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Don't have much time, but ... that piece was a loooooong time coming.  Thanks Geoffy!

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Q.  Does the piece indicate, to you, that Zduriencik is "a bully"?

A.  Not by F-500 standards, no ... by baseball standards, apparently, he uses his authority in a way less gentle than they'd like.

Now, bear in mind, Dr. D hates bullies, hates men who pick fights with smaller men and run from fair fights.  Where there is real bullying, he's the first one to speak his mind.  But that's not what we read, in this case, not based on the content of Geoff's article.

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Jack Tatum, in They Call Me Assassin, once mocked Dick Butkus for bragging "When I hit people, I like to see them wobble back to the huddle."  Tatum scoffed, "Anybody in today's NFL knows that if you hit somebody with your best shot, and they can get back to the huddle under their own power, then you are not a hitter."

It's all a question of how you calibrate things, I guess.  I dunno how many high-ranking execs that Geoff has worked under...

Not much that was attributed to Zduriencik, in Baker's article, would have been at all unusual for the Boeing execs I worked for.  

Just f'r instance, I was puzzled, the "bullying" account that Zduriencik apologized to Fusco in the phone call, "You didn't do anything - it wasn't my call."  The exec's I've been around wouldn't have been sheepish about a firing.  No way no how, babe.

The guy who fires anybody sheepishly, that's not the bully you watch out for ... :- )  Some of these guys need to meet some execs with REAL fangs down to their chins.

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Q. Any other examples of "re-calibration" on "bully" definitions?

A.  Guerrero said that JZ "probably" fired him to "force Engle out" because "they often pushed back against his directives."  Slap me silly!  

I've worked for third-levels who, if you said one word they didn't like, they looked up with a huge glare, the room fell silent, and you spluttered trying to repair it.  Here is a VP, and his people "often push back against his directives," and this is the big bad bully?

If the running back can wobble back to the huddle, you are not a hitter.

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Another example - Zduriencik coming down to Wedge's office and "buffering" between Wedge and Armstrong.  Wish I'd ever had any 4th-levels who were interested in doing ANY "buffering" between their CEO's and ANYBODY.

It's dog-eat-dog at those levels, with those pay stubs.  The picture being painted here is more of confusion, stress, and chaos than it is of bullying.

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Q.  Are you saying Zduriencik is a nice guy?

A.  No, saying that at all.   

He does sound like a soft touch, compared to the average Nintendo VP I'm used to -- but at the same time, he probably is indeed "tough to work with" compared to the genteel standards that baseball people are used to.

I'll quickly concede that there are a few details in the article that give away the fact that he has his unpleasant moments.  

If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.  You don't sit down at a conference table with $500,000 execs and expect to be coddled.  You sit down with them in order to make money.

I dunno - maybe in baseball you do.  Expect to be treated with sensitivity, that is.

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Q.  In baseball?

A.  That seems to be the basic dichotomy here.  Employees of baseball executives seem to have much different expectations of their bosses, than employees of Nintendo or Microsoft execs get to have of their bosses.  

In baseball, stats analysts seem to expect to "work with" a VP, as opposed to "working for" a VP.  That would be where Tony Blengino and I talk past each other.

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Q.  What about Zduriencik "not knowing one iota about stats"?

A.  Blengino, a disgruntled ex-employee, then proceeds immediately with an anecdote about Zduriencik picking apart his presentation, fine-tooth.  How many stats presentations did Blengino make in front of Zduriencik?

I'm speaking as a guy who ran these presentations.  How can you have an exec sitting in front of a PowerPoint presentation on the budget, 100 times a year, and then say "the guy doesn't know one iota" about budgets?  

Blengino was Zduriencik's #2 man for years.  What did he talk about with Zduriencik?  Did they talk about uniform color?  It was Blengino's job to make sure that Zduriencik knew what OBP is.  That is what a SME does.  

I'd be ashamed to admit that I worked with an exec for two years as his chess coach, and when I was done, he didn't know what a Bishop was.

But ... Blengino is using a figure of speech, that's all, to say "There were too many times Jack made a call I wouldn't have made."   Tony should be careful, because now people are going to misconstrue that to mean "Zduriencik literally doesn't know what OBP is."  

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Q. To what extent WOULD a non-math GM like Zduriencik understand an argument like Blengino's recent one on Fangraphs?

A.  I also don't doubt that Zduriencik would have a hard time giving Blengino quality technical feedback on his Cano piece, like you or I could.  Usually, talking to a VP about your own expertise is a lot different than talking about it with a fellow SME.

But it's a little weak for the SME to complain that his boss doesn't know as much as the expert does, within his field.

If you think that Zduriencik couldn't sit through that kind of presentation on Cano, and process it, and include it in his decision, you're being naive.  But Zduriencik's judgment might very well tell him, "I'm not buying it," and that's fine.  It so happens that Dr. D doesn't buy it, either, for different reasons.

For the SME to say, "well, you can't understand any of it, or you'd be buying in..." that's a critical misunderstanding of the role.  Personally, I never sneered at execs for being unable to keep up with me on technical subjects.  They have their own strengths.

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I was going to write a piece about Blengino's current article at Fangraphs, pointing out its intent as a thinly-disguised swipe at Zduriencik.  It's pretty clear to me what has happened between the two men .... Blengino pushed his ideas hard, and Zduriencik started rolling his eyes a little (as Dr. D also rolled his eyes at Blengino's Cano piece), and the tension grew, and finally Zduriencik said "I've had enough."

Look, who works for who?

