No predictions here
I’m not posting any playoff series predictions because I’m horrible at predicting playoff series. I mean, seriously, every year you’d do really well to pick exactly the opposite of what I picked. So I’m not touching these things with a ten foot pole. Instead, I’ll just sit back and watch good baseball the rest of the way.
That said, I don’t mind telling you who I’m rooting for. A hearty “way to go!” to the Twins for knocking off the Yankees tonight. I was happy to see the Red Sox top Anaheim today as well. I’ll definitely be pulling for Houston over Atlanta. In the other NL series, Cards-Dodgers, I could go either way (but I think Dave’s right, that St. Louis is just too freaking good).
We now return you to your regularly scheduled managerial debate… unless Derek decides to chime in with his thoughts on the post-season.
Playoff Predictions
While we discuss managerial tendancies and upcoming free agents, other teams are preparing for the greatest three weeks of the season. The playoffs may not be the best way to determine the best team or to reward a season of excellence, but there are few things in sports as exciting as October baseball, and this should be a fun year to simply enjoy the games. Here’s my gut feel on how the playoffs will shake out.
ALDS, Minnesota vs New York
Johan Santana is tremendous and Brad Radke is pitching better than anyone on the Yankees, but this still looks like a big mismatch to me. The Twins are in the playoffs because they play in the saddest division in baseball, not because they are one of the four best teams in the American League. The Yankee offense is still fearsome, and a rotation of Mussina-Hernandez-Brown-Vazquez, for all its struggles, is still ridiculously talented. Yankees in 4.
ALDS, Anaheim vs Boston
An interesting pairing that should make for a fun series. The Angels bullpen is trying to carry a poor rotation, while the Red Sox starters are trying to carry the rest of the roster. A contrast in styles, with neither team having a clear advantage, and a series that could go either way. I’ll take Boston in 5, but with little conviction.
NLDS, Los Angeles and St. Louis
The Cardinals are the best team in baseball. The middle of their line-up is unprecedentedly awesome. Their rotation, despite not being full of all-stars, is very good. They play great defense. There aren’t many things that you can point to as flaws. Meanwhile, the Dodgers have a shaky rotation, a questionable offense, and are dealing with a lot of question marks. Cardinals in 3.
NLDS, Atlanta vs Houston
The most surprising team in baseball against a team that was left for dead six weeks ago. Phil Garner versus Bobby Cox in a match of bunting madness. This is probably the least interesting of the four series’ to me, but also the one that I feel like I’m just totally guessing on. Atlanta in 5, but I wouldn’t even shrug if the Astros swept all three games by 10 runs.
ALCS, Boston vs New York
Prepare yourself for 842 shots a day of Aaron Boone. Expect to hear the words “Pedro Martinez” and “Daddy” in the same sentence every fifteen minutes. Gear up for an 8,000 word column from Bill Simmons and an assasination attempt on Terry Francona. Despite all the annoying hype that goes along with a Red Sox-Yankees playoff series, it’s also great baseball. Red Sox in 6, sealing the fact that Pedro will be wearing pinstripes next spring.
NLCS, Atlanta vs St. Louis
Remember all those things I said about the Cardinals? They still apply. Cardinals in 5.
World Series, Boston vs St. Louis
The series where Albert Pujols officially becomes the new face of baseball. People know he’s good in a reverant, those-are-some-gaudy-numbers kind of way. But he’s never had the chance to shine on the big stage, showing people that he’s legitimately one of the best hitters they’ll ever see. It isn’t the curse of the Bambino or the hated Yankees that will doom the Crimson Hose; it’s the sticks in the St. Louis order. Cardinals in 6.
Dierker and the clubhouse, a brief digression
Dierker’s a guy who shows up in the candidate speculation post, and is my favorite managerial candidate. Maybe not for this team, for reasons I may get into later. The knock on him, in a nutshell, is that his team quit on him and he had to get fired. This is going to illustrate something important that’s too-often forgotten in the discussion of managers… but we’ll get to that.
If you followed those Astros, it’s a little more complicated than just “they quit”. Dierker did well for a while managing his team, because he understood that Biggio and Bagwell were hard workers and didn’t need him to stomp on them over a botched DP. He had a soft touch, I think, which gets managers lauded when it works (“He wasn’t the kind of guy who would bawl you out in front of people, he’d take you aside later and say ‘You see what happened there? Here’s how you handle this next time.'” versus “He’s a fiery competitor who lets you know what’s on your mind.”)
