The Danger of Veteran Entitlement
One of the main themes of the 2007 season has been the divergence of opinions on the value of veteran happiness, especially as it pertains to clubhouse chemistry. As we’ve talked about many, many times, we were in favor of putting the best players on the field in an effort to have the 2007 season result in a playoff appearance, while the Mariners were extremely reluctant to make any roster moves that would result in the veterans on the club feeling disrespected.
The Mariners bent over backwards to make sure that Raul Ibanez, Jose Vidro, Richie Sexson, Jeff Weaver, and Horacio Ramirez were given leashes that would cross the Atlantic ocean, despite all having significant struggles for long periods of time that undermined the teams ability to win games.
All the while, the fans were fed a continuous line of defense of this please-the-veterans strategy from most of the local media. They had a track record. They had earned the right to fight out of the slump. The team owed it to the guys who got them in the playoff race in the first place to go the whole season with the same group. You’ve heard all this before.
Well, about 1,000 miles south of Seattle, we’re seeing the danger of an organization enabling their veterans to, essentially, have free reign over the clubhouse culture. The Los Angeles Dodgers have fallen apart in September, and it didn’t take the old players long to start telling the fans why the team wasn’t able to stay in the race:
“I don’t know what it is, especially when you have a lot” of young players, said Kent, whose double Thursday raised his average to .298 to go along with a team-high 20 home runs and 78 runs batted in. “It’s hard to influence a big group. We’ve got some good kids on the team. Don’t get me wrong, please don’t misinterpret my impressions. [But] it’s hard to translate experience.
“I don’t know why they don’t get it.”
Asked what they don’t get, Kent said: “A lot of things. Professionalism. How to manufacture a run. How to keep your emotions in it. There’s just a lot of things that go on with playing 162 games.
“But I think experience can help more than inexperience. And it’s hard to give a young kid experience.”
It’s become increasingly apparent in the last few days that the Dodgers have more problems than their lowly station in the standings, or as Derek Lowe put it, “The tension here is getting to the point where we have two different teams in [the clubhouse].”
Lowe, after spending a good deal of time criticizing his own inconsistent performance this season, added, “The last two or three weeks we haven’t been on the same page as a team, and you can see what happens when that’s not the case.”
The Dodgers’ collapse down the stretch, Lowe said, “wasn’t because of a string of bad luck; it’s just not a lot of people pulling together in here.”
Or, as Lowe put it, “you can’t have young players thinking they are bulletproof. No one should be bulletproof around here, walking around believing they don’t have to listen to anybody.
But “historically teams with a lot of young players don’t win championships right away,” Lowe said. “That’s something everyone around here is going to want to know — are we going to be playing young players so that they can have the time to develop and really be good in two years?
“What about next season? I’m going to be 35 . . . that’s a little unsettling for some guys who are under contract here. Do they already know the team they’re going to field is not going to be competitive next year?”
More than that, Lowe said, when it comes to mixing young players with a new crop of veterans next season, there has to be two-way respect.
“This has to be settled going into spring training,” Lowe said. “If there has to be a knockout, drag-out fight, so be it. But it cannot carry over where we’re having this same conversation. We can’t have the young players believing they are bulletproof.
“We’re also going to have to be very careful as an organization what kind of people are brought in next season,” he said. “If you listen to people here, the vision is to get even younger. You’re going to have to bring in players who are going to be all right with limited playing time.”
“Look at the back of his bubble-gum card, and all those numbers compiled over the years, which tell you how consistent [Kent] has been,” Gonzalez said, “and consistency is what gets you respect in this game.”
The targets of most of this criticism? James Loney and Matt Kemp, both of whom were called in for a closed door meeting with both manager Grady Little and GM Ned Colletti. Earlier in the linked article, they discuss how Kemp showed bad teammate abilities by failing to properly meet Tony Abreu at home plate for a high five after he hit a home run to give the team a 1-0 lead the other day. In their eyes, this was simply more evidence that Kemp and Loney are not doing enough to help the Dodgers win the NL West.
James Loney: .331/.381/.528
Matt Kemp: .333/.367/.515
Loney in September: .395/.441/.721
Kemp in September: .358/.386/.507
James Loney and Matt Kemp have been, without question, the Dodgers two best hitters this year. They have literally carried the Los Angeles offense that was been dragged down by the poor performances of highly paid veterans Juan Pierre, Rafael Furcal, Nomar Garciaparra, and Luis Gonzalez. And yet, when you hear the Dodgers veterans tell the story, the reason this team didn’t make the playoffs is that they had too many young players.
