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.
Jim Riggleman is Awesome
I don’t love all of his in game tactics, but every time we get one of these locker room controversies, he comes out and says brilliant things. From Ryan Divish’s piece in the TNT, we get all kinds of awesomeness. Here’s one good answer:
Divish: Why would someone say stuff like this?
Riggleman: Pettiness, seventh-grade mentality, just pettiness of whatever jealousy, pointing fingers, deflecting responsibility, lack of accountability, just a lack of a character. These things happen when you’re losing; you’re not seeing that happen with winning teams now. But those winning teams go out and lose a couple games and you’ll see it.
And then this is just tremendous:
Rats are the first one of the ship. When the ship is sinking the rats are the first ones off. They’re the ones scavenging everything on the ship when it’s floating good and going good, but when it’s sinking the rats are the first ones to abandon the ship.
Go Jim Go.
Edit: KJR has the whole audio, and it’s so great. Listen to the whole thing. I might go start U.S.S. Riggleman.
Game 159, Angels at Mariners
Moseley v Jimenez. This’ll be fun.
Lineups:
Mariners
RF-L Ichiro!
Assorted jerks and one person who apparently stuck up for him.
A brief comparison of Ichiro and Ibanez
I wanted to expand a little on this diary at Lookout Landing, which takes a different issue with Baker’s piece.
When it came to Ichiro, who got off to a typically slow start in April and part of May, the internal turmoil nearly hit its boiling point.
Ichiro, career April: .293/.348/.395
Ichiro, career May: .364/.412/.464
Ichiro, April: .252/.310/.361
Ichiro, May: .319/.384/.398
Ichiro, first seven games of May: .423/.464/.500
Ichiro, May 1-May 15: .310/.344/.379
Quick and dirty, M’s hitters through May 15th, by OPS
Ibanez .854
Beltre .777
Lopez .737
Ichiro .688
Betancourt .630
Johjima .570
(Did Sexson have a .714 or is that a query artifact?)
But others point out that Ichiro, along with Ibanez, is one of the few Mariners to put up consistently high numbers during a season in which the team has all but collapsed.
Ibanez, May, when Ichiro was supposedly about to be beaten up by his teammates: .218/.307/.366
Ibanez, September: .256/.316/.337
Shouldn’t the conversation have gone more like
Anonymous clubhouse coward: “Hey, so yeah, we all hate Ichiro and in May we were going to kick his ass because he wasn’t hitting.”
Baker: “Okay, but he was hitting, he started off May on an amazing streak and was stealing bases two a game.”
Anonymous clubhouse coward: “Uh, never mind.”
I don’t expect that. But the very least we should demand from people who cover the team is that they check these things before they go into print. Ibanez hasn’t been consistent unless consistent is “good except when he isn’t” and Ichiro’s stats don’t line up with the given reasons for discontent. And if they don’t, again — what’s the reason for the hate?
Quick Question
If clubhouse access allows reporters with press passes advanced insight and a perspective unavailable to the masses, why weren’t issues like the clubhouse-versus-Ichiro reported at the time, when they happened? Read more
Teammates Hate Ichiro, We Hate Teammates
In his second part of his rebuilding series, Geoff Baker writes about specific hostility towards Ichiro in the clubhouse during the early part of the season. Quoting the relevant portion:
And it was a clubhouse in need of some direction, given the problems engulfing it as the season came undone. When it came to Ichiro, who got off to a typically slow start in April and part of May, the internal turmoil nearly hit its boiling point.
“I just can’t believe the number of guys who really dislike him,” said one clubhouse insider. “It got to a point early on when I thought they were going to get together and go after him.”
The coaching staff and then-manager John McLaren intervened when one player was overheard talking — in reference to Ichiro — about wanting to “knock him out.” A team meeting was called to clear the air.
Now, you might wonder, what could Ichiro have done to foster such open anger? Clearly, he must have offended someone pretty severely.
Ichiro this year had to battle a midseason hamstring problem, and he was shifted from center field back to right because McLaren thought Ichiro was a better defender in the corner. While Ichiro is said to have recovered from his injury, his stolen-base totals dropped as the season progressed. He also did not get to some balls in the gap and the right-field corner at times, prompting more clubhouse complaints that he cared only about piling up hits instead of sitting out to heal properly.
