.1.21.10 Baseball Prospectus interview here, for your convenience.  

BP Q:  C'mon, you are making a major move approximately every other day.  You must be thrilled to be in the GM's seat.

Cap-O-Vision Translation 1:  No.  No.  No.

I'm not even thinking about it in the terms you are:  Wow, I'm going to make three times the moves of a Billy Beane and really become a high-profile GM.

Making lots of moves is natural to me.  I'm not in a race.  I'm just not afraid to pull the trigger.

...

SSI Kibitz:  Jack might almost be unaware of the reason for his making so many moves.  That reason being, he is not encumbered by cover-your-backside thinking.

In "baseball" -- MLB(TM) baseball -- blunders last a long, long time.  Bill James' most recent interview contained a reference to Ernie Broglio for Lou Brock, 1964.... how long has it been now since the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth?  The Red Sox were jeered at for that trade for approximately one century.

You sign Darren Dreifort or Carlos Silva and it's liable to cost you your job in baseball.  Mistakes resonate.  They thunder around the echo-dome until you go deaf.

Hence no trading in the division.  You wouldn't deal Felix to the Angels because you don't want him rubbing your face in it, 3 times a year for 15 years?  Well, that same mentality applies, in only slightly lesser extent, when you trade Shin-Soo Choo for a platoon DH.

There is something about baseball -- fans, writers and other execs -- that is very unforgiving of mistakes.

....

A few, very special, men not only think they're good but know that they're good.  Whitey Herzog, Billy Beane, Pat Gillick, Jack Zduriencik.  These guys simply do not need other men telling them that they're good at what they do.

It's not going to hurt Jack's feelings if he stops reading that he's great some day.  Most people overreact to criticism, but Zduriencik is the rare man who is genuinely secure in his ability.

.....

Cap-O-Vision Translation 2:  It's very important to me that my trades help both clubs.  I mean that.  I want Aumont and Gillies to perform well for the Phillies.  That way, I can go make another important trade with them some day.

SSI Kibitz:  That's bidness in the 21st century.  Wonderful to see a 60-year-old man with the heart of a Deming VP.

Every time there is a trade, the national sites (ESPN, BP, Fox, etc) will put out an analysis focusing on who "won" the trade, as though it were a chess match and "winning" trades made you a chess grandmaster.

Need to switch paradigms here, folks.  AT&T and Apple weren't out to whoop each other in the partnership negotiations.  They were out to stay level against each other, while competitors all went in reverse on a relative basis.

In roto:

BABVA +2 Barking Spiders +2

BABVA +1 Semantic Insanity +2

BABVA +1 Silen Pandas +1

BABVA +3 Inside Pitch +3

Add all those up and it's BABVA +7, three other teams +2, and eight other teams +0...

.

BP Q:  What moves have you liked that you haven't gotten as much acclaim for?

Cap-O-Vision Translation: the infrastructure.  The teachers.  The context and atmosphere -- the pitching coordinator, the AA manager, Wakamatsu.

...

SSI Kibitz:  It's interesting that Zduriencik said, quote, every time you’re in this chair, you want to make sure that everything around you meets your comfort level. With Jeff ... there was simply a great comfort level ... we made a lot of changes when I came in. We changed the farm director. We changed the scouting director. There is just a natural progression, when new people come in, where you’re going to have changes. That’s just how baseball works.

The attitude at ground level flows from the top.  This is one thing I'll criticize Bavasi and the co-GM's for:  there was lack of coherency at the top, and this translated to an every-man-for-himself attitude below.  Dan Rohn getting fired for undermining the ML manager, for example.

When the 4th-level manager is bringing in his own people, and they are all-business, winning-matters, super-professional, super-positive, that takes hold.

In Fortune 500, when the managers and execs have rinky-dink, my-territory-first attitudes, you've got nothing but fighting on the factory floor.  When the execs are about timelines and defects and are fair in handing out justice, that resonates to ground floor as well.

............

The Mariners ownership group benefitted from Pat Gillick's credibility and connections right down to the class-A level.  With Gillick and Piniella here, the entire organization was major league.

For the first time since Piniella left, the M's have restored a big-time, Major League culture in the organization.