Common Sense Consultant
Posted: July 26th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Other Sports | 52 Comments »
OK, I wrote this thing about how every team should have a Common Sense Consultant and posted it and the first commenter out the gate told me that Bill Simmons (and I don’t know how I missed this since I’m a pretty regular reader) has been touting the “VP of Common Sense” for a long time now. So, basically, I looked back and the reader’s exactly right: I’m just repeating his idea here. But, hey, it’s a good idea. And I think this is a perfect example of WHY everyone needs a Common Sense Consultant in the first place … if I had one, he would have told me that Bill Simmons already came up with this idea like years ago, and I would have just written the piece accordingly from the start.
Now, look, one of the points I try to make on this blog and in virtually all of my other writing is that I don’t know anything about anything. I mouth off my opinions because it’s fun and because people pay me to do it and because over the years I’ve come to know a lot of people who ARE smart about various things and are kind enough to fill me in on their views and knowledge. But I’m always aware that every opinion I offer could be wildly and tragically wrong.*
*A few people here probably remember the “I Pounded Poz” campaign in Augusta many years ago … that was a contest, put on by the Augusta Chronicle, where I picked something like 20 football games (college, pro, high school, whatever) and anyone who picked better than me won a free “I Pounded Poz” T-shirt. The campaign was such a disaster — we gave away SO many T-shirts — that at some point the publisher of the paper (who is also the President of Morris Communications) came up to me and said, in a blunt tone, “Pick better.” To this day, I still get photos from people wearing their “I Pounded Poz” T-shirt.
Still, I have noticed … I have been right an awful lot about the Kansas City Royals the last two or three years. I was bullish when they signed Gil Meche, even though most people I knew hated the signing. And I think that has worked out pretty well. I thought it was a good move when they traded Ambiorix Burgos and his 100-mph fastball for Brian Bannister — another move that got mixed reviews at the time — and I think that has worked out pretty well too. I admit to being fairly happy with the Coco Crisp move, and I still think that might have been OK if he had stayed healthy … though we’re not really talking about ifs here.
I really did not like the Jose Guillen signing (I was with the majority on that one), really did not like the Mike Jacobs trade (I was with the majority on that one), and I’m definitively on record on the Yuniesky Betancourt deal (and he’s off to a roaring start: .156/.152/.219 through eight games. Look, it’s just a week, I know that, but you know it really would not have hurt Yuni to get off to a good start and show his new club some of that potential they seem to see in him. Anyway, it would not hurt for him to have a better on-base percentage than batting average).
And when Tony Pena had his one inning of relief, I immediately wrote a long post suggesting that the Royals make him into a pitcher. And now, voila, almost a year to the day later, it looks like the Royals will do just that.
I don’t make these points to pay myself on the back — I could point to a million terrible predictions and opinions I’ve made through the years* — but to make a specific point, one that does not relate exclusively to the Royals. If I knew, then lots of people knew. If I could see it, then lots of people could see it. Bill Simmons made this point a long time ago back when the Texans passed on Reggie Bush — every team really does need a Vice President of Common Sense. I called it a Common Sense Consultant, but it really is just about the same thing.
*In fact, in that very post about Tony Pena, I went into a long side-note about how Philadelphia made a horrible blunder trading for Joe Blanton … and I think now I was wrong about that. I figured Blanton would go to Philadelphia and, without the comfort of the pitcher’s park in Oakland, would flop miserable. He has not. He continues to be about a league average pitcher, which is a valuable commodity, especially for a team that scores a lot of runs. He has, in fact, been as effective or more effective than anyone else on the Phillies staff.
If I was a GM (heaven forbid) that’s what I would do. Now, I wouldn’t HIRE someone to do it. Hiring someone would make them lose their point of view. And I wouldn’t bring that person into a meeting. No, I would find someone — a friend, an outsider, someone who loves baseball (or football or basketball or any other sport), someone who is fairly plugged in but from a completely different point of view (a journalist, statistician, former player, a mentor, an intensely involved blogger) — someone who would be blunt and honest and not try to please me but at the same time could offer some sort of angle that I didn’t have covered anywhere else.
