In Part I and Part II, we identified "old-school" and "new-school" ways of getting information about decision-making out from behind the "insider" curtain and conveyed to the general public.

So we have three variables that might be at play here:

     (1) The actual Mariner decision-making process

     (2) The manner in which Mariner decisions are explained/justified

     (3) The audience receiving the explanations/justifications

Let's explore some possibilities:

• The Mariners are uniquely bad at making baseball decisions
• The Mariners are not uniquely bad at making baseball decisions, but are particularly inartful in their choice of cliches/buzzwords to describe their decisions
• The Mariners are neither uniquely bad at baseball decisions nor particularly inartful in their choice of cliches/buzzwords, but happen to face a particularly "tough crowd" on the receiving end

Needless to say, the chances are that none of those things is completely true to the exclusion of the others, but that all three have some degree of truth.

***

My sense of the Mariners blog-o-sphere is that:

• Where there is variation between Big Data vs. Insider-y "you had to be there," it has particular faith in Big Data
• It has particular skepticism of the proverbial "middle-aged white guys in suits" (Eric Wedge's uni counting as "suit" in this case), who also tend to be the ones shoveling out the cliches/buzzwords
• And as a result, it has a particular aversion to those types of justifications being offered for decisions

This probably comes from a combination of tech culture and Seattle culture ... but I don't know.

***

My sense of the Mariners brass is that:

• It is skeptical, but not necessarily uniquely skeptical, of the idea that Big Data can overcome "old-school" thinking
• It places particular value on the "old-school" ability to dodge and fudge and bury their true intentions in platitudes and cliches without being "called on it"
• It harbors some level of resentment at the "new-school" ability to "call them on it" (resulting in the "9-year-olds" comment)

***

As a result, there is -- maybe not a "perfect storm" -- but ideal conditions for "getting wrapped around the axle" and producing "more heat than light" (cliches again!).

So: it is bad decisions, lame communicators or tough crowd?  I do think it's all three.

But I also think the situation appears worse than it is because of the "old-school" communicators conveying their message to a "new-school" audience, and a lot of "heat" gets expended in that clash -- which is, at the end of the day, not particularly useful (as I said, a battle over a Potemkin Village).

At the same time, that very "heat" makes it easy to be dismissive of "Internet know-it-alls" who huff and puff at every "non-analytical" decision.  And that's not helpful either.