What’s He Trying to Do, Make Me Like Him Less?
Posted by SBG on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Joe Pos, with another Gardy’s a Genius column.
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Reading that, after watching the games on Monday and Tuesday, made me very, very unhappy.
The weirdest part is that he comes off somewhat similar to the anti-stat crowd. He admittedly buries his head in the sand and says outperformance=good manager.
Don't get me wrong, Pos is one of my favorite, if my not my favorite baseball writer around. He tells a story in a way that very few can, but he really straddles the stat head/old school line very tightly. He sees the truth in stats but he can't get over his love of old time baseball where none of that mattered.
At least he acknowledges numbers and that is a pretty good start for a MSM writer.
I'm giving him a pass because of the shout-outs to Zooey Deschanel and Parker Posey.
I think it's a good acknowledgment of a situation where being too wrapped up in the statistics can destroy a persons enjoyment of the game. In the context of someone who is forced to watch the KC organization, how can Minnesota not look like the baseball equivalent of an attainable supermodel? I remember as a kid liking some players who, as time has passed, were actually probably lower than replacement value players. I don't think I'd personally like baseball as much if I had to endure someone calling me a moron for liking a certain player because their stat A or stat B is substandard.
I definitely think Gardenhire benefits (quite a bit) from the strength of the overall Twins' organization and I don't think he or anyone else for that matter could go into KC and fix what ails them. These are the things I like about Gardy:
1.) He's not an egomaniac and he acknowledges its the system and not his own personal genius. He will admit a mistake and it looks like he is having fun.
2.) He tries to protect his players both pitchers and position players
3.) He's "hands-on" yet he also seems to delegate and let his other coaches do their jobs.
4.) For as "high-strung" as he reportedly is with his blood pressure, etc. -- he doesn't seem to manage the games or the clubhouse that way. The team does not seem to play that way either.
5.) I think as a rule his staff is good at establishing a "job" or role for each player and letting them know what the expectations are for that role.
6.) As a rule he makes more good decisions than bad..
I wasn't sure how the transition to Smith from Ryan was going to effect Gardenhire's status. I thought there might be a chance he'd get fired before the new stadium opens. I guess he'd have to f-up pretty bad for that to happen.Put it this way, if I were going to make some changes to the Twins' organization, I don't think this would be the place you'd start tinkering first.
The things that bother me about Gardy are the same things that bother me about Delmon Young. They both seem to mess up the easy stuff that even regular old baseball fans like me know.
For instance, Delmon swinging at the first pitch with the bases loaded after the pitcher had thrown seven balls to the past two hitters. On Gardy, he won't set his lineup based on the platoon stats. He'll sit Mauer in the day game just because it is a day game instead of the night before against a left-hander.
I'm not saying Delmon sucks or Gardy sucks. I just think that they make too many obvious mistakes that they shouldn't be making. It's probably the same way Gardy felt about Bartlett. He had great range but he would make errors on some routine plays. Those errors were such obvious, easy mistakes that Gardy focused too much on it.
I think Gardy is better with some groups than others. For example, now that Torii is gone, I think point #2 is more valid. I like hearing that Gardy is chewing on players or cajoling or encouraging. I'm very much of the belief that the manager needs to control the clubhouse. I think he probably does that best when there aren't strong personalities in there. Of course, that's just speculation.
I'm much more positive on the Tool than I used to be.
But, I don't think ANY manager can take credit for a team hitting .315 with RISP. If so, they should hit like that every year. They haven't. So, in my opinion, JoePos is way overstating Gardy's influence on something that looks very fluky. I'm still enjoying it, even if I have a sneaking suspicion that it won't last.
The debate over clutch hitting has raged on for a while now, and I'm of the opinion that some players are better clutch hitters than others. However, I don't believe that any hitter will become exceptionally better (or worse) in clutch situations than average. A .250 hitter just isn't going to become a .300 hitter because of the pressure. It just doesn't happen. If he could hit .300 with RISP, he could hit .290 overall.
For the Twins to do what they've done would mean that on average each of our hitters is hitting .040 higher with RISP than they normally do. Can anyone actually believe that's not a fluke? Come on.
My hope is that it is a fluke in both directions. Hopefully our underperformance without runners in scoring position will be erased as our outperformance with runners in scoring position is erased. That could result in more total runners in scoring position and keep scoring at the same pace.
And we're bound to hit a few more HR at some point, right? Cuddyer, Young, and Morneau have combined for 19 at this point. They hit 60 last year.
One somewhat problematic thing that I see here is the whole "fast baserunners cause problems for the defense" school of thought. They would point to this roster, with really Mike Redmond as the only substantially below average runner, and say that with guys stealing and hit and runs, and so forth, the defense has to move around a lot and are out of position when the Twins put the ball in play, which leads to more hits with runners on base.
The team that the Twins currently remind me the most of are the 2003 KC Royals. I don't know what the breakdown is between first half and second half, but that 2003 KC team hit 50 points better with RISP than they did with no one on base. 50 points! And that was with about 3000 PA with no one on base and 1500 PA with RISP.
Now, even that 50 point split over the course of an entire season could be a fluke, but something smells fishy to me.