for an established middle-of-the-lineup presence because he really believes that you can’t stick an unproven player in the #4/#5 slots and expect to win, and doesn’t step back and look at whether or not that’s valid.
I can’t imagine that he doesn’t look even within his own division and see GMs taking much different approaches and not think that there are lessons to be learned.
I hold out hope that one of these failures is going to be the one that makes everyone get together and start talking about what’s not working, and what the fundamental assumptions they’re working under are wrong.
I’m realistic, though — there’s really one GM in baseball who has made that kind of change, and he’s running the Padres. Everyone else refuses to change and the dinosaurs get beaten by the furry little mammals. I know the chances are slim. And yet still I hope.
It’s likely it’ll come to a purge. The ownership team – the Baseball Club of Seattle which is, operationally, Howard Lincoln for Nintendo of America, and yes, I know it’s more complicated than just “Nintendo” – has an enormous incentive to right the ship. No matter what the front office says, there is only so much failure can be tolerated. Even if you think that’s a lot of failure, there is somewhere a limit.
And once they’ve decided to make a change, we’re a good interview away from a turnaround. Say there are four retread candidates and Chris Antonetti in the queue, and they ask them each the same opening question: “How quickly do you think the Mariners could compete for a championship, and what would it cost?”
Their answers would be more or less:
1-4: “Next year, with the core we have, if we make the right moves, sign some front-line starters, keep moving forward with the general strategy you already have in place…”
Chris: “It’s hard to say without more information, but if you’re willing to keep spending at the same level, we can find some short-term solutions that will put a .500 team out there while I spend to sign Felix to a long-term extension. Then I’d be looking to work younger, cheaper players into the lineup while making better free agent signings as we go – you’ve been burning your money, but you know that, we should talk about how we can do better – and every year we’d improve the core, try and pick up a couple of wins. We might get into the playoffs while we’re working on the team, but building a championship team will require us to build a young core of home-grown talent to build around, and that won’t come next year or even the year after.”
The conversation starts.
As set in their ways as they may be, as much as Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln may think Bloomquist is the true way to winning baseball, the next time they try and hire a GM, they’re going to be faced (if only in picking candidates to interview) with more of what’s gotten them into trouble and true change in the form of Antonetti or another dramatically different viewpoint.
I hope that if they face that choice, they’ll make the smart business decision and pick the different approach.
Say they don’t, though, and they pick a retread old-school candidate, they muddle around while attendance drops, their next media deals take a hit. How low can the franchise go? With their sweetheart lease, they’re guaranteed to be able to milk profits out of it.
Then there’s another set of criteria to consider: when does the team’s majority owner realize they’re getting an extremely poor return on their investment? What happens then? Do some of the extremely smart, long-neglected, don’t-even-get-a-desk minority owners step in? Or does the Baseball Club sell entirely to someone who thinks they can do better than squeak by? If the team’s making very little money, it’ll be a hugely attractive turnaround buy for someone — get the franchise winning, butts in seats, new media deals and they’ll be climbing the Forbes rankings soon.
We’re of course right to fear the kind of endless Royals/Pirates style purgatory. But the M’s aren’t saddled with parsimonious or micromanaging owners in the same way those have been. And it’s possible they could still do that – beautiful stadium, barely-attended games – but it’s unlikely. That’s a different post, though — this is about hope.
The current owners don’t have to change their minds, or decide to sell the team for financial reasons. Perhaps the owners decide they’d like to get out of owning a pain-in-the-ass franchise. It happens.
Either way, we’d get a change in management.
And there you have it, change and a new shot at success:
– Front office changes, either through person ell or enlightenment
– Ownership changes, in whatever form, resulting in front office changes
Once I started to think rationally about when and why changes would be made, I realized that changes were inevitable. They might not come as quickly as we’d like, but they’ll come. I have faith.
While I might not be as optimistic about the FO as you, I do agree that the future isn’t totally forsaken. I’d be a little more confident if we still had Jones, Sherrill, and the young crew of prospects, but it’s not like Bedard is an old goat.
Anyway, to all of the serious bandwagon abandoners, you might jump back on while you still can. Those of us who stick with the team will one day be able to say that we weathered the worst as fans. When, and I did say WHEN, we win it all, it will taste that much sweeter.
I’m a regular and appreciative reader of USSM.
This post is a perfect example of why.
So has there ever been any insight as to why Lincoln and Armstrong have been so insistent on using an approach that hasn’t worked for several years now, and moreover why they are so incredibly resistant to sabermetric approaches?
