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Yeah, that's a sustainable strategy.
Yeah, that's a sustainable strategy.
As strategies go, it beats the crap out of signing FAs their former team didn't want and didn't plan to offer arb to just so you can give away the high draft choice you didn't want anyway.
Well, if their strategy is signing old FA's and ignoring prospects, and they work harder at it, that won't really help.
The idea that you can "out work" your competition is generally laughable. Are there a lot of baseball front offices out there putting in 4 hour work days capped by 3 martini lunches at 1PM? Are there a lot of baseball players that don't try really hard to maximize their skills? I don't buy it.
It's the same "logic" behind doctors and investment bankers working 36 hours straight without sleep. A lot of bad decisions get mad in hours 18-36.
dammit, I logged in just to make that joke. I should've known someone else would beat me to it.
He's not a baseball guy, and with a background as a Microsoft lawyer, he seems more like old rich white guy than innovative business leader.
No. Your competition also works hard. It's a push. Something everyone can do is not a sustainable source of advantage. I'm sure Sabean and Bavasi work/worked hard. They just had a fundamentally flawed approach.
To have a sustainable advantage, you have to be smarter in some systematic way, or have more money, or have players want to play for your team for some non-easily duplicated reason.
SF should have sustainable advantages in money, ballpark, the history of the franchise, and being a really nice place to live. Now, all they have to do is not be so stupid.
Traveling at the speed of nerd.
dammit, I logged in just to make that joke. I should've known someone else would beat me to it.
Traveling at the speed of nerd.
I was gonna reply, "Put up your dukes, Neukom," but y'all ruined it. Thanxalot.
Of course, you could always just inagine Jerry Seinfield saying, in a disgusted tone, "Neukom!"
Sabean I'll get right to work on it.
Sabean thought bubble Yes! We can afford Nomar! Yes!!!
And if so, where should I send my resume?
You mean other than the Giants?
I heard an interview with an advertising guy talking about Madison Ave. in the 1950-60's, and apparently the 3-martini lunch was literally true. Everyone spent the afternoon hammered and no business got done after lunch.
Ah the good old days!
If you meet some of the old school newspaper men, you'll find that they believed in the same tradition, although a lot of them also partook in the three martini breakfast.
Going to be a long time to a winner again in SF.
Though I think it's a positive sign that the leadership is unhappy about the status quo.
This is a pretty dumb statement. Of course you can. Most sucessful people outwork their opponents. That's how they get better than them.
What, are you advocating a "let's out-lazy our opponents!" strategy?
This sounds very much like the philosophy of someone who's thought a great deal about how one goes about rationalizing one's sloth.
If you actually read what the insert said you would have noticed the word outline... which is clearly not a grand plan. It is an outline.
I could have practiced golf with the best coaches 24 hours a day my whole life and still not been anywhere near as good as Tiger Woods.
A hard-working mediocrity is still a mediocrity.
A lot of people bust their ass. Busting ass is good. But when you bust ass for the sake of busting ass, rather than for a specific goal, that's where you go wrong.
Yours, a layabout student.
Most successful people do work harder than their unsuccessful opponents. But people don't rise to a high-level executive position, in the incredibly vast majority of cases, without working hard. There is a point where "working harder" ceases to yield marginal benefit. Whether MLB is over that is debatable, but it certainly would not surprise me. And the likelihood that it is the most marginally beneficial strategy is very, very low.
This statement: "“Baseball is a science and an art,” he said. “My view is that ‘Moneyball’ is a very shrewd strategy but it’s not the only strategy. You’ve also got to have a lot of baseball savvy." seems to show that he understands this. Picasso worked very hard at art, I'm sure, but he wasn't better than others *because* he worked hard, after a certain level. He worked hard because he was good at it and enjoyed it. Get people who like what you ask them to do, and the working hard enough to succeed follows.
Not really paying much attention to them? They have a pretty decent farm now: Bumgarner and Alderson have both emerged as very good pitching prospects. Combine the good drafts the last couple years, and international signings like Villalona, with development of existing guys like Lewis, Schierholtz, and Sandoval, ontop of Lincecum and Cain, and their future is pretty decent.
