The larger issues
If I may, there’s a lot tied up in this whole Ichiro thing today and I think it’s important to tug them apart a little.
First, there’s the blind quote thing. I wish Baker would either name his sources or stop acting all coquettish about it (“You’d be surprised… could be a pitcher… name doesn’t start with a ‘Q’…”). If someone wants to give an incident like that on background, that’s fine, but if it’s important enough to run, it deserves a more detailed exploration. If the situation was so serious that the team thought Ichiro’s physical safety was an issue and called a meeting to work it out, that’s really quite disturbing.
The story’s now been flatly contradicted by at least two people who would have been around for it in Riggleman and Putz. And there will likely be others. If they’re all singing the same tune to protect Ichiro, doesn’t that at least undermine the clubhouse-v-players thing?
Beyond which, if there was a player looking to pick a fight with Ichiro, they’d have been thrown out or traded for John Mabry or something crazy, and it would have looked really weird. Unless it was Brad Wilkerson (hey, Blue Jays-Expos connection!) it’s fair to assume the threat of actual violence didn’t seem too serious.
We don’t know what happened. Some people do who are willing to put their names to it, and others don’t, and they’re probably afraid to shower with the team because there’s a big yellow streak down their spine which if spotted would guarantee at least one player does get in a fight. We can’t weigh that out.
So chalk the “was Ichiro going to get beat up?” to at best uncertainty.
Second, is Ichiro a bad teammate? Does he harm team chemistry? I don’t know. I wrote a whole thing on evaluating team chemistry and the short of it is that team chemistry, if it exists, can’t be predicted, evaluated, doesn’t seem to be significant and — as Riggleman said today — tends to be the product, rather than cause, of winning or losing. And we don’t know Ichiro personally, so I can’t speak to that either. And maybe contributing by quiet example in 2001 ticks the 2008 supporting cast off. But if there’s a real reason that Ichiro’s a bad teammate, we haven’t heard it yet, as Dave pointed out.
Third, is there resentment of the Japanese players? I don’t know that either. But I don’t understand how Ichiro would enter into this. Ichiro’s well-paid for being a good player. He’d certainly have received more on the open market, whether or not you think he’s worth the money. Johjima got a huge contract extension while sucking and then kept sucking. I think Washburn’s public tantrum about Johjima was ridiculous, but it’s still true that he, at least, and Bedard both didn’t like throwing to him for whatever reason. So I understand players might look at that contract deal and think “he only got that contract because the team has Japanese ownership ties”. But that’s not Ichiro. And if the resentment and hostility is really about performance and undeserved contracts, why Ichiro over Johjima?
I realized while writing that I do understand how Ichiro might enter into this. If they’re mad about that and think Japanese players get special treatment, well, Ichiro’s Japanese, why not hate on him, too? And that’s even beyond the general racial issues, which brings me to:
Fourth, is the clubhouse racist? This would hardly be the first time a team fractured along racial lines. Stuff a bunch of vastly talented people from diverse backgrounds speaking different languages into each other’s company for 162 games and crazy things happen. But if that was the case, you’d think we’d have seen symptoms of this a lot earlier. So we don’t know this one either.
Fifth, why Ichiro? There’s a Bill James line Gomez quoted in the comments I like: “Bad teams tend to focus all their frustration at their best players.” Ichiro’s clearly the best all-around position player on the team. Ibanez is by far the more productive hitter, and he’s done exceptionally well in important situations this year, but he’s terrible in the field. Felix can be electric, but he’s not the draw Ichiro is yet. We’ve seen this before, when players like Alex Rodriguez and even Ken Griffey Jr. were criticized for not doing enough to lead.
And yet it seems strange that Ichiro would be singled out for being paid while not performing, when there are other players are equally well-paid, but produce nothing. Silva was supposed to solidify the rotation and instead has been plagued by back trouble, talks trash about players to the press, and has had a season line so bad it’s painful to glance at. Why was there no blanket party held for him?
… unless Ichiro’s a bad teammate, to the point that his teammates find reasons to hate him.
… or it’s because the clubhouse is divided and there’s some portion that doesn’t like the Japanese players
Neither of which we can know.
Sixth, why is this important? Brewer argued that Ichiro being in a bubble was the team’s greatest problem. Which should let you know not to value his baseball analysis, because this is a team that can’t hit, pitch, or field, and a front office that spent vast sums of money on horrible players because they couldn’t tell the difference between good value and bad. They’ve lost a hundred games this year. There is no possible accounting, no matter how much value you want to put on a team “melding” or whatever chemistry term you like, that makes Ichiro or his personality or lack of leadership worthy of this kind of treatment.