300ZXNA- Isn’t it obvious? Results-based analysis–the goal of any front office, smart or less smart, is to win championships via winning baseball games, and the team’s record has improved in every year since Bavasi became GM. I’m sure ownership would say they’re unhappy with how long it took to “turn the franchise around,” but it seems obvious they really felt the team had a chance to contend this year–thus the Bedard trade. Now that the wheels have mostly fallen off, you can see how the entire team, from players to ownership, is confused about what’s gone wrong and repeatedly asserting that the team is good (I know a lot of this is PR, but I think it at least somewhat reflects the team’s actual views).
So, it seems to me that the team is on the cusp of changes, in one of two forms:
-Realizing that there’s more to winning baseball games than… winning baseball games. Evaluating and changing team’s approach to front office hires, roster construction, all of it.
-Retaining current approach, blaming Bavasi for failed implementation via bad signings/trades (Sexson, HoRam, Vidro, Everett, etc.). This is the scenario in which a retread GM is hired. I actually think this is somewhat unlikely because of the perceived suddenness and surprisingness of the team’s collapse.
All of which is to say that I agree with Derek. There’s definitely hope.
I’m guessing that all those people who post on Geoff Baker’s blog saying that USSM “hates the Mariners” don’t read this kind of post.
I’ve begun to wonder if Lincoln/Armstrong don’t interfere with personel choices more than it would seem. What would Bavasi care if Wee Willie is popular? It has become obvious that ownership rather be profitable rather than winning. The ownership group may not care about winning a championship. However, they care about the chance of a championship. When the Mariner’s are competitive and exciting, people attend games. Do these decisions influence personel decisions? Perhaps. It would certainly affect budget for that personel. And if Lincoln/Armstrong put restraints on who and how much can be spent on specific players? Say, L/A say to Bavasi. “Willie needs to be under contract for the next 4 years, not for more than 5 million a year. Get it done.” “Find someone else like Willie. We don’t have one internally. Find someone, but keep the number low, and one or two years only.”
I have begun that while ownership is pretty laissez fair in regards to what is going on. However, Lincoln and Armstrong are not.
Prediciton: Lincoln Armstrong will sacrifice Jeff Pentland first. Norm may suddenly find himself reassigned to some sort of “scouting” position.
I’ll shamelessly jump back on the bandwagon if they become contenders and enjoy every minute of it. I have feel I have earned the rare privilege of having complete freedom as a Mariners fan but still be considered a true blue fan. All this talk about you are going to be missing out if you don’t stay the course of your Mariners fandom has become just plain lame in my opinion. I can respect the basic sentiment of not abandoning your team because times have become bleak but projecting that on to everyone who has become frustrated with this team regardless of the context of their fandom history is shorsighted in my opinion.
Excellent observations on the F/O reminds one of the French General staff, they always fight the last war and draw incorrect conclusions from the correct evidence. I fear that they may see this year as a quirk in their path of a few more wins every year resulting in Bavasi and others staying on.
I had a depressing conversation last night that caused me to conclude based on family genetics and the like that I probably have 30-40 years tops to see the M’s win a series. Any chance we can turn this around a little faster please?
More than the casual fans think, less than the pessimists fear. We know in the early years of his management, he spoke obliquely of no longer basing personnel decisions on ownership whims. But there have been some statements that personalities still play a role in roster management.
This team is too boring to keep my attention. They are not a group of loveable losers. Wake me up in 2012 or whenever they become contenders because that is the only thing that could make this team even remotely interesting. 🙂
Was that really a “WarGames” reference? In that case, who’s Dr. Falken that could come in and distract Joshua long enough to save the day?
and not just them; there is a board & ownership group made up of people who became fabulously rich in what were at the time non-traditional organizations….
very few teams use the bullpen coach as a sacrificial lamb.
Derek, I just don’t believe it. Joe Morgan was speaking intelligently? C’mon, what kind of fools do you think we are?
Derek,
Great post. There’s always reason for optimism. You can point to positive trends and optimistic scenarios for the organizations with the bleakest outlooks right now – the Giants, Orioles, Nationals, Royals, Pirates.
Bad contracts expire. Rosters turn over. Scouting departments strike gold. Etc.
Maybe, as you said, Bavasi can learn hard lessons from what’s happening this year and adjust his approach. Or maybe he doesn’t get that chance and the organization hires a hungry, unproven GM with some solid ideas on how to rebuild the team and the ability to turn them into action.
Either way, there’s always reason to be hopeful.
This is certainly the glass half full perspective. It is certainly a fact that change will eventually come. The glass half empty perspective is that there is a pretty good chance – I’d put it at 50% at least – that another old-school GM is hired and we have to go through 5 more years of the same before we get our change. It will come, but I’m not counting on it coming quickly.
Lincoln and that dead weight Armstrong are the problem. All they are about is marketing, marketing, and marketing. It’s more important to them to have a scrappy white kid from “around here somewhere” to go out to the boonies and sell tickets to the gomers than it is to have a winning team.
