Search Results for 'process results'

Dice-K’s mediocre Saturday start…and this week’s readings

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on June 18, 2007
in Daisuke Matsuzaka, J.D. Drew, Manny Ramirez, Mike Timlin, Oblique references to the Byrds and Yankees
. 7 Comments

Quick thoughts on this weekend’s Giants series, of which I attended games two and three:

* Saturday was most definitely not Dice-K’s best game of the season; it was, however, an illustration of one of my favorite themes: the need to consider process vs. results. At points he had trouble locating his curve; he went to three balls a number of times; and only threw seven frames of zeros because of a gift-wrapped strike zone. The sixth inning, in particular, was a classic example of what we’ve seen when Matsuzaka struggles: with Bonds up third, he walked a batter and gave up a hard single before K-ing Barry. Another hard hit liner by one of the Flying Molina Brothers was, fortunately, aimed directly at short. After that gift, Dice-K hit Nate Schierholtz — who has now amassed a total of 41 big league at bats — loading the bases. He then proceeded to walk in a run in a 1-0 game…or would have, anyway, if home plate umpire Charlie Reliford had had his eyes checked before the game. That’s not to say I didn’t like what I saw…but this game might have been a blowout had the Sox been playing an AL team.

* Terry Francona finally seems to have realized that you never want to pitch Mike Timlin in any game in which the Sox are winning or losing by less than five runs. (I pray I’m right on this one…)

* Manny’s two home runs were great to see, but even better was the authority with which he was swinging the bat. He was back to the showing off perhaps the most beautiful swing in the game. Historically, when he finds that swing, he doesn’t lose it for a while. Ortiz, on the other hand, still looks like he’s swinging from his heels too much, and he’s also beginning to look over anxious. Yesterday’s two ground-rule doubles were great, don’t get me wrong…but they weren’t the kind of majestic drives we’ve come to expect from Papi.
* JDD continues to miss badly on some pitches, but the balls he is hitting, he’s hit squarely and with authority. All season I’ve been a guy who’s preached patience with Drew; you don’t put up the kind of track record he does and suddenly forget how to play ball. Coco looks much more confident at the plate too, and he continues to play good-to-great center field. (Lugo is a whole other story; he looked desperate and confused.)

* Following Murray Chass’s logic, the fact that the Sox gained a game on the Yankees this weekend means they’ll end the season 35 games up. That, of course, won’t happen. It’s not out of the realm of possibility to think Boston’s lead will stay within the 5-9 game range through September, but it’s also not out of the realm of possibility to think it’s going to get much tighter down the line. Both of these teams are good. New York’s not half as bad as they were playing in May, and Boston’s not the historically great outfit their record indicated. If both teams stay healthy, it’s going to be an interesting — and hopefully fun — summer.

***

Want to hear me talk about all of this, and more? (And whatever else you want to know?) This is your lucky week: I have a series of readings/signings/q&a’s in Boston this week: tomorrow night (at the Boston Public Library, 6pm), Wednesday lunch hour (12:30, downtown Borders), Thursday night (Winchester’s Bookends, 7 pm), and Friday night (Porter Square Books, 7 pm). Don’t miss out.

Process vs. results, part 4183 in a continuing series: the myth of the 3-0 double

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on January 26, 2007
in 2004 Playoffs, Process v. results and Trot Nixon
. 5 Comments

Longtime readers will know that Murray ain’t my only obsession; I’ve also been fixated on the notion of process versus results, especially as it relates to baseball (and stock picking). Honestly: who else do you know that could incorporate Robert Rubin’s economic policy and why the Boston media doesn’t write about the positive things happening in Red Sox Nation? (On two seperate occasions, no less?)

There’s a strained way that this relates to Trot Nixon and one of the most discussed at-bats of the 2004 World Series. The scene: Game 4, 3rd inning, bases loaded, 2 out, Sox leading 1-0, Nixon at the plate with a 3-0 count. Jason Marquis serves up a meatball that Trot nails; the ball is mere inches away from being a grand-slam. (The fact that that ball didn’t leave the park speaks to Trot’s diminished power…but I digress.) The Sox were roundly praised for giving Trot the green light on 3-0, especially with Marquis struggling and a walk scoring a run. Except Trot wasn’t given a green light; he simply blew the sign. Taking a pitch was arguably the right move: Marquis was struggling, there was nowhere to put Trot, and Shaggy McShouldaBeenSeriesMVP was on deck. In the end, it didn’t matter, Terry’s a genius, and Trot’s folk-hero status is brought up one more notch. But it’s worth pointing out that the play didn’t go down as planned; it went down despite not being planned…

Mailing it in, Dec. 22 2006 edition

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on December 22, 2006
in 2006 Hot Stove Season, Jim Caple and Sports Reporters
. 11 Comments

And the prize for lazy story of the day goes to…ESPN’s Jim Caple’s “Empirically Speaking,” the latest in an onslaught of stories about how the Red Sox’s profligate ways have, in essence, made them the newest member of the Evil Empire Club.