Lowe actually outright states that he’s worried the team is rebuilding by giving so many at-bats to “developing” players such as Loney and Kemp, worried more about the future than winning immediately. Because, clearly, James Loney and Matt Kemp’s presence on the roster is about playing for the future…
Keep in mind that both Loney and Kemp began the year in Las Vegas, having been given no chance to compete for a job in spring training thanks to the offseason acquisitions of veteran players to play the positions they have ended up taking by force after the veterans failed.
The Dodgers, through their heavy pro-veteran entitlement, have enabled bad players to publicly blame good players for the team losing. Think about that – the guys who are actually responsible for the Dodgers struggles are taking aim at the guys who have kept them in the pennant race. And, thanks to the ridiculous gang of writers who cover the Dodgers, the pro-veteran story will be written without challenge, and the 2007 Los Angeles Dodgers will be held up as an example of what can happen when you tinker with team chemistry by promoting kids from the minors in the middle of a playoff race.
Congratulations, Los Angeles – you’ve officially gone from dysfunctional to embarrassing. If you want to unload noted troublemakers Kemp and Loney, there are 29 other franchises who will gladly take those young punks off your hands. Good luck winning with your highly entitled, overpaid, and essentially useless veteran core.
But at least they’ll high five each other at home plate.
Off-day fun
Angels clinch the West.
Indians clinch the Central.
Boston’s only a game and a half up on the Yankees.
The M’s are one Yankee win or Mariner loss from being eliminated from the wild card. You’d think then they’d start to play the kids… for a couple of games, which… standard rant goes here.
Good times.
Game 154, Mariners at Angels
Batista v Colon! Wooo! 12:55, which I totally did not see coming.
Bloomquist at 3rd! IGNITION TIME
Game 153, Mariners at Angels
Washburn v Saunders! Joe Saunders. You know him, right? He’s that one guy.
Jones in left, bats 7th. Ibanez takes over at DH, Vidro takes first.
Also, Dave adds that Jorge Campillo was suspended for four games, and John McLaren for tonights game, as the result of Campillo throwing at Vladimir Guerrero last night. Honestly, I’m not sure four games is enough – what Campillo did was ridiculous and petty. Don’t like Vlad showing you up when you gave up a HR on your 85 MPH fastball? Hit him in the back. Message sent, move on. Throwing at someone’s head shouldn’t be tolerated, and honestly, if Vlad had charged the mound, I’d have been rooting for him to get a few good shots in before everyone broke it up. It’s basically inevitable that a Mariner hitter is going to get drilled in the next few days and we’re probably going to see a fight. Let’s just hope no one gets hurt because Jorge Campillo wanted to be an idiot.
USSM on KJR an hour early
Just an FYI, I’ll be on with the Groz a little early today – 1:35 pm out in Seattle. As always, you can listen here.
Rotation Building
One of the main topics of conversation this winter will be, I’m sure, how to acquire some new starting pitchers. Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez are unlikely to be back, and the Mariners will continue their annual offseason pursuit of starting pitching.
Everyone knows the normal suggestions. Throw big money at a free agent (which, in this years case is, I don’t know, Carlos Silva?). Trade for an established frontline starter, even though those guys are almost never available. I’m sure you’ll hear names like Dontrelle Willis mentioned in rumors because, after all, everyone knows who he is.
However, I’d like to offer an alternate option, and one that will could make the casual fan write me off as a blithering idiot – make a deal with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for one of their excess arms, because they’ve got more good starting pitchers than they have rotation slots.
Yes, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. They have too many quality starting pitchers. Really. I’m not kidding.
You probably know that the Devil Rays 2007 starting rotation has the 3rd worst ERA in the American League this year, posting a 5.15 ERA that is only better than the performances by the Seattle and Texas starters. Whenever people talk about the good young talent in Tampa, they always bring up B.J. Upton, Carl Crawford, and Delmon Young, so the perception is that the team can hit but not pitch.
Well, perception is not reality, especially in this case. The Devil Rays, as we’ve mentioned before, have the worst defense in baseball and one of the worst in recent history. They’re absolutely abysmal at turning balls in play into outs. They’ve used guys out of position in up-the-middle positions for significant portions of the year, and while it gave them a good chance to evaluate what guys can and can’t do, it also sabotaged their pitching staff.
But, if we evaluate their starters (bullpens not included in these numbers) by fielding independent metrics, we see that they’ve actually pitched pretty well this year.
