Proven Chemistry Guru Guillen Harming Chemistry
I like Jose Guillen, and this isn’t in any way an attack on him, as much as it is a hilarious conclusion to the ridiculous claims that the M’s simply fell apart without his leadership.
Guillen demands trade, not speaking to manager.
But the main reason he is in “living hell in Kansas City” is a foul relationship with manager Trey Hillman.
“Guillen and Hillman are not on speaking terms, they don’t talk,” said the source. “Guillen is definitely not happy, he’s not comfortable and he would do anything he can in economic terms to ease his way out of Kansas City.”
The next time sportswriters correctly predict a player’s effect on a particular team’s clubhouse chemistry, it will be the first time. Until then, ignore them.
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but! but! the guys on the radio know that the reason the M’s have a bad clubhouse is ’cause Jose isn’t in there, policing the place!
High baseball ability + High baseball IQ = good chemistry
The scary thing is, I think the biggest “learning” that M’s management will take away from this season is that they didn’t focus ENOUGH on clubhouse leadership, chemistry, etc. Also, that Erik Bedard was a bad acquisition because he was mean to the media.
As a result, this offseason they will double down on high-character, media-friendly guys and believe this new clubhouse mix will put them back on the winning track.
Why do I get the feeling that the reason succesfull teams for the most part have good chemistry is that winning makes everyone happy, therefore producing good chemistry? And vice-versa for unsuccessful teams?
Bill “Spaceman” Lee had it right when he said this about clubhouse chemistry:
“You take a team with twenty-five assholes and I’ll show you a pennant. I’ll show you the New York Yankees.”
Pretty much the way you can predict that whatever follows, “I’m not tryin’ to be dick, but,” will be something only a dick would say, you can predict Guillen crapping on somebody.
This all reminds me of an awesome quote I read from Terry Francona the other day in regards to Manny being unhappy… again.
“I’ll take a guy hitting .500 that’s miserable as opposed to somebody that’s handing out bouquets and roses to his teammates and he’s hitting .145,” said Francona. “That’s kind of how it is.”
Guess he must have heard how Pepe was staying in our lineup…
So Guillen’s only non tempermental year was in Seattle.
from the KC Star in February:
““I know about Jose’s past,†manager Trey Hillman said, “and maybe I haven’t spoken about this enough. The one thing I’m very encouraged by is he’s always had passion. Sometimes, the passion is misconstrued as a bad attitude. I don’t see it that way.
“I would … rather have a guy you need to help continue to control his presentation than a guy where you’ve got to apply a cattle prod to his rear end to get him going. It’s a lot easier proposition to help tame someone with passion.—
This offseason, the M’s will have a new GM (though “new” could mean Pelekoudas taking the job full time). Either that new GM correctly understands the value of Chemistry relative to more mundane things like, extra base hits, defense, on-base percentage, etc., or he (or she) doesn’t. If the new GM understands, we don’t have to worry about a chemistry fetish screwing things up. If the new GM doesn’t understand, we’re scuppered anyway, so why worry?
Yep, if the team is winning, then nobody’s worried about how much time the struggling slugger spends in the cage, the group of latin guys who always hang out together “really help each other out”, and the tempermental pitcher who won’t talk to the media and wants a personal catcher is just quirky that way. Oh, and if everyone gets along great, then they’re a bunch of guys who really pick each other up. If they don’t get along, then they really motivate each other.
The same team with a losing record has a slacker at first who needs to be “called out”, it has a problem with cliques, and personality problems on the pitching staff. If everyone gets along, they’re too nice, and if everyone yells at each other, the clubhouse is a distraction.
There is a part of chemistry that is real, but that part, as Dave says, just can’t be predicted. I think there’s a bigger part that is mostly the equivalent of gossip, and get’s spun to suit the story line. That’s what’s happening with Jose Guillen. Same guy, same behavior, different narrative depening on the W-L record.
So Guillen’s only non tempermental year was in Seattle.
Well, while the region’s all-pervasive passive-aggressive seasonal affective disorder leads the already phlegmatic/melancholic to immobility and suicide, it may lead the choleric/bilious to sanguinity. Such is the gloomy coin’s two halves. For chemistry questions of such humor I prescribe leeches.
And to think! Guillen could have been doing this in our clubhouse all year!
I could kick myself!
I’d offer up Turbo to them. Well heck, I’d even throw in Pepe. Think of it, two gritty veterans for one!
Too true. Sportswriters seem to think that certain things are constant: so-and-so is a “character guy”, so-and-so is a “proven hitter”, etc. People change. Some adapt successfully to change, some don’t. The Mariners had a guy once who was the happiest, sweetest player you’d ever see, such a student of baseball history he would step up in the box when he thought a curve ball was coming because he’d read that old time ballplayers did that. They later had a guy who hit into 4-3 groundouts regularly because he’d decided the seats in a new stadium were too far and got really frustrated about it, and who terrorized the other players in the clubhouse, even those who were, at that point in their respective careers, better than he was. Of course, the name of both those guys was Ken Griffey, Jr. George Karl could transform a team of unbelievers into a defensive juggernaut, but he couldn’t control the egos success brought.
