=== Definitions ===
KARMA, Hinduism, Buddhism. Literally "action," seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or a reincarnation.
Karma, in Hinduism, is not punishment, revenge, or retribution, but a consequence of decisions and acts. It names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction, that governs all life.
Karma is not fate; humans act with free will, creating their own Karma and therefore their own destinies. A Christian expression of this is found in Gal. 6:7-8: "do not be deceived; God is not mocked. What a man sows, that shall he also reap."
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=== Origins ===
Somewhere between 95% and 98% of human beings -- including intelligent ones, LrKrBoi27 ;- ) -- believe in some sort of Grand Script that at times they observe taking place in their lives. In the Eastern Hemisphere, they most often explain these natural observations through the principle of Karma. In the Western Hemisphere, such intuitive sensing of a Grand Script is more often seen as divine intervention.
The 2001 Mariners, the ones who won 116 games, might very well have benefitted from positive karma. How many games did they win the year before, or the year after?
The 1995 Mariners might have, also. An Eastern yogi might cheerfully propose that the Mariners had spent 20-30 years' worth of positive karma in those two seasons. Dr. D isn't saying he believes that; he would seriously doubt it. But this is a baseball chat, and why not keep it fresh? :- )
From a cosmic perspective, perhaps the Mariners were destined to leave Seattle in 1995, as the Sonics left later. Perhaps the River Of Fate was diverted radically in 1995, in our favor as baseball fans, and that Grand Mitigation of Karma alone expended the next 100 years' worth of positive karma. (Maybe something like this happened with the Cubs and Red Sox, creating their 100 years' droughts.)
I could see that 1995 Mitigation interpretation being the accurate one, if I were into Karma, which I'm not particularly.
In the first 11 games of 2013, the Mariners have seen ...
Poor Jack Zduriencik. Everything he's tried has blown up in his face this month. If you GM'ed the Mariners and watched these first 11 games? You wouldn't feel that the universe was conspiring against you?
It's very poor form to state what probably 80% plus of M's fans are thinking to themselves: there seems to be some Grand Script operating against the Mariners in the first two weeks. But as you know, SSI is a place where you can get the truth, not a place to go to find a blogger auditioning for a job in baseball.
You're perfectly free to deny the effects of Karma in the 2013 season locally. In fact, I do too, in this specific case. You're not perfectly free to deny the persistence of the world's reaction to its observations of Grand Scripts.
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=== Root Causes ===
If Karma were biting the Mariners, it would be biting them for their "competitive team and nice night at the ballpark" corporate culture. But I don't personally believe that is what is going on.
There are times you see a team badly out of synch. The whole is LESS than --- > what the sum of the parts should be. They're just out of kilter.
In baseball, teams can be out of synch for many "invisible" reasons:
Wait, hold it, full stop. What did you say a second ago?
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=== Speaking As a Huge Jesus Montero Fan ... ===
Dr. D has now heard from four (4) very interesting sources, back channel, that people in the M's org suspect that Jesus Montero's catching is creating teamwide dysfunction. Dr. D has got to say, nothing he has seen with his own eyes has contradicted that, either.
Montero's obviously working hard; last year he wasn't able to catch two games in a row, much less five. He looks better back there, despite the backhand stabs at bouncers and the amateurish turning of his neck towards wild pitches. His stats are fine, I'm sure, but ...
If the Number One Catcher isn't providing coherency, it is a fact that the entire ballclub can become incoherent.
Now, then, let's go back and re-visit Joe Saunders' sour reaction to his first game in Seattle. Granted that it was a cruddy thing for Saunders to do. Let's move past that and ask: Was Saunders telling us anything important there?
If there WERE a huge problem, how would we know? A guy like Joe Saunders would come in, and would do what he did. (I don't say that's the end of the discussion.)
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What's interesting is that Eric Wedge doesn't seem to believe this, or is at least giving Montero a VERY gracious chance to work through it. Wedge hasn't turned the ball over to Kelly Shoppach. He hasn't even let Shoppach catch at all.
SSI, and some in the M's organization, are wondering if the 2013 season is disjointed because it gave the ball to the wrong catcher. It's a fascinating question.
Shoppach is crunching the ball right now...with the team in the toilet offensively and two key players hurt...and Montero playing shoddy defense and ticking off the pitchers...while not hitting and having poor AB after poor AB...why is Montero still catching?
Following the bread crumbs here...
The best years in M's history? 1994-2003
Dan Wilson's years as a productive #1 catcher in Seattle? 1994-2003
Additionally, Dan the Man wasn't just any catcher but an excellent defensive catcher with off-the-charts communication and leadership abilities.
