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...then I have no problems keeping Cust around for veteran presence and some guidance to the kiddies. He can get 150 PAs the rest of the way, be reasonably productive at it and help the kids...what's wrong with that?
8-and-a-half man NBA rotation
Spec sez:
I think Wedge loves the kids-n-vets mix & match.
I think he likes Jack Wilson as his reserve infielder and I think he likes Jack Cust as his extra bat. I foresee:
- Guti-Carp-Halman-Peguero-Cust as 5-to-make-3 at CF/LF/DH
- Ackley-Kennedy-Figgins-Wilson as 4-to-make-2.1 at 2b/3b/backupSS
He doesn't like playing rookies every day and he's said so -- and I wouldn't be surprised if they kept this roster indefinitely. LRod was done in by bad BABIP, but he also just landed on a roster with too many infielders.
In 2007, the Oakland A's had the following players NOT among their nine starters, as measured by plate appearances:
- Jack Cust
- Marco Scutaro
- Kurt Suzuki
- Milton Bradley
- Mark Kotsay
- Jack Hannahan
- Todd Walker
- Bobby Kielty
- Daric Barton
- Dee Brown
- Chris Snelling
- Ryan Langerhans
Their starters were (at the 1B/OF/DH spots) Dan Johnson, Mike Piazza, Travis Buck, Nick Swisher, and Shannon Stewart. None of them got their own cubicles. You typed your 80 wpm or you gave up your seat to somebody who would.
Obviously some of these players were on-and-off the roster, as the season went along, but the example is clear. Billy Beane has enjoys using EVERY bench position as a jobshare.
He has 13-14 position players on his roster and he's going to cut the playing-time cheesecake 13-14 ways. The 25th man for Beane is liable to be Mark Kotsay or Jack Cust or Marco Scutaro ... not Willie Bloomquist or Chris Woodward or Josh Wilson.
But that will happen when your instinct is toward scoring runs, as opposed to your instinct being towards "polished" defense and easy-to-understand late-game substitutions.
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Dr. D always wanted the M's to run this kind of 13-to-make-9 rotation, and have guys earning their PT with their bats. Guess he got it!
One more huge, and legitimate reason, for getting on to the Eric Wedge bandwagon. Not only is Wedge willing to manage jobshares, but he can make them work in the clubhouse.
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Hey. Did you guys notice how smooth ex-Athletic Jack Cust was, about his losing playing time? The beat writers went to him breathlessly, "You're benched! Are you going to make trouble?!"
Did you notice how Cust sort of smiled relaxedly, said, "I know what I can do. I know my hits will fall in, and I'll play."
He knows the drill, is the thing. He is not phased by jobshares. It is really a Seattle thing in which the media reinforces the players' sense of seniority and entitlement.
Perhaps you remember the media's catalytic role in the clubhouse breakdown when Jose Lopez competed with Bret Boone for playing time. There are individuals in the media who believe more in "fairness to loyal players" than the players themselves do.
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Zduriencik and Wedge have just about kicked down that wall. Cust, with his team-oriented background, is providing an assist.
Maybe I need to stop calling for the Mariners to shed Jack Cust. Y'think?
Comments
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(the backup catcher not incorporated into the idea.)
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Kennedy quoted on Shannon Drayer's blog:
"I think we are all excited for him to come up," he told me. "His bat will be welcome here and I think it will give us a little boost and hopefully we all can fit in the lineup one way or another and continue playing well. That is the big thing."
Kennedy has played first, second and DH this season and has been taking early work at third for a couple of weeks now. He told me that he has yet to be told where he will be playing and when I asked if he was basically ready for anything he said yes.
"Absolutely," he said. "That was my job when I got here so I will just continue with that."
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If Adam Kennedy -- with the big hits he has delivered for this club -- supports the jobshares, how are Chone Figgins and Franklin Gutierrez supposed to walk their blizzards of outs into Eric Wedge's office and complain?
Kennedy and Cust are the two vets who have hit, other than Ichiro* and Smoak. Right now they are making it impossible for other vets to bellyache.
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Jack Wilson is, without a doubt, still here because he does not hang his head about PT.
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It continues to boggle, how cyber-fans who just last year watched a clubhouse implosion into 101 losses, could fail to appreciate the need to manage a team's self-image.
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. . . or should I say Brad Pitt.
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There are a lot of fake trailers these days...
If it's not, I'm there opening night...
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The thick-headed, grumpy-old-fogey scouts are not played by Brad Pitt. Wonder who we're supposed to root for?
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And I'm looking forward to it...even though I think Beane is monumentally overrated as a talent evaluator and got ridiculously lucky with his big three rotation rats.
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Yeah, but Paul DePodesta gets played by Jonah Hill who may be his exact opposite in terms of total mass.
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GREAT article, Doc.
That said - my take on Beane is that he (like most GMs) is "average" on talent evaluation. But, what Beane is/was correct about is that for a low income team to compete, it is forced to identify "value". Beane's edge (at the time) was he correctly recognized that OBP was undervalued dollar-to-run wise in the MLB. And he got (where most who read the book missed), that OBP was not the end-all be-all stat ... it was just significantly undervalued "at the time".
That said ... I think Beane created a lot of his subsequent problems as a result of the book. I think he was hurt in negotiating with many GMs who had ego issues (not uncommon), and may have even helped some GMs examine their approaches and made them better.
What's interesting to me is that I get the sense Beane has tended to do better when mining for extra draft picks through arb-and-walk offers than he has when trading stars (since the book). This I attribute to the book making it harder for him to snag the talent he actually wants when trading away his Hudsons and Mulders.
But, I think, over time, the small market paradigm may have also become a drag on his farm system (to a small degree). I have noted that I believe it is important to develop an organizational culture if one is going to "sustain" success. I think you need some number of home grown veteran REGULARS (I continue to believe batter/pitcher dynamics are two different psychological subsets), around to promote the "insert team name" way.
The Oakland model was consistently shipping off the star bats (even quicker than the star arms). I think there is an inherent difference in Jeter or Chipper saying ... "listen to Skip" versus say ... Richie Sexson as a Mariner. The real end to the Oakland run (from my perspective) was when Chavez fell off the production table.
I think Doc calls it true ... that Oakland "had" a working 13 to make 8 paradigm ... but I don't think it is sustainable, unless you have those foundation pieces in place to keep it going. The 13 to make 8 paradigm is almost directly contrary to the mercenary mentality ... unless you're talking ONLY lucky-to-have-a-job mercenaries. Cust was nearly out of baseball once upon a time ... of course he'd buy in. Just like Kennedy would today ... or Langerhans ... or Josh Wilson. Who doesn't? Somebody like Chone Figgins who has always been "the man".
But, if you're playing 13 to make 8 with home grown talent ... that is 'naturally' feeling the GIFT of a major league job ... it makes sense that it'll be easier to get buy in -- (unless you have a bunch of mercenary vets in place who promote the attitude that since they've paid their dues they deserve full time play regardless of production).
This goes to the point I've been belaboring for the past 3-4 years ... that order matters in building a solid organization. It's one of the reasons I've been petrified of the club going the mercenary route this year before things like the 13 to make 8 paradigm has time to solidify. It's already a tough situation because of Chone and Ichiro ... the two "entitled vets" both playing way under norm.
It's actually a minor miracle what Wedge has managed to do. Ichiro, Chone, Bradley, Jack Wilson ... each was a different flavor of land mine to building a solid team-first foundation. And having someone like Kennedy to say "divided PT is fine" while playing his a** off ... without A.K. ... I don't know that Wedge wouldn't have lost the clubhouse without him.