The whole thing – the stirred-up controversy, which I certainly bit on angrily, is exactly the sort of baseball coverage that drives me nuts. It’s the focus on the superficial: which players are “accountable” by being media-friendly, or who hangs out with who, the blind-source gossiping and speculation, all at the expense of what’s substantial and to me interesting — and what some of the other stuff Baker’s series is covering. How does an organization go so badly wrong? How do they recover?
It’s a weak story told because it generates a lot of controversy and traffic for the Times. And obviously, since they’re contracting out road beat coverage, they’re willing to run this kind of thing. I wish they hadn’t (bringing us back around to the first point). We’re now in a place where, as scraps put it while I was drafting this,
It’s coming down on Baker because he’s responsible for it. If the source won’t take responsibility, then it’s on Baker. We have to take Baker at his word, over Riggleman and now Putz. I’m not willing to do that.
Moreover, it’s not an important story for that very reason. If it’s Beltre and Beltre’s got something to say, we can talk about that (Beltre, lauded for playing through injury, Ichiro, supposedly resented). Or Silva or Bedard or who the hell ever. We can discuss whether they can deal with him or need to be traded, or if Ichiro has to go. But this is gossip, and common gossip at that.
Riggleman’s right: teams that lose a hundred games, particularly teams that go into a season thinking they’re contenders, have these problems.
I want to know whether or not the team is serious about playing Lopez at first, and whether that’ll affect their off-season strategy, and whether they’ve given up on LaHair (yes). Whether Ibanez might get offered arbitration, what the GM process will look like.
We’re a week away from the end of the regular season, and we haven’t read a good GM article in ages. Who’s on the list? Who’s available, and what other options are out there for candidates? That’s the kind of thing that’ll matter to the franchise. Because when they’re winning again, Ichiro will go back to being the weirdly-dressed, funny and sometimes foul-mouthed leader-by-example, all of this will be forgotten, and we won’t have to wonder which team personnel are fighting a proxy mud flinging contest in the press.
All of which is reason enough to hope they get this ship turned around.
Exactly right. This is hack journalism at its worst: pull a fake “controversy” out of thin-air to distract people from the bigger picture.
This is what happens when you try to build a team with a focus on “chemistry.”
Well put, Mr. Zumsteg.
You hear all the time that “Winning is the best deodorant”, or some variation of that. Because, when it comes down to it, players are happy when they win and unhappy when they lose. The examples to the contrary are rare and do not have blog posts the size of this trying to understand why their team is turning on each other.
The M’s are not only losing, but they’re underachieving on top of it which leads to, well, this. The cherry on top is a media that enables it because they can’t get a good quote from Ichiro.
I think Ichiro could go a long way to improving his club house charm and alleviate some of this gossip, but at this point Ichiro is the smallest player in this whole drama. Writers trying to get a story and players looking to blame anyone but themselves have turned a bad season into a very ugly, very nasty season.
What more can Ichiro do? Even Geoff has stated in the past that when a reporter wants to talk to Ichiro, Ichiro typically talks to the reporter.
So what should he do? Stop using his translator? Japanese is a wildly different language than English, and I’ve studied enough to know that if I were in Ichiro’s shoes, I’d sure as hell would want someone extraordinarily proficient in both languages to do the translation for me.
Stop with his individual stretching routine and use only the team drills? No thanks, Ichiro’s routine seems to be working just fine.
Change his entire personality and insist he become more vocal? You know we seemed to cut John Olerud a lot more slack for being a quiet guy when he played here.
Dave has already covered all of this. If a player has a problem with Ichiro’s “club house charm” that player probably has their own issues to tend to first.
The Mariners have real work to do, and as far as I know none of that work includs finding out whether or not Ichiro is a good clubhouse guy.
Who cares.
Its the clubhouse, a area in my opinion the media shouldn’t even be allowed. What happens in the clubhouse should stay in the clubhouse. Fans gain nothing from reading articles about blow up dolls and baseball bats in the ChiSox clubhouse. We gain nothing from finding out that Sexson hid from the media on several occasions. We gain nothing from learning that a couple players want to beat up Ichiro. I want to hear something substantial, something important. I want to hear about the future of the Mariners.
As a fan I have many other things to worry about other than gossip.
The Season cannot end soon enough.
The Season cannot end soon enough.
Thank you Derek. And Dave also. I can’t describe how angry this all makes me.