WHO is duke neukom? did DON newcomb used to be called duke? because i can't find it
Look for Duke Nukem :-)
Duke Nukem was one of the big early/mid 90s first-person shooter computer games.
If you've heard of Doom.. it is along those lines.
The Newcomb guess was actually really good, I hadn't thought of Newcomb=Nukem
Duke Nukem was one of the big early/mid 90s first-person shooter computer games
- sigh
it figures. here and i thought it had to be some guy from 19th century baseball or some obscure sport like football or golf or something
mennnnnnnnnnnnnn
if there is anyone on this here board who is still disbelieving that anyone who will state with pride that she has NO testicular fortitude a tall is an actual born that way female, all you need do is look right here
BBC, you know, girls play computer games too. Including shooters. Including loving hack n slash games in computer RPGS. Or do you also believe that there are no girls on the internet? And that girls are not interested in sport?
- grinning
of course i know grrrls play computer games. after all we all fantasize about BEING lara croft instead of effing her.
and sure i know there are plenty of grrrls interested in watching sports and playing sports
but i was not complaining about males and computer games. i was noticing that once again i completely was unable to think like a male
WHAT?
i am female. i do not have a Y chromosone. i do not have penis or testicles. never did. never will.
and there are some people who STILL don't believe it.
most of us don't talk with movie lines or have seinfeld/simpsons episodes memorized or know who duke nukem is
i was noticing that once again i completely was unable to think like a male
and again. :-)
Hmm? How does linking Neukom with Nukem involve thinking like a male?
9 am: coffee
9.15: Check email. An A-ball pitcher is hurt, better call farm director to move somebody up. No trade offers. Another Nigerian looking to move billions overseas -- I'll give him the account number of Bud's slush fund. I love that one.
9.30: Mass email all other GM's offering to trade Eric Byrnes, Juan Pierre, Jose Guillen and Carl Pavano, that will confuse them.
9.45: coffee
10: face time with the owner; man his PA is a cutie, should I flirt? Nah, too much alimony as it is.
10.15: Check to make sure everythings's set for the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert next week.
10.30: Assistant GM is all hot-and-bothered about that Jackson kid we got. Looks good -- nice numbers, scouts like. Let's call the manager, says he's a good kid and deserves a shot. Psych profile shows a little bedwetting issue late in life, those guys almost never come through in the clutch. Still, we'll give him a go. OK, now, who gets the heave ho, the guy who can run but can't hit or the guy who can almost hit but moves as well as I do in the OF? Skip, call one of these two guys into your office and I'll meet you in 10 minutes.
11: Man, I can't believe that took a whole half hour.
11.15: Coffee
11.30: Y'know, Kevin's just annoying and Davis is an arrogant prick but that Levski kid cracks me up.
11.45: New email. Sidney Ponson's agent again ... worse than those Nigerian guys.
12: Finally, lunch! Maybe I should ask the owner's PA if she wants to join me. Gotta remember to be back by 1.15 though because the Cubs are at home so there's baseball to watch!
1.15: Cubs
4.15: it's been a long day I deserve another drink.
6.15: Home game tonight ... why'd I come in at 9?
6.30: Beat writers -- thank god they're drunker than I am.
Woods has basically played golf every day of his life since the age of 3. You could not have picked a worse example to counter the notion that hard work is relevant to success.
10 months out of the year, Epstein works 16 hour days, Walt.
How do you know? A newspaper profile? Whoop-de-doo.
Really, what does he do during that time? How much could the information really change from day-to-day? Don't his assistant GMs, farm directors, etc do anything?
He rarely makes a roster move of any sort, he rarely has to negotiate contracts, he has other people to keep an eye on the farm and do the scouting, they've outsourced the ticket-selling, ushers, parking, concessions, broadcasting and, I'm guessing, photocopying services. A good chunk of his "work" is watching Red Sox games.
Baseball just isn't a business where things change day-to-day much less minute-to-minute. They're not particularly large, complex businesses in the current economy. They're not developing a new product or opening new branches or buying up other companies or expanding into China or worried about a banana republic government closing down the mines. Nor is it a small business where Theo's got to be there at 6am to open it up and midnight to shut it down and isn't sure he can trust that teenage punk running the cash register from 3 to 6 pm.