And then I would use that voice accordingly — throw it in the mix. Sometimes, I might take the person’s advice, sometimes I might not. But I would ALWAYS wants to hear it.
See, no matter what line of work or what stage of life you are in, you have almost certainly seen how it works on the inside. The loudest voices get heard. The experts give you “close-up” information. And, it seems to me, that after a long drawn-out process consensus becomes convenient — generally people think, “Let’s just get this over with.” I could come up with countless examples where I was the goat of the story, but the one that comes to mind I was actually the outsider. It happened when the Kansas City Chiefs got rid of one of their stalwart players, Dan Saleaumua, to help with Salary Cap issues. Well, editors sat in the office and tried to come up with a catchy headline — the Kansas City Star has become somewhat known for an ongoing series of clever headlines — they started playing around with Saleaumua’s name (pronounced: Sa-lee-uh-MOO-uh).
And they came up with this headline in bold letters: Salary-move-a. They were very proud of the headline — you know how people get when they come up with what they are sure is a brilliant idea. They’re high-fiving, laughing, can’t wait to see the paper hit the street. Trouble is, they didn’t hyphenate it like I did there. No, they put it all in one word: “Salarymovea.”
So when they showed it to me that night, I said: “What does salary-movie-ay mean?”
And, the editor’s face just dropped. Crestfallen.
I know that feeling — been on the other side of it a million times. But that’s my point: Maybe if you had someone who you trusted, someone who doesn’t work for you, someone who is paying attention but isn’t bogged down by the overload of information and infighting, stuff like that would happen a little less. Take the Yuniesky Betancourt deal … if Dayton Moore had called me or about a dozen other people I could mention before the trade and said, “We’re going to trade for Betancourt, what do you think?” … well, he probably would have gotten a view he had not heard. I suspect in their meetings, scouts talked a lot about how talented Betancourt is defensively and how he has a little pop in his bat, I’m sure they talked about how with a fresh start he might regain his enthusiasm and edge, talked about how much teammates like him. I’m sure they had hours and hours of talk about him, they broke him down and broke him down more. And, at the end of it all, they came away convinced — utterly convinced — that Betancourt made the team better.
But if he would have called, well, lots of people, he would have gotten this: “Uh, listen, you can take this advice or leave it, but I think that would be a horrible move. Based on what I’ve seen and calculated and based on who I’m talking with, I think Betancourt is going to keep regressing offensively and defensively. He swings at everything, and guys like that can drop into oblivion really, really fast. If you traded for him, you’d have money tied up in him, and that’s a big mistake. You would be better off putting a Triple-A shortstop out there for the rest of the season until you can regroup and figure out what you want to do with the shortstop.” Dayton would not have to LISTEN to that. But at least he’d hear the opinion from a totally different point of view.
Now, maybe teams have that already … maybe they are overloaded already with too many voices. Maybe Dayton already heard from PLENTY of people who told him not to make the Betancourt deal and he ignored their advice and went with his own instincts. But I somehow doubt it. My sense — and again, this is not just the Royals — my sense is that often when teams get ripped for a deal or a signing, they usually seem ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED and ENTIRELY BLINDSIDED by the reaction. The Royals seemed to think that most people would see the Betancourt deal as a good one, that most people would see Betancourt as a good defensive shortstop with some offensive punch. Most people did not see it that way, and this led to some defensive and unfortunate quotes from Dayton and Trey Hillman and … it just seemed pretty avoidable. Maybe they make the trade anyway, but at least they would have known exactly how people would have reacted.
As for Tony Pena … I have no idea if his conversion to pitcher will work. The odds are against it. But I would say the odds are no more against that than against him playing in the big leagues as an every day player. He has proven that he can’t hit in the big leagues. His pitching potential — in his one inning of relief, he hit the low 90s and seemed to have movement on his pitches — is yet untapped. It’s a last gasp, sure, but I’m glad the Royals and Pena seem willing to try it. Nothing to lose. Common sense and all.
