Capt Jack earns his pay (again)
Q. How in the WORLD did Zduriencik make this happen without any buyout.
A. In case you haven't caught on, kiddies, Zduriencik is one whale of a hardball GM.* He is polite about it, he's cordial and professional, but he's just a guy you don't cross. You don't take advantage of him, and you don't even ask.
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This had been our early impression of the guy, but when Mentink interviewed him about Junior in 2010, he politely goes "in the end, nice stories are nice stories, but we have to go forward..."
We've run into our share of execs ... you know what the first thing is, that would hit you about them? Is that they tend to be emotionally very cool. Well, distant. Well, cold. They'll sign a piece of paper that un-employs 100 people while chatting on the phone about concert tickets.
Most of them have nice smiles, many are charming, but 98% will fire their best friend and then go have a nice hot meal at lunch.
That's not a criticism. The guys who make deadlines happen, are the guys who don't sympathize with human beings much.
Bill Bavasi liked to be friends with the people he worked with - much more so than most upper-execs we've run across. We used to see guys like Zduriencik do the interfaces between Boeing and the Feds.
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*This is our opinion about Zduriencik, whether or not our read on Johjima's particular situation is on target.
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Q. Why does paying Johjima $0 prove Zduriencik is a hardball GM?
A. It doesn't, in a vacuum.
But the fact that Johjima's power agent wouldn't be able to get a coupla bucks -- in this particular situation, with the M's desperately needing that $8M -- is astounding.
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I mean, look at it this way. Suppose Nero tells Zduriencik, "Give us $1M a year buyout or he's staying put." And suppose Capt Jack says, no, we'll keep him.
In that scenario, Zduriencik just powerflushed $7M a season on a part-time catcher he doesn't even want (the M's like Johnson and love Moore, and the Jamie Burkes of the world are not hard to come by). Successful execs are not known for spending $7,000,000 on nothing.
I wouldn't have had the guts. I'd have signalled the $1,000,000/yr buyout to save my other $7,000,000.
Somehow Zduriencik -- in part by increasing Joh's playing time late -- signalled $0. And Nero took it.
Granted, there isn't a lot of precedent for ML teams paying NPB stars to go back to Japan. :- ) But is it unLIKELY that they would do so? Note carefully that this is the first thing Capt Jack said on KJR: no buyout, baby.
That implies the implicit negotiation. Just FLABbergasting to me, this $0 development.
I don't know whether Nero and Zduriencik talked, or whether they didn't, or what. Doesn't matter. There are some execs, you just know, not to even ask the question.
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The Johjima situation notwithstanding, Mariners fans, go ahead and bask in the glow. The fact is, your GM has street cred the likes of which no non-Gillick exec has ever brought to Royal Brougham. Zduriencik is Large and In Charge.
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Q. Is it surprising to you, that Joh could get $5M in Japan?
A. Surprising to our NPB monster-analysts, so therefore surprising to me. Their midseason guesses were that Johjima would get about $2M in Japan in 2010. Based off this exact databit, my expectation was that Joh would return.
So the shocker was the $5M offer. That made it feasible for Johjima to pass up the $8M. $5M + happiness beat $8M + misery. $2M + happiness would not have.
Went home and re-evaluated, my eye. What happened was that Hanshin (?) came up with the jack. And CAPT Jack wiped his brow...
Me too,
Dr D