Now, it wouldn't surprise me at all if Epstein was obsessed with his job and takes on all sorts of stuff he doesn't need to but that's a different thing. He might spend lots of time watching other teams, watching videos of players, poring over scouting reports and minor-league data, thinking up marketing strategies, etc. But that's really other people's jobs.
Don't take this as me saying it's easy to do his job -- I would suck at 90% or more of Theo's job. I have little doubt that Theo worked his butt off to gain the knowledge and experience that makes him good at a wide array of tasks. Heck, he might even be smarter than me! :-)
And it wouldn't surprise me if Theo was like a lot of managers I know and wishes he was back doing useful, interesting stuff rather than spending 8 hours a day in pointless meetings. I'm sure the poor man has to sit there and hear how they sold 15 Pedroia jerseys but only 2 Ellsbury jerseys yesterday and this continues the trend that started on May 15 as he can see in this slide and this forms the basis for their business case to increase their order of Pedroias especially since he's showing up in MVP discussions.
But c'mon, a major-league baseball team hasn't gone out of business in over 100 years and it's probably been at least 50 years since an owner actually lost money on a team. Other than the occasional weather related or similar event, no games have been cancelled, nobody's ever lost their lease and only one team has ever not had enough hot dogs on hand for the game. Heck, these days you don't have to do anything and Bud will still send you a check for like $80 million. As long as you work hard enough to avoid disco demolition and nickel beer nights, don't schedule Jason Tyner bobblehead night, don't sell your park naming rights to Enron, develop enough media savvy to not say that African-Americans can't swim and don't trade Kazmir for Zambrano, you've done 90% of your job. The other 10% takes 16 hours a day for 10 months?
So if Theo works 16 hours a day, I'd like to know what he's doing all that time. Right now I'm guessing 15 hours of that is flirting. :-)
Yes, a newspaper profile painstakenly accumulated every day for 6 straight years.
You have no ####### clue how busy running a billion dollar franchise, with hundreds of employees, and under a ####### microscope the likes of which you could not possibly imagine, can force one to be.
Walt, if you were a GM and you took that attitude towards your job, the phone would be jumping off the hook, your peers would be so eager to fleece you out of your last player.
Not familiar with a high intensity work environment, I see.
Well, for starters, he has contracts to handle. Lots and lots and lots of ####### contracts. You ever spend your day pouring over the fine print in contracts? I have. It will cause you to seriously consider suicide.
Every roster move that is made is planned for weeks, sometimes for months. Why? Because millions of dollars are usually at stake, that's why. And if you make a wrong move, you get fried publicly in the press. If it goes especially badly, you get fired.
Then he has to keep track of the scouting department. The scouting department does 3 main things. It prepares for the draft, it scouts players from other teams in preparation for trades or free agent signings and it scouts teams to prep for looming series. Each franchise has about 150-200 players, and a GM has to be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of every last one of them. 200 times 30 is 6000. How long do you think it takes to become intimately familiar with the idiosyncrasies of 6000 employees?
Executing a trade requires months, sometimes years, of prep work. The Manny for Bay trade was highly unusual, done in less than a month (though Theo probably worked exclusively on that for 2-3 weeks, I bet). More typical is the Schilling trade, one the Red Sox had been setting up for a bout a year.
The GM has to orchestrate spring training, and all the logistics involved with that. Roughly 300 people being moved en masse for 6 weeks to Florida or Arizona to intensely prepare for the coming season. Many major decisions have to made on top of the day-to-day decisions of road trips, scheduling, injury reports, assignment changes etc.
The GM has to hire and fire people. That means interviews. Lots and lots of interviews. A ####### boatload of interviews.
The GM has to negotiate radio and TV contracts. That in itself is a fulltime job. Subordinates or legal counsel are called in to negotiate lower level points of contention but the GM has to sign off on everything and so has to say tuned in to anything of importance.
The GM has to oversee the scouting corp. More interviews. More video. More phonecalls.
The GM has to keep his finger on the pulse of what his rivals are up to. That means all kinds of call, conference call, video conferences and face-to-faces. ######## sessions to throw a guy off the track, serious negotiations that can take hours, after action briefings to settle lingering loose threads.
