No air more refreshing than what you breathe the first time you open your windows in the spring. The stale air that has stagnated over the late fall, winter, and early spring is dissipated, and fresh winds blow through the house.
That is what Eric Wedge is doing to atmosphere of the Seattle Mariners. He is doing in the clubhouse what Jack is doing in the front office. And both are most refreshing.
The notion that Ichiro cannot ever be written out of the lineup for a rest, even when he hits like Figgins for two months, is ridiculous. The notion that anyone who suggests this is showing disrespect to his honor suggests to me that his honor, his position with this franchise, has gotten much TOO honorable.
I don't know if the rest will help or not. But at least he's reinforced the precedent he's been setting that PT must be earned, even by established vets. Wedge has bent over backward to allow Ichiro time to work out of his funk Ichiro's way. Now it's time for Wedge to play his proper role as manager and shake the status quo up. Again.
Baker and you, Doc, make the essential point here too, that the "some are more equal than others" mindset, while it may of necessity hold sway above Wedge's pay grade due to the nature of the ownership, cannot be allowed to prevent the establishment in the clubhouse of the ethic necessary to Jack's rebuild, earned PT replaces entitled PT.
Ichiro has earned our everlasting respect by his production over his Mariners career. He has earned an enforced day off by his play over the last two months.
Q. Is it such a big hairy deal for Ichiro to sit one game? Doesn't he play 156 per year or something?
A. It actually is a big hairy deal, as we were surprised to note from the back of his bubble gum card.
In the last seven (non-ulcer) seasons, Ichiro has played in 162 games three times and he played in 161 the other four times.
Ichiro was given five (5) games per year off under Lou Piniella. But then Ichiro got only three and one games off under Bob Melvin ... and of course Mike "Entitled Vet" Hargrove let Ichiro write the lineup card. Under Hargrove, Ichiro ossified his organizational entitlements into a quasi-Cal Ripken situation.
I hadn't realized this. And we remember vividly, Ichiro DH'ing or bunting or something in his first year, and the press asking him if it bothered him. He said, using exactly these words, "It is not my job to make those decisions. It is my job to do as the manager wishes."
We remember, during Cal Ripken's streak, Bill James acidly saying, "I know nobody asked me, but if anybody did, I am completely opposed to putting personal goals ahead of the team."
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Q. That implies that Historian James believes that a 162-game season hurts performance?
A. Yes. And I take it as self-evident, too.
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Q. Has the issue been studied?
A. Can't imagine how you would isolate the variables to "study" whether players perform better after a day off ... okay, here are the top 100 players in baseball, and they were slumping irreparably (defined how?), and they'd played a long time (defined how?) and they got 1-2* days off, and here were their results in the short term..
Not only that, but baseball is a grind. You're not worried about Olivo's legs in June. You're worried about them on August 20th.
So you're absent a sabermetric answer, as far as I've seen anyway, and the issue is fantastically complicated. Like pitcher health.
It's time for us sabes to simply shut our yaps and ask the athletes what they think about days off.
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Q. What do athletes think about days off?
A. You ever play (say) high-school basketball, and you're 1-for-8 from the floor, and you're frustrated, and you're taking worse and worse shots to "make up for it"?
The coach pulls you, and you sit four minutes ... then the coach walks over. He says, "I want you to touch the ball three times before you take your next shot. And I want it to be from the block. Get some short ones to get going."
And you sit another three minutes. And then you go in.
Anybody ever play sports? Then you know that re-sets are important.
***
Sports are about rhythm. Even LeBron James, at his level, is still fighting the daily battle to find rhythm, comfort zones, the sweet spot on the floor. When he's not getting it, he sits, takes a look, thinks a little, and goes back at it again.
The alternative: let the athlete continue to flail away without thinking. The action is chaotic out there.
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Q. What about Geoff Baker's theme that Wedge can't be seen to play favorites?
A. We in the blog-o-sphere might take a good long minute here and recognize that Geoff Baker is --- > in the locker room.
The players we write about through our monitors are, loosely speaking, Baker's friends. Are you going to tell somebody from Rio de Janeiro how things work in Brazil?
Baker shrugs and informs us that, hey, if Wedge is going to crack down on Figgins and Cust and whoever, he'd better not give those tomata cans the excuse to say, "Yeah, but he just doesn't like us. Look how he does Ichiro."
Especially when you are slamming the crackdown, you'd better be VERY sure you don't give employees that little, um, wedge to start questioning your integrity.