Or to give huge contracts to Silva and Washburn so that they can suck, and they can “market” that they have acquired “proven starters.” Here’s a clue, Howie and Chuckles. A good team will “market” itself if it is winning.
Maybe I am a pessimist, but somebody tell me what incentive Bedard, for whom they gutted their OF and pitching staff, has to sign here again.
And now we get the Griffey rumors again!!!! Give me a break! These morons are treating Seattle fans like we were hicks stuck in the 1950s when all we had were the Huskies and the hydros, and nothing mattered but those old home town ties.
Bavasi is a minor problem. A good club president who knew anything at all about baseball would tell him what to do and he would do it. Lincoln and Armstrong must go if this team is to contend regularly.
Well done, sir. As an English major, I come to USS Mariner for the in-depth statistical analysis, but I stay for the pitch-perfect metaphors.
I think, The Baseball Club of Seattle will sell to an ownership group based in North Carolina,
And then two years later, claim that they had NO IDEA that the new owners wanted to move the team back to their home town.
The problem is philosophy. I hope Bavasi will realize he’s making mistakes and change, too, but it seems like his philosophy is to assume A (which is, of course, wrong) and then assume B will follow. When your initial assumption is wrong, you get stuck in circular logic when it doesn’t work out.
The reality is that the Mariners are 313-374 under Bavasi’s guidance, and near the bottom of MLB in 2008. Bavasi has had five years to turn things around, and he has failed miserably.
Bavasi is responsible for signing the likes of Spezio, Aurilia, Reese, Everett, Washburn, Sexson, Weaver, and Wilkerson.
Bavasi dealt: Guillen for nothing; Winn for Foppert; Cabrera for a future ESPN analyst; Moyer for nothing; Soriano for “Horramible”; and Snelling/Fruto for Vidro. Bavasi failed to get a pitcher in return for Garcia. Bavasi also tried to trade Balentine for Dotel, who was on the DL within weeks. It was Bavasi who agreed to include Sherrill in the Bedard trade. Bavasi should be fired before he is allowed to make another ill-advised trade.
Hope? Not as long as Lincoln, Armstrong, Bavasi and McLaren are in control.
The Rangers will win the upcoming series.
I like the optimism of DMZ but I am suspicious that all the people that claim Uss Mariner hates the Mariners are subconsciously making him soften his tone a bit and throw them a bone every now and then.
Ow.
Also, it certainly hasn’t worked if that’s what my subconscious is attempting.
I like Bavasi. He’s certainly got the people skills necessary to be GM – he’s good at his job in that respect – but I’m having trouble with this paragraph. Can someone really be smart without being a critical thinker? Because that’s what your saying: Bavasi’s smart, but he hold baseless false opinions and never questions them.
Bavasi, I think, is an excellent argument for why teams shouldn’t have a single GM who does both the work of being a GM (personnel management, inter-team deals) and the work of a talent evaluator (scouting, player selection). Bavasi shouldn’t be the guy deciding what players we need, but he could be the guy going out and making deals to get those players. I think he’d do that job pretty well. He’s also excellent at media and public relations: who didn’t love him when he said “[expletive] Dave Samson”?
Look at someone like JP Ricciardi. He’s seemingly really quite good at evaluating pitching talent, but the man knows nothing about hitters, and his media relations are astoundingly bad.
It’s teams that divide up the work between different experts (like Oakland and Boston) who do well.
The Garcia trade was a great trade. Bavasi deserves credit for that one.
Ricciardi tends to take risks on players that get hurt a lot. That, in terms of GM duties, is one thing the M’s have done well. For the most part they go after pretty durable players. It’s why, one reason anyway, why they paid so much for Silva.
Why? Considering Olivo was a total flop, Reed can’t hit, and Morse can’t play defense, I think I would’ve much rather upped it a little bit and gotten a pitcher off the White Sox for Freddy instead.
Not to mention, he damn near stuck us with the washed-up suckitude that is Barry Zito as well.
We’ve hashed that trade over many, many times here.
I would appreciate it if my little ode to hope was not overrun by another discussion of that particular move.
To answer the “smart” question: I think it’s entirely possible to be smart in one way and not another. Bavasi’s clearly a bright guy in some ways, but I don’t really have a good answer to the “if you’re not self-critical, can you be smart?” argument.
Bavasi, I think, is an excellent argument for why teams shouldn’t have a single GM who does both the work of being a GM (personnel management, inter-team deals) and the work of a talent evaluator (scouting, player selection). Bavasi shouldn’t be the guy deciding what players we need, but he could be the guy going out and making deals to get those players. I think he’d do that job pretty well. He’s also excellent at media and public relations: who didn’t love him when he said “[expletive] Dave Samson�
Do we know that they don’t have different people doing that now? It’s not as if there aren’t assistant GM’s, outside consultants, etc.