The GM has to report to the president and the owner. That means briefings, powerpoint presentations and monthly reports.
A GM has to write job evaluations, promotion recommendations and decisions to fire or relocate.
A GM has to manage the manager. That relationship is exquisitely scrutinized publicly under a microscope. It requires special nurturing, as it is the most public, and the one most fraught with underlying tension, as any in the franchise.
A GM has to keep track of the minor league performance, to make sure the coaches are doing their job and to ensure the players under contract are being developed properly. More video, more phonecalls, more performance evaluations, more status reports.
The Stadium or park the team plays in has to maintained properly. That requires managing the subcontractors who maintain the ballpark, the grooming and maintenance of the field, the concessions, security etc.
Walt, I don't what planet you come from but the idea the GM job is an easy one is completely whacked.
He doesn't take any off. From mid-December, when the 40 man is reset after the free agency season is over, to mid February, when pitchers and catchers report, he works 12 hour days.
Man, doing lots of fixing today.
I guess he doesn't have children. Or, rather, the Red Sox are his children.
Changing in and out of the gorilla suit accounts for two hours right there.
It worked out great for Spinal Tap.
Actually I am. Nothing like the Red Sox of course (nor you). And fortunate enough that most of my career has not been spent in such environments.
Well, for starters, he has contracts to handle. Lots and lots and lots of ####### contracts. You ever spend your day pouring over the fine print in contracts? I have. It will cause you to seriously consider suicide.
I have a little bit but not much. I would hire a lawyer or other expert since they're much more likely to know this than even Theo's genius GM brain.
Every roster move that is made is planned for weeks, sometimes for months. Why? Because millions of dollars are usually at stake, that's why.
You don't actually know this. And what makes you think Theo is doing all this work.
Then he has to keep track of the scouting department. The scouting department does 3 main things. It prepares for the draft, it scouts players from other teams in preparation for trades or free agent signings and it scouts teams to prep for looming series. Each franchise has about 150-200 players, and a GM has to be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of every last one of them.
Absolute and utter nonsense. The GM doesn't have to know 6,000 players. It's far from clear the organization has to know 6,000 players. But the GM, at best, has to have access to information on any of those 6,000 players at his fingertips -- wow, computer databases. Alternatively, the GM turns to his farm director and scoutiing head and says "you guys have the reports from the guys who actually looked at this guy, what do you think?"
Executing a trade requires months, sometimes years, of prep work.
That's hilarious.
The GM has to orchestrate spring training, and all the logistics involved with that. Roughly 300 people being moved en masse for 6 weeks to Florida or Arizona to intensely prepare for the coming season. Many major decisions have to made on top of the day-to-day decisions of road trips, scheduling, injury reports, assignment changes etc.
No, the GM might be _responsible_ for orchestrating spring training. The actual orchestrating is done by staff. And I'm gonna guess that orchestrating spring training in 2008 was a lot like orchestrating it in 2007, it's not like people are starting from scratch. The team has multi-year contracts with a field. I would assume they have multi-year contracts with hotels, vendors, service providers, etc. but maybe those are done on a yearly basis.
The GM has to hire and fire people. That means interviews. Lots and lots of interviews. A ####### boatload of interviews.
Again, most of the hiring and firing is done by his staff. Most of his staff is stable from year to year.
The GM has to negotiate radio and TV contracts.
Once every 3-5 years or so.
That in itself is a fulltime job.
How so? Once every 3-5 years or so. Broadcast contracts aren't renegotiated every year. I believe the Mets' first cable contract was for 18 years or something (suckers). And don't the Sox have substantial ownership stakes in many/most of their broadcast outlets? Isn't it then a question of how the broadcast revenue gets divvied up between the team and the broadcasting wing of Henry's outfit? Isn't that decision made above Theo's head?
Actually I'm pretty sure all this stuff about broadcast rights is negotiated above the head of the GM for most teams.
The GM has to report to the president and the owner. That means briefings, powerpoint presentations and monthly reports.
And he does his own powerpoints and monthly reports? The guy really needs to learn how to delegate more.
A GM has to write job evaluations, promotion recommendations and decisions to fire or relocate.