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Bill Simmons has been touting a ‘VP of Common Sense’ for a couple of years.
A CSC would have been helpful for me before I acted on the thought, “How bad could a Bud Light Lime actually be?”
The Yuniesky Betancourt of beers, I believe.
Good post and I hate to be a nit picker but Bill Simmons has been writing and talking about a common sense advisor like this for quite some time. Maybe give him a hat tip or something.
Let me guess, Joe. Have you already sent your resume to the Royals?
Yeah, Simmons came up with the VPCS right after the Texans passed on Reggie Bush. Oops.
A former player as a CSC??? Have you watched ESPN lately?
Good read Joe, but yeah, here’s one example:
“I’m becoming more and more convinced that every professional sports team needs to hire a Vice President of Common Sense, someone who cracks the inner circle of the decision-making process along with the GM, assistant GM, head scout, head coach, owner and whomever else. One catch: the VP of CS doesn’t attend meetings, scout prospects, watch any film or listen to any inside information or opinions; he lives the life of a common fan. They just bring him in when they’re ready to make a big decision, lay everything out and wait for his unbiased reaction.”
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/060519
Joe, you have very nicely demonstrated one powerful method of avoiding what is called in the Psychology field “groupthink.” Groupthink is the practice of a bunch of people getting together and reaching a general consensus that everyone in the group likes, but that is horribly, inescapably wrong. It has many causes, all related to the notion that no one in an organization likes to rock the boat, contradict a peer, or, especially, contradict a superior.
One of the best ways of avoiding GroupThink is to hiring someone who is an outsider whose job is to look at a decision after it’s been made or right near the end of the decision process and independently evaluate it. If he or she can, it might not be terrible to intentionally evaluate the decision from a negative standpoint, so he or she doesn’t accidentally fall into the role of another GroupThinker.
The rest of the group then must try to rationally deal with the criticism of the outsider, rather than simply summarily rejecting it.
There are, of course, other methods, but they don’t deal head-on with the current discussion.
Anyway, here’s a link that explains the whole thing better than I am.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink
In fact, Joe, the best teams to get an outside consultant, if we really think groupthink is an issue, are those that are doing terribly.
Presumably, those groups are the ones most likely to shut out outside opinion and rely on one another. Bunkering or hunkering down, I believe, is what you’d call it.
People as a whole really dislike negativity and unpleasantness. If a team is doing poorly, the team and staff is going to receive a great deal of hostility from the outside world. Naturally, if one is feeling uncomfortable because of all of the negativity of the outside world, people inside the establishment would seek to reduce conflict by reducing the conflict among coworkers. In other words, they would want to agree more. In this way, GroupThink is a very natural, human reaction, and one that is almost certainly eating away at the Royals decision making process right now.
My favorite thing about Simmons’s VP of Common Sense meme is that the Texans were ABSOLUTELY CORRECT to pass on a league-average RB in favor of Mario Williams, thus at least denting the meme…
How abour Rany??
I will pay good money for an “I pounded Poz” t-shirt.
Joe, what your talking about is a well-known sociological phenomenon. It’s called (in some forms) an information cascade.
James Surowiecki talked about this extensively in his book “The Wisdom of Crowds” — about how small groups of people tend to get trapped into groupthink. He used the Columbia as a perfect example where everyone agreed to agree so as not to rock the boat. Talking to low-level engineers might have saved lives.
Joe-
GMs don’t need this guy. They should just pick their favorite internet message board for the team they run and skim it daily. There are lots of smart people (and lots of stupid ones) giving exactly the kinds of opinions you’re looking for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In regards to the Betancourt trade, I think about your post on your initial thoughts on Betancourt.
I imagine a bunch of people in a boardroom excited about Betancourt and the possibility of acquiring him. They are all thinking about the stuff that you mentioned (tools, defense, some pop) along with stuff that you had originally thought (ie. he was younger). Everyone is excited and then I imagine someone else in the room looking at the numbers, seeing the stuff that is obvious when looking at his baseball-reference page. Perhaps everyone was just too happy and excited, that the person who looked at the numbers was just too embarrassed to spoil the good time with some bad news.