Yep – the explanation given is that teammates want to “knock him out” because he plays when he’s less than 100% healthy. What a bastard. How could he possibly garner the respect of his teammates when he’s selfishly hurting the team by playing at a diminished level and keeping guys out of the line-up who could have helped the team win? If only he would learn how to be a clubhouse leader, such as Raul Ibanez, who would never struggle through pain, costing the team valuable runs in a playoff race while a ready replacement was waiting in the wings.
Oh, wait, that’s EXACTLY what Raul Ibanez did last year. You remember last year, right, where the team managed to stick in the race despite the fact that Ibanez had a .697 OPS the first four months of the season while playing absolutely brutal defense in left field. Remember last July, when he hit .184/.241/.262 as the team was trying to figure out if they were a legitimate enough contender to make a trade deadline acquisition, then later admitted that he had played through a painful shoulder problem that limited his power and affected his swing. Meanwhile, Adam Jones toiled in Tacoma, unable to get any playing time while Ibanez killed the team with some brutal performances.
Why was no one threatening to beat up Ibanez last year? Why is he a revered clubhouse leader while Ichiro is a selfish one dimensional egomaniac?
Because the stated reason is total crap. The players aren’t mad at Ichiro for playing hurt, even if that’s what they’ll state publicly. They’re mad at him because he’s Japanese, or he stretches by himself, or he wears funny clothing, or some other non-baseball reason. I’m not denying that they really do dislike Ichiro – this isn’t the first time this has come up – but I am calling BS on their reasoning. MLB players don’t get aggravated to violence because a guy won’t sit out when he’s hurt. Just the opposite, in fact, has been the case with Erik Bedard, where members of the team reportedly have no respect for him because he wouldn’t pitch with pain.
So, what is the real reason? It could be racially based (let’s be honest, MLB players aren’t the smartest crowd in the world), it could be personality based (“His shoes are pink – how gay!”), or it could be something else entirely. I have no idea, and I don’t pretend to know. But I do know this – I don’t care what a bunch of replacement level, washed up, overpaid and entitled career losers think about Ichiro’s efforts or value, and neither should the M’s front office. If Carlos Silva thinks Ichiro is selfish, then maybe Carlos Silva should look into being more selfish and pitching well enough to win a game once in a while.
100/100 club
I know milestones like this are pretty meaningless, but the loss mark on its own is enough to stop and contemplate.
Going back past the Gillick-through-Bavasi years, you have to really go back to get an M’s team this bad. They have a shot, if they really pull together — and Silva’s re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-injury doesn’t help their chances — to lose out and tie the franchise record of 104 losses in a year, set in 1978, the second year of their existence. More reachable: 1980’s 59-103, or 1983’s 60-102 (two teams with payrolls of approximately $0). Anyway you look at it, this season the M’s took a colossal amount of Nintendo’s money and managed to not only historically less with it but they also managed actively set the state of the farm system back and reached out to slap around future years by committing to waste future Nintendo money in advance, in case they’re not around to sign horrible pitchers to ghastly contracts.
I know I’ve tried to skate through the year a little, not spending too much time staring into the abyss, looking for bright spots like Morrow’s progression, or Ichiro’s play, but I paused after the game tonight and thought about the scope of this disaster for a while. The more I think about it, comparing how the team fell this far that it’s competing with those early expansion years, the more I wonder what I’m doing following this idiocy.
I can’t understand why anyone would want to retain Lincoln and Armstrong’s services, or anyone associated with them or even who knows them after the they put this capstone on the rubble they’ve turned the franchise into these last few years.
Game 158, Angels at Mariners
Felix! It’s Felix! Yayyy! Two-game win streak here we come!
Looking at the standings, I take some small consolation from knowing the Yankees won’t be getting a playoff berth either.
Our long nightmare ends
If you’d told me before the season started that the M’s would have a 12-game losing streak broken in a start where Ryan Feierabend left with five runs on his record, Roy Corcoran would get the win by pitching two innings, and four of the teams’ nine RBI would be from Jeremy Reed and Wlad Balentien, I’d probably have just stared.
“Attendance” last night was under 20k: 19,065.
Remaining games: 2 against the Angels, 3 against the A’s.
The Nationals have 2 against the Marlins and three in Philly.
I can’t bring myself to root against the M’s, but I don’t see any reason I can’t root for those lovable Nationals.
Game 157, Angels at Mariners
Weaver v Feierabend