Prioritizing the Dumb
Eric Wedge is a bad manager. The manager of the Seattle Mariners, he continues to do things that make no sense, like play Chone Figgins and Miguel Olivo. Fans criticize this because, you know, Figgins and Olivo are horrible major league baseball players. Also many of these fans have some understanding of statistics and evidence. Mariners beatwriter Geoff Baker thinks we mere fans should lay off:
There is no time to be delving through stat pages in your brain when this stuff is happening. Jim Riggleman once told me that he would get a thick, book-sized stats package before every game and that he’d throw out about 95 percent of it. He was kidding about actually throwing it in the garbage, but what he meant was, in terms of preparation, there wasn’t time to go over every itty-bitty stat. No time for coaches to do that and even if there was, his players would have it go in one ear and out the other because human beings typically can’t process that much info in such a short time.
….
And those human managers all know about baseball. More importantly, they know about managing in baseball and the human subtleties that come with the job. The human politics that must be played. The pressures that younger players fall under versus the more experienced ones. How those pressures might impact daily play on an individual and overall lineup basis.
That is more important in discussing a manager and his employment future than whether or not he uses words like “RBI” and “home run” in discussing a hitter. Wedge knows what types of hitters he needs and where. But he simply doesn’t have enough of them. So, if Olivo is his best shot at a .450-slugger who doesn’t rely merely on doubles, then that’s what he knows. And Olivo has been that guy before. Just not last season. And Wedge, trust me, knows he needs to get more out of Olivo’s bat. He needs a daily catcher as well and Olivo is his best bet, but that’s a discussion for another day.
I’ll leave you with this one thought, which occured when I read this comment over the internet yesterday:
“Today is Eric Wedge’s 1316th game as a manager of an MLB team. If you take him at his word, he apparently still believes that it is a worthwhile effort to (1) place a fair amount of importance on Olivo’s veteran status, and (2) reference RBI numbers as a measure of how effective a player is.
He’s had 1316 chances for the light bulb to come on and realize why that’s wrong. If I did my job wrong for 1316 days, I would be wondering why I was still employed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to wonder if Wedge is really cut out for this sort of thing.”
My thought after reading that comment is, is this really the level of arrogance our increased knowledge of stats has brought us to? For me, out of simple humility, the thought process should be: “Wedge has had 1,316 chances for the light bulb to come on and realize he’s wrong. Maybe, the fact that Wedge hasn’t realized he’s wrong is an indication that my thought process might not be as bang-on correct as I think it is. Maybe it’s me who has to re-evaluate. Maybe there is more to the job than I realize and that’s why Wedge has been employed at it for 1,316 games.”
But that’s just me. Something to think about.
No, Wedge has been employed for 1316 games because many people in baseball resist something called intelligence. Not all, of course. And those organizations tend to maximize their resources pretty effectively. Take Tampa Bay. But a lot do. Dumbness is prioritized in the clubhouse and throughout baseball culture. If a baseball player sees a movie in a foreign language or reads a serious book, he’s seen as a freak. God knows what the other members of the As think about Brandon McCarthy, who is not only not dumb, but actually takes stands against the homophobia so deeply ingrained in the game and its traditions. Though if there is any organization that would really appreciate a guy like McCarthy, it’s the As, and not only because he’s a pretty good pitcher during his rare periods of health. As Dave Cameron noted in his preview of the Seattle-Tampa game the other day:
Oh, also, Chone Figgins is playing because he’s 7 for 14 lifetime against Niemann. Joe Maddon is shifting his defense on every play because of the work the Rays front office has done to figure out the spray tendencies of every hitter in the Majors, and Eric Wedge is starting Chone Figgins because of the results of 14 at-bats against a particular pitcher. But, yeah, us stat nerds are the ones that are out of touch with today’s reality…
Indeed.
mca died today. the force was strong with that one.
Sure Wedge is bad, but how many fans get a chance to see a perfect game? He’s helping create memories that will last a lifetime.
Harrumph, harrumph!
If you’re just going to make the argument from authority/tradition, you really shouldn’t need 6,000 words to do it. Baker really shouldn’t be given an unedited forum.
Seriously, they could have boiled the whole thing down to “But he’s the manager. THE MA-NA-GER.”
I guess I always assumed Wedge never had any success as a manager, but I see he did have two 90+ win seasons in Cleveland.