Like every other manager. And, really? He writes the job evaluations of the scouts? Don't get me wrong, he probably signs them, he probably even reads them. But he doesn't even work with these guys, they don't report directly to him, what's he doing writing their job evaluations?
A GM has to keep track of the minor league performance, to make sure the coaches are doing their job and to ensure the players under contract are being developed properly. More video, more phonecalls, more performance evaluations, more status reports.
Why doesn't he hire a farm director?
And again, my point -- how often does this information change? How often does he need to be updated? Is the information that last year's top draft pick went 1 for 4 yesterday of any importance?
Obviously he needs a daily update to hightlight big things -- this guy's hurt, this guy's mother is sick and is away for a few days, this guy threw 97 pitches last night so we're gonna push his next start back a day and limit him to 80 pitches. Some of those will take some time for Theo -- an injured player requires a few decisions be made immediately and (if serious) a long-term impact assessment be done. But that's not happening every day.
And obviously he needs "regular" updates on the progress of guys in the minors. But these will mostly be summaries and, what, weekly, monthly? If they're daily, his time is being wasted. And yes, somebody needs to put in substantial time on those summaries ... but not Theo.
At any give time, there can't be more than maybe 20 guys in any team's minor-league system that the GM should be spending any substantial time caring about. Yes, somebody needs to keep track of the 150-200 guys in their system but if Theo is spending substantial time keeping track of the 25 year-old in low-A ball, he's not making good use of his time. (I suppose the presence of a 25-year-old in low-A ball might suggest one of his underlings needs to be fired.)
I have at times worked in that sort of environment -- i.e. I've had the privelege and luck to work with some people who are tops in their fields. (They may have been more the Jim Hendrys than the Theo Epsteins but whatever ...) Some worked 16 hour days because it was required, some worked 16 hour days because they were obsessed, some more efficiently delegated and/or wanted a better work/life balance and got by on about 70 hours a week. Some are horrible micro-managers but generally the thing that really pissed them off was when someone came to them with something that didn't need their attention because they had a lot of better things to do. If Theo's not hiring people who are good at prioritizing and have no problem making decisions and filling him in later, then I bet he is working 16 hour days.
The Stadium or park the team plays in has to maintained properly. That requires managing the subcontractors who maintain the ballpark, the grooming and maintenance of the field, the concessions, security etc.
Yes, I'm sure every once in a while an issue in these areas arises which is big enough to require his attention. I wouldn't think this is very often and I would think generally these issues are dealt with well below Theo. But hell, for all I know he _is_ responsible for calling the copier repair guy.
I'll grant you, Fenway could probably collapse any second so this is probably more time-consuming for Theo than other GMs.
Haven't most organizations now separated their "baseball operations" from this sort of stuff?
I don't what planet you come from but the idea the GM job is an easy one is completely whacked.
I come from a planet where not everything the Red Sox organization does is done by a single individual. I come from a planet where once an organization gets big enough, there's nobody who knows everything that's going on. I come from a planet where good decision-makers are the ones who can absorb information quickly (rather than keep it all in their head), make a good decision, then move on.
Theo has a lot of stuff to oversee. A lot of the stuff he has to oversee is quite routine and rarely gets out of kilter because he's lucky to work in a very stable industry with limited competition for his market (and hires good people). A lot of the stuff he has to oversee is part of a long-term contract with appropriately negotiated parameters.
Of course he works hard Kevin -- chill out you jackass. But the idea that he's super-human ... not to mention the idea that you have the foggiest idea what Theo does with his time, how hard he really works, etc. ... are just silly.
He's a smart guy. He's knowledgeable about his industry. He balances risks and benefits. He makes good choices among several competing, roughly equal, scenarios. He synthesizes information from lots of other smart people that he's smart enough to trust to bring him the relevant information and separate the wheat from the chaff. He's smart and experienced enough at player development and media relations and contract negotiation to be able to make good decisions in all those areas -- that is a breadth of knowledge and experience that many other managers in the world are not required to have.
And of course maybe he wants to move up. Maybe he's making sure he's aware of and plays a part in most everything in the organization so he can be Team President here or elsewhere in the future. That of course requires extra hours because he's got to do his job and more. Good for him.