If you want to throw stones at the Sox for the manner in which they’ve opened their wallets this offseason, you have plenty of good-sized rocks to choose from. The most obvious, of course, is the way Theo cried poverty at the trade deadline, only to offer J.D. Drew a 5-year, $70-million deal at the season’s end. (At the very least, that seems to have been a misreading of the market.)

That, of course, would involve some analysis. Instead, Caple makes fun of the Red Sox’s $51,111,111.11 posting bid for Matsuzaka (”when you have the luxury of slapping $1,111,111.11 on a bid for the pure look of it, you definitely are not living in the same neighborhood as the Kansas City Royals or Pittsburgh Pirates (or even the Chicago White Sox, for that matter)”) and compares John Henry to the Boss (”It’s to the point that if John Henry gained 40 pounds and started acting like an ass, you would think George Steinbrenner owned the Red Sox”).

Huh? The Sox’s bid of $51 million was arrived at because they thought it possible another team would bid $50 million; that’s a common tactic in blind bids (just ask Bob Barker+). Adding on $100,000 more was done for the same reason. The extra .002 percent represented by the final $11,111.11 was done because of the number 11’s significance to Henry (which I explain in Feeding the Monster). That relatively puny amount is something the White Sox (or even the Royals) could afford.

As for comparing JWH to Steinbrenner, I’m not sure where to start. Those people that consider big, blustering George offensive think so, at least in part, because of the way he blindly throws around money, overruling Brian Cashman, his beleaguered GM, in the process. Signing the 41-year-old Randy Johnson to a multi-year deal when Cashman was advocating picking up Carlos Beltran is a case in point: there was no rationale for throwing away that kind of dough on an arthritic giant except for the fact that the Sox had Schilling and George wanted a “warrior” of his own. Regardless of what you think about the Red Sox’s posting fee, there is a clear rationale for spending resources on a pitcher like Matsuzaka, a phenomenal talent whose best years are in front of him, not behind him.

Caple sets up plenty of other equally silly straw men:

* “No team has ever paid more money for a world championship than did the 2004 Red Sox.” And no National League team has paid more money to lose a world championship than did the 2004 St. Louis Cardinals. And no team’s payroll has topped $100 million in three of the past four years without even making it to the World Series expect the New York Mets. And no team has spent over $100 million in payroll and put up a losing record except the 2002 Rangers. Since they don’t win, I guess they’re not Evil Empires but just…stupid? What’s more, because of the unbalanced schedule, comparing the payrolls of teams in different divisions doesn’t really make sense. The Yankees’ 2006 payroll was 60 percent higher than the Red Sox’s, a greater percentage than that between any division winner and either of the two teams that finished behind it.

* “Further, when those Red Sox recorded the final out of that World Series, not a single player on the field was homegrown.” True, but that has absolutely nothing to do with what the Red Sox under the new ownership group has/had done, because it hadn’t been in place long enough to have a significant impact on minor league players who’d worked their way through the system to the point where they’d be in the bigs. (What’s more, Trot Nixon and Kevin Youkilis were both on the WS roster; Tim Wakefield, Derek Lowe, and Jason Varitek had been acquired early in their careers (Tek’s never played a major league game for another team) and David Ortiz, Kevin Millar, and Bill Mueller were all on-the-cheap pick ups and not Evil Empire-like acquisitions).

* “When the Sox open the 2007 season, they may have just two homegrown players in the lineup, first baseman Kevin Youkilis and second baseman Dustin Pedroia.” And if you add pitchers, you have Jon Lester, Jonathan Papelbon, Craig Hansen, and Manny Delcarmen. I guess they don’t count. Because who needs pitching?

I know, I know: no sooner will I post this than the homer accusations will start to fly. Fine; I’m used to it. It’s not that I’m blindly defending the Red Sox, or even that I’m really defending them at all. Take a shot at the disorganized way they went about things last offseason. Unpack all the reasons the Arroyo-Wily Mo trade was a bad idea. Ridicule the panic move of reacquiring Mirabelli for Cla Meredith and Josh Bard. But whatever you do, put some thought into it.

+ I know that’s not how “The Price is Right” works. But you know what I mean. So lay off.