I wouldn’t lay all of the Mariner failures at Wedge’s feet. What does he have to work with? The front office is the problem with Seattle and has been for awhile. I expected Jack Zduriencik to have more success after leaving the Brewers, but it hasn’t happened. Is the Mariners farm system improving?
I’m as surprised as anyone that Figgins has turned into a pumpkin. I realize he’s on the wrong side of thirty, but did anyone see him turning into a complete zero offensively so abruptly?
Jack Z has done an excellent job with smaller-type deals and rebuilding the farm system.
The Mariners face a number of problems. First, their park is death on right-handed power and makes it hard to sign people to play there. Look at Adrian Beltre’s career for evidence of this. Second, Seattle is far away and this also makes it hard to sign free agents. Third, some of the bigger deals he made havent’ gone well. Justin Smoak is a bust and that’s a huge problem. Everyone supported the Figgins signing and he’s been horrendous. Finally, the farm system had absolutely nothing in it when Bill Bavasi got canned. The Mariners had god-awful drafts for a full decade. And that comes back to haunt you. Now they have 3 of the top pitching prospects in the minors, all at AA.
I agree that Jack Z hasn’t done a fantastic job all told, but the situation was so, so bad when he took over. And I think that’s why there’s been patience.
It is however worth nothing that trading Brandon Morrow for Brandon League was really dumb, even if Morrow remains inconsistent.
Spectacularly dumb trade.
But I wouldn’t give up on Smoak quite yet.
Agree about Smoak. He has been a bust so far but still has the potential to turn it around. Although there have been ominous signs that suggest that what we see is what we get.
FWIW, there’s basically no evidence whatsoever for these various “makes it hard to sign free agents” theories. By and large, most free agents only get one large contract in their careers, so the idea of taking less money to play for your next deal is illogical on its face.
Well, sometimes Figgin type collapses happen. But you don’t have to play him.
You don’t have to play him, but what’s the alternative? I ask honestly. Maybe there is one, but I’m not familiar enough with the M’s to know.
SEager at 3rd, combinations of Carp/Wells/Saunders in the outfield. None of them are particularly great prospects, but they’re all pretty clearly better than Wells right now.
I suspect the goal behind playing Figgins may revolve around the hope that he turns it around enough such that he might be tradable for some salary relief. This theory wouldn’t have been entirely crazy a decade ago, when there were a lot more incompetent and moronic GMs than there are today.
that’s “better than Figgins right now” obviously
How about Chih-Hsien Chiang, Denny Almonte or Trayvon Robinson?
Robinson: .728 OPS in AAA while striking ouit in 25% of his PAs, after hitting very badly in the majors last year.
Chiang: .625 OPS in AAA with very little power.
Almonte: Big improvements in his plate discipline this year, doubling his walk rate and cutting his strikeout rate while moving from A+ hitter’s paradise High Desert to AA. However, he’s still striking out in about 25% of his PAs (down from 30%!) and I caren’t imagine he’s major-league ready.
so all better than Figgins
But you don’t have to play him.
But you do, kind of. In other words, there are only 25 positions on the roster, and you can’t waste one on a player you aren’t going to use. Moreover, if a player has problems, you have to either get him in games enough to fix him, or get rid of him–what’s wrong with him isn’t going to fix itself while he’s on the bench. Management is very properly cautious about releasing a player paid as much as Figgins, unless he’s demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn’t fixable.
Sometimes, when a player like Figgins gets a bunch of playing time this time of year, that’s not a good sign for him–it means that his job is on the line, and that he is being given a last chance to show something or be released.
And of course, I’ve got my name wrong again–the downside of sox puppetry (which is baseball sock puppetry).
In other words, there are only 25 positions on the roster, and you can’t waste one on a player you aren’t going to use.
Figgins’ defensive flexibility and baserunning ability make him a fine utility player. There’s room for one of those on a 25 man roster, and his current skill level, combined with his not needing PT for developmental purposes, make him the obvious choice for that role.
Management is very properly cautious about releasing a player paid as much as Figgins,
This fails to properly consider the concept of sunk costs. The money paid to Figgins is already gone, whether you play him or not. So the question is–do you give plate appearances to interesting but flawed prospects in their early to mid-20′s, who have a shot at being part of the next competitive Mariners team, or to a player in his 30′s who fell off a cliff two years ago and is exceedingly unlikely to be part of the next competitive Mariners team?
Figgins’s defensive flexibility, in the judgment of the Mariners based on how he’s been used this season, no longer exists. As a left-fielder he can’t find replacement level with a spotlight.
And as of tonight, they’re not. He’s been demoted to bench utility player.
