Terry posted a lot of provocative items in the shout queue today on the failures of management in terms of player development and other areas of concern. To sum up what he said:
Ackley is failing miserably, but was left to work out his swing changes on his own. Nick Franklin embarks on an eating program of his own volition and is immediately castigated when ST starts. Jesus Montero had several issues to address and the Ms left it up to him to do so, even though there are rumors of accountability and work ethic. At least five games have been lost due to some form of umpire bias or extremely timlely ineptitude, but the FO hasn’t said anything about it.
If I’m misrepresenting you in any way Terry, please let me know.
I agree with all that. Ackley is an asset that you are fumbling. Smoak was too, and he’s doing his own balance-stance work to overcome bad habits just as Ackley is trying to go back to his college swing and Saunders had to use rubber bands… None of our major prospects are getting the in-house assistance they need to get better. Whatever we’re doing for them isn’t enough, because Montero’s weaknesses are exactly what they were last year. We gave him a homework assignment but didn’t give him a tutor to make sure he understood the work. Saunders wasn’t even given homework, he rented a tutor himself out of his own pocket to fix his major-league trajectory.
In basketball, when JaVale McGee asks the Wizards for a big man coach and is told, “sure, if you pay for it” it’s a laughable offense by an inept front office.
Is baseball that much different that players are just expected to do their own thing? Honestly, I think baseball players would be better off getting swing gurus and pitching gurus just like they have in golf to help them work their own swings and motions to perfection, but teams frown on players going their own way (see: Nick Franklin’s eating habits). If Michael Saunders’s offseason regimen with Bard HADN’T worked out would they have then blamed him for taking outside advice?
And why does a team that mandates all sorts of crazy/cutting edge, individualized workout regimens from a sports science expert for all their best minor leaguers then forget to individualize the batting approach and training of its very best hitters? It’s very odd. Perhaps dysfunctional.
But does that mean that all the front office’s decisions are inept? I mean, every decision-maker will make bad ones, or have bad outcomes from good process. You want to see sound reasoning and more good outcomes than bad based on correctly formed processes.
So let’s make a ledger. First, the negatives:
- Young hitter failure: Montero screwing up his offseason homework, Smoak getting no helpful in-house counsel, ditto Ackley
- The Brendan Ryan / Robert Andino offensive hole nonsense
- Not standing up for the team by getting thrown out (manager) or filing grievances with the league about the umpiring (GM).
- Lack of urgency to correct known issues
I'm sure there are more but these are just the ones raised today. I don’t know that calling the umpires on the carpet is a good way to get more calls in the future. I do know it’s a good way to get fined, but maybe that would help. I’m sure there’s an article in that one point all on its own (*cough* Doc*cough*). The other stuff is all roster construction or instruction, and that’s certainly on the head man and something to talk about here.
But what about the plusses?
+ Outfield: Jason Bay and Raul Ibanez added. Howls of shame and rage ensue. Why aren’t Wells and Thames on this team? Why are we robbing the grave to fill lineup spots with bad defenders? Etc. By the way, I said these things.
Results: Bay: .241/.350/.425, 119 OPS+ in 103 PAs. Ibanez : 226/.265/.538, 120 OPS+ in 98 PAs. But that’s not the whole story, because we were forced to use extra outfielders thanks to injuries to Saunders, Morse and Guti, ALL our starting outfield. Endy Chavez was promoted and is running a decent-for-a-CFer .289/.295/.368 (87 OPS+) in center over 78 PAs just to keep us in the race. The spare outfield parts we chose have us within shouting distance of a playoff spot. If Thames and Wells post 80 OPS+ numbers are we out of it now? We currently have a 100 OPS+ offense. That’s nothing to shout about… except that we haven’t had one of those since…
2012: 89
2011: 84
2010: 79 (yeesh…)
2009: 92
2008: 90
We have to go back to 2007 to get to an offense over 100 (103, to be exact). We went 88-74 that year with a staff ERA+ of 92. Horacio Ramirez was on that team (ERA over 7 for 98 innings), Jeff Weaver (ERA over 6 for 146 IP), Baek (ERA over 5 for 73 IP), Feierabend got 50 innings with an ERA of EIGHT…
This staff is worse than that one? I don’t think so. Not when Felix had one of his lesser ERA seasons and Jarrod Washburn was our 2nd best pitcher.
Did that club over-achieve? Absolutely. They pythag’ed to 79 wins. But this IS the best offense since that winning club, with room for growth. A couple of hits with RISP and we’d have a winning record right now. And management put this team together, Bay and Ibanez included. The offense is better than it was and much of the thanks for that goes to the outfield. Do I wish we had a glove man for when Saunders AND Guti both went down? You bet. Can you plan for every eventuality when you're trying to scrape up enough offensive performance to get out of the AL West basement? Maybe not.
