Chemistry 101 - the Branyan Kapler Durham Counsell Maneuver
Q. Put me in the camp with Sandy about being ambivalent about the trade. Don’t like losing Heilman but like having pressure on the middle infielders to perform, which Z has explicitly stated was his intent. Also a move to make the pitching more left-handed.
A. Is everybody clear on the point that Jack Zduriencik and Don Wakamatsu are making the trades with chemistry as a dominant concern?
Both men believe that a ballplayer could have an UP year or a DOWN year based on ---- > the psychological environment around him. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about "chemistry."
Capt Jack and Waka-San both acknowledge the reality that if you instill some fear-of-failure into Yuniesky Betancourt, you give yourself a better chance to get an UP year out of him.
The Oakland A's have done this year after year: nobody's entitled; nobody's privileged; nobody's guaranteed their position. Even if you're the one guy who plays well, like Nick Swisher, you might find yourself in center field or long relief :- ) if that's what is best for the club.
The ballplayers hate this, but it also forces them to bear down. If Zduriencik and Wakamatsu create an environment in which players genuinely fear for their jobs, then great. Maybe you'll see some UP years out of some guys.
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Look, everybody scoffs at "chemistry" when a 58-year-old manager uses it to justify playing his petted favorites. That kind of "chemistry", used to justify the addition of a Trusted Vet who can't play any more, is poison.
But we're talking about the Oakland A's kind of chemistry: a set of expectations and contingencies that cajole UP seasons out of players.
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As sabermetricians, we study everything except this question: "What causes a player to have an UP or DOWN season?" We study how the batted balls would have gone, if given a normal Pascalian cascade-fall. We study what would have happened, if he'd hit those balls in a neutral park. We study what the batted balls would have produced, if they'd hit an average amount of gloves.
What we don't study, and maybe can't study, is why a ballplayer brings focus one year, and then doesn't the next year.
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=== Eyes On Your Own Paper, Dept. ===
Now, no peeking ahead, you lurkers, :- ) and then claiming that, oh yeah, the below is why you actually liked this influx of Cedenos, F-Guts, Sheltons and their ilk. LOL.
There is one level on which I could get interested in players like Ronny Cedeno and F-Gut: and that is the scenario in which the M's honestly rotate 9 players through 5 spots all season long, like the A's sometimes do. Give Cedeno a real good share of the 2b, 3b and SS time and you might just see UP years from Frenchy, Beltre and Tejada Jr.
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Did the 2008 Brewers actually use this strategy? It looks like they did: they had respected ML veterans like Russell Branyan, Ray Durham, Gabe Kapler, and Craig Counsell pushing the starters.
Branyan - 121 OPS+
Durham - 138
Kapler - 117
And in front of those bench veterans, a lot of the Brewers' starters had good seasons in front of them!
After years of the Hargrove bench use, and the Entitled chemistry it breeded, I'll thoroughly enjoy an Impact Bench.