Weeee! This is more fun than Michael Kay thinking Swisher’s dad was a ML pitcher!
‘‘I heard the same [stuff] on April 20 [last year] about me,’’ Guillen said. ‘‘He’s got to say what he’s got to say. He was talking about people he’s only known for two weeks. That’s hard to make that statement when you only know people for two weeks, but that’s Nick.
‘‘I’m not pretending to be the best manager. I never will. But I guarantee that I will manage a lot longer than he will play. That’s all I can say. And I’ve got more friends in baseball than I have enemies. Some people can’t handle the way I manage. It’s not easy. When you manage, you have to deal with 25 to 50 people every year. To make [all of those] people happy, you can’t.
...‘‘I hope Girardi is a better manager than me because he manages the New York Yankees,’’ Guillen said. ‘‘He manages one of the biggest sports teams on the earth. I hope [Swisher] gets along with him. Things didn’t work out here for him, but it seems that when somebody leaves this ballclub, they find a better manager.
‘‘I never said I was a good manager. But do I get along with all my players? Yes. Some better than others? Yes. I didn’t come here to impress anyone, and I hope I do a good job. All of a sudden, he knows everyone on the ballclub. I was reading the article, and I just laughed. You only got one week, two weeks on the team, and everyone is nice?
‘‘That’s part of the game. That’s the way it is. That’s the way Swisher is. Things work out for him good, everyone is great. That [stuff] doesn’t work out for him, it’s someone’s fault.’’
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1. Tripon Posted: April 19, 2009 at 10:58 PM (#3144947)I can't support Ozzie's thoughts on what makes a baseball player good, but that's taking it a little too far. Swisher blew it last season.
Ozzie has never once said that Wise is a great players. In fact, during ST he was constantly harping about the fact none of his CF's looked worth a damn. He doesn't think Wise is anything special, but that he's better than everything else he's got.
As for Swisher, he was terrible last season and can't play CF. Add in the personality issues with the manager and over $20 MM owed and it's not surprising Chicago dealt him.
Since neither I nor you are Ozzie Guillen, I find the correct outside interpretation much more helpful:
If other people continue to talk smack about someone, and they don't appear to be affected in any way, maybe they just don't give a #### and we shouldn't either...
Doesn't mean they have to, of course. They can keep being a jerk and not care. Ultimately it doesn't matter that much whether he's a jerk or not. Which he is.
Who else has? I'm not being argumentative, I just would like to know who has called out Ozzie because I hate Ozzie Guillen, but I'm not up on who is on his enemies list.
My comment wasn't very clear. I was trying to defend Ozzie. Swisher forgot how to play baseball last season, and deserves the shots more than Magglio or Caballo ever did.
Ozzie, Nick, one of you should call up these people: www.longbets.org
As for your response, I'm kind of puzzled myself. Ozzie is the manager. He is responsible for the performance of his team. On some level, players should, if not like, respect him. You and I have gone 'round on this before, and I'm sure we will again, because if one thing's for sure it's that Ozzie is going to get tired well after we do. As for us not caring, I mean, I don't care in the sense that it affects my life, but that's the same thing as Sheffield in the HoF. If we accept the notion that we can come here and talk baseball, this is square in that wheelhouse.
AG#1F, you can see this link for two more. And I quote: "Ozzie Guillen's swipes at Brandon McCarthy on Mike North's morning radio show Friday set the stage for a carbon copy of the Guillen-Magglio Ordonez "feud" of 2005. In both cases, Guillen overreacted to some non-sensational comments made by a former player, trying to paint players who are solid professionals as anything but." That's from Phil Rogers, in 2007.
Playing career - 2 paragraphs
Managerial career - 2 paragraphs (plus one sentence)
"Controversy" - Let's call it 13 paragraphs (EDIT) Detailing 8 separate incidents with different opposition each time (EDIT2) Of varying degrees of note, a couple of which aren't really his things, but on the flip side, it misses more than one
Now, what's wrong with asking yourself, at that point, whether or not you're the one that's the problem? I realize Ozzie isn't going to do it, nor do I have the 'right' to tell him that he should. I'm just saying.
I don't agree with this.
I would agree if you mean "his players".
I do not see how him tearing to pieces someone who is a) no longer with the team and b) said something that negatively compared the team with his new team would impact what you are saying.
It's a natural process--player goes to new team, talks about how much better it is, old management tears him to pieces. I don't fault either party--both has the job to see things from those different perspectives.
If someone is seen in a negative light by multiple people, it's worth seeing the context. If a player homers every fifth at bat, he may be good, he may be bad. If he's 28 and playing in little league, that's relevant.