Since 2004, we've been subjected to the following catching situations:
2005 - cast of forgettables led by an overmatched Miguel Oliva (20 OPS+)
2006 - Kenji Johjima (good offense but poor communication with pitchers)
2007 - Johjima (with declining offense)
2008 - Johjima (64 OPS+)
2009 - Johjima/ overmatched Rob Johnson
2010 - overmatched Adam Moore/ overmatched Rob Johnson
2011 - Miguel Olivo (the human passed ball)
2012 - Olivo/ Jaso
Maybe Karma in baseball is as simple as the presence you have behind the plate?
when the Young Core breaks out...
when the Young Core breaks out...
if the Young Core breaks out...
will the Young Core break out?
It seems plenty of other teams devote standard or standard-plus resources to developing young players and come up with more breakout younguns than the M's. The M's lose for a decade, finish in last place in the division 7 out of 9 years and get terrific draft positions, spend five years dedicating their entire organization to the pursuit of developing a Young Core, and have no more to show for it (yet) than their competition. Indeed, it wouldn't be ridiculous to say they have less to show for it at the MLB level.
Mike Morse can lead the league in HR's and bat .290. Kendry Morales can hit .315 with good pop. But unless/until a good number of the Young Players start to truly break out, the org's destiny is to be fodder for more worthy franchises. You can't succeed when you choose an aspect of roster development (Young Core) as your arena of advantage...and then watch as your competition takes a more balanced approach, or even an unbalanced approach with a different emphasis, and then trumps your development of young players with better ones (in terms of MLB production) than you have. They may not have as MANY young players, but if their top young players outperform yours in these circumstances, you are, shall we say, up against it.
Everybody here knows it. You need Saunders hitting .260 and supplying good power. You need Seager at .270 with doubles pop. You need Ackley at .280-plus with gap power. You need Montero starting to induce fear at the plate (theirs, not ours). You need Smoak to make the Smoak Bomb famous. You need decent OBP's from most all of them. You need more than hope engendered by a couple of bloop hits here and there.
Not every one of the above need happen every season, if it ever does, look out. But you need at least two or three of them every season. Down years happen. But until players set their performance bar at a high level for entire seasons and multiple seasons, you're left with perennial down years, a whole lot of promise and little fulfillment.
Gosh I want to explode with enthusiasm and see these kids do it. I pray (not literally) they will. I want it as bad as all you want it. So far it has not happened. We are still waiting in frustration and reciting truisms that give us reason to hope. Those truisms need to resolve into fact. The sooner the better.
Every time Shoppach has caught this year, the pitcher has gotten hit. And most relievers too.
If Shoppach is hitting, put him at DH
Montero is eventually moving off catcher...or at least being the #1 Catcher. Zunino's presence assures that. That move will occur earlier (this year) rather than later (mid-'14 or beyond).
I was surprised that Montero got the start last night, very surprised. Shoppach had gone all Johnny Bench the night before (at the plate, anyway) and a RHP was on the mound, not usually Montero's cup of tea. But there he was behind the plate.
I thought it was interesting, to say the least. And, too tell you the truth, I didn't understand it. When you're struggling, go with the hot bat...especially when your starter isn't long for that position.
But hey, he had a knock and a double and a ribbie, a good game.
I don't see any obvious problems Montero creates while on the field, esprit de' corps wise. But I can buy that they are there. Interestingly, that would shine badly on Wedge if that is a low level current with impact. That's supposed to be the Sarge's specialty, isn't it? He's the clubhouse disciplinarian, right?
Doc, I must admit to seeing the presence of Karmaic events, once in a while. Perhaps it is only our own positive (or negative) thoughts coming to play...or just coincidence. But when I feel I'm in need of a bit of good Karma landing on me, I go out of my way to do something to deserve it. It often pays off. Norman Vincent Peale would nod with approval and agreement, probably.
I see no Karma with the M's right now. I do see a team is some disarray. Almost every team loses a starter to the 15-Day DL during a season, nothing odd there. Almost everyteam sees needed bats slump together, nothing weird there. Almost evety team runs up against a lousy team with hot bats, so what? And so on....
But I see, in the M's, a FO not currently with a mindset to muck through those things, and without a clear vision of what exactly we are this year: Are we a team that will certainly compete for the WC, a team a year away, a veteran-based team or a Kiddie Corps building to a bright future. I don't think they have agreed on that definition. I sense that we have a "wait and see" approach right now, a lack of FO/Manager clarity. I'm not blaming injury or strikeouts or hanging sliders on anybody but the players, mind you.....it's the response to those events I'm speaking of.
Again, I wish I thought that there was a clear plan for the '13 M's. Do the A's and William Beane EVER enter a season without conviction? A good lesson there, perhaps.
I don't see that in Safeco.