Every time I think this season can’t get worse…
Brian – Assuming your comment was about mine, I think you’re picking nit’s a bit. I was pretty clear that Ichiro isn’t the problem. My point about his club house charm was only that he isn’t a big Rah Rah guy and people around him use it as an excuse for everyone elses poor performance. I could have stated that better I guess.
Can it be said enough how stupid this whole discussion is? You’ve got a team with awful pitching, disastrous defense, a poor offense thats probably about to lose 2 of it’s 3 best hitters, an interim manager, no GM, a depleted farm system, and we’re talking about Ichiro’s leadership?
Good points, DMZ, but I’m kind of sorry they had to be made so explicitly.
I believe a cute comedy bit could be made of several unnamed, fat Ichiro-haters ctually losing “it” and attacking Ichiro in the locker room after a game: it’d be like one of the sillier kung-fu flicks, withIchiro effortlessing evading one douchebag’s flailing punches; throwing four or five others around like wide-eyed rag dolls; and the taking the bat out of another who thought he was creeping up silently behind, flashing a grin, then cutting to the OR where the surgeon is removing the bat from the guy’s ass.
The only thing that could make this season even worse is (knock on wood) some kind of sordid scandal involving the Mariner Moose, a clubhouse towel guy, Chuck Armstrong, and a hot tub.
This is really an unfair criticism IMHO. We shouldn’t expect someone with advanced insight and a perspective unavailable to the masses due to clubhouse access allowed by a press pass to be able to report on this kind of thing.
mln,
Why would that make the season worse?
I thought the Mariner Moose was the clubhouse towel guy.
Good post, Derek. This is why I read you guys and don’t even bother with the Times.
Beyond which, if there was a player looking to pick a fight with Ichiro, they’d have been thrown out or traded for John Mabry or something crazy
Maybe it was Cha Seung Baek? His trade seemed totally nonsensical at the time.
you also then get interesting notions as went out over KJR this morning …
Teams where players want to hurt the star can never never win (really?), so the Mariners will have to decide if they are going to “jettison the problem” so that they can win, or to live with losing for the sake of having the player there for merchandise & ticket sales.
This then leads to his notion that if the FO decides they have to trade the star, Japanese ownership would sell the team, rather than be a party to this move.
so, promulgated over the Seattle airwaves this morning– if the team loses, it’s Ichiro’s fault. If Yamauchi sells, it’s Ichiro’s fault.
msb,
Elise Woodward was great on this topic last night. No surprise Levy has the rectal-cranial inversion…if ever two people deserved to switch time slots…
Mitch is awful at discussing baseball. While he apparently has M’s season tickets, he knows precious little about the M’s or baseball in general.
DMZ- great write up, but the only thing I disagree with is your conclusion…by the time this team is winning again, ICHIRO! will probably be retired and relaxing back in Japan…
Great post, Derek.
Here’s what I imagine happened w/r/t the story: A mediocre/bad player who was recently signed to a big & long contract is coming off an especially bad season on an especially bad team. This mystery player’s all upset about what he sees as his fantastic skills being wasted on (and, worse, suppressed by) a crappy team. He wants to leave. Unfortunately, he’s a terrible player coming off a terrible season who’s owed tons of money for a long time, so he won’t be traded. How can he get away from the organization? Go after their best player in the press.
A Korean/Japanese schism?
While this would explain the trade… what?!? Unless Baek was still upset about what Ichiro said (or was reported to have said as a result of a bad translation) about Korea during the WBC, this makes no sense at all.
There was a reason Baek was traded. It was an awful reason, but a reason nonetheless. Baek had thrown two consecutive days and couldn’t go a third. The M’s needed a long man the next day, and Baek was out of options. I would have more faith in the M’s had they traded Baek because of a rift between him and Ichiro rather than the actual reason the trade was made.
I think this whole nasty story is nothing more than Geoff Baker trying to do another underhanded hatchet job on Ichiro again. (Baker should be fired in my opinion. He doesn’t deserve his journalist pass.)
We already saw this story in slightly different form a little while ago, when Baker “reported” that Carlos Silva was fed up and about to wreak some violence on a nameless player he blamed for the team’s woes.
A lot of people didn’t take Baker’s bait and naturally assumed that the person in question was Yuni (instead of Ichiro as Baker tried his best to insinuate in the article). After all, it doesn’t really make sense to blame one of the best players of the team, no wonder few took Baker’s bait, although some rightly wondered at Baker’s motives.
So it seems Baker changed his strategy now.