That probably isn’t how it happened, but in my head, that’s how it played out.
The Augusta Chronicle should have had a VP of Common Sense to suggest a different title than “I Pounded Poz” so that I could have done something else over the past half-hour than try to come up with some sort of half-assed innapropriatly off-color prison rape joke at the blog’s expense…a task at which, mercifully, I have failed.
Common sense did not fail with the Betancourt trade. You wrote that the deal did not at first inspire any particular emotion in you, but then an examination of his numbers sunk your stomach. In terms of common sense, the Royals improved with the trade and received a young 27-year-old shortstop. Of course, we know that they could have grabbed many cheaper AAA shortstops that would have been bigger improvements and that 27 years is not young in baseball. To put it another way, I see common sense as equivalent to received wisdom, which is precisely what sabermetric thinking questions (whether ultimately to discard or to verify).
[...] Joe Posnanski » Blog Archive » Common Sense Consultant By Joe Posnanski Now, look, one of the points I try to make on this blog and in virtually all of my other writing is that I don't know anything about anything. I mouth off my opinions because it's fun and because people pay me to do it and because over … Joe Posnanski – http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/ [...]
According to an article in the Star, Dayton Moore told his staff that the Betancourt deal would be widely panned and would be his most unpopular move to date.
As a commenter and therefore quasi-consultant of common sense, it’s good that you posted this here before making it the subject of a newspaper column, although probably not much better if any Royals staffers read the blog.
welcome to working in an office.. it’s called groupthink and it ruins lives
For my Common Sense Consultant, I would want that person to be a Diamond Mind Baseball expert — someone who has managed hundreds of games, conducted countless transactions, understands the complicated statistics, and built great teams in their leagues.
This consultant would sit in on all meetings with me, as well as sit in the dugout next to the manager. For the latter, his primary objective would be to exclaim, “Uh, what the fuck are you doing!?” to the manager in important situations when the manager is clearly about to screw the pooch.
The only reason I’m still somewhat a Royals fan, is because Dayton Moore was smart enough to sign Greinke to a deal for the next few years (without Greinke, KC’s the AL’s Nationals). He needs to do some things to get my faith back….like, get a good OBP hitter when he says that’s the kind he thinks the team needs….or try to understand defensive stats.
Maybe you’re right… maybe the scouts are the problem in the Royals system. But, if they are… Dayton Moore should’ve noticed this before the Betancourt trade.
And yeah…the problem isn’t that he was fooled by scouts to think Betancourt would be a good trade… the problem is that he was fooled by scouts to think Betancourt would be a good trade. That isn’t the mark of a winning GM.
In the computer game business, I like to call this type of person “fresh eyes”, as in “You always need fresh eyes on a project before going to outside testing.” Why? People making a game learn all the right ways to do things (and to avoid the wrong things) until it becomes a habit. One of my biggest strengths (IMO) as a game designer is my ability to make myself stupid and to find all the nasty flaws in a game early.
In this case, I can see everybody in the front office saying, “Well, we gotta find SOME shortstop, and with baseball-reference and “Baseball America” and the internets and whatnot, we can’t afford to give up anybody who looks like a prospect unless we’re getting real quality.”
“Nobody is willing to trade us anybody decent for anybody we’ve got except for real prospects or our starting pitchers. Heck, not even anybody mediocre.”
“Hey, the Mariners will give up Betancourt for anybody just to save salary!”
“Excellent! We’ll show the fans we’re committed to a better team by picking up a guy with some major league history, we won’t give up anybody good, it’s a win win!” Everybody cheers. Everybody is so desperate to make a trade that they lose sight of the fact that it’s not a good trade.