Jose Guillen is the same guy he was when the Angels kicked him off their team. He is the same guy who kept everyone loose in Seattle last summer. And he’ll be the same guy when he gets the heck out of Kansas City.
Chemistry can keep a club loose and happy, and lack of chemistry can aid a collapse, but neither is as effective as hitting a two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth when trailing by one, or striking out the other team’s cleanup hitter with the bases loaded. And the guy who does that isn’t thinking, “I’m doing this so Jose Guillen will like me more”, just as the guy who fails doing it isn’t thinking “This will teach that Jose Guillen!”
I’m sure the winning had something to do with it too. Does anyone think that Hargrove and McLaren coddling of veterans also helped Guillen fit in better in Seattle?
Losing cultures talk about chemistry as a cure, winning cultures speak of it as a by-product.
Teixeira to the Angels for Casey Kotchman and minor league P Stephen Marek
do any of them have proven chemistry?
…because the Angels haven’t been banging the M’s like a gong enough already this season.
The Angels (rightfully) believe they’ve got the division locked and are probably looking ahead to post-season matchups at this point. Is Tex really going to be that big of an improvement over Kotchman at his point?
Dave’s analysis at Fangraphs pegs him at about a 9 run / 1 win improvement over the course of the season (he actually was suggesting swapping him for Rivera, but it’s probably about the same). Clearly, as you said, they’re looking for this to pay off in the postseason. That’s more of a crapshoot (eg see Gene Tenace, 1972 WS) but if you can do something to improve your odds, and your pitching is already solid, upgrading your slugging without hurting your defense sounds like a good plan to me.
Bill James, here:
As in politics we have left and right—neither of which explains the world or explains how to live successfully in the world—in baseball we have the analytical camp and the traditional camp, or the sabermetricians against the scouts, however you want to characterize it. I created a good part of the analytical paradigm that the statistical analysts advocate, and certainly I believe in that paradigm and I advocate it within the Red Sox front office. But at the same time, the real world is too complicated to be explained by that paradigm.
It is one thing to build an analytical paradigm that leaves out leadership, hustle, focus, intensity, courage and self-confidence; it is a very, very different thing to say that leadership, hustle, courage and self-confidence do not exist or do not play a role on real-world baseball teams.
The people who think that way. . .not to be rude, but they’re children. They may be 40-year-old children, they may be 70-year-old children, but their thinking is immature.
Nobody is saying “leadership, hustle, courage and self-confidence” don’t exist. In fact, you’ll find enormous amounts of them on every major league team… the winners and the losers.
Or is it only children who think a team full of A-Rods would beat a team full of Ecksteins?
James is tilting at a strawman. Nobody (here at least) is saying those things don’t exist; nobody is saying they don’t matter. They’re saying they don’t matter anywhere near as much as they are popularly thought to, and vague terms like “chemistry” are often a crutch used by sports journalist to explain the unlikely or to invoke the mystical or poetic in what comes down to more prosaic thumping of an inferior team by a superior one.
I agree with most of the things said in here, but this statement is taken way out of context. You can’t take one item and expect it to do the same at another location. Kansas City has a different team and different management and different People! Seattle has different people and is lacking leadership in the clubhouse and a guy who has a go get them attitude. I don’t necessarily agree with this statement, but Kansas City was most likely not missing this on the physiological side of things. You can attack those of use who think psyche has a big effect on the game, but do it with correct logic. If the mariners beet the Indians 5-3 and the Indians beet the red sox 11-1, would the Mariners beat the Red Sox 33-3? Well with Guillen’s psyche back on the club we would…..J/K. I think Guillen is huge part in why the mariners sucks so bad this year not just because of his psyche but the mainly because he did in the field and on offense. Do you really think Sexson would skip all the practice and warm up items if Guillen was still on the team?
I think that is a large part of the point of the post. No one knows how to predict chemistry. Despite what people say, even winning doesn’t always create good chemistry. Even if you keep a guy in the same place, the people around him might change, or he might just change, and now you’ve got different chemistry. No one knows how to predict chemistry because no one knows how to predict human behavior on a scale lower than several trillion people (First Law of Psychohistory, right?).
Not to mention that everybody is affected by other things going on in their lives. The guy that “held the team together” one year when he was young and in love might be a “clubhouse cancer” a couple of years later when he’s going through a messy divorce. But how much that helps the team actually win games — or not — is generally overstated regardless.
Character is important, but it’s not as important as talent.