***
So, far from a pointless exercise to appear to the media that he's involved ...Wedge is executing a maneuver that (1) works well in sports, and (2) puts Ichiro under the same (or at least similar!) rules to everybody else.
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Q. SSI approves of the Piniella II clubhouse atmosphere?
A. I didn't even know that it was possible nowadays, especially in Seattle. Eric Wedge has done what I thought was impossible.
Did you think the Mariners would be fighting for a pennant in mid-June? Tell me Wedge isn't front-runner for manager of the year.
Lou Piniella was awesome. Subtract Lou's mild case of senility, give us a younger, sharper, more edgy Lou, and that's Eric Wedge.
Unless they don't like his moves sabermetrically, sabes tend to scoff at the idea that managers affect things much. Usually they're right. But not this time, boys, not this time. Eric Wedge is doing a great job, a job only a few people in the world could have done in 2011.
You've got a fun season going. You owe Eric Wedge for that. Just give it up for him; he has earned that.
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BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
Gimenez is catching Bedard. This will be interesting.
Re: Ichiro...
I am interested in people's opinions on whether they think there's a reasonable chance that, if his production doesn't rebound, he might bow out of the remainder of his contract, or take a settlement portion of it to retire?
Interesting suggestion ... my $0.02 is:
$0.01 = I'd give 20-to-1 that he's not old yet
$0.01 = He wants to play in MLB till he's 50, including as RP
I'd be more shocked by a Sasaki/Johjima bail, than I would be by Ichiro aging five years early.
As it happened, Bedard was able to carry 3b/1b/c better than were Vargas and Fister. But he was none too happy about it...
You hit the primary need for days off - the mental reset - out of the park.
But, IMO, you whiffed on the other variable -- the ability of the body to repair the muscular damage done by playing athletics at the highest level. For mortal man, science says it actually takes 36-48 hours to repair damage from strenuous physical activity. (Body builders train every other day because the rest day allows faster increase in muscle mass).
I believe one of the things that sets pro athletes apart is that they repair faster - under 24 hours. So, they CAN play every day without detrimental effect. (The steroid era may be the ultimate proof of the reality in baseball - as several players admitted to dipping into the pharmacy in response to injuries).
The thing about aging is this ... the speed at which the body repairs the micro-muscle tears slows down. The Beltre disaster season, (I believe) was an absolute cause and effect of him being "a little" injured and never getting enough time to fully heal - (until he finally went on the DL months too late).
When you're trying to make precise contact with a spheroid hurtling at 90 mph, and shifting in the other 2 dimensions at the same time, "tiny" disruptions in physical well being can have all kinds of impacts on results. While the typical pro-athlete mantra is "suck it up" and "play through the pain", there is a point where any athlete is "just" uncomfortable enough that they can play - but cannot produce.
I believe, the 37 year old Ichiro has likely moved beyond the point where his body can fully repair his daily muscle damage. So, what happens is it starts accumulating. For a week or two, no detrimental effect. But, after enough consecutive days played, maybe a tricep is a little sore, and his ablity to change the vertical plane of the bat is ever-so-slightly compromised.
A "three day weekend" out of the lineup, and Ichiro might recover and find his swing again. BUT ... if you then return him to his Ripken status and ride him, he'll likely as not go cold again.
The mental reset is certainly the larger variable for any younger player. But for guys above age 35 ... I would argue that playing 5 days a week instead of 6 should be a nearly mandatory adjustment. It's not. But considering how well we saw some codgers play in their late 30s while on steroids ... I'd love to see some managers 'baby' their aging Hall of Famers more often ... because I think it would extend the careers of many of them.
The only slight refinement I might add is, what if the fitness/freshness graph follows a slight "sawtooth" graph that is gently downhill ... down during the exercise, up during sleep, but trending slightly down over time...
Usually re-set by days off, but when in the midst of 20 games in a row, "sawtoothing" just down under the crispness waterline...
Perhaps also this "sawtooth" graph is re-set by the double-day off that many managers favor ... the bench game following the travel day...
The thing about aging is this ... the speed at which the body repairs the micro-muscle tears slows down.
Without any question. At Ichiro's age, how many games per year was Rickey missing?
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All of which tells you why Wedge didn't pinch-hit last night and use Olivo for the 9th. That inning of catching might have had a profound negative effect on Olivo's "sawtooth" micro-tear healing graph.