Remember Philip Seymour Hoffman as an angry version of Art Howe in Moneyball, bristling at Brad Pitt’s every innovation? By most accounts, including Howe’s, this was an unfair and simplified portrayal, but it spoke to a deeper tension that does exist in the game.
Baseball’s front offices are becoming ever-stronger and more erudite, which is great, except when it creates issues with the field staff that hurt the organization. The Houston Astros’ messy divorce with Bo Porter this week served as another reminder that big ideas are vulnerable to spectacular failure, if they are not effectively communicated to a willing partner.
Houston GM Jeff Luhnow is experimenting with revolutionary concepts, an approach that has brought him both praise from the outside (a Sports Illustrated cover that declared the Astros 2017 World Series champs), and widespread derision in a conservative industry. Baseball is a closed-minded world, a flaw often noted by those with analytical minds.
But minds can close on every side of a debate, and it is incumbent upon those with power to seek all views, including from the lifers in uniform (playing the game teaches you something, after all), and explain their own. The effort to create buy-in is basic leadership and people management.
In Tampa Bay, Andrew Friedman and Joe Maddon seem to have a genuine partnership, one defined by mutual respect and healthy debate. Friedman’s initial task with the then-Devil Rays was not altogether different from Luhnow’s; the team endured a few years of guaranteed losing, while it built a sustainable model for future contention.
Maddon, given the power to run the clubhouse while understanding that the analytics department was central to the organization, thrived in this environment, and became respected as one of the great managers in baseball. Initially, Porter looked like a similar hire, and Luhnow made the striking comment to me last spring that he might have found his manager for decades to come.
Reality was significantly messier, disrupting the plan and leading to strife. When a front office demands so much say in writing lineups and making in-game decisions, the situation has to be handled delicately, or it will blow up.
One of the trickier elements to a powerful front office is how it can cause a manager to lose respect among the players he is assigned to lead. As one current major league player on a team whose front office is deeply involved in day-to-day decisions said of his manager, “We like him as a guy, but we know he doesn’t have much say in things.”
In other words: Players are streetwise enough to know that they don’t have to listen to a middle manager with limited power. This is one reason why the dynamic in Tampa Bay works — and also in Oakland, where Billy Beane finds the pieces, and Bob Melvin deftly handles the egos and platoons. Both Beane and Friedman have found managers who fit in the system, but also can assert their own personalities.
Down in Houston, the dynamic was clearly more toxic. When the front office hustled last year’s No. 1 overall pick, Mark Appel, to Minute Maid Park for a semi-secret morning bullpen session, Porter was forced to explain it to players without having full information. This was a failure of leadership by the front office, an unforced error.
It’s fine to implement new ideas, and to rethink the power structure of a baseball organization. But it is basic human communication to respect one’s employees enough to include their input, and inform them of decisions. Some of baseball’s sharpest minds do this effectively, while others seem to forget.
STICK A FORK IN ‘EM
Except we pretty much already did. Last night, the Yanks and Shane Greene lost to Boston. Feinsand says there is a new F-word for this ballclub.
Mark also gets into the possibility of Brandon McCarthy and Chase Headley returning to the Yankees next season,
Oh, and the whole Jeter batting order thing.
THE METS WON
Juan Lagares led the way. Kristie Ackert was in Miami, tasked with describing the action.
CHANGE IN PHILLY
Last week, we talked about the element of the Phillies organization that many outside the market did not understand — and almost familial loyalty that stems from team president David Montgomery.
Since then, Montgomery has taken a health-related leave, and named Hall of Fame executive Pat Gillick as his interim replacement. Gillick told reporters yesterday that Amaro would remain in his role, though final baseball decisions once again were his. It didn’t seem possible for the Phils’ situation to be less clear, but it has become exactly that.
Here is Jim Salisbury’s story on an organization in flux.