Team BB/9 K/9 HR/9 FIP LAA 2.83 6.97 0.90 3.90 CLE 2.21 5.64 0.92 4.01 BOS 2.83 6.92 0.98 4.02 OAK 2.99 5.93 0.89 4.16 TBD 2.99 7.63 1.18 4.21 MIN 2.34 6.58 1.23 4.30 NYY 3.11 5.66 0.92 4.30 TOR 2.80 6.39 1.17 4.40 CHW 2.59 6.14 1.20 4.43 SEA 3.11 5.83 1.10 4.53 BAL 4.07 7.02 1.09 4.57 DET 3.27 6.33 1.21 4.64 KCR 3.16 5.28 1.13 4.71 TEX 4.33 5.68 1.16 5.06
That’s right – the Devil Rays starters have the fifth best Fielding Independent ERA in the American League, ahead of Detroit, Minnesota, New York, and Toronto, all of whom are considered to have playoff caliber starting pitching. Yes, I’d have rather used xFIP for the comparison, but I don’t have team GB/FB/LD totals, and in this case, it doesn’t matter, since xFIP would tell the same story. This is despite going through the first couple of months with Casey Fossum and Jae Seo getting regular turns in the rotation. Those guys have since been replaced by actual major league quality arms, and while it may still seem tough to believe, the Devil Rays have a very good rotation.
Everyone knows about Scott Kazmir and James Shields. But it doesn’t stop there. Andy Sonnanstine, Jason Hammel, Edwin Jackson, and J.P. Howell have thrown a combined 390 innings and posted a 4.74 FIP/4.75 xFIP. Those are solid numbers for the 3/4/5 spots in a rotation, especially considering their cost. And, of course, that gives the Devil Rays six arms for five 2008 rotation spots, and it doesn’t leave room for top pitching prospect Jeff Niemann, who is essentially major league ready after succeeding in Triple-A and staying healthy this year.
Counting Niemann, the Devil Rays will enter spring training with seven guys worthy of a rotation spot, none of them older than 26, and all of them making peanuts. And they’ll have two more top prospect arms starting the year in Double-A or Triple-A, knocking on the door to the majors, in Jake McGee and Wade Davis, along with moderately interesting Chris Mason, who could be next year’s Andy Sonnanstine.
That is an abundance of pitching depth, almost all of it certain to be undervalued by the market, and a chance to acquire a quality young arm with a better future than a past. No, you’re not going to get Kazmir or Shields, but that’s okay – pick up one of Sonnanstine, Howell, Jackson, or Hammel (with Howell getting my vote as the primary target), and your rotation is instantly better, younger, and you’ve managed to keep your money to improve other areas of the club.
Game 152, Mariners at Angels
Wooo! New starter! Feierabend versus Weaver!
Standard old new no-Sexson, Vidro-in-#6 hole lineup. The Angels’ magic number is three for the AL West title, so they won’t clinch tonight — and it’d be nice to force them to do that against some other team. Call me a grump.
(I believe New York’s number is 5, and they’re not playing tonight)
Random Things You May Not Have Known
Here are some interesting Mariner-related statistics that you may not have known. We’ll do it did you know style.
Did you know that Yuniesky Betancourt had 18 extra base hits in August? That was 55% of his hits for the month, and is the highest monthly total of XBH any Mariner hitter has had this year.
Did you know that the Mariners have seven pitchers on the roster with an ERA of 10.00 or higher in September? Jeff Weaver, Horacio Ramirez, Eric O’Flaherty, Brandon Morrow, Sean Green, Ryan Rowland-Smith, and John Parrish have formed their own arson squad.
Did you know that opposing hitters have a .331 batting average on balls in play against the Mariners in the second half? The only guys below .300 are J.J. Putz, Mark Lowe, and Sean White. Remember, BABIP is more about defense than pitching – the M’s defense has been killing them all year, but never is this more obvious than since the all-star break.
Did you know that the Mariners team ERA in games they lose is 7.21? Only Tampa Bay gives up more runs in losing efforts.
Did you know that opposing teams hit .347/.399/.515 against the Mariners in the first inning of ballgames? This is, by far, the worst in the American League. Hitters have only managed a .674 first inning OPS against Jarrod Washburn, but they’ve teed off on everyone else, especially Jeff Weaver.
Game 151, Mariners at A’s
Hernandez vs Meyer, 12:35 pm.
Happy Felix Day.
Jones in left, Ibanez at DH, Felix on the hill – the blog smiles.