The front office asks columnists, fans, to read Treasury Secretary memoir

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on August 23, 2006
in Red Sox front office and Robert Rubin
. 3 Comments

“When Robert Rubin left Goldman Sachs 14 years ago and came here to join the Clinton administration, he brought a couple of big ideas with him. …

“The idea was simply that uncertainty was an inevitable part of life and only the foolish imagined they could eliminate it. To make the best possible decisions, bond traders and policy makers alike had to weigh every relevant piece of information, estimate the risks that something unexpected would happen and then make a judgment based on the odds, aware all the while that success could not be guaranteed. They had to understand that a good decision could produce a bad outcome. That is what uncertainty meant, and recognizing it maximized the chances that they would succeed next time.

“‘Unfortunately, Washington — the political process and the media — judges decisions based solely on outcomes, not on the quality of the decision making,’ Mr. Rubin wrote, with his co-author Jacob Weisberg, in his 2003 memoir, In an Uncertain World.”

–”This Fed Chief May Yet Get a Honeymoon,” David Leonhardt, The New York Times, August 23, 2006

The non-trades of 2006, Theo and Larry’s evolving relationship, and the reaction in the clubhouse

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on August 1, 2006
in John Henry, Larry Lucchino, Red Sox ownership, Theo Epstein, Tom Werner and trade deadline
. 18 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, Theo Epstein spoke to the Boston media not long after the trade deadline had passed. “We gathered around everybody two minutes after the trade deadline and thanked them for their hard work and said, ‘As disappointed as we are not to be able to add a significant piece, we’re certainly proud of the process and actually proud of the results, because it would have been better than getting emotional, reactive, short-sighted in doing something that we would regret and would be detrimental to the health of the franchise.’”

The quote–which, according to some quick and dirty on-line searches, didn’t show up in the main trade stories in the Globe, the Herald, or the Providence Journal–says more about what happened (and what didn’t happen) yesterday, and how the relationship between Epstein and Larry Lucchino is playing out, than anything else Epstein said at his press conference.

During the year I spent with the Red Sox, Epstein talked often about the importance of process. When, throughout the 2005 season he was attempting to work out his contract with CEO Larry Lucchino, he didn’t appeal directly to principal owner John Henry because of his “deference to the process.” When Epstein finally explained to Henry why he felt he had to leave the team, he said that “the process of reaching a new contract” had disappointed him. And when, several months after famously walking out of Fenway in a gorilla suit, Epstein returned as the Sox’s general manager, he explained that the biggest factor had been his and Henry’s shared philosophical approach in regards to putting together winning baseball teams: “We both agree that what’s important is process over immediate, short-term results,” he told me.

***

In the days and weeks after Epstein left the team last October, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not Epstein and Lucchino were fighting for control over the team’s baseball operations. They weren’t: Lucchino has always functioned as the team’s CEO, and Epstein has always run baseball ops. There was, in addition to personal distrust that had built up over more than two years, a difference in how the two men felt the team should communicate with the public. Lucchino, who’d had to practically beg for fans when he ran the San Diego Padres, believes in doing whatever it takes to bring make the public feel as if the team is listening to their concerns. (This approach even extends to the players: Lucchino told me that one advantage of a July trade is that it shows the players that management is as committed to winning as the players are.) Epstein, especially in the wake of the 2004 World Series victory, believes the Red Sox have a unique opportunity to focus on the long-term instead of always looking for immediate gratification. In some very important ways, this difference in approach exacerbated the rift that led to Epstein’s resignation: when the Red Sox traded Nomar Garciaparra two years ago yesterday, Epstein was convinced that the process that led to that trade–dispassionately weighing the options, calmly considering the alternatives, and carefully looking at the future–was the right one. In the day or two immediately following the trade, when an Orlando Cabrera error resulted in a Sox loss and all of New England was bemoaning the departure of one of its heros, Epstein began hearing rumors that there were people within the organization who were telling the press that this had been a “bottom-up” trade, one orchestrated (and pushed through) by Epstein, not the team’s executives. Epstein not only felt betrayed, he began to wonder if the organization shared a commitment to the long-term goals he had laid out.