The Royals’ problem is that they need to spend several years making really good draft picks and signing decent prospects in Latin America in order to replenish their minor league system. It takes years. Or they need to spend an extra $50M to sign a lot of free agents, especially free agent relievers. And whatever they do, they must NOT trade the bullpen for guys in the offseason. They need to wait until July, when contenders are worrying about pitching arms, and then they can offer their >150 ERA+ relievers for legitimate prospects 1-2 years away.
I mean, I like Mike Jacobs more than you do. But Jacobs is 29 years old. By the time the Royals get good, he’s probably going to be in decline phase. Without steroids, the era of players combining the experience of strike zone judgment that comes from 4,000 big league plate appearances PLUS the bat speed of a player in his 20s leading to player having their best seasons in their 30s has come to an end.
And the best time to get full value for dollar (I should write a book!) is in July by trading relievers with fresh arms (not overused) which shouldn’t be that hard with the Royals starting pitching. Trades guys who are pitching really well this season, to teams like almost everybody in the NL Central or AL East who might be one excellent 7th inning man away from making the playoffs. You think the Phillies will care about having a great middle infielder versus making the playoffs again, given Rollins and Utley? How about a first baseman behind Pujols? I’m not suggesting going after the next Pujols (you won’t get him) but you might get a solid upgrade.
There is more variance season to season in relievers (not closers) than any other position in baseball. One hot closer, to make it lights out for the win after the eighth inning, or even the seventh, can make a huge difference in the stretch run and the playoffs. And a true relief ace like Soria should be able to bring a can’t miss prospect from a team with a long term contract holding a star in town. That’s what the Royals should be doing. And in order to do that, you need to stockpile more major leaguers coming off of injuries who might come back. I mean, the Royals have one, exactly one reliever with an ERA+ above 104: Soria. They have nothing but no names out there. Compare to the Dodgers. Yeah, Vargas almost certainly costs more than the major league minimum, but ERA+ of 325 (in only 7 innings) looks like trade bait. Jeff Weaver ERA+ of 118. Eric Milton ERA+ of 110. Guillermo Mota 139. You pay a little more for guys with some experience, show they’re healthy, swap them for a AAA prospect or two with higher end potential, and suddenly you’ve built one of the best bullpens in baseball.
The new baseball economics are that it’s critical to get the All Star caliber players before they reach the majors so you control them for several cheap years and then get great draft choices if you have to let them go. To do that, you need to have trade bait to dangle in front of teams that have a shot at winning it all, and go for guys before it’s 100% that they are going to be that good. The Royals aren’t managing their money well for a rebuilding team. They should be trading Mike Jacobs types for decent relievers, and then relievers for 20 year old guys, not what they have been doing.
Joe,
Maybe you could be the common sense consultant for the headline editors on the sports page. The childish headlines are an annoyance and not nearly as clever as the editors apparently think they are.
Excellent, so we’re all in agreement that groupthink is a terrible thing.
#25 awesome.
I always wondered what would happen if you just had a person with common sense running a ballclub (heck it doesnt have to be “common” sense, it could be harvard sense for that matter). I haven’t followed Dodgers’ GM Ned Colleti’s career, but i know he started up as a journalist writing about the (philadelphia) flyers. Perhaps, it’s his writer’s common sense that makes him so good at making decisions. In another Philly example, the Sixers best years in the last years were under Pat Croce who, as president, basically served this role.
“Bill Simmons made this point a long time ago back when the Texans passed on Reggie Bush — every team really does need a Vice President of Common Sense.”
Huh? What’s the argument here?
Williams over Bush is practically Exhibit A in making the case that decision-makers should NOT listen to conventional wisdom.
There are some teams who leak information to the media about possible trades to find out what the general reaction would be. That is one reason the public hear about trades involving certain teams more than others. Those teams don’t want to be blindsided by a negative reaction, so they become an “unnamed source” for a journalist, who then reports on the possibility of the trade. If fan reaction is bad, the team won’t bother with the trade. Kind of a general public common sense consultant.
phuck Bill Simmons anyway
well simmons point was, you have one guy that wasn’t a sure thing, and another guy, Bush, who was guarenteed to at least be good(2 pro bowls or something), and would gaurentee excitement and butts in the seats. it may or may not have worked out in the end, but the logic shouldnt exactly be dismissed.