Jocketty and LaRussa
In an article that was co-published in a St. Louis newspaper this morning, Larry Stone gives words to the rumor that Buster Olney has been repeating on sports radio in recent days, suggesting that the Cardinals GM/Manager tandem of Walt Jocketty and Tony LaRussa could end up in Seattle this winter, replacing Bill Bavasi and John McLaren. As with all of Stone’s articles, it’s worth reading, even though the only connection to the story right now is Olney’s public assertions and some long running rumors about the future of the Cardinals franchise.
For those who haven’t heard, here’s the basic deal in St. Louis.
Walt Jocketty got his start in baseball under the Sandy Alderson regime with the Athletics, coming out of the same tree that would later produce Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta, J.P. Ricciardi, and the popularity of the Moneyball theories, but Jocketty is, at heart, a scout. He was hired to run the Cardinals in 1995, and a year later, brought in Tony LaRussa, whom he knew well from his days in Oakland, and the two have held their current positions ever since, achieving significant success.
Several years ago, Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt initiated some organizational changes with the franchise, including bringing in Jeff Luhnow, a guy with a strong business approach but no real baseball experience, to institute some of the new wave of analysis into the Cardinals organization. They overhauled their scouting department, shifted towards an extreme emphasis on drafting college players, and Luhnow created an “advisory board” of well known statistical analysts, including fantasy guru Ron Shandler and uber-stathead Mitchel Lichtman (inventer of the UZR defensive system, which we’ve quoted here frequently), though that board is mostly now defunct. Luhnow has steadily been given more power over the past few years, and he’s often seen as a trusted advisor to Cardinals ownership.
This has, naturally, created the perception of a divide in the orgnaization. Jocketty, LaRussa, and Duncan are all old school, despite their ties to the A’s organization, and they’ve garnered significant success through traditional evaluative methods. They are among the most respected men in the game. Luhnow’s group is far more aggressive in adding new evaluative techniques to the organization and approaches the game from a very different direction than the Jocketty guys.
It’s been rumored for years that Jocketty is unhappy with the fracturing in the organizational structure, and that Bill DeWitt has been grooming Luhnow to take the GM job when it becomes available. However, Jocketty has denied these claims and is under contract through the 2008 season. He wouldn’t be the first to deny the existance of a problem that actually exists, but it’s not quite as simple as stating that he’s leaving the first chance he can get.
With LaRussa’s contract expiring, however, and the close ties between GM and manager, it has fueled plenty of speculation that the two will make themselves something of a package deal this winter, and if LaRussa leaves St. Louis, Jocketty will attempt to follow him out the door. Popular reports have tied the two to division rival Cincinatti, where a major investor in the Reds is a former part-owner of the Cardinals, and has ties to both Jocketty and LaRussa.
Among the backchatter in baseball, it’s about a 50-50 split on whether Jocketty will actually attempt to get out of his contract and leave at the end of the year, though most expect LaRussa to leave either way. And, yes, the Mariners are still considered an attractive option for a lot of people, despite the struggles of the franchise the last four years. If the Mariners made their GM and manager positions available, it’s nearly a given that the big name executives would be fighting for a chance to interview for the position.
So, yes, there might – and I stress might – be something to Olney’s assertion. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Jocketty/LaRussa tandem are in Seattle next year. However, that’s a long way from saying it will happen, or that it’s even likely to happen. As of right now, the Mariners aren’t giving any indications that Bavasi or McLaren are going to lose their jobs at years end, and a month ago it was a given that the front office had done enough to earn themselves another chance in 2008. I wouldn’t go registering LaRussa for the local chapter of PETA just yet.
There’s also the issue, of course, of whether this a move the organization should be looking to make. There’s no doubt that Jocketty and LaRussa have long track records of success, and they undeniably come with credibility and respect within the game. However, they are also undeniably traditional evaluators who would bring many of the same evaluative techniques to the organization that are presently held. They are cut from the same cloth as Woody Woodward, Pat Gillick, and Bill Bavasi, though its pretty easy to argue that they’re more adept at getting results from that approach.
If you were hoping for an organizational overhaul, however, with the franchise finally adjusting some of the philosophes that have been holding them back for years, Jocketty and LaRussa would not represent that kind of sea change. The culture shift that many of us see as imperative for the long term success of the organization would not occur in a change of power from Bavasi to Jocketty. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be considered, but it should certainly be a factor in the decision making.
It’s an interesting story, but remember, it’s based mostly on speculation, and at this point, it’s more smoke than fire.