In the last two years, the Red Sox have repeatedly made player personnel decisions that reflect Epstein’s philosophy. They decided what they thought Pedro Martinez was worth and then stood firm when the Mets added a fourth year to their offer. Even after Lucchino told me he thought often of Johnny Damon’s “long-term value” to the franchise vis a vis the team’s relationship with its public, the Red Sox decided to not offer more than $11 million a year. But there have consistently been intimations that these moves reflected Epstein’s wishes, the implication being that even though Epstein was in control there were those who disagreed with him.* So far, that has not been the case this year, and the extent to which the Sox have stayed on the same page with their public “message” is striking. “We have a long-term plan,” Epstein said yesterday. “As much as we desperately wanted to do something to help our big-league team, it would have been shortsighted to sacrifice that long-term plan in order to incrementally increase our chances this year. We were asked over and over again for a lot of our good young players — good young players at the major league level who are part of our long-term plan — and it just wasn’t worth it.” The proposed Andruw Jones deal that got so much attention yesterday–in which the Red Sox would give up Coco Crisp, Craig Hansen, and Jon Lester–never was much of a possibility. The one deal that Sox were most eager to make, where Boston would get Houston’s Roy Oswalt in return for a group of players including some combination of Lester, Hansen, and Manny Delcarmen, didn’t work out in the end because Epstein and the Red Sox refused to give up more than they felt Oswalt was worth. This year, the Red Sox weren’t going to be caught up in the frenzy of the day or consumed by a need to counter the Yankees’ pick-up of Bobby Abreu. (An Oswalt acquisition, one article said, “[w]ould have been the classic ‘take that’ response to the Yankees”…which is precisely what the Sox were trying to avoid.)

Does this mean Lucchino’s power has been diminished? No, not necessarily; it means only that, when John Henry and Tom Werner promised Epstein that his running of the team’s on-field operation would not be compromised by leaks or outside pressure, they meant what they said. Lucchino, whose role within the team has never been clearly understood by the public, will continue to oversee every aspect of the organization and focus on the team’s revenue enhancement and long-term, off-field plans. And judging from what happened yesterday, Epstein will be freer than ever to shape the Sox’s roster without worrying about what’s going to show up in the next day’s papers.

***

It’s hard not to support Epstein’s push towards a future in which the Sox are less concerned with public reaction to the team’s every move. (At Saturday’s game, I listened as a very loud and very agitated fan bemoaned the fact that Willie Harris was not pinch-hitting when Jason Varitek was sent up late in the game to execute a bunt. Disregarding the fact that Willie Harris currently plays for Pawtucket, there are so many boneheaded sentiments expressed in that one sentence I barely knew where to begin. It would be frightening if the Sox did pay attention to this type of fan, who often shout the loudest but make the least sense.) But Epstein has always been more concerned with reactions in the clubhouse than on the street. On Sunday, in response to the Abreu trade, David Ortiz, who likely wanted a teammate on which he could unload some of his burden, asked a reporter, “What are we doing?” Baseball clubhouses are incredibly cliquey places (just ask Coco Crisp), and Epstein, who didn’t play baseball beyond high school, doesn’t have the easy rapport with players that former assistant general manager Josh Byrnes did. (Brynes was never a prospect, but he was a standout at Haverford, setting the school’s all-time home run mark.) “Josh is one of the people in the organization that I feel like I really have a good relationship with,” Gabe Kapler told me last September. “If I were to say you should go talk to somebody about the pulse of the organization, I’d say go talk to Josh. He’s going to be a great GM. I’m a big fan of Josh.” In October, Byrnes left Boston for Phoenix to become the GM of the Diamondbacks. If I were a fly on the wall this year, I’d be fascinated to watch how Epstein’s relationship (and his comfort level) with the players evolves.

* Believe me, I know Esptein wasn’t technically back when Damon signed with the Yankees; I know the Red Sox didn’t even have a chance to offer Damon $11 million a year; and I know Pedro didn’t go back to the Sox for a counter-offer when the Mets offered their four-year deal. The overall point holds, and if you want the nitty-gritty about all of these machinations, check out the book.

EDIT: Reactions like the one in the comment below offer a decent illustration of the fundamental misunderstandings that often accompany baseball comings and goings (as well as a total misunderstanding of what I was trying to illustrate above). 2004_champs writes: “Theo’s view on Pedro was wrong. I don’t care how bad Pedro is in 2008, he was still a better value than the other options such as Matt Clement. There was more to the Pedro non-signing than baseball. Theo made that personal, and it cost the Sox last year, this year, and the next two years as well. Theo needs to be held accountable. … How bad do you really think Pedro will be in 2008 for his $13 mill?”