What kind of blackmail material does Tony Pena have on the Royals? Can’t we get rid of this guy? It was such an insult that he started the year on the roster.
Mikey- exactly what I was thinking. I would say the Texans have been vindicated for passing on Bush.
But if Reggie Bush’s career proves anything it’s that nobody is a sure thing (and I was one of the many who thought he’d be a superstar and that the Texans were nuts).
As far as guaranteeing excitement and butts in the seats, the Texans have sold out every game in franchise history. If there’s one thing they don’t need to worry about it’s butts in the seats.
Simmons is cool if you’re looking for 7000 words on how Jon Lester is like the Karate Kid, but his analysis of sports other than pro hoop is generally weak.
It’s time to document the pounding of America’s Best Sportswriter. Send your “I Pounded Poz” photos to poundedpoz@YOURPANTSgmail.com (drop “your pants” for the real email address” and get featured on the I Pounded Poz website! Let’s do this!
i was merely explaining simmons point. i meant butts in the seat in the sense of interest. national tv games would count as well. but the point is it really isnt about reggie bush. you either buy the premise or you dont. it’s the same premise as this article. but i agree i havent read him since the OC was cancelled
Nathan@8
You said exactly what I thought about halfway through Joe’s original post. You said it so well that I will only say this…good thinking!
I will say that I kind of like the idea of having someone whose only job is to vigorously question the management and coaches and force them to defend their positions. A Devil’s Advocate. This person could come from any field, but has to be a smart person obviously. This is completely unrealistic and I have no idea how said person could be hired and yet kept objective. Still…
I’m a Cardinals fan as my “name” indicates. I also am a frequent commenter over at VivaElBirdos, and I’ll tell you what…our franchise desperately needs someone like that to hold our wacko manager accountable for his decisions. The sportswriters in St. Louis are largely spineless, minus Miklasz who really only calls out the management when he feels it’s a safe time and rarely calls out La Russa anymore. The majority owner, Bill DeWitt, has essentially given La Russa a lifetime contract. John Mozeliak is a fine GM, but recently has made moves that appear to be nothing more than appeasement of LaRussa moves…the Holliday trade happened b/c La Russa has verbally advocated for bringing in Holliday (w/o specifically mentioning his name…) and b/c La Russa was mad Chris Duncan was dealt. La Russa has also carried a 13 man pitching staff for a large portion of the season, wasting a roster spot b/c that 13th pitcher very very rarely gets used. He’s willingly played Ankiel and Duncan while they were a two-headed monster of hitting suck, and then argued they were severely injured and as such you couldn’t expect much of them…but then he’s turned around and benched Colby Rasmus b/c suddenly you can’t play injured people (even though Rasmus is considerably better of course). For some reason, Todd Wellemeyer has been run out there to give up a run/inning and two/three bombs per appearance…yet La Russa insists that no one on the farm is better. Really? No one can do better than one of the worst starters in baseball???
And through it all the Cardinals have been in first most of the season (they’re 1/2 back right now). I can’t imagine what it must be like to watch a team like the Royals, whose play is endlessly bad and their management endlessly worse, and where there is zero accountability apparently.
Btw Joe…we’re trying to figure out a way to organize enough strength at VEB to kidnap you and bring you over to St. Louis to write about our boys. You get a largely successful team to write about and we get someone who won’t coddle the organization.
Any spouse worth their salt should be your Common Sense Consultant. I’m sure Mrs. Moore could’ve told Dayton what a lousy idea Betancourt was.
I’ve always liked this idea. In all my jobs, I’ve either benefited from the outsider’s view or regretted not listening to it.
On a side note, hiring a common sense consultant would be the first thing I would do were I to suddenly get vaulted to celebrity status. Think Plaxico Burress could have used someone saying “It’s not a good idea to shove a Glock down your sweatpants before going to the club”?