Is the Mariners farm system improving
For one view, compare John Sickels’ top 20 lists for 2009 and 2012:
2009: 1 B+, 4B, 4B-, 6 C+
2012: 1A, 2A-, 1 B+, 1B, 6 B-, 7 C+
Nice of Jeff Baker to rely upon the wisdom of lousy manager Jim Riggleman in his “stats are bad” argument.
In DC, we’re much happier with Davey Johnson. Who, BTW, got a mathematics degree almost 50 years ago – because stats aren’t new and can help you win if you actally take them into consideration.
Davey Johnson is a tremendous manager.
I never understood why he went so long without a major league job after the Orioles.
i have no idea whether this is true, but davey was said to enjoy a beer or three.
but he may just have been too smart.
What percentage of great baseball managers have been alcoholics, 90%?
if i were to attempt to enter the mind of a baseball team owner, i would guess: a.) much less tolerance today for alcoholic managers than once upon a time; b.) perhaps davey got caught on the cusp of changing tastes, not that i have ever seen it said that he was an alcoholic, just liked to drink; c.) it’s not impossible that within the fraternity of baseball owners, the idea that a hard-drinking davey johnson didn’t have sufficient control of a hard-carousing mets team that didn’t achieve its full potential in good measure because of the drug habits of some of its key hard-carousing players is out there and inhibited owners.
or, like i say, it could just be that davey was too smart and he intimidated people.
or….
If I had to work for Peter Angelos, I’d drink a lot too.
If I had to work for Peter Angelos, I’d drink hemlock.
If I had to work for Peter Angelos, I would put poison in my tea.
I’m an extremely loving and passionate man, and people who investigate me honestly, without the baggage of political correctness, ascertain the conclusion that I’m a damned nice guy … and if i worked for Peter Angelos I would either be dead or in jail by this time next year. And, if you can find a statement more powerful than that, I’ll suck your dick
If I had to work for Peter Angelos, I would put poison in his tea.
To be fair, he actually seems like a pretty decent guy to work for. He’s loyal to the Stocksill brothers to a fault, and he was the guy who refused to use replacement players during the last strike. He’s incompetent, but once you get past the fact that he doesn’t have any idea how to run a baseball team, he’s pretty much a saint as far as really rich people go.
As an incompetent person Angelos may be and in fact is a good person. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s incompetent.
On an anti-bucket list of things to avoid doing before dying, working for a boss as incompetent as Peter Angelos ranks pretty high.
You know what? If he offered me a seven figure salary to be the GM of the Orioles, I’m fairly certain I’d grin and bear it until it was my turn to fall on my sword. Especially if he’s a reasonably nice incompetent boss.
One season is long?
but it was 11 years after the Dodgers
Part of it was his pricly nature. Johnson wants to do things “his way” which a lot of ownership won’t tolerate.
The other part was health. Johnson had heart problems and was sick for a lot of his early 60s. He had heart surgery a few years back and is in much better shape now than he was 7 or 8 years ago.
It seems to me (and I don’t usually get a chance to watch a ton of West Coast games, and definitely not last place ones) that it doesn’t make much sense to blame a manager when the roster lacks good options. It’s not as though Wedge is refusing to play Ackley because OMGZ VETERANS or something, he’s working with a genuinely bad roster handed to him by Jack Z’s initial “defense first” roster building plan.
Except that as the post notes, he’s playing two veterans — Figgins and Olivo — who are absolutely useless, and in that latter case this is having a major impact on the future of the team. The Mariners need to figure out if Montero can catch. Obviously, the Mariners wouldn’t be contenders no matter who was managing them but that doesn’t mean Wedge is doing a good job.
You probably don’t need to put someone in very many real games to figure out if they can’t play a position, especially when they’ve been one of the most scrutinized defenders in the game for 2 or 3 years now (and the short answer is; no, Montero can’t catch).
no, Montero can’t catch
What’s the basis of this, exactly? He doesn’t have much of an arm, but the effect of this is trivial. Whether he can develop the other parts of his defense I have no idea, but the obvious play for the Mariners is to play him for a year and find out. For a non-contending team to prematurely covert a 23-year-old to a DH is really stupid.
The couple of games I’ve seen him catch looked a lot better than I feared. Of course, that could be the effect of watching Olivo for the last year plus. I’ll say this with significant certainty: he’s a better defensive catcher than Olivo. At a minimum, he’s modestly competent at blocking a pitch in the dirt. It’s difficult to describe how bad Olivo is when he’s not throwing to second.