“Carlos Silva” going after a “nameless player” (blamed for the team’s troubles)
was morphed into:
“Huge number of guys who really dislike and are” going after “Ichiro”.
Baker put the anonymity (to protect his behind) in the front part this time, to properly target and try to degrade Ichiro.
“Carlos Silva” –> “Huge number of guys” (Oh, I can’t tell you their names, you’d be surprised)
Baker should be strung up on the journalistic gallows.
Maybe it was a typo:
“huge number of guys:
instead of
“number [1] of huge guys”
The proof that this is Baker recycling his Silva story to try to damage Ichiro’s reputation is pretty clear, when you have straight speakers like Putz and Rigglemann shaking their heads in puzzlement, indicating that in reality, Baker’s story as he wrote it, never actually happened in that way.
Seattle Times better look to their reputation.
I would love to see any of these asshats stand up to Ichiro. He would kill any one of them 6 times before they hit the floor, then walk off while stylishly wiping the blood and teeth from the hem of his $700 jeans.
Hey,
If we want new leadership in the FO, I see Kerry Killinger is available
for some reason, pt 3 of the series (addressing pitching) was posted last night under thursday’s articles
The Times hasn’t had much of a reputation in a while:
There was Blethyn using the editorial line to push the repeal of the Estate Tax (because it would benefit his kids).
The bad-tempered writers’ strike from several years ago.
The off-target attack on the Fred Hutch supposed-conflict-of-interest.
And, tellingly,
The general crucifying dullness of the bloody thing.
The first thing I thought of when I started reading this was “Must’ve been Wilkerson”, because he was probably mad that he wasn’t getting playing time, and that was directly affected by moving Ichiro to right.
Either way, I think Baker has bitten off more than he can chew here. This story is now on the front page of espn.com. I doubt he’ll ever give up his source, but he’ll probably be more careful to hide behind being a blogger to release this kind of information in the future.
You know, it’s interesting — ultimately all this hulabaloo comes down to “we don’t know what the truth is.”
Isn’t that the opposite of what a news story is supposed to accomplish?
I don’t think that Baker goes out of his way to do hatchet jobs on Ichiro.
But I do think that he tends to “buy” statements that are congruent with his beliefs on the importance of chemistry.
So dirty laundry in the clubhouse is the easy story to write that probably gets the best response and this recent batch of Ichiro talk also resonates with the prism that informs Baker’s opinions about rosters.
I think there are tangible reasons he tends to not question sources like the ones he won’t identify recently. Chief among them is that he’s already bought their argument.
I think he offers them to us outsiders in part as validation for his position on the importance of intangibles.
What a cheap, attention-whoring move on Baker’s part. The less attention we pay to this “journalism”, the better off we will be.
The mystery: why is the Ms record the reverse of what I generally thought it would be?
Premise: intangibles are very important to winning baseball.
Premise: the Ms have “documented” clubhouse rancor this season.
Conclusion: Poor team chemistry has torpedoed their season.
Continually the second premise is buffeted by Geoff but he fails to apply similar rigor toward examining the first premise.
The truth is nobody knows why
Marsellus threw Tony out of that fourth-story window except Marcellus and Tonythe Heathers wanted to attack Ichiro except the Heathers and Ichiro. But when these little media scamps get together they are worse than a sewing circle.Exactly. Thank you! This is Geoff’s “White Jays” article for our day. He hasn’t been on ESPN First Take enough, or something.
The guy is more interested in his blog’s hit counter than journalistic ethics. As somebody who writes for a living, all this hinting at a source is pretty despicable. “You’d be surprised.” If the story is written with an unattributed quote, then it is what it is, and going around making cryptic comments about who the source is only serves to further undermine an already weak story in addition to undermining the trust the source put in the reporter when they agreed the comments would be unattributed.
I would like to congratulate the Mariners, due to their stretch losing streak they have assured themselves of at least the #2 pick in the next draft. Way to Go!!!!!!!!!!
Makes me wish they’d have gone ahead and jumped him. Ichiro woulda ninja kicked their sorry behinds and we’d all know what’s what.
Is there a line on the DL for “ass kicked by teammate?”
Yeesh.
They use “strained quadriceps” I believe.
Wow. How happy are the M’s the focus has shifted to Baker instead of a clubhouse full of talentless ballplayers, one, or several, of which made these comments?
I doubt anyone was actually going to hurt Ichiro. But why would Baker make up the fact that someone said that? What does he have to gain? A whole bunch of extra attention and traffic benefit the Seattle Times, not Baker. With the state of the newspaper industry, if he gets more than a 2 percent raise this year, he should throw a party.
