What quitting means
Posted: August 10th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball, Other Sports | 60 Comments »
Reporter: “Well, at least you have to be proud that your team didn’t quit.”
Kansas State coach Bill Snyder: “They don’t let you quit.”
I’ve long wondered what it really means for a team to “quit.” You hear people say it all the time. This team quit. That coach needs to go because his team quit. The other team lost but they never quit. And all that. The problem is the word, “quit.” It connotes a certain unfathomable image … of Roberto Duran turning his back and walking away during the Sugar Ray Leonard fight, of a tennis player tanking points when the set looks lost, of a golfer picking up his ball and disqualifying himself.
Well, Bill Snyder is right. They don’t let you quit a team game, not like that. And because they don’t let you quit, we probably should try to understand the word. Seems to me that teams don’t quit. They fade. Teams don’t give up. They give in. Teams don’t stop trying. They stop trying hard. These are tougher things to pinpoint.
Yes, we have to use the Kansas City Royals as our example … but only because the Royals for the last three months have been (by far) the worst team in baseball. The Royals are 25-57 since May 8. Only once in team history have the Royals been worse over 82 games … and that was in 2005 and included a 19-game losing streak. There have not been too many teams in baseball history that have been worse than 25-57 over 82 games.
Or to put it another way:
Since May 8
Royals 25 57 –
Nats* 31 54 4.5
Pirates 33 50 7.5
Padres 34 50 8
Reds 33 49 8
Orioles 34 48 9
Mets 38 46 12
Oakland 39 46 12.5
The Royals are 4 1/2 games WORSE than the Nationals the last three-plus months. Bryce Harper is in their sights.
*This is totally unrelated, but have you noticed how the National Geographic Channel now refers to itself as “NatGeo.” Maybe this is something that has been going on for a while but … really? National Geographic is going hip hop now? NatGeo? I am NOT calling it NatGeo. I’m just not.
Now, of course, May 8 is not just an arbitrary date. On that day, the Royals were 18-11 and it looked like they might contend in the wide open American League Central. It obviously did not work that way and the reasons are multiple. But let’s not go down that road again. No, we’re left to ask the original question: Have the Royals quit? And, beyond the terrible results, how can you even tell?
Well, first thing, I don’t believe the Royals quit in the way most people mean it. I don’t think they have ever stopped trying. For me, that’s just the wrong use of the word “quit.” Professional baseball players don’t stop trying. There’s no point in it. Hitters go up to the plate and they TRY to get hits. Fielders have balls hit their way and they TRY to catch them. Pitchers step on the rubber, and they TRY to get batters out. These things don’t change no matter how badly a team does. There’s professional pride involved. There are future paychecks involved. There is ambition — all these guys have worked all their lives to play in the big leagues. And there is team success involved too … and I will never believe that athletes do not care about their own team’s success. They all want to win. Who doesn’t want to win?
No. Quitting in sports isn’t about QUITTING. No, I think it’s about something else. While I don’t think that players ever stop TRYING to do well, I do think that in a bad environment players will stop believing that any of it matters very much. And I think that comes closest to what we’re talking about here. This might not be the best comparison — and you might not even relate to this — but for me there was always a very different feeling when we played baseball games around the neighborhood than we we played official Little League games. Sure, we TRIED in the neighborhood games. I would suggest we tried just as hard as we ever did in the real games. But we weren’t wearing uniforms, and we didn’t have coaches, and we we didn’t have dirt infields, and there were no repercussions for messing up other than your friends busting your chops. There was this sense that the Little League games MATTERED in a way that the neighborhood games did not. You played with a certain attention and inspiration that was missing in the neighborhood games.
And I think that’s what can happen to a lousy team. In baseball, I’m thinking, there are really two levels of belief. There’s the belief the player has in himself. And there’s the belief a baseball player has in his team. And those two beliefs intertwine and intersect. A player’s self confidence can be withered by a bad team, and it can be boosted by the success of a winning team, and it can be affected in odd and unexpected ways too. And a players confidence in his team can be affected by how he’s playing too. You always hear guys on great teams say something like, “It’s hard to explain but we just knew, night in and night out, that we were going to win.” And you always hear guys on lousy teams say, “We are just not executing.” Sure, it comes down to talent. But it also comes down to the confidence that infuses people who are good at whatever they do.