Whether or not Pedro will or won’t be worth $13 million in 2008, and whether or not Pedro is or isn’t a better value than Matt Clement, is totally besides the point for two important reasons. First, the Red Sox didn’t have a chance to counter the Mets’ four-year deal. They were told, explicitly, that if they offered Pedro a guaranteed three-year contract that equalled the Mets’ three-year offer, he would re-sign with Boston. Obviously, that wasn’t true. (Nor was it true, as Pedro said in June, that he had a concrete four-year deal on the table before the Mets made their last-minute offer.) Second, whether or not the Pedro ends up being a better value than Matt Clement has little to do with anything; the point I was trying to illustrate is that the Red Sox believe that if they consistently follow the process they’ve articulated (internally, not externally), they will, more often than not, come out on top. Of course some deals won’t work out: players get injured, or they underperform, or they can’t adapt, or whatever. But the same process that led to the Sox’s signing of Ramiro Mendoza also led to their signing David Ortiz; you can’t bitch and moan about one without acknowledging the other. (It’s worth pointing out that Boston wasn’t alone in thinking Matt Clement would be a better value than Pedro going forward; many people in the Mets thought that, too, but Omar Minaya told his staff he thought Pedro could help bring the Mets some of the attention that had previously been concentrated on the Yankees. It’s also worth pointing out that there were 28 other teams in baseball who didn’t even get into the bidding.)

Fans’ reactions are supposed to be emotional; that’s what makes us fans. And hopefully, the reactions of the front-office are based more on reason that feeling.

Rudy Seanez, the Boston Red Sox, and process versus results

Published
by
Seth Mnookin
on June 19, 2006
in Baseball, David Ortiz, Jason Varitek, Red Sox ownership, Sports Reporters and Theo Epstein
. 0 Comments

In the bottom of the seventh inning of tonight’s Braves-Red Sox game, Rudy Seanez came in to pitch to Jeff Francoeur with two on, two out, and the Sox leading 3-2—and Francoeur hit Seanez’s first pitch over the left-field wall to give the Braves a two run lead. Which means Seanez screwed up, right? Well, not exactly. Jason Varitek gave a target on the lower left-hand corner of the strike zone, and Seanez hit his spot almost perfectly with a nice slider…or he would have, anyway, if Francoeur hadn’t deposited the ball into the stands.

There’s plenty to second-guess here, to be sure. Francoeur is a free swinger—he has only five walks on the year, to go along with 57 strikeouts, 15 home runs, and 52 RBIs—and Seanez’s pitch was obviously hittable. But with two men on, the Red Sox didn’t want to give Francoeur a 1-0 count, on which he’s hitting .481 this season. And Seanez didn’t throw a hanging slider or leave a pitch out over the heart of the plate—it just nipped the outside corner.

Francouer’s 3-run shot certainly won’t be one of the turning points in the season. The Sox scored six two-out runs in the eighth and went on to win the game, 10-7. And Seanez’s role in the game probably won’t be remembered for long, either, except for those fans who’ve already decided they hate the man. But it is a good example of how baseball offers up numerous daily illustrations of how a good process doesn’t always lead to good results. The Red Sox—with a front office that has a well thought out reasons for virtually every decision they make—offer almost daily illustrations of this. After the 2002 season, the Sox let Cliff Floyd walk rather than pay him the eight or so million he likely would have gotten in arbitration; then, in a move that was criticized at the time, they signed Jeremy Giambi, Bill Mueller, David Ortiz, and Todd Walker for a combined $8.8 million. Before this season, the Sox traded Bronson Arroyo to the Reds for hard-hitting outfielder Wily Mo Pena. That move was, for the most part, treated as good news: with the Red Sox’s outfield in flux, the injury-prone, left-handed Trot Nixon manning right, and the need to start turning over a veteran team that was in danger of rapidly aging, picking up a 24-year old power-hitting outfielder who had a couple of years left before he reached free agency made a lot of sense, especially when the cost was a pitcher who threw up a 4.52 ERA last year. Of course, now that Pena’s on the DL, Arroyo’s 8-3 with a 2.51 ERA, and the Red Sox starting rotation appears to be in danger of falling apart, that move is drawing plenty of criticism.

Hindight, of course, is 20-20, and baseball fans (and sportswriters) have a rich history of knee-jerk reactions in response to whatever happened last night (or last inning). But indulging that tendency, especially in regard to a Red Sox team owned by John Henry and Tom Werner and run by Theo Epstein, would mean missing out on a lot of opportunities to think about and learn why a given decision was made. During spring training this year, Epstein told me the reason he loved working for Henry was that both men believed in making decisions based on carefully articulated processes. That doesn’t mean never paying players more than they might be worth according to a strict statistical analysis—there are some decisions that need to be made for stability, or because of excessive turnover. But it does mean coming up with a plan and sticking to it. And if the team decides certain players are only worth risking three years on, well, that’s what they Sox will offer.

“It doesn’t always work out perfectly,” Epstein said that day. “That’s life. But we believe that if we come up with a plan and stick to it, it’ll work out more often than it doesn’t.”

There’s more–lots more–about the Red Sox’s management philosophy and all the roster moves and in-game decisions of the last several years in Feeding the Monster, out July 11.

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