And what do you expect Riggleman and Putz to say? Oh yeah, we know who said that. It was that guy. Go rain your fury on him. No, they’ll protect their own just like someone in the political or business world. The same media-handling rules apply in baseball.
Baker will continue to protect his source out of self preservation, some give up on that line. If he gives it up now, not only does he lose that one player, or several, he loses most of the clubhouse because he can’t keep his word. As a beat writer, he can’t afford that.
SMB-
Nice Pulp Fiction reference…
What would he hypothetically gain by making it up? That should be obvious, though I feel like I should now say that I don’t think he did.
What do I expect Riggleman and Putz to say? There’s a difference in denials. You can say “we had some issues, we dealt with it” or “We wouldn’t discuss clubhouse problems even if they happened”… there are a lot of ways that could have gone beyond flat denials and all the other stuff.
I’m not sure what to say about “protect his source” except, as I noted above and others have been a lot more specific in discussion, he’s not doing that. Baker’s been giving out a set of clues, which I’m sure wasn’t part of the agreement with whoever he promised anonymity to. We’re not at the point where we can figure out it’s player X or clubhouse attendant Y, but this is already a far sight from flat blind sourcing.
RRS weighs in with an updated entry
RRS is quickly becomming one of my favorite Ms…great blog, great interviews, great on the field…
Really looking forward to him in the rotation full-time…hopefully for years to come…
Nice Pulp Fiction reference…
The movie this is reminding me of is less Quinten Tarantino and more Lindsay Lohan. Seriously, between the supposedly professional press, the players, the bloggers, and the fans, this whole thing reminds me of nothing more the petty intrigues of prepubescent girls. I have nieces, I don’t need to get this in my blog diet too, thank you.
I’ll keep checking USSM every day but until I see articles like those described in DMZ’s penultimate paragraph, I’m not going to be reading much at all, I’m afraid.
Fortunately there’s real baseball being played elsewhere in the country, and that gives me something I want to pay attention to. Go Rays! Go Brewers!
Nobody’s saying Baker made it up. Where does that come from?
I noticed he used ass instead of arse. Americanized Aussie! RRS is a class act and I, too, hope to see him going deep into games next year and for many seasons to come.
Hear Hear!!
That’s Ryan Rowland-Smith. I assume no one’s going to suggest this is more media-handling, what-do-you-expect-him-to-say stuff.
Joser, I appreciate what you’re saying, and I’ve always taken your comments seriously. I don’t get this, though. Of all the content we’ve written this year, in all our years, this is a blip. Are you really afraid that we’re going to be talking about this continuously for a couple weeks, never to return to the kind of other content we do all the time?
I feel like we should have earned a little more faith than that.
coming next:
Part 4 | Saturday: The Ownership
Part 5 | Sunday: GM and manager
Just looking at the title of this post, I thought it might be about the offseason, or the future in general, in which case the larger problem would definitely be Silva.
Sorry. It just seems like this has been going on for days already. I realize that’s not really true, but other than the game thread this is the 5th post in a row related to the “somebody said somebody hates Ichiro” gossip cycle. I know it’s not going to go on like this for weeks; I’m just saying I won’t be reading much while it does. Hey, it is your blog and you’re not getting paid so it has to run on passion; whatever gets you motivated to write is what you should be writing about. This is just a topic that doesn’t interest me at all (I have a low tolerance for soap operas of any sort, real or fictional — it’s why I never watch reality TV or “The Office” or “ER” etc and it’s why I pretty much stopped reading fiction over a decade ago). I appreciate what USSM does, particularly when it deepens my understanding of some aspect of the game. But I realize sometimes you can’t do that because you have to react to what is going on in the Marinerverse, and sometimes those are things are going to be the soap opera side of the game. And I know that appeals to a lot of people (as the popularity of soap-ish programming reveals); I’m a bit of an outlier on this issue and I understand that. You write about what matters to you; I read what matters to me. Most of the time, the two coincide. This time, not so much.
So I was just registering a bit of displeasure at seeing so many posts in a row on the topic and a hope (however badly expressed) that USSM would soon be returning to the kinds of topics that kept me coming back over the past few years. And judging from Dave’s Bedard article, it already has.
Good news for joser, we can have some GM discussion. The AP has a story out about how Armstrong says the Mariners are going to be “color blind” and, significantly in this case, “gender blind” about bringing “some fresh thinking” into the organization.