Huh? His arm strength has consistently been his most positive grade behind the plate. His receiving skills, on the other hand, are dodgy, he’s bulky and awkward in his movements behind the plate, and he’s a bit slow getting the ball out of his glove on throws. He’s probably viable back there every here and now, and if he can improve his agility a little maybe he can surpass the minimum threshold…but these are definite if’s.
That there are no great options at LF, CF, and 3rd at the moment doesn’t mean there aren’t better and worse options. There are players on the roster for each of those positions who have the chance of developing into a useful player (and even if they flop, they’re probably still not going to perform worse than Figgins).
I’m particularly frustrated and baffled by the refusal to play Casper Wells. He’s basically a league average hitter with plus defense right now. The GM traded for him no less than 9 months ago. There’s no good reason he shouldn’t be seeing significant playing time given this roster.
Eric Wedge uses his gut, not his brain. Just remember, your gut has more nerve endings than your brain. Now, you might look that up, and find out that’s not true. That’s because you looked it up in a book. I looked it up in my gut.
I love this.
Colbert is good.
btw, i’m a distinct minority on this, but i firmly believe that there are hitter-pitcher matchups that are highly favorable one way or the other due to style and other factors (now whether you can know that after 14 at bats is another story).
for example, if you scroll through warren spahn’s lifetime matchups (i use spahn becaue he pitched forever and some of the hitters he went up against played forever, so you get some fairly robust sample sizes).
for example, stan musial (311 plate appearances) and willie mays (253 plate appearances) pretty much had their career ops level against spahn; on the other hand, richie ashburn (who had a career obp of .382 only had an obp of .327 in 226 plate appearances against spahn; while ashburn was never a power hitter, his career isolated power was .074 but against spahn it was only .039) considerably underperformed and wally post (in 156 plate appearances) had an ops against spahn of 1.001 against a career figure of .808.
now, maybe that’s all just random noise, too, or maybe it’s that post matched up well with spahn for some reason (by the way, even on the platoon differential, post’s career .ops against lefties was .853) and ashburn matched up poorly for some reason (his career obp against lefties was .385).
because i miss no chance to recommend jim brosnan’s pennant race, i’ll segue to pete whisenant mentioning that he had a reputation as a vinegar bend mizell hitter, so i looked it up recently.
whisenant had a career .399 slugging (isolated power of .175), career ops of .683 (ops+ of 80), and a home run every 26.7 at bats.
against mizell, in 49 plate appearances, he had a slugging percentage of .833 (isolated power of .500), an ops of 1.229, and 6 home runs in 42 at bats (scattered across 5 seasons).
call me crazy, call me old-fashioned, call me taken in by small sample size, but i’d be inclined to start him against mizell!
Obviously, it makes sense that there would be matchup advantages and disadvantages; it just doesn’t make sense to infer them from a dozen atbats.
but let’s pursue the point a little, scott, because it’s a tricky question, of which the most extreme version is that under no circumstances should the mets have ever sat down willie mays in 1973!
in other words, there is always going to be a marginal point where you want to disregard the overall career norms (last year, adam dunn; a few years ago, i agreed with girardi sitting down swisher in the post-season when his strike zone judgement was messed up even though whoever he played in his place – can’t recall who it was now – was obviously in the long term not the offensive value that swisher is).
if we agree that it makes sense that there are more and less favorable matchups, then while 14 at bats can hardly be definitive, it can be suggestive. to follow through on the whisenant example, here’s a guy who never played more than 103 games in a season, was obviously a mediocre offensive player (his career offensive war is -1.0), and at some point, some manager had to decide to roll the dice with whisenant against vinegar bend.
if it never makes sense that there are more and less favorable matchups, then it never makes sense, whether the sample is 15 or 350, but if it does make sense, then sometimes, a dozen at bats is all you got the information available on.
none of this is to justify wedge per se: why you’d only fixate, for example, on this one little piece of data but ignore so many others is hard to justify.
but i’m much less inclined to say “he’s playing a guy who is 7-14 against this pitcher, what a maroooooooon” than many are.
“Get clear, Wedge. You can’t do any more good back there!”
expand the left field promenade, add more beer stands, have seats right on top of a new LF wall….call it “the munster”.
Oh…and fire the current (been there forever) management (Lincoln)….the fish rots from the head.
Or maybe the Münster?
didn’t you leave the “e” out?
sincerely,
Dan Quayle