Fire Scott Servais
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BUT FIRST ...
Check the "All" domain. Dr. D accidentally filed his "Fatal Flaw?" piece under the All subdomain, so if you visit only the Baseball domain, you missed it. Once there's a comment to an article, I can't reassign fer yer convenience. Sorry.
The gist was, opposing scouts and execs apparently think Jerry Dipoto shoulda known his 1-4 starters were too rissssky, Gollum, too risssssky. This sounds dubious to Dr. D but is a fascinating systems-approach suggestion.
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WHAT THEY'RE SAYIN'
Yet again Monday we get a beat writer angularly telling us about the danger Servais is in. Dutton is doing quite a remarkable job of "hinting" to the savvy M's consumer what's going on, without alarming the M's consumers who don't care so much what is going on. Excellent finesse on Dutton's part. First he relayed the enemy gloating that we ref'ed above; now he follows on with a caution against superficial agreement.
Read the article, if you please, and then take a second swig of this paragraph:
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The latest example came Sunday when Kyle Seager got doubled off first base on a fly to left field, which killed a promising threat in what became a 4-2 loss to the Indians in the season’s final game at Safeco Field.
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KYLE SEAGER didn't care enough to run the bases right. Who?
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BUT IS THAT FAIR, Dept.
What's fair isn't the point. No, it isn't fair. Scott Servais is world-class at managing baseball teams, one of the best 100 or so people there is at it. There are probably more astronauts than there are baseball managers better at their jobs than Servais is.
And he seems such a LIKEABLE guy, doesn't he? Dr. D trusts you don't need yet another self-effacing qualification that Scott Servais is better, richer, handsomer, and cooler than Jeff Clarke is. In a Seattle Mariners chat we don't have unlimited time for, what is the most kind, compassionate thing to say here. At the moment we're talking about what would be the most successful thing to say here.
Like Leo Durocher always sez. Nice Guys Finish Last. Sports is Life, babe. As an enemy scout put it about fifteen years ago: "You think Lou Piniella gives a rat's patootie whether his players like him?"
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Dr. D had a senior manager one time who was very much like Servais: very smart, completely likeable, a comprehensive skill set - by any algebraic formula you wanted to apply, it shoulda worked. That's why he was there. But! It didn't work. It just didn't work. Like Kyle Seager's baserunning didn't work, the other day.
People did stupid stuff in his (my sr. mgr's) organization, in-fighting and cross-purposes proliferated, and they weren't QUITE scared enough of him to knock it off. The org missed that one extra deadline and it brought in a senior manager - from Maryland! - with fangs down to his chin. Everybody hated him. Everybody started making deadlines.
Such execs tend not to wear well. This particular senior manager got the org back on track, and then he was gone. More than a year or two of it, and people would have cracked under the pressure. In baseball it's a little different; an Earl Weaver or Lou Piniella or Bruce Bochy or Buck Showalter can hit a point of Critical Mass and his own success overrules the players' natural inclinations to run the asylum.
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In pro sports you can't hire drill sergeants any more; what the hey, you can hardly make players stand in line for the National Anthem when your ticket sales are at stake. But everything's relative, and the 2018 Mariners need somebody who doesn't care whether his players like him.
Seattle Sports Insider isn't a playa on Royal Brougham. It merely gives you tomorrow's news today. That being, a chat about who manages the Mariners next. Tip o' the kelly to Billy Zoom who thought of it first. He was right.
Respectfully,
Jeff