I am seen negatively by a large majority of corporate administrators seeking to destroy public schools. Is that because I'm an #######? Perhaps, but it's unlikely that it's the main reason. Maybe it's more because I support students to come downtown and embarrass those administrators on citywide television every other month?
Well yeah, he's a Buckeye.
Well yes, that's what I mean.
I do not see how him tearing to pieces someone who is a) no longer with the team and b) said something that negatively compared the team with his new team would impact what you are saying
Because a substantial percentage of people (I'm not saying a plurality, or majority, because nobody's polled on it, of course) think he's overreacting. On top of that, how can you not see the impact? It's damned hard to argue that his players like and/or respect him with this going on. You can read this in one of two ways: Either he's not overreacting and they really do mean to say nasty things, or he is overreacting. Neither one speaks well of him, and either one speaks directly to my point, that a self-examination might be in order.
It's a natural process--player goes to new team, talks about how much better it is, old management tears him to pieces. I don't fault either party--both has the job to see things from those different perspectives.
It happens, at least part of it. Player goes to new team, talks about how much he likes it? All the time. Says it's better than his old team? Less often, not rare. "Old management tears him to pieces"? Other than Bowa, who has had this happen remotely as much as Ozzie (throw in Kenny, too)? I can think of a small handful of feuds between player and former team in the last 5 years, and nearly every one involves the White Sox as the former team.
If someone is seen in a negative light by multiple people, it's worth seeing the context.
Yes, it is. And part of that context is Ozzie himself. The comparison to a 28 year old in Little League casts no light. Ozzie doesn't coach the baseball equivalent of The Longest Yard. He has a team of professional people who tend to act professionally everywhere else. Yes, if he had Chris Truby, Albert Belle, and 23 members of the Manson family, that would speak to context. He doesn't, it doesn't.
I am seen negatively by a large majority of corporate administrators seeking to destroy public schools. Is that because I'm an #######? Perhaps, but it's unlikely that it's the main reason. Maybe it's more because I support students to come downtown and embarrass those administrators on citywide television every other month?
The differences between the two situations are so many that I'm not going to bother to expound on them all, just note the main one: you and these administrators are on different sides. Ozzie and his team are not. Additionally, if said administrators were generally complimentary (or respectful, at least) of others that fill your position in other situations, and a great number react negatively to you, yes, I would say that is squarely on point. And that perhaps you could benefit from the same self-examination. I trust that you have done so. I'm just suggesting that perhaps Ozzie do the same.
Anyway, this all seems like a pretty enormous overreaction to what Swisher said:
From watching him come up and play in Oakland, Swisher plays hard, plays well, does everything the team asks him to do (1B, CF, RF, LF), generally doesn't yap in public, is well-liked by teammates, and makes connections with sometimes difficult personalities.
Yeah, he's got his flaws as a player, and yeah he's enthusiastic. But for the life of me I can't figure why he catches so much grief.
None of whom are on his team, so it's completely and utterly irrelevant.
Yes, except for the fact that his players constantly go on record talking about how much they respect and like him.
Yes, and so what?
Overreacting in reference to what? I fail to see how this affects his teams' on-field performance in anything except a positive way.
The context is that the examples you are using are of players on other teams. They are by definition not "on the same side".
This is the only relevant point I've seen. (Life philosophy-wise, I actually agree entirely, but not in terms of what's best for a baseball team.)
Swisher for whatever reasons played awful last year, and I don't think he could play in CF better than Brian Anderson. However, if the on-team treatment of Swisher reduced either his performance or trade value, that is clearly responsibility that is held by Guillen and Williams.
That still has nothing to do with the current dispute, but is a fair speculative criticism.
Ultimately, the question for White Sox management is "Does the team win more games with Guillen as manager as compared to a replacement manager?" The answer is undoubtedly yes.
Isolating individual incidents and evaluating them for their impact is also an interesting process, but it's really inexact when these events are part of a cohesive managerial strategy, and we get to observe and evaluate such a tiny portion of it.
This has always been armchair sabermetricians' glaring weakness in evaluating management--no decent metrics combined with no access-->over reliance on media soundbites.
If you learned anything from that Joe Morgan book about Billy Beane, it's that media is a tool for an effective management team to use, not a place to tell full truths.
If the A's management team understands that, the White Sox team has mastered it.
On top of that, how can you not see the impact? It's damned hard to argue that his players like and/or respect him with this going on.
So -- if I'm reading this correctly -- you don't think his players, as in the current White Sox, don't like and/or respect him? No, I don't see that one bit -- please elaborate. And what "impact" are you talking about? Certainly not having much of an impact in the W/L column...
It was Sean Tracey and that's not entirely accurate.
Tracey DID throw at Blalock, but he MISSED and then got Blalock out. Guillen went ballistic.