What backfired, was that the team soured badly and almost immediately in his last season. They brought in some players (Meluskey’s been singled out particularly) who didn’t get along with anyone else, there were fights, and the Bs turned on Dierker. A long discontent with his strategic decisions, because Dierker often didn’t play by the book, leaked into the press and guys like Brad Ausmus jumped in with the Bs to slag Dierker.
Now, the crux of their complaints, in my mind, was entirely baseless, but illustrates something important. Like this: Dierker didn’t like walking the #8 guy to get to the pitcher. He’d given this traditional strategy a lot of thought and figured out you were better off taking your chances (and most likely an out) from the #8 guy.
Ausmus hated, hated, hated this strategy. It worked almost all of the time, but the one time in twenty it didn’t, Ausmus would glare at Dierker, bitch at him, carp at the press. Eventually this kind of thing led to Dierker losing the respect of his players and his job.
Which is to say — some thing aren’t worth the fight. Lineups are like that. I’ll argue until I’m blue in the face that lineup construction is something where a manager can eek out a couple runs a season, force interesting matchups, and tinker to their heart’s delight. But if that tinkering’s perceived as weakness, for instance, the team and the media seize on it. Rob Neyer argues persausively that it’s not worth it. Whatever runs you get aren’t worth the trouble, and you’re better off expedning that energy elsewhere.
I think walking guys is a case where it is. A couple times a game, it’s a significant advantage.
This was one symptom. The others were similar: that he didn’t make enough moves, call enough weird plays — which, if you think those plays are of limited value, makes sense.
Dierker was unable to convince his players that these were the right moves. His players are not without fault in this, either. Dierker expressed a desire to have nine captains on the field — a lineup every day that thought through each play, knew what to do, and what might go wrong. In that, I think he did well — his teams were prepared, played hard, and didn’t make the kind of crazy gaffes you saw in, say, Art Howe’s Athletics teams.
What may have happened is that in so doing, in trying to create nine captains, Dierker created nine managers who disagreed with him.
There’s more than enough blame to go around, but I’d suggest that Dierker’s style there worked well to a point in accomodating the veterans but was doomed to failure. Ausmus and Bagwell want a Melvin, say, not a guy who reads baseball research and comes up with a new way to do something.
Many managers fail until they find the right team, when suddenly they go from being dolts to being geniuses. Joe Torre is the best model of this today, and the list is long and distinguished.
Dierker seems like an ideal manager for a team like the A’s, who are willing to do crazy stuff to win games, try to draft and create smart players, but who still need better preparation on the field. Their players have already seen managers make extremely few moves, they’re culturally ready for a more cerebral guy, and they don’t have the kind of elephant-in-the-room veteran presences those Astros teams have.
Site lateness issues
You may have seen that the USSM is at times slow to respond to specific requests this week, so if you ask for article x, it may not serve that article up to you. We’re getting hammered, which is good, but also… bad. So bear with us.
Managers
Derek’s breakdown of the candidates is quite thorough and well done, and I believe the commenters mentioned every person with a pulse who has ever been involved in baseball. Reading through all the suggestions, though, I noticed one common theme;
As a fanbase, we don’t have any idea what we want as a manager. We know what we don’t want, but ask for specific strengths, and the answers are all over the board. Complicating matters even more, the few things that we would like in our new skipper, we have no idea how to evaluate ahead of time. The analysis supporting most suggestions hinges on a winning record with the last team that fired him. However, we’re ignoring the fact that the guy we just fired had a winning record last year, and we all clearly agree that it wasn’t an indication of good managerial qualities.
Rather than supporting Cito Gaston because he won a few world series (even Bob Brenly won one…), Larry Dierker because he’s a good writer (whose players hate him), or Dan Rohn because we liked what he did with Tacoma, I’d like to see people explain how their candidate will help the Mariners. Be specific. What traits does your candidate possess that is actually going to improve the team, and how do you know he has those traits?
Evaluating managers is mostly beyond our grasp right now. I’m of the opinion that we’re basically just guessing, and we really have little idea who would or wouldn’t make a good hire. Personally, I’m just rooting against Larry Bowa and Jimy Williams and am ambivolent on just about everyone else. Sometimes, it’s okay to plead ignorance. When it comes to figuring out which managers are going to be successful at the major league level, even the teams haven’t figured it out, and they have exponentially more information than we do. Barring an obvious debacle (like Bowa), I’m just giving Bavasi the benefit of the doubt on this one, and let’s all hope it works out.
