Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Mitchell: Pedroia, Cano and Magical Thinking
(www.huffingtonpost.com)
Pedroiadolia: The psychological phenomenon of seeing wacko images on dirty uniforms.
Read More...The narratives around the two players, however, could not be different. Pedroia is almost the prototype of the over-achieving “scrappy” player. He is a 5’8” middle infielder who does the little things well. This ignores that he was also a second round draft choice who played baseball at a top baseball school. Cano, on the other hand is bigger, more athletic and does not project scrappiness at all. Throughout ...
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1 2 3 >At this point ownership needs to pick a side. Either they have to give Valentine authority and start trading people like Pedroia, Gonzalez, etc...and do a complete overhaul or they need to fire Valentine. I hate Valentine so booting him out the door is my preference but I can respect the alternate position. What is not acceptable is continuing this fiasco anymore. It's Valentine or the players.
What a great clubhouse. Nothing but stand up, high character guys. I can see why they stood pat at the deadline. Wouldn't want to break up this group of winners.
Reminds me of Caine Mutiny when Willie is glad to see De Vries go and to get Queeg.
There have been more than enough reports of jackassery from Bobby V, and now further reports of him not putting in the hours expected of a manager. (Screwing up the platoon lineup because he looked it up on his phone, being mocked for napping in the clubhouse.) I don't see any reason to keep him around.
But the problem of clubhouse culture has now been retained over two very different (and previously very successful) managers. I don't see how you can keep this core together and expect good things to happen under a different manager.
So blow it all up? Really? Did Gonzalez have this rep before Boston? Isn't this a function of losing? I would think you just deep six Bobby, which seemed an awfully volatile and odd pick given prior clubhouse problems, and build around solid players like Pedroia and Gonzalez.
+1
Bobby V has been nothing short of a disaster, but you can't turn a blind eye to the players rising up against their last two managers in the span of a year.
There's blood (and chicken grease) on everyone's hands.
I'm involved in a situation at my office right now that has me feeling otherwise. Right now we have a lot of people who are coming in late, leaving early, taking long lunches, etc...not by hours, by minutes, but enough that it's becoming frustrating. As a result I got to lead a company meeting where we basically told everyone "knock this #### off." No one got fired, no one got disciplined, but we made it clear that this was the one and only warning.
I think the Sox players are in a similar situation. I don't think there was a dramatic moment last year, I think it was probably more a 1, 2 or 3 year process of declining standards and no one ever told them to grow up. Suddenly, they were thrust into a completely different scenario with Valentine and they've reacted badly. I think had the Sox brought in a steadying voice that kept the general culture intact (protect the players publicly, that sort of thing) while making it clear that some of the stuff had to change they would have been fine. I think if they go that route now, they can still save this core, the alternative is to trade away a hell of a lot of talent which I think would be a mistake.
But you may be right of course.
2) I don't think the Red Sox should sell everything that isn't nailed down. I think they should err on the side of making moves, and make sure to trade enough established players that the clubhouse gets that things are changing.
That said, I don't follow the Sox as closely as you, and I'm sure I'm missing parts of the narrative.
I just, I mean, wasn't this precisely the justification for hiring Bobby Valentine? I feel like I wrote the exact same paragraph this spring as a description of the Red Sox' plan for 2012.
Now, it's easy to point out two key ways the Red Sox screwed this up. First, they picked Bobby Valentine. Second, they didn't give Bobby Valentine full authority over the coaching staff to run things as he saw fit. So maybe they had the right plan with the wrong execution.
EDIT: This is all by way of saying, then, that JC may also be entirely right, along with Jose.
Pedroia and Gonzalez? Pedroia hit .304/.336/.491 last September, and Gonzalez hit .318/.455/.523; those were basically the only two guys who showed up last September. Gonzalez is also doing his best hitting of this year now, while all of this is going on - he's hitting .393 since the all-star break. Pedroia also seems to have finally gotten hot, and was probably slumping only because he came back too soon from a wrist injury. This will be a down-year for Pedey statistically, but I think if you just look at the times he's been healthy, he'll have been as good this year as any year.
I understand that two different managers seem to have lost control, but the players they lost are, for the most part, different guys. Even if Pedroia and Gonzalez are unhappy, there's no sign it's affecting their performances. I'd find another player's manager and ship out whichever guys lack the self-discipline to succeed with a player's manager in charge.