So, back to the Royals. Have they lost belief? Are they playing these games without the heightened sense of emotion and energy that good teams have? Hard to argue. You just look at the dreadful record and deduce that teams don’t play THAT bad unless, in some way, they have checked out (mentally or emotionally or physically).
But I think you can go even deeper than that.
Look: The Royals don’t walk. At all. In those 82 games, they have walked 193 times (struck out 548) and that’s just sickening. True, the Royals don’t have anyone on the team who is particularly proficient at working a count, but that is 2.35 walks per game — no team has walked that little over an entire season since the 2002 Detroit Tigers. The Royals on-base percentage over those 80 games is .302 … which is beyond dreadful.
Now what does that tell you? That the Royals have terrible offensive players? Yes. Sure. But think about walking for a minute. To walk, you have to be confident enough to hit with two strikes. You have to be intense enough to grind it out through long at-bats. You have to be assured that if you work hard to get on base (without even helping your batting average) that your teammates will work just as hard to drive you in. The Royals are not built to walk, no, but they walk even less than that. It’s like there’s no fight left in ‘em.
Look: The Royals are a dreadful base running team. If you measure the Royals on the base running basics — going first to third, second to home, first to home on a double, sac flies — they are by far the worst team in baseball. The Bill James ranking has them minus-74 bases at the moment.
Now what does that tell you? That the Royals have built a slow team? Yes. Sure. But to be good on the bases, you also have to be aggressive, you have to be assertive, and you also have to be disciplined enough not to just go in some sort of desperate effort to “make something happen.” The Royals may be slow, but their base-running follies goes beyond speed. It’s like there’s no fight left in ‘em.
Look: The Royals are a terrible fielding team. You can see this by any number of measurements. They have allowed 56 unearned runs — most in the American League. They are minus-52 runs according to John Dewan’s system, worst in baseball* and the infield is minus-42, which is unimaginably godawful.
*Nobody is even close … except (believe it or not) the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox, you might recall, have been seen as a very good defensive team — last year they were plus-20 on the Dewan. They are minus-50 this year, largely because the the left side of the infield is a staggeringly bad minus-30 and because their pitchers apparently are brutal defensively (minus-12).
Now what does that tell you? That the Royals have built a team without good defensive players? Yes. Sure. Going into the season, everyone expected the Royals defense — and especially the infield — to struggle defensively. The hope was that Alberto Callaspo might fight second base to a draw. The hope was that Alex Gordon might take a step up defensively. The hope was that Mike Aviles might solidify the shortstop position. These were extreme hopes even at the time, but now they seem plain silly. The Royals are a defensive wreck. Mental mistakes. Dropped pop-ups. Ridiculous decisions. Missed cutoff men.
The other day, with a man on second, a single was hit up the middle. What followed was an Abbott and Costello routine. The centerfielder threw home. The runner was not going. The catcher threw to second too late and the batter was safe. The shortstop threw to the plate too late, and the runner was safe. The catcher threw to to the third baseman too late, and the batter was safe again. Triple play.
It’s like there’s no fight left in ‘em.
Again, I don’t believe the Kansas City Royals have stopped trying. They’re trying. They’re working out after games, they’re taking batting practice and infield practice, they’re “working hard.” Of this I have no doubt. And they care. I almost never buy into the easy notion that players or managers or owners don’t care. This is their livelihood, and they care.
But I just don’t think that’s what quit means … I think what quit means in team sports is that it just stops mattering. The players stop diving for balls or stop stretching singles into doubles or foul off pitches when they need to hit the ball to the right side because … well, seriously, what’s the difference? Then, a burst of aggression, maybe they will dive for a ball they have no chance of catching or try to score from third on a play and get thrown out by 20 feet because — well, you have to try and get something going and really what’s the difference.
I think quit means playing numb baseball with the knowledge that the season is lost, and the victories won’t change anything, and there’s plenty of blame for everyone. It’s rotten to watch a team play in this mode … but it happens every year. It’s a manager’s job to keep his team from quitting. It can be a hard job.
Loading ...
Wow, I keep trying not to qiut rooting for them
I was going to try to be the first person to post, but decided to quit instead. … That is, quit in the truest sense of the word.