Ichiro
Wacky Ichiro stat of the day — his crazy, reverse platoon split. This isn’t anything new, but still worth pointing out. Whereas normally you’d expect a left-handed hitter to hit better against right-handed pitching, Ichiro is the opposite….
vs. RHP: .359/.402/.423 (very, very good)
vs. LHP: .404/.444/.529 (ridiculous)
2005 Managerial Speculation
I’m going to add to this as we work on it, so please, if you don’t see someone here, be patient.
Internal organizational candidates
Minor league managers
Dan Rohn. Manager, Tacoma Rainiers.
Rohn’s been recognized as a fine minor league manager. He’s a player’s manager in a different way than Melvin was. Where Melvin let the team run, Rohn’s happy to shake things up without beating up on people — dumb stuff like cancelling BP if the team’s dragging, for instance. Rohn’s been able to get a lot out of his players and keep a team together even as it was pillaged by the M’s. Rohn’s tactical game is predictable in some situations, which at the major league level would be scouted and exploited.
Dave Brundage. Manager, San Antonio Missions. Organization loves him, he’s a fiery motivator type. Doesn’t care for stats at all, and his teams run like crazy on the basepaths. It’s worked for him, though, and it’s not as if he’s making really low-percentage plays. What I really like about Brundage is that while he may not care about stats, he’d clock his mom if it meant he could win a game. If the opposing team has a terrible player at third who can’t charge bunts, he’ll have the team bunt at that guy until they sub him out. If their catcher has a hitch in his throw, he’ll steal bases every pitch he can get away with it. If you’re as tired of seeing Melvin mechanically steal a base instead of using brain power to figure out how to steal a game, Brundage is the manager you want.
Both of these guys would be upgrades over Melvin. They have managerial experience where he does not, they’re used to working with young players, which Melvin did not, and in particular players they’re going to try and build the team around. Rohn is a good choice for managerial experience, Brundage would likely remake the team’s style in his image, with all the risk and reward inherent in that kind of project.
Bryan Price, pitching coach, Mariners. Price was a finalist in the managerial running last time. He was thought to lack the required experience, but someone who might take over for Melvin down the road. Which doesn’t make sense, since Melvin had no managerial experience to speak of either. Anyway, Price’s reputation’s taken a huge hit since Piniella. It seems strange that Price managed to win Piniella’s respect and turn Lou’s greatest weakness into a strength by demonstrating to Lou the benefits of shorter leashes, rest patterns, and Price also did a lot of work in when to pull guys against leaving them in, bullpen management, and so on. And yet under Melvin, supposedly a more progressive thinker, the team went to endless L/R platoon matchups out of the bullpen, where guys warmed up eight times a game only to not come in, and inexplicably wore out their starting pitchers over seasons and over games.
What happened? Did Price get dumb? Stripped of authority? Did Melvin not listen to him? Only Price can answer these questions, but no one’s asking.
In a larger sense, pitching coaches almost never go on to become good managers, which seems weird but… it’s also true. We can speculate on why this is — I personally don’t see why someone smart like Price couldn’t pick it up — but it remains that it’s a huge barrier to overcome.
External candidates
Melvin fired
Tim Hevly, team spokesman, confirms. It’s up on ESPN. So far we’ve heard nothing as to the reasons behind the firing, but at this point it doesn’t matter much whether he was fired for the right or the wrong reasons. All we could do with that information is do the tea leaf-reading routine, because it’s likely that the candidate will be sold to us as meeting those requirements.
Edit: Added by Dave: As I alluded to last night, the entire staff, minus Bryan Price, also did not have their contracts renewed. Despite Price not being fired, his job as pitching coach is not guaranteed for ’05. If the new manager would like to bring in his own pitching coach, Price could be reassigned.
Edited by Derek to add: ahhh, boy, nothing like a good housecleaning. Everyone but Price gone. Myers may be back in some capacity — especially if they hire Rohn/Brundage. Aldrete I don’t know about.
Also, reasons emerge. They’re sort of vague non-reasons, but the interesting thing is how this search will contrast from how Bavasi was hired: that the’re going to decide on someone, go after that person, and if that fails, go to the next person on the list. At the same time, the list of ‘consideration’ will be pretty large, since they’re going to great pains to say that they’re not going to rule anyone out.