In my opinion, that's much worse. I've never believed in retaliation on the field and firmly support the "living well is the best revenge philosophy". The unwritten rules crap is the worst of baseball, and I was sorry to see Ozzie subscribe to it.
That being said, Tracey was demote the next day, but not because of this incident, and Guillen said nothing in the press about the incident except that he made a mistake in putting the rookie into the situation.
He shouldn't have written Moneyball.
Christ, no it isn't. If many people think something, that is not irrelevant to the question of whether his players think that same thing. Absent direct evidence to the contrary, it's instructive. Asserting irrelevancy doesn't make it so.
Yes, except for the fact that his players constantly go on record talking about how much they respect and like him.
Some of them. What about the ones that don't? What about Nick Swisher, last year? You'd have me listen to the ones that praise him while they are there, and not listen to the ones that denigrate him once they're gone. Players who do not have histories of doing such things. I fail to see why one is relevant and the other isn't. Nick Swisher was on the team last year. Nick Swisher is making comments now. Sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Lalalalalala not on the team" doesn't change the fact.
Yes, and so what?
So what? You assert "it's a natural process" for players to move and rip their former team and for team management to in turn 'rip apart' said former player. I say it's not common at all, and it seems that the White Sox are the only ones to do it repeatedly. How on earth is that "So what?"
The context is that the examples you are using are of players on other teams. They are by definition not "on the same side".
I know for a fact that you're not this ####### dense. So you're either just being contrarian for the sake of it with terrible argumentation, or you are basing your entire dispute with my original statement, that Guillen should perhaps look at himself, with the following:
"Disregard the facts that he has feuded publicly with former players on numerous occasions. Disregard that neutral observers, many of them, have called these overreactions to the players' comments. Disregard the fact that even others have questioned his volatility and reactions in other professional situations. All of these things don't matter because these did not involve people directly on the team at the very moment they made their comments. It doesn't matter if they're gone for less than an offseason. It doesn't matter that this happens considerably more with the White Sox than the majority of other teams. Some players say they respect him, so that can be extrapolated to most, or all, of them, despite the evidence to the contrary, because all of that above, that's not evidence."
If that's the case, then I don't know what to say.
So -- if I'm reading this correctly -- you don't think his players, as in the current White Sox, don't like and/or respect him?
I don't think they all do, no. Because, again, one of the two following has to be true: Either Guillen is overreacting to innocuous comments and ripping former players publicly for no reason (and other rational people are taken aback by this), or he is *not* overreacting, and his former players rip him in the press regularly. Unless you're arguing that bizarre stack-blowing over small things is an endearing quality, either one is indicative of the likelihood that at least some of his player do not respect or like him.
Riiiiiiiiight. Let me know when this has some tangible effect, such as players on the Sox widely underperforming or players choosing not to go to the Sox because of Ozzie. Until then it's nothing but guesswork (and a ton of it, at that, on your end).
EDIT: And again, what exactly is this "impact" that is so obvious to you? Did you spot Carlos Quentin crying tears of jelly beans because of mean ole' Ozzie? Because -- again -- this oh-so obvious impact hasn't had much of an impact on their overall play.
I'll repeat what I said in the last post since you I know you are certainly not so \"####### dense" as to merely select out pieces of an argument so as to denigrate it.
Basically, the point is that you have points of evidence, but you don't know what they consist of or what the context of them is. When you point emphatically at pieces of data like "random people somewhere who have nothing to do with baseball think he's overreacting" it doesn't lend confidence that you are analyzing at all.
Then you get abusive and flip out and say I'm not addressing you sincerely. This is foolish and you may indeed benefit from self-examination.
It does not demonstrate at all that you are a bad baseball manager or beekeeper or whatever profession you have mastered in your life.
E-X, is there something other than the same types of anecdotes you dismiss that lead you to believe that Guillen is "undoubtedly" a good manager?
Not E-X, but since Ozzie has been with the White Sox, the franchise has generally exceeded expectations, and played at least as well as one could expect. In other words, they've maxed out on their potential. That's the highest compliment you can pay a manager.
Hyperbole aside--obviously there is room for doubt--I'd say the White Sox consistent outperforming of most projection systems suggests that the management team in general has done a good job. Also, the staff/bullpen management of Guillen seems to be outstanding by most measures from performance to number of days missed to injury. Obviously, none of this is "undoubtedly" due to Guillen, but it would make sense that he has some role in each of these positive outcomes. So forgive my overreach, but minus that, I would say "Yes."
I didn't find him obnoxious, but I agree he seems annoying. He's obviously trying to clown around all the time, yet he doesn't really seem funny. If you're funny, it works. If you're not, I'd really want you to shut up.
Isn't Ozzie''s job to win ballgames? Haven't his teams pretty much outperformed expectations yearly?