+ Young hitter performance: Seager and Saunders were allowed or maybe even enabled to flourish. We kept Felix off his WBC team but not Saunders, and Michael went on to do very, very well for the Canadians. He carried that over to this season. Is he a world-beater? No, but as a half-time CFer with thump he’ll be worth what, 2-3 WAR this year? Seager is hitting like David freakin’ Wright and is on pace for something like a 6 WAR season. If he gets to 4 he’ll be in Adrian Beltre territory - at least the Beltre that was with us. Kyle’s making $500K this year. If Saunders and Seager were named Ackley and Smoak we wouldn’t be having this conversation about “development” at all. Most blue-chippers unfortunately fail to hit their upsides, but we have some that certainly are getting there. Whether management can take credit for their achievements or not, they didn’t trade them away and kept them on the big-league club to figure it out. What hasn’t worked for Smoak and Ackley did work for these two, so is it the plan that’s flawed or the fact that the plan is used for all players and not all players can succeed this way?
+ MOTO: Morales and Morse. They were brought in to be the MOTO. With OPS+ figures of 123 and 120 they aren’t out of place in that role. If we’re out of it at the deadline either man can be flipped for a nice return, or we can try to keep one if we’d like. Yes, they are one-year rentals and not likely to be long-term solutions, but they came at the cost of spare parts (Vargas and Jaso). That ain’t bad.
+ TOR for pennies: Iwakuma is vastly underpaid. We picked between he and Vargas for our off-season 6 mil, tacked an extra year (plus a team option) onto Iwakuma’s deal for the same ballpark figures, and are getting a 6 WAR (pro-rated) pitcher out of Kuma thus far, while we traded Vargas for one of our MOTO slots. Should we have kept Vargas too? Maybe. But he’s still atrocious on the road (OPS against is almost .900 with an ERA over 5) and his overall numbers are bumped by having more home games so far this year. For the same price (Kuma is actually 2 million cheaper than Vargas) we got the better pitcher. And Vargas brought us a 120 OPS+ hitter that we desperately needed. Where’s the “lose” part of that equation so far?
+ Injury response: Guti went down, along with Morse and Saunders for a couple of weeks and we found a way to plug holes and put up a good offense. Pitching has been a similar story, but the devastation there was worse. Erasmo was our de-facto #3 starter. He still hasn’t thrown a game-time pitch since Spring Training. Hultzen was laying claim to the #5 spot in camp but had a slight injury that delayed him, then a more serious one that kept him from being Beavan’s replacement, so we had to go trade for Harang. We relied on Maurer (who is getting better as he goes), and Joe Saunders has been the same kind of Road Horrible that Vargas was, but again the money’s pretty similar. We’d have been better off with Vargas, but then there’s no Morales, so sometimes these things happen. Pryor went down, Kinney too, and we had to call up fireballers from the minors to help out. They’ve done well.
The staff ERA+ of 95 is higher than that of the 2007 squad even with all this ridiculousness. When you lose 2 setup men and two starters before the end of April, can you really judge the makeup of the team? The replacement stopgaps of Beavan and the like weren’t great in the rotation and Loe was a horrible idea, but we’re patching holes as we go. This team with last year’s Erasmo (112 ERA+) and the unhittable 10K-with-control Hultzen we were seeing in Tacoma could have done some serious damage. As it is, we’re still treading water and cursing bad luck and missed opportunities that have kept us below .500 this week. If we get that call in NY we sweep the Yankees, and a couple of plays in Cleveland makes that a split. Rough weeks are a part of baseball, not just a reflection on management.
+ Farm: SS/2B Nick Franklin is killing it in AA. SS Miller isn’t bad himself in AA. 1B Choi is a doubles and OBP machine in the Cal League, and SS Chris Taylor is Seager-ing up the league by leading it in average with more-than-expected power. Even if (when) he comes back to earth in AA he’s a bonafide SS not a marginal one like Miller and Franklin, so he doesn’t have to hit a billion XBHs to be valuable. Walker and Paxton are pitching well, Erasmo and Hultzen should be back soon, Pike is pitching very well as a teen in an older league, 3B Kivlehan is hitting… we have a wealth of talent still down on the farm to help replace players who either don’t work out here or to trade for those who might.
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I don’t like the minuses on that list, but there are still a lot of plusses from management. If and when Ackley puts it together or Franklin gets promoted or Hultzen and Erasmo can make it back and perform well enough by the trade deadline to replace the Harang types, we can cross off a lot of the minuses. The biggest problem Zduriencik has is that his #1 choices (Smoak, Ackley and Montero) are all struggling and underperforming. This is not a problem he had in Milwaukee. All those first choices came up golden while fewer of his later-round guys made any impact at all. They also struggled with pitchers in MIL while we have good pitching at all levels of the minors with some on the big-league club too.
Which brings us to the paralysis by analysis part of the equation that we listed on the minus side. Why can’t the Ms take decisive action with their failing big decisions on blue-chip prospects?
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