But he's not GMing 16 hours a day. He's not doing making those highly complex decisions and negotiations every day. If he were to wander away from the organization for a month or two with nobody hired to replace him, the organization wouldn't suffer any substantial damage. That's not to say they'd suffer no damage -- e.g. he might be smart enough to trade away a popular over-30 RF before his trade value collapsed -- but it's not like spring training wouldn't happen or broadcast rights would be given away or the next season wouldn't sell out or the team would lose 100 games for each of the next several seasons.
The point is if the _quantity_ of the work were so great, we'd see teams screwing it up often. But we don't really. Teams don't screw up spring training; the rosters are always full; the paychecks don't bounce except in Arizona; the stadia don't fall over; the grass is always green; the beer always flows; the parking money always comes in; the games are almost always on TV and radio; the media get their passes; the palaver doled out by the GM, manager and players always appears in the papers. Loria moved his whole organization just a couple months before the season and the worst that happened was running out of hot dogs on opening night. Heck, the Expos were owned by nobody and put in the hands of a couple caretakers (Tavares and Minaya) who (if memory serves) had no experience in those jobs and they managed to keep everything running.
The _quality_ of the work varies a lot. But the quality of Theo's work won't be any better if he's memorized the stat line of all 6,000 players in professional baseball.
Again, just look at the history of baseball as a business. It clearly isn't that hard of a business to succeed at. Even morons like Steinbrenner and Cashman have been able to pull it off.
I like this one:
Oh, i have no doubt you've worked amongst the finest ditchdiggers on the planet.
This is such a staggeringly stupid statement, I don't know where to begin.
How on earth do you equate lack of hard work with the outcome of success?
Kevin has clearly never heard of working smarter, not harder. Although judging by the quality and quantity of his posts here, he's not doing either.
Face is apparently another one who's thought a great deal about constructing rationalizations to justify his sloth.
Face, in case you weren't aware, it is possible to work smart and hard at the same time. You should try it sometime.
Suffice it to say that nobody who posts at BTF works very hard, and judging from his last post, Walt works least hard of all.
Kevin, Go F*** yourself.
I worked for 5 years at an elite management consulting firm known for long hours (70-80 hr. weeks). I never found the need to go past 50-55, except in emergencies, and had plenty of down time most days.
The idea that people who "work" 16 hour days get more done is just BS.
I've worked with investment bankers and consultants my whole career. The amount of wasted time (long lunches, gym visits, etc.) and facetime is extraordinary. Once you judge people on the # of hours they work, productivity plummets.
If you paid two guys $200K each to work 40 hour weeks, rather than one guy 500K to work 80 hours, you'd get way more and better quality work. Epstein's an idiot if he works 16 hrs. a day. He should just hire more staff. I'm sure there's an infinite supply of really-smart guys who are willing to take a pay cut to work for the Red Sox.
Which goes a long way towards explaining why you worked (past tense emphasized), rather than work, for an elite management consulting firm.
Everyone in my class got laid off in 2001-2002; basically after 9/11 business tanked.
The extra hours didn't save anyone. They were the suckers, not me.
I'd much rather have my 8:30-5:30 job, than work 70 hours a week for double, or even triple the money.
I'm guessing you're not exactly running Goldman Sachs given your post count.
And I agree with Gaelen, the irony of this thread is delicious :-)
No, I'm not. Thank god.
Well, then I guess you're both missing the posting time of Walt and my own retorts (late at night) and the irony of your postings (middle of the workday) too.
Well, mine aren't really ironic, b/c I admit most white collar workers only put in a few hours of real work each day.
So you never post at work?
Multiple windows and "posting a lot=stay a little later." I work nights as well as days. I just did a budget for a new program, and will go back to emailing/lesson planning after this post.
One of my bosses has started reading the site after seeing me posting on it, BTW. Thinks it's pretty cool.
How many trades happen just because one GM happens to have a little more information about another team? Doug Melvin got Salomon Torres for very little this offseason. Presumably any team making that offer could have gotten Torres if they wanted, but it was Melvin that made the deal. Did Melvin or Gord Ash do better in their conversations with the Pirates in picking up on who the Pirates considered expendable and what kind of minor league depth they wanted? Did Melvin just decide one day to make a ridiculous offer to the Pirates and was stunned that they accepted it?