When are Ozzie and KW going to stop being the butt of jokes and start getting credit for building a very successful franchise?
This happened a couple of years ago. Stop living in the past! Contemporize, man!
That's a cool site. I wish it had been around in spring 1998 when I bet someone $20 that Chipper Jones would eventually be inducted into the HOF. Chipper's line to that point (thanks to BB-ref):
Yrs G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG SB CS OPS+4 462 1722 303 502 96 11 74 307 237 276 .292 .374 .489 42 10 122
And from a player management standpoint the LaRussa comparison is apt. It's just that Tony typically clams up when the jilted players vents to the press while Ozzie is always ready to "engage".
The flip side of this is to of course take anything Nick Swisher says with a grain of salt as well. Let's not pretend that Swisher is some naive 22 year old on his call up to the majors here. Swisher knows that the media knows that he's a "free spirit" and he plays it up as much as possible. He did it last April with the White Sox (I'm too lazy to lookup the numerous fawning write-ups of how loose Swisher was and the great clubhouse effect he had)and he's doing it again this spring with the Yankees. I don't mind Swisher, but he was horseshit for most of the year and can't play CF to boot.
I feel the whole "he wasn't a good fit" had more to do him getting along with the clubhouse leaders than Ozzie himself. Konerko, Dye, Thome, Buehrle and AJ are the leaders of the team and I don't think Swisher's overly saccharine ass-kissing routine played very well with them.
Ozzie is clearly a good manager, regardless of anything he says to the media. He's won a World Series and two division titles, the team out performs expectations (saber and otherwise) almost every year and the vast majority of his players are on the record as saying they love playing for him. He's arguable the best manager in the bigs at managing a pitching staff (health being a large component of this) and clearly the management and coaching staff he and Williams have assembled works for them.
Every year Ozzie says something like this and every year it just blows over and the Sox are in contention for another division crown. I expect this year to be no different.
Thaaaaaat's right. I couldn't remember most of the details. Or, actually, any of them.
As we've learned from Chad Bradford Wannabe, you'll probably not find a baseball manager who <u>doesn't</u> subscribe to it.
He just shoots his mouth off. Nothing to see here. Just the same ol same ol.
"Few hit-and-runs?" More or less. He's good at adapting his style of play to his personnel. I think that people who think Guillen's a bad manager (as opposed to those who think he's just an #######, like Buddha in #40) tend to listen too much to what he says and not pay attention to what he does. Ozzie's dream team is probably the 1982-87 St. Louis Cardinals - little wiry guys bunting and hit-and-running and stealing and winning games 3-2. But he's never had that team and from what I can tell (I live in Chicago but am not a Sox fan, so I only watch them when there's nothing else to do) he lets his sluggers slug, he doesn't bunt a lot, certainly not as much as you'd think from listening to him.
"Good bullpen use?" I'd say, yes, this is one of his strengths. I suspect that a lot of it is Don Cooper, but Ozzie's the manager, so he at least deserves credit for keeping and listening to Cooper.
"Starts the best players?" In general, yes. Here, again, sometimes there's a disconnect between what Ozzie says - he's seemed to love Jerry Owens at times in the past, for example - and what he does. Playing time complaints tend to be along the lines of playing DeWayne Wise over Brian Anderson. Anderson's probably "better" but, before this season, it's not like Anderson was actually anything particularly close to "good". I think he's got a bias toward what he views as an ideal player - fast, good fielder, able to bunt/steal/hit-and-run, works hard - but he appreciates OBP, for example, and tends to do a pretty good job of evaluating how good players are, I think.
"Effective platooning?" Guillen likes to have his starters start - his ideal would be to have 9 position players start 140-150 games each and have 5 starters make 33-34 starts each. I can't think of his ever having used a platoon and he rarely pinch hits. The White Sox under Ozzie's tenure have been remarkably healthy with remarkably stable starting pitching. I don't know how much credit one ought to give a manager for his team's health, but, as with Cooper and the pitchers, to the extent that this isn't just luck, Ozzie at least deserves some credit as the manager.
I think he gets the most out of his team. How's that for a cliche? :)
I think Kenny Williams has become a really good general manager too.
I obviously don't follow them as closely as you do; I'm just generally skeptical of our ability to rate managers--especially ones with 5 years of experience like Guillen. Managers obviously have an effect on teams, I just don't see any real way to come close to isolating that effect.
I've seen people who closely follow the White Sox claim that the team generally overperforming expectations is due to the projections being worthless or biased, Ken Williams being adept at finding talent that's about to break out, and Ozzie.
Have you isolated the effect fn a GM on his team? Does it matter whether the GM in question has decided to compete for the season in question, or is punting that season?
Yes, yes and yes.
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