Maybe if there was some expectation of accountability from the front office, if they were afraid for their jobs if they consistently miss popups or get doubled up on a fly ball, they would work a little harder in practice and concentrate more during the game. It just seems that every time there are mistakes made; and not just once in a while but sometimes twice or three times a game; that player will be right back in there the next game. Maybe a few benchings might have some effect.
KC got some quittin’ company in the central… ‘Sota has seemed lost since the debacle in Oakland a month or so ago.
Inciteful posting today, Joe. The pains and pleasures of a 162 game schedule leap out from between the lines.
Being a Royals fan has become an exercise of resilience. Every single season of this remarkable 20 year run of frustrating seasons has, in reflection, moments of unbridled hilarity mixed into the discussions of relativity …….of comparative degrees of “awfulness”…….of which of the long, long list ……is the absolute worst of all Royals teams
Certainly, this team is one of three finalists for the worst of the worst……
“NatGeo” > “SyFy”
I think.
Sure, teams quit. The thing is, it happens so infrequently that when it does happen, you know it.
Case in point: 1985 World Series, game 7, bottom of the fifth inning.
With the Nationals having won 8 straight, they stand a decent chance of having an 18-11 stretch of their own this season – they just have to play 500 ball for the next three weeks. And I watched the Cubs sweep the Nationals in person in DC last month, and other than Nyjer Morgan (who has a chance to be this generation’s Omar Moreno) and Adam Dunn, that team is pathetic.
@Mean Dean – that SyFy thing sickens me. The only reason they changed it from SciFi is that they couldn’t copyright “SciFi” as it used far too much elsewhere.
WTF is SyFy? Ugh.
Nick- I’m glad to hear that you enjoy Nyjer Morgan. I am okay with many of the Pittsburgh trades over the past 13 months but trading Morgan was a huge mistake IMO. At least in DC he gets to play CF everyday and improve his game. He would be jockeying for gametimein LF/RF in Pitt amongst others not as good as he but with more of that damn “potential upside” malarkey.
Go Nyjer! He definitely does not know about quitting!
Wow, Joe. You can’t tackle the easy ones, you try to address the hard questions. I’m not sure what quitting is. I ‘know it when I see it’, I think.
This is an interesting topic. You really don’t think there are times when teams/players aren’t trying their hardest? hmmmm. You are closer to locker rooms and games than I’ll ever be, but it sure looks like there are times they aren’t trying their hardest.
btw, to number 4, I think this is different than the implosion happening in MN. I think that is lack of ability to handle adversity, not quitting – two totally different actions/traits.
Joe, maybe you could tackle, “why do we care about sports at all” next? I mean, there is no logical reason for me to care if the Twins win or not, yet I do.
SciFi is also an English language thing. It means nothing in other countries. And, SyFy is going more international. Why should they use an abbreviation that is based on one language?
[...] * Sometimes I feel like I’m the unpaid publicity agent for Poz, but he has a really, really good post about “quitting.” [...]
This may be old news to those of you who pay attention to such things re marketing…So, Radio shack is going to become “The Shack” and Pizza Hut will become know as “The Hut”.
Next generation someone will probably have a company/retail store called “The” or if they aren’t too proud of their wares it will just be “the” I suppose…Sad. We are such busy folks that we can’t wait to drop another syllable.
Word…
Joe, I think you’ve done a (typically) excellent job isolating those areas where variations in the amount of effort put forth by a team can really make a difference: fielding and baserunning. I’m still not convinced that batting (including plate discipline and walking) is susceptible to “effort” — either you’re good at pitch recognition and self-discipline or you’re not, though those skills can develop with experience. But just as we teach Little Leaguers, much of fielding is mental alertness: staying aware of the situation, of the runners, of the position of the other fielders, etc. A team that’s mentally beaten (i.e., one that’s dropped 57 of the last 82 games and is mired deep, deep in the cellar) is going to find it very difficult to maintain the sense of urgency and alertness necessary to make smart, timely plays in the field — especially in August, and especially after you take away their “greenies.” Baserunning is much the same: it requires close attention to the fielders, to the situation, to the hit ball, etc.
Can any manager maintain that sort of discipline and alertness when the team has taken a season-long beating? I don’t know.