When I was consulting, it was my job to know when to shut my mouth.  If you wear out your welcome with a VP, that's on you, not him.  

As Earl Weaver (!) put it, "If I'd taken the Yankees' offer I'd have been fine.  It would have been my job to get along with Steinbrenner, not the other way around."

The fact that Blengino was arguing with Zduriencik, that right there tells you that they had a "soft" relationship by Nintendo standards.

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Q.  Do you read Zduriencik as being inaccessible?

A.  I regret that Geoff didn't balance the article, include some accounts of Zduriencik calling his staff together to "think tank" a trade offer.

We remember, at the time, was it the Montero/Pineda deal?, a report of Zduriencik getting off the phone, calling his staff into a room with donuts and coffee, folding his hands behind his head, and saying "OK, guys, what do you want to do?"

Again, I'm not used to execs who "think tank" ANY decision in that fashion.  

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I've been very impressed by the way that Zduriencik has treated Geoff Baker himself -- apparently quite cordially, and with few reprisals, despite the fact that Geoff has (thankfully) been No-Holds-Barred on the team he covered.

It's too bad that the discussion isn't more balanced tonight.

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Q.  Should a SME resent it, when his ideas aren't used?

A.  You think this didn't happen to Dr. D?  :- )  Where he put together (what he fancied to be) a Rembrandt of a report, and ... the steering committee yawned and ignored it?  That happened most of the time.

Gimme my $$$ per hour, take my report, if you don't want to read it that's on you.  I'm going to the movies after work.

In Moneyball, too, there was a scene where a bunch of scouts started yelling at Billy Beane for "overruling" their conclusions.  One of the scouts spoke up said, "Guys, guys!  We're here to ADVISE Billy!" ... Bill James said it was awesomely accurate.

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Q.  How about the Lincoln/Armstrong content in the article?

A.  Even Dr. D, in his worst nightmares, did not imagine to what extent they were micromanaging the baseball people.

It's one thing to get along with upper management on a personal basis.  It's one thing to hand upper management a report, and it gets ignored.  That's fine.

It's another thing when execs micromanage the Subject Matter Experts (SME's), interfere with them, and foul things up that way.  Execs are supposed to understand that SME's know things they don't.  We all have a role.

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Q.  Wedge blaming Zduriencik for siding with his bosses?

A.  :: blinks ::

I guess baseball is a lot different from Boeing or Nintendo or Weyerhauser.  :: shrug :: At those companies, there isn't any chance that a 4th-level is going to "side with" a 3rd-level against the CEO.

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Q.  How about the reaction that Lincoln and Armstrong are getting from around baseball?

A.  I don't doubt, in the least, that baseball is rolling its eyes more and more at the two lawyers who fancy themselves to be twin Steinbrenners.  

Jason Churchill relayed that Gillick didn't come back because he "is not a fan" of the M's front office; Lou Piniella barely considered coming back ... these things add up.

It has been DOV/SSI's contention, for 10-15 years, that the M's front office was totally dysfunctional.  The Top-Down message has been "the city is lucky to have baseball at all," and then the lawyers turn around and try to personally put their fingerprints all over the 25-man roster and all over the lineup cards.  Yes, it's a mess.

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Geoff Baker relays that, internally, the M's are staffed with a whale of a lot of unhappy people.  I've seen that a lot in F-500, orgs of 500 people all being unhappy with the adminstration, and usually you just live with it.   In this case, though, it reflects a dry rot that goes all the way back to an absentee owner who doesn't like baseball.

There are lots of Peter Angeloses around baseball.  You don't often see their ex-employees come out this hard against them.  But Gillick, and Lou, and now Wedge, and others, have been coming out against the regime for quite a while.

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It is my considered opinion that the root cause of the problem is Zduriencik's boss.  I'd like to know how somebody else would handle Zduriencik's situation.  Pat Gillick won't come near it with a 10-foot pole.

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Q.  The state of SSI's opinion on Jack Zduriencik?

A.  It's not much changed from before the article.  As before, we all hope that with Armstrong being gone, Zduriencik will be free to operate in a coherent and agile fashion.

Apparently, among the 30 current GM's, you would put Jack Zduriencik among the 5 least people-oriented GM's in the game.   I ain't saying that Zduriencik is a likeable guy :- ) but then again, I'm used to working with execs who are not at all likeable.

In the past, I had sort of read Zduriencik as being aloof, "more tart than sweet" as somebody put it of George W. Bush.  With this new data, I would assume that he's fairly tough to work with, especially over the course of those 14-hour days those baseball amigos put in.  

I hadn't pictured the GM as quite as gruff as Geoff reports, but ... sure.  He's never come across as Mr. Congenial.

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These "baseball people," many of them seem to resent Zduriencik's management style.  Personally, it sounds to me like they're spoiled.  I'm sure they do wish that they had a nice guy, a Theo Epstein or a Pat Gillick, as their Vice President.  Where I come from, that's not your birthright.

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:: shrug :: Moneyball painted Billy Beane as an intimidating, loud, temper-prone, difficult-to-work with GM.  Dan Duquette, from what I've read, his arrogance is insufferable.  Ned Coletti, Dayton Moore, and a few others would probably be pretty blinkin' unpleasant to work with.  

The picture of Zduriencik as imperious, refusing to listen, being out-of-touch with stats, etc., well ... he actually comes off as MORE accessible than most of the execs I've worked with. 

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How GOOD is he?  

He's got Cano, he's got his young talent finally jelling, he's got lots more $$$ to spend.  He's going to get to show everybody whether he's a winner, or whether he isn't.

My $0.02,

Jeff