Things I would be surprised to hear a new manager say
DMZ · November 20, 2008 at 6:22 pm · Filed Under Mariners
“I liked the old approach, and don’t think I’ll be changing it.”
“We’re not going to work on fundamentals this spring — we’re good enough at that kind of thing.”
“We’re going to be less aggressive on the basepaths.”
“There will be no real competition for jobs unless there’s a major injury.”
“This is a bad club with no chance at contention.”
“I want to lose coming out of the gate and establish a losing atmosphere that can carry us all season.”
“I’m going to try to divide the team into warring camps I can play against each other.”
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What brought this on, friend Derek?
“damn, my star player is an ass, and if he never gets off the bench I’ll be happy.”
hey, you can see if Wakamatsu used any of these in his long interview this afternoon
“I’m quite unimpressed with ownership here and hope in my next gig to have a better front office supporting me.”
“I understand these are the worst fans in baseball and I’m hoping to match their expectations.”
“We’re trying to get our pitchers to concentrate on throwing more first-pitch balls.”
“We’d like our hitters to show a little less patience at the plate.”
I was irritated that he was so anti-rebuilding periods. I hope that doesn’t mean he starts looking for “established veterans”. I wouldn’t mind a few losing seasons if the teams were filled with young up and comers who will make a great team a couple of years from now.
I didn’t get that he was anti-rebuilding, just anti the phrase ‘rebuilding’
“There are just too many Asians in baseball!”
“None of these young kids on the club can be compared to a well-known star.”
“Last year was fine. I don’t really see any reason we should try to improve on it.”
“winning breeds infighting, jealousy and general all-round laziness”
“My wife and children don’t like the area. We’ve done very little research on the schools, but from what we can tell they are quite poor.”
Didn’t McLaren say pretty much the same thing as the 4th one? Maybe that’s why they sucked so much.
Or how about,
“Not only will this Team lose at least 90 games for the next two years, were also raising the price of Beer at Safeco.”
Ladies and gentlemen, The Zduriencik/Wakamatsu era! It rolls off the tongue.
In all seriousness, I’m pretty stoked. Let’s give ’em a shot.
“I’m not going to sit up here and promise the moon. Obviously, someone promised the moon last year and it didn’t work out.”
Wait, Wakamatsu did say that at at the press conference.
I like him already.
Also — happy birthday to Ken Griffey Jr (39), Hank Blalock (28), and Stan Musial (88).
The Zduriencik/Wakamatsu era! It rolls off the tongue.
It’s the Waky-Z era. If it doesn’t work out, they can do hip hop.
Z’s the MC dealin’ whack rhymes
Wak does the scratchin’ while ridin’ the pine
Z’s on the phone, rappin’ out deals
Wak’s in the dugout, keepin it reals
[scratching ’til fade]
Great humor. Yes it would be nice to see some unvarnished commentary from the always PC Mariners management. Unfortunately, what we got from Wak was the good old “We’re going to try to win right away”, and even better “just with osmosis, we should be better than last year”. Heaven help us.
Haven’t we heard this before, and before that? The schizophrenia remains: are we (re-)building for the future or will we just try to patch things up around our veteran players and see if we can trick the fans into coming back to the ballpark. When fans are being lost at the rate of ~500,000 a year for last several years, I’d think some candid comments would be very appropriate…as noted in this thread!
Well, I don’t know about “osmosis” but he’s right, even if they changed nothing they should be better than last year, because last year they significantly underperformed their Pythagorean won-loss (67-95). Just as they weren’t as good as they appeared in 2007, they weren’t quite as bad as they appeared in 2008 (though they were still pretty bad). But Wak has a valid point that the team was/is a little better than people might believe. That’s a sane observation, and if he (and more importantly Zduriencik) also realizes when the team is over-performing, then we won’t have a repeat of the “trade away the farm to get one piece to push us over the top” insanity like last year’s offseason.
Classic, guys. Classic.
Yeah, I can’t fault Wak for anything he’s said yet. He did make some semi-valid points, and he’s a new manager – he’s supposed to say these things.
I think it’s obvious by now that we can expect anything but “more of the same,” and I couldn’t be happier. I know a lot of us have been (understandably) conditioned to be pessimistic, but, quite frankly, we should all be jumping up and down right now…