And maybe that's bringing down that gloomy Karma.
moe
I just do not think cutting a couple marginal players gets you bad karma. Doc and Moe are correct in that there must be something else missing... but I am not an expert in this area... but how about a few observations.
What I do see though is that EVERY team the Mariners play seem to have most of their batters at peace when they are in the batters box. All these teams have a majority of their players almost in a zen like state of see ball - hit ball. Ackley has 40% chance at best currently of putting a hanging slider in play, and much less hitting it to the wall. Seagar is trying to make sure he hits every fast ball thrown, so he does not have to try hitting anything off speed. Heck even Morse and Ibanez feel they must hit homers every time there are players in scoring position. So know maybe Wedge or Hanson wants the players on edge in the batters box, but it looks to me that someone is managing these at bats by chaos versus zen.
On the flip side, every team we face knows ALL the Mariner pitchers are throwing strikes. Our philosophy is not to WALK ANYONE. If you know that as a hitter, you dig in your back foot, you lean in to make sure you reach the outside corner, and especially the last week, you look for the mistake pitches that are up... and you just crush the ball. There is nothing that scares you about facing the Mariners pitching staff. Not even the un-hittable Felix change up is immune.
I am not saying we start a bean ball war or hitting guys just for the sport of it... although I do think Oliver or Pryor should have hit someone last night after Morse got hit on 2 straight pitches. I do think we need to throw inside a LOT MORE, and get opposing players moving their feet away from the plate. Ya know... add some Ron Villone or Drysdale to your pitching diet. Now maybe this is where a Shoppach catching may help, but Montero is not too young to learn.
For what ever it is worth, I do remember that during Felix's great stretch last year that Felix hit Ichiro, Jeter and A-Rod all in the same game...and I think we won.
Don't know who said that, but consecutive lock-down starts from Iwakuma and Saunders would sure help right now.
"People in the M's org suspect that Jesus Montero's catching is creating teamwide dysfunction." As a guy who deals in tangibles and not intangibles, this statement, for me, raises several questions:
1) What are the concrete on-field effects of this teamwide dysfunction? E.g., players not trying, pitchers making wrong pitches in key situations, poor defensive positioning, baserunning mistakes, etc?
2) What specific actions are being done by Montero to create the dysfunction? E.g., poor pitch calling, poor framing, failure to block pitches in the dirt, poor throws against baserunners, etc? If there specific areas of sub-standard performance, then they should be addressed in an improvement/training program.
3) What is the role of our newly-acquired corps of veteran leaders (Ibanez, Morse, Bay, Shoppach, etc) to mitigate this dysfunction? Shouldn't Raul be sitting Montero down and explaining the "right way" to do things to get the team functional? If Raul can't do this sort of thing, then what good is veteran leadership?
4) Wedge is an ex-catcher. I assume that his leash is fairly short - if the M's don't make .500 this year with an upward trend, I assume his job is in question. I also assume that this dysfunction should be most apparent to him. Shouldn't he be fixing the problem right now, to protect his own job?
The Jeremy Giambi/Josh Hamilton/Miguel Cabrera effect where a player is throwing off the team vibe of dedication by not taking the season seriously and partying?
Wedge made comments that were less than flattering after Montero's offseason of learning to run. Something to the effect of, "He looks a little better, but he's not in shape." Basically he dismissed Montero's offseason "work". Could it be that Montero is the one guy on the locker room who doesn't seem to care about the losses?
Hey Tacoma,
In the post on Zunino, I comment on what I see as the problem with our young bats. I think the "Wedge" philosophy makes an AB too complicated for the young guys. Vet's like Morse, Morales, Cust, Olivo and Ichiro bring the approach they've got......Wedge doesn't impact them much.
But young guys get wacked, not immediately but soon.
Ackley was a guy who looked like he had 50+ XB hits in him his rookie year. He pulled the ball more then, and he loooked comfortable at the plate. he looked Trout/Harper comfortable. His natural talent got him to Seattle in a hurry. Now he looks like a lost Punch and Judy hitter. Maybe MLB pitchers found his hole. Maybe not.
Seager rode a rocket and mashed as a rook. I hope he's only in a short slump right now.
Carp? He bombed his way into the lineup...then kept it up. A year later he collapsed.
Is all of this linnked to a "Wedge-type" philosophy? That's probably too simplistic.
But I think the way to approach young hitters with talent is to make it simple for them. Hey kid, pick a zone. Smote the first pitch you see there.
If they have any ability they will figure out the rest.
moe
This is clearly all my fault. The agony I feel when watching this team is the karmic boomerang for the transgressions of my early 20's. The rest of my life is pretty peachy. There is no other explanation for why my favorite team is so cursed. It's my bad karma - y'all are just collateral damage! ;)
And we remember how shrill the baseball people were about giving the job to Olivo. Maybe that's what they were thinking about.
