1) This is the sort of thing that isn't readily measurable, and hence likely to be discounted by the sabermetrics community, which is fine. The point of advanced statistics is to understand performance first, i.e. what actually happened. But, when you're dealing with humans, not everything fits into a nice little box.
2) On the other hand, Dustin Ackley has been an elite level baseball player probably since his early teens. Baseball is what he does. Shouldn't he be used to pressure?
3) I recall in the book Moneyball, since they came up together in the Mets system, Michael Lewis made a point to draw a comparison/contrast between Billy Beane and Lenny Dykstra as prospects and eventual major leaguers. I can't recall the details, but the main point that Lewis was making in that section of the book was that Dykstra was much more tempermentally suited to achieve success in baseball. He was looser, and more relaxed than Beane. He took the failures in stride, whereas Beane dwelled on them.
4) It seems like there's no one formula that works for every player. For certain types of guys, maybe the best thing is to have a Jeffrey Leonard there that first year. For others, it may not matter in the slightest. Some guys need mentoring, while others don't. I guess it comes back to knowing your talent, which is hard. Maybe things would have been different for Billy Beane had he been brought up as a prospect in a different environment. I'm sure Griffey was aided, not just by Jeffrey Leonard taking the pressure off that first year, but by growing up surrounded by major leaguers and hearing those conversations take place every single day.
5) While I'm not the world's greatest Eric Wedge fan, I am inclined to believe that Ackley would be well served by a more aggressive style of hitting.
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What is success? What is failure?
Rick sez,
There's a lot of pressure being the savior of a franchise. Some young folks handle it better than others. And when you disappoint, then even when you bring in veterans to help out, the underlying message is not "we want to give you help" but actually "you aren't cutting it."
When Ackley came up, like Seager, anything he did positive was going to be gravy. His confidence was sky high - he was owning AAA at the time...
Griffey spoke a lot about how much Jeffrey Leonard meant to him. That always seemed strange to me - Jeffrey Leonard wasn't exactly the kind of guy you thought of as a mentor. But Leonard was a 33 year old vet and a bigger run producer than Griffey. Leonard carried the load. Griffey could enjoy being Griffey that first season...
Why do the Mariners have such success with pitchers and not with position players? Could the presence of Felix have almost everything to do with it? Pineda & Fister: neither ever had to be The Man.
....
I'm going to go play basketball here in a couple of hours, YMCA basketball so to speak. Let's suppose we play seven games to 15 points, sort of like playing one game to 105.*
Suppose Dr. D, at age 50 and 6' even, playing against guys a lot better than him ... suppose he shoots 9-for-26 on the night, including 2-for-9 from three ... he sets a bunch of picks, makes a bunch of passes, and his team wins six of seven games. Is that success? Or is that failure?
If he feels like he's having a good night, he's more likely to hit the current shot that shows up for him. Right?!
....
It's a funny thing. If Brendan Ryan hits .270 this year, 18 doubles and 11 home runs, he's going to come into the clubhouse every night laughing and smiling. People will be joking around with him, going "attaboy," and he'll be a happy man.
He'll go out each night, figuring, if I get a single or double tonight, man alive. That's one more triumph for clean living. He'll bear down and focus, aiming for that hit, optimistic that he'll get it, and he'll be at his best.
....
Supposing that Mike Morse does exactly the same thing. He hits .270, 18 doubles and 11 home runs. Will he be happy, optimistic, and at his best?
....
People talk about, "It doesn't matter where you hit in the lineup." These people are always people who did not play professional baseball. Eric Wedge tells you, it matters a whale of a lot whether Justin Smoak hits 3rd, or hits 7th.
Have you ever heard a manager, or GM, say anything ELSE? Don't they ALL talk about setting a kid's standard so that it will be easy for him to succeed?
It's not about the batting order. It's about where you set the bar for a kid. And it's about whether he's happy or miserable.
Changing a player's slot in the lineup -- or changing his playing time role, as the A's did with Jaso -- changes the definition of success for him. The players themselves will tell you that is a whale of a big factor in sports. Sure, it matters to a player whether others tell him he is failing.
Mike Morse, Kendrys Morales, and Felix Hernandez have functioned well under very strict definitions of success.
At this point, Tom Wilhelmsen and Kyle Seager have also functioned under strict definitions of success, and have prospered. Those two are good to go. They are going to have good major league careers. Next question.
"Is 'closing' as difficult as they say it is?" Well, what is the definition of success for Tom Wilhelmsen, as opposed to that for Oliver Perez? What does Tom Wilhelmsen have to do, to get 9,000 people mad at him?
Raul Ibanez has played under ridiculous definitions of success, and enjoyed it. Jason Bay has been there before; it's something to consider, as you project the remained of 2013, that playing well [under heavy expectations] is not foreign to Bay.
Good stuff Rick,
Dr D
Comments
This post combines some shouts recently posted, otherwise at the rate shouts are going they'll be off the page in an hour.
There's very few managers whose personal views, strategies or habits over time don't start egging us on to dislike him. Wedge brought some toughness and intensity to the table that the M's needed after Wakamatsu. The thing is, I'm not sure it gets you anywhere to keep firing managers after you get tired of their schtick. Whoever you bring in, you're just going to restart the cycle and end up firing him after a few years, just like we did with Hargrove. I admit it can be a problem if things get to the point where the team tunes out a manager who just says the same things over and over. But if I'm Zduriencik, I'm keeping Wedge unless I feel it's got to that point. From ownership's standpoint, to me Zduriencik and Wedge should be a package deal. If things are really that bad overall you consider firing them both, but you only fire Wedge independently if he's lost the clubhouse.
I have expressed concern over the last couple of years that perhaps, I say PERHAPS, Jack's admittedly bright skill set is too limited to allow him to succeed in the full orb of a GM's responsibilities in putting together a successful MLB team. Again, I'm not saying that this is the case, just wondering, JUST PERHAPS. That said, I am extremely reluctant to make a full regime change and reboot with another GM, even if things continue to go not so well this season.
At some point a franchise needs some continuity. Seattle had some continuity with Piniella for a full ten seasons. Even he had two significant GM regimes, though. You have to find someone you vet thoroughly, someone you believe in, hire them, then stand by them. Granted, at some point if you made a mistake in entrusting your operations to the guy you hired, you have to admit it, make a move, then move on. But after too many of those, it starts to look like the problem is more with the people doing the hiring. Jack needs more rope. Nobody's more impatient than me. I want to live long enough to see a run of successful seasons by the Mariners. But I don't like it when a franchise becomes a revolving door.