GMs probably spend a lot of time having friendly unproductive conversations, but all those conversations lay the groundwork for future trades that can have a nice impact.
Yeah, that post was Rifkinesque in it's length.
I can't touch on everything here, but I think that Lucchino and Werner handle the broadcasting negotiations for the Red Sox. And kevin, I doubt that you give a #### what I saw, but belittling people doesn't really become you. I think that Walt can sometimes be arrogant, but that's no reason, no ####### reason, for you to call him a ditchdigger. Is there anyone on this site that you like (outside of yourself?)
So what this means is that I probably work 160 hours a week.
I think kevin likes me, in spite of the "purple and gold coming out of my ass." Hell, you are a Republican AND a Red Sox fan, and I like you. BTF is all about unity, baby.
FWIW, I think it is clear that the Henry/Lucchino/Epstein operation is brilliant and deserves most of the media blowjobs it receives. And I say this as a guy who really intensely dislikes Larry Lucchino and was not thrilled about the way Henry acquired the team.
EDIT: I agree with Gaelan. This site helps my writing and thinking skills, and I learn a lot from many of the people here, Gaelan himself included.
The only time the office was really crazy was right before the draft and during the draft.
A lot of teams are divided up by Baseball Operations and Business Operations. The GM is most likely the head of Baseball Operations. The Business Operations takes care of everything else. GM's don't negotiate T.V. or ad contracts. The hiring and firing is most likely done by an Assistant GM.
Being a GM is hard work but it's a different kind of hard. It's the ability to see the big picture and focus on small parts all at the same time.
For starters: probably nobody here has a really good idea of how many hours a GM puts in, or of how much better he might be if he doubled them. Everyone is talking out of their ass about this.
To argue against working hard in the abstract is really moronic. Snapper's assertion (that you cannot outwork the competition) is a joke. Kevin's response ("Most succesful people outwork their opponents") shoud have been totally uncontroversial.
And don't forget that we are talking about a miserable franchise marked by some of the most horrible decisions in recent years - very possibly they do have a culture of laziness. The front office might be full of ex-jocks that think they can go with their gut and then play golf in the afternoon. AND, on top of this, the statement about working hard is just a benign cliched little bullet point given to a journalist, not something that anybody deserves to get ripped for.
Honestly this thread sounds like it is peopled by a bunch of college kids that were always smart enough to coast to an A- without doing much work, and use that as their life example. And have never had a job where the work just flat out wouldn't get done if they didn't put in 15 hours.
I think most people were disagreeing that putting in 16 hours = working hard. Or, more specifically, that 16 hours = working smart. Also:
If an organization with a large amount of financial resources demands 16 hours from the most important member of the management team, they're likely doing something wrong. Hire more assistants, spread out the workload, do something, or the guy is likely to get burned out, lose it in the middle of negotiations, and walk out on the team dressed in a monkey suit. Or make a decision like giving Julio Lugo a 4 year deal for too much money.
I'll admit that this pretty much describes me, except for the libelous insinuation that I ever received an A-.
Wonder who's doing it? Most of us seem perfectly comfortable mocking Kevin with our usual screen names.
I'm actually mildly curious to know, which may speak badly of me.
His mom.
I thought about posting "bunyon's mom gives bjs AND copies of Atlas Shrugged to monkeys" a la Rob Base to see if Szym would close the thread before you got here after I saw GGC had set you up like that. GGC is like a good 8th-inning guy on mom jokes. (so's...)
In the end, of course, it was no contest.
Seconded.
Someone with nads the size of a decimal place.
I think that Walt can sometimes be arrogant,
moi?
Oh, i have no doubt you've worked amongst the finest ditchdiggers on the planet.
No f'ing way. That is some serious hard work.
I was complimenting Walt but since he wasn't posting at work I'll take it back.
I live in New Zealand ... wee bit of a time difference. It was a slow day at work. So I'll take the compliment back.
And really people, that was like a middle distance post for me. See ... that's exactly what I was saying about quantity vs. quality.
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