If they were right, they've been right for ten years now.
What would it be?
CAN'T be the SELECTION process at this point. Can't be. No way that Ackley, Montero, Smoak etc were the wrong players to bet on.
If there's a systemic problem creating fails, it's got to be something *fouling up* the prospects as they hit the big leagues.
What would that be?
... as opposed to the universe being angry at the M's.
It's a young team. A few things go wrong, they're liable to go into a bit of a panic. Agree also that the dings to Saunders and Morse are not, in and of themselves, an unusual collection of owies. Ask the Angels about that ... :- )
When I worked for a nursing home, my workload was ridiculous. Thirty patients assigned to me, and the average eight hour work day took more like twelve hours to complete with paperwork. But, I BELIEVED in what I was doing because the entire team agreed (between the usual grumbling) that patient care was first on our list of priorities.
Then a funny thing happened. Our director began implementing a system-wide, top-down 'avoid all mistakes' mentality with policy updates. We were nearing the threshold for license review, and management became less focused on care and more focused on administrative/paperwork obligations.
Net result? Patient care began to deteriorate. I honestly couldn't point to specific changes at ground level, but attitude changed across the board. I found myself contemplating procedure, rather than patient well-being. WhenI left that place and went to work at a hospital, I found the union culture there was even more focused on procedure than the nursing home! The difference was patient load: 4-6 instead of 30. We just outmuscled the problem.
The M's have company-wide peccadillos and irrational preferences, and don't overcome those obstacle by outmuscling the problem (bigger payroll and smarter allocationof resources). If they said, "We WILL NOT employ pitchers who throw inside, because it might offend Suzy Soccer Mom," that is not necessarily a doomed position. BUT, they MUST then deploy their resources in securing the services of pitchers who have already proven capable of doing so.
Could Randy Johnson have succeeded AT ALL if he were required to abide by a memo instructing him to pitch only to the outer half? No, of course not, and he's maybe he greatest pitcher of our generation. What about telling Edgar he absolutely CANNOT hit the ball in the air the other way? Felix that he must throw 85% 4seamers? Anyone here remember the coaches complaining about how little Jeremy Reed pulled the ball? What about Choo's defense? Anyone notice Cincy just put him in CF?!
The M's, to my eye, QUITE CLEARLY have a disconnect between their minor league system and their big league system. The philosophy in the minors doesn't look to affect prospect trajectory much, if at all. The talented guys perform as I expect them to.
But when they get to The Show, it's a whole different story. Someone is doing something unusual, in the strictest sense of the word, within the M's organization when young players arrive. There is pressure to change them and focus on their weaknesses, rather than work with them on maximizing their strengths.
Doc,
The trail of breadcrumbs in your post led me to Wilson. I was never a huge fan of Wilson, either. Maybe I should have been.
"3) What is the role of our newly-acquired corps of veteran leaders (Ibanez, Morse, Bay, Shoppach, etc) to mitigate this dysfunction? Shouldn't Raul be sitting Montero down and explaining the "right way" to do things to get the team functional? If Raul can't do this sort of thing, then what good is veteran leadership?"
I've always been skeptical of the value of veteran leadership in baseball. While I don't want to say that there is NO value to it, I've always suspected that baseball places too much value on it. Just because a guy like Kelly Shoppach has been good enough to hang around the major leagues for the better part of a decade doesn't magically make him a good influence. [No slight on Shoppach intended here. I'm just using him as an example.]
To a certain extent, this is a natural tendency. Culturally, pretty much every human society reveres and values mentorship. Examples of this relationship between the young and the old is embedded in our culture, particularly in the stories we tell. For instance, how many early Tom Cruise movies paired him with a mentor of some kind? Answer: almost all of them.
More than any of the others on the team this year, it would seem like this is why Raul Ibanez was brought in. But, just because we want him to be a good mentor doesn't mean that he necessarily is one. We assume he's a good mentor/player coach because he comes across in interviews as being a pretty decent guy and because, to put up the career numbers that he has takes an awful lot of hard work and dedication - values that any team would want to have transferred to their young players. But, again, just because he possesses these qualities himself doesn't mean that he's especially gifted at imparting them to others.
Something else I just thought of: too often, when someone is successful at something, they tend to assume that their pathway to success is the answer for everyone else as well. The very best coaches and teachers, in my experience, are the ones that have this central attitude of openness and a kind of thirst for new knowledge. To me, that's a big part of good coaching. I don't assume that just because a guy is a veteran and a great guy and exudes professionalism, that he also possesses the intangibles of a great coach.