I think Simmons came up with the VP of common sense to chide Houston’s GM (it was Casserly) for taking Mario Williams rather than Reggie Bush. Casserly resigned afterwards. He was made fun of by the entire sports world. (including me)
The problem is this: Casserly was right, and we were all wrong.
VP of common sense is still a good idea though.
Omar Minaya – badly in need of a common sense consultant.
If teams get a common sense consultant the Twins will never be able to get rid of Delmon Young! Come on Joe! Be nice to us!
My favorite post is number 25. Great, great post.
As someone that often plays that role in big companies, I’d never take that job. No matter how many times I’ve been told by a VP to speak the truth, it is never a good idea to do so in a meeting. Joe’s right, it would need to be someone from the outside, that wasn’t in the meetings.
For all how much Bill Simmons likes to pretend that his ideas are always awesome and always right, and he’d be an awesome VP of Common Sense, you hardly ever see him admit it when he’s (bleeped) up tremendously.
His “Texans should have drafted Reggie Bush” idea is one, but does anyone remember him absolutely KILLING the Magic for taking Dwight Howard over Emeka Okafor?
Howard is one of the top five players in the league now, maybe even top three, and Okafor just got traded straight up for Tyson Chandler.
A VP of Common Sense would be a good position, but I wouldn’t give it to a guy who spends the whole day watching reality shows on TV.
You, Joe, would make a very good VP of Common Sense for a baseball team.
That said, I think Dayton Moore doesn’t so much need a VP of Common Sense, as a VP of “Can Actually Look Up And Comprehend Statistics.”
Because that VP could have told Dayton, in about five seconds, that in 2244 plate appearances, Betancourt has a .689 OPS, has walked 70 times, and grounded into 55 DPs.
Btw, his OPS+ is currently -11. He is currently 11% worse than Tony Pena Jr. THAT is truly spectacular. (small sample size notwithstanding.)
I wish GMs would stop listening to all this “all he needs is a change of scenery!” broohaha. Sure, it might be true. It also might not be. And there is no way to quantify or predict it, so I wouldn’t put much stock in it as an assumption.
Not sure if this would qualify as a “common sense consultant”, but did anyone else notice that Bernie Madoff has hired himself a “prison consultant”. No, I am not making that up.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009549782_apusprisonbrokers.html
@B #40 — Every single member of the Mets’ front office staff, from Jeff Wilpon on down, could use MULTIPLE common sense consultants.
You wanna fight about it?!
for the record, simmons has admitted he was wrong about his bush/williams argument
It’s funny that Reggie Bush, who has never rushed for 600 yards in a season launched the idea.
Richard Aronson wrote: “I mean, I like Mike Jacobs more than you do. But Jacobs is 29 years old. By the time the Royals get good, he’s probably going to be in decline phase.”
Uh, what phase would he be in right now?
So, you’re the VP of Common Sense for an NFL team. And your team would be improved by having a backup QB with speed and agility. And your starting QB isn’t all that good anyway. Do you tell your owner and GM that signing Michael Vick is stupid?
“If you’re watching this game, there’s an ABC Seamless Siding near you.”
Here’s some common sense – the Mariners have basically swapped Betancourt for Jack Wilson.
As someone else said, the “common sense” guy is a hard role to play. To some extent, I play this role in my current job. I’m a numbers guy, and it’s often my job to explain why a particular problem is not amenable to a simple solution . . . that the problem has multiple sources . . . that addressing any one source of the problem would cause other problems . . . that even if we succeeded in addressing one source, the effect would be at the margin. And so on.
Decision makers, especially ‘executives,’ develop a belief in a few simple truths–that decisive action can ‘turn the tide,’ that they can cut to the chase, get to the bottom line, with a few questions, that someone in their position MUST know something about [whatever]. Their self-confidence can be really amazing.
The same folks for whom you write talking points come to hold those talking points as self-evident truths. But if they knew more, would they need the talking points to be written down?
I guess my takeaway is that the common sense VP would not be very successful for the very reason s/he is needed in the first place.