Really? It seems that’s his biggest weakness: Overvaluing the talent he’s acquiring and undervaluing the talent he’s giving up. If he’s not deciding who to acquire, and shouldn’t be trusted to decide who to give up to acquire someone else’s target, then what’s his role?
While even Billy Beane applauded Bavasi for the Garcia trade, not including a pitching prospect in the deal was unwise. The Mariners (including Bavasi) apparently overvalued their pitching prospects, and didn’t feel it was necessary to get one in return for Garcia. Oops.
Sorry about that. Results-based analysis clouds my judgement.
I was going to respond to this, but it got metaphysical and epistemological really fast.
It’s something worth considering, at least. Is critical thinking a necessary component of intelligence?
You’re focusing on the talent evaluation, again.
When someone has decided what the relative value of our players are, and what players we want to acquire, I’m suggesting that Bavasi is the guy we want on the phone trying to sell the deal to the opposing GM. Even if we have perfect knowledge of player skills, someone needs to make the sales pitch in order to get the other GM to agree.
Evan,
Opposing GM’s are the ones who want Bill Bavasi negotiating deals for the M’s, not Mariner fans.
I agree — and this is something I don’t blame on BB exclusively. I think there were a lot of folks in the FO who were hoping that Meche and Pineiro would come back from major arm surgeries (of which really only Meche has, to a decent extent), and that some of the other guys like Nageotte and Blackley would step up — rather than sadly go down the same road of debilitating arm injuries, as was the case.
And again, that doesn’t sound like much of a role. Official drinking buddy of fellow GMs? Come on.
If Bavasi is going to keep his job, it will be (I think) with a revised, improved, and more realistic view of the types of players he needs to acquire (and, more importantly, avoid) and do his best to make moves along those lines. I doubt he would accept, or be fit for, an “official negotiator” role as part of a split-GM position.
That point is only valid if Bavasi is also the top talent evaluator.
Au contraire; that’s a HUGE role. Why do you think unions, management, etc. pay big bucks for a negotiator?
Those are totally different situations.
Having someone on staff to be your trade negotiation closer for the 8 or 10 trades your organization makes a year is not a good use of resources. If you have a GM smart enough to accurately peg the value of in-house talent and identify and accurately value talent on other teams as part of a trade, he/she ought to be able to, you know, pick up the phone and make it happen.
I’d like to see more posts in the vein of “how things get turned around” like this one…
I’m pretty sure we all know every reason there is out there, as to why we should hate this team by now. And this isn’t intended as the too common knock on the USSM staff… (if you’re being analytical, and the situation is one that’s negative, what do people want you to do? lie about it?) All I’m saying is, I believe in you guys, go give me a reason to believe in the M’s. Tell me about the great GM candidates out there, and that good SS down in Albuquerque.
(Really, just keep doing what you’re doing) Give me a reason to believe. Cause looking at fangraphs over and over doesn’t seem to help… 🙂
Not really.
If you really think negotiations and relationships is a major part of a GM’s job, then negotiation skills should be valued thusly. It’s NEVER just a matter of picking up the phone and making it happen; if it were, then we’d all be making fortunes at sales jobs….
Besides…
People skills are tremendously under-rated by a lot of fans. Remember: Paul Podesta.
Get a better philosophy of players and better talent evaluation input and you’ll be surprised by how much better a GM does.
I think you’re missing my point.
Negotiating skills *are* very important – if you have leeway over the terms and parameters. But the role proposed here was for BB to finish negotiations without being responsible for parameters on either end (what you want, what you’re willing to give up). I fail to see how that’s valuable or much of a role for a major league front office.
Now, this
I agree with wholeheartedly. And I think that’s the key issue – can Bill improve in these areas himself or will it take a regime change?
On another note:
What about Dan O’Dowd? If anyone’s been to the proverbial drawing board and reversed course from past mistakes it’s him. Since his tenure started, the Rockies have seemingly tried a half-dozen team building methods, mostly in a vain attempt to compensate for their park. Now he has a solid young core of talent that he’s moved aggressively to lock up at reasonable prices, which plays well in any park.
Gwang,
Bavasi’s trade record is considerable evidence that he is a poor negotiator.
How do you separate that from his talent evaluation?
Bavasi appears to be able to fgo out into the market and get the sort of player he wants while giving up only the sorts of players he undervalues. That’s incredibly successful negotiation.
What sort of player he wants and what sort of player he undervalues are the problem, but that’s beyond the scope of his negotiation skills.
If other talent evaluators give him detailed information about what each player he has or could want (from a given team, perhaps briefing him for a specific trade pitch), he’s then fully informed.
You’re correctly assuming that the negotiator needs to know everything about what he’s buying and selling, but where you’re wrong is the implicit assertion that Bavasi can only have that knowledge if he comes up with it himself.
What makes you think he undervalued Cabrera, Soriano, and Balentien?