He was fine as a guitarist, but do you think he could manage a big-league squad?
More importantly, I don't think that "losing the clubhouse" refers to a manager directly causing specific "lost" players to play badly. It refers to a dysfunctional work environment, in which the authority of the manager is not properly respected, which leads to a variety of different outcomes, most of them bad. The effects are unpredictable, and one-month samples of slash lines don't tell you which individual players have been "lost". People is complicated.
I actually think there is something to this. The Sox have had some issues dating back to 2010 which was the first year Mills wasn't with them. That was the year of Youk vs. Ellsbury and laughable medical mishaps and of course the first non-playoff year in this stretch. I wouldn't be shocked if Mills would be the perfect guy to bring in.
He likes baseball and is no longer tied up with REM...
(1) Was Valentine present at the "heated meeting?" My impression from the article was no, but it doesn't seem to be clear.
(2) What was the follow-up with Valentine after the meeting? The article doesn't say.
(3) It strikes me as odd that Cherington goes on record confirming the meeting while "the team" declines to comment- but maybe I'm just reading into that.
I doubt there'd be any shortage of interested parties if Boston wanted to shop Gonz or Pedroia... but that still seems like a pretty bad idea to me. It's not like a Carlos Zambrano situation where in addition to becoming clubhouse poison, he's also performed into near worthlessness.
I guess the problem is that Boston needs 1)a player's manager, but also 2)one who commands respect. Billy Martin is dead, Leyland and Showalter seem pretty content in their current situations, and Lou is probably retired for good.
Who's really left that fits that bill? It would seem like you almost HAVE to have someone with experience... Davey Johnson? But he's pretty well set in Washington.
Could the Marlins interest you in a slightly used Ozzie Guillen? He's got a ring! Imagine the fun you could have!
Absolutely! He now plays bass for the Baseball Project. How much more qualified can you get?
Could he really be any worse than Bobby V?
Edit: Dammit, Coke to asinwreck for #26.
I can see why you would feel that way, but if I ran Boston, I wouldn't be looking to trade Pedroia and Gonzalez. It is certainly not all his fault, but ISTM that Valentine has to go.
What do you think the text said? "We h8 V-tine?"
*EDIT*
Coke to MCoA; I didn't see his lead-in.
Joe Paterno isn't doing anything...
Boo-#######-hoo.
At all.
Would this mean Joe Posnanski follows the KC-Boston path Bill James forged? (With a detour through North Carolina?) A reanimated JoPa leading the 2013 Red Sox would be worthy of the title The Great Experiment.
Sure, but these issues tend to escalate mostly when the best players on the team are involved. Bill James once said that the only non-negotiable part of a manager's job is the ability to command the respect of his players. Pedroia may (or may not) be an a-hole, but he is a lot tougher to replace than Valentine will be.
Bobby Valentine ruffles feathers. If the Red Sox didn't know that before they hired him, they didn't do their homework and if they weren't going to stand by him when the feather-ruffled ##### about him, they never should have hired him.
That's wrong. Some people aren't emotionally intelligent or mature enough to respect that which should be respected. If that happens to be a team's best players, the team's going to have trouble.
Obviously All-Stars are hard to replace, but the counterpoint is that a toxic clubhouse is hard to replace as well. If they try again with the new manager / same players deal, should we really be confident that the problems which felled the 2011-2012 Red Sox won't arise again?
**I'm being intentionally vague because I don't know (a) what the trade of value of individual Red Sox are / how replaceable individual players are, or (b) which players' removal would be more or less likely to change the culture or be perceived as a re-establishment of managerial authority.
Perhaps. But I would rather try to find a guy who can get along with Pedroia than yoke myself to Valentine.
Also, the thing that Bill James said is exactly correct. Lots of professional ballplayers are jackasses - the game selects for jackasses, it helps to have ego pouring out of your ears if you want to be a a pro ballplayer. The manager has to manage jackasses, and when he can't do that, he can't keep his job.
Well, they traded Shoppach before he could turn on the sprinkler system overnight and get the much-needed rain out.
That's what happens when you don't watch the movie all the way through.
I'm not equating misplaced respect/disrespect and jackassery. Plenty of jackasses know who and what to respect.
You need to get jackasses to play for you. You don't have to get them to "respect" you, pace James.
Gonzalez and Pedroia look like they're blaming other people for their failures. That can't be rewarded.
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