This from the Times made me laugh.
As for when he made the decision on Melvin, Bavasi said it wasn’ t until five or six days ago that he made up his mind. And now what will he need to replace him?
Hee hee. Is he implying that a decision wasn’t made by Bavasi, but instead higher-ups? I mean, we knew he was most probably getting fired way back, and I knew it was certain after that letter to season ticket holders. But like saying there was nothing negative to say about Melvin, this is a polite white lie to make this a less painful occasion. We can mock the M’s for their feel-good ways, but there’s something to be said about trying to conduct your public affairs with class (counter-example: Mets firing Art Howe).
Another funny thing: Bavasi said that the team’s going to be looking for players this off-season that are “self-starters” which cracks me up in a couple ways:
– the player that gets to this level of competition without busting their butt is pretty freaking small, whether they appear unemotional (like Olerud, Grieve, others) or not
– isn’t it in some way a manager’s failure if their players are unmotivated? I’m only saying.
– last year it was “veteran grit” and this year it’s going to be “self-starting”. You know what might be good? And this is just a suggestion — good players. Something to think about.
Oh yeah…
Rene Rivera, Mickey Lopez… was I the only one who forgot these guys were even on the roster? It was cool to see Lopez get his first major league hit, but I hope he enjoys it, as it very well may be his only major league hit.
Looking Ahead to ’05
I’m not going to get into a specific “what Dave would do” plan in this post. We’ll lay out our suggestions in time as the offseason begins. Instead, this is a general overview into what the team needs, broken down by section.
Management
Bob Melvin will officially be relieved of his duties as manager of the club in the morning, and a search for the club’s new skipper will begin immediately. Expect the team to do interviews during the playoffs and hold a press conference to introduce the new manager shortly after the World Series has ended and the moratorium on transactions is lifted.
In less well known news, expect an announcement, perhaps tomorrow, that Pat Gillick will also be leaving the organization to “pursue other interests”. He has already expressed public interest in the available Washington job, and I will be surprised if he’s not the General Manager of another club next year.
There is a real possibility that the entire coaching staff from ’04 will be dismissed. Depending on who is chosen as new manager, Bryan Price could find himself being reassigned or released from his contract. If the team chooses an internal candidate such as Dan Rohn or Dave Brundage, the promotion of Rafael Chaves to major league pitching coach is a real possibility.
Position Players
The team has seven everyday players under contract who are nearly guaranteed a spot on the ’05 roster, barring trades; Olivo, Ibanez, Jacobsen, Spiezio, Boone, Winn, and Ichiro. These seven will most likely occupy starting spots at catcher, first base, second base, and all three outfield spots, as well as two of the six bench spots. That leaves the team with holes in the everyday line-up at third base, shortstop (depending on who you believe about Jose Lopez’s destination), designated hitter, and four bench spots. Players such as Reed and Leone are considered possibilities, but fall more into the longshot realm, and most likely won’t make the opening day roster without some help.
Rotation
The team will plan on having Moyer, Meche, and Madritsch fill three of the rotation spots. Pineiro’s health is a question mark, making him a possibility for the 4th spot, but he will not be counted on when building the roster. Franklin will likely be moved to the bullpen or traded. Expect the team to acquire two major league starting pitchers during the offseason.
Bullpen
The bullpen is in the greatest flux. There are seven candidates for six spots currently on the roster, but only Shigetoshi Hasegawa is going to be determined to be part of the mix for offseason planning. Guardado (for health concerns), Sherrill, Atchison, Mateo, Putz, and Franklin will all be considered possibilities, but none are guaranteed a spot in the ’05 pen. Expect the team to acquire at least one major league reliever.
Overall, I’d put the over/under on new incoming players at eight, including the most substantial changes to the makeup of the roster this team has seen in quite some time. Regarding the cinicism of fans who expect more of the past, I can only suggest that you take a wait and see approach. The regime that persuaded management to avoid long contracts and superstar players in favor of a balanced, 25-as-1 approach has lost power. Whether the “big splash” that the organization is undoubtedly going to make will be a wise one is yet to be determined, but I have no doubt in my mind that the Mariners will be among the most active and aggressive teams in the market this winter.
Starting tomorrow, everything changes. Let’s hope the changes are for the better.