Nick: Don’t forget the Nats have Ryan Zimmerman who I think might be the best 3rd baseman in the NL.
I think Trey has quit. Either that, or he is horrible. Either of which is a good reason to try “someone else” next season.
Moe the bartender: we are gonna need somebody else.
Homer Simpson: Hey, I’m somebody else.
Lenny or Carl: He’s right; he is somebody else.
Great post Joe. I don’t think the Royals have quit either… even though I’ve been keeping track of how the Royals have been worst team in baseball ‘93-now… worse than Pittsburgh who hasn’t even had a winning season during this time. The season might end this way…but it’s close & the Pirates are falling lately in a slump to make it more even.
(i update that list every couple days)
It’s just a talent issue…which points to the GM. Even the Nationals have an 8 game winning streak right now. Yeah.
The 2003 Tigers didn’t even quit! They had a pretty good September.
Why do those hopes for defense seem plain silly?
If Aviles and Gordon had not missed most of the season to injuries, is it crazy to think they could have been major league average at those positions?
And if they had not been injured, Teahen’s greater athleticism at second base might have led to a C+ infield defense , which is a far cry from where we are now.
I think that the talent difference between professional athletes is so small, that just a hair’s breath difference in focus can lead to dramatic differences in results on the field or on the court.
It’s a no win situation in KC for now. Obviously, the big name teams are full of highly paid players who aren’t ashamed of doing roids even if they get caught. How could the Royals POSSIBLY compete with cheaters like A-Fraud, Manny, Ortiz, Pujols, and countless others?
Sure, you might think it’s easy to have a team full of roid players but in a central place like KC it’s probably the hardest place of them all. Thus, the continual losing…
Yeah, the SyFy thing sickens me as well. First of all, because when you see channels rebrand from something very distinctive, it usually signals a shift in direction. I would imagine that eventually SyFy becomes SF, or they just rebrand entirely and change the format.
Also, I read SyFy as “siffy” so now they make me think of syphilis. So that’s a win.
Here’s the answer to “numb baseball:” Promotion and Relegation.
Can you imagine if the Reds could knock the Pirates down to AAA? That would make games in September insanely exciting. Could you imagine the being on the brink of demotion? Small market teams struggling at the bottom would be less willing to sell their players because doing so would seal their demise. Then they’d lose all sorts of sponsorship and media money.
Could you imagine if Louisville would win AAA and make it to the bigs? Pick up a few victories over huge clubs? See the Yankees come to town.
Imagine newly-promoted kids playing games in huge parks.
Finally, how about an open cup, in which all of the nations teams enter a single-elimination tournament?
Baseball could become magical. Attendance would skyrocket at all levels. And this system might help people forget about the steroids era.
Fuck it; it will never happen – we’re so entrenched in marketing deals and farm systems, and all that, though the open cup thing could).
Are you on board with this idea? If so, let’s start a movement.
Nani
I think, under your new definition of “quit” (read: “quit believing that trying hard will allow you to compete”) that the Indians front office has quit as well.
did you just call Pujols a cheater?
In Cincinnati, our “we’re just not executing” is “things just aren’t going our way”. Must’ve heard it a dozen times this year from good ol Dusty.
[...] do a little more reading. So I’ll send you over to Posnanski, where he’ll talk in his typically longwinded and brilliant style about what it means to “quit,” especially when you’re talking about a team sport. You know how people always say stuff like [...]
Joe, as your post itself points out: the Royals have built a team that’s horrible at getting on base, horrible at baserunning (in those rare situations when they get on base), and horrible in the field.
Do you really need to dig any deeper as to why their record is so bad? Maybe it’s not so much “losing belief” as it is “facing the facts.”
I think the important distinction is whether or not you have a goal you’re playing for. Devon @ 17 mentioned how the 2003 Tigers had a great September. I think the main difference is that the Tigers had a goal: to stay less than 120 losses. When you’re sitting at 38-118 with one week left to play and everybody making comparisons between your team and one of the worst teams in the Modern Era, there is a tangible and quantitative goal to shoot for, and that’ what the Tigers did.
With the Royals, it seems like they have nothing to play for. They’re too far away from competing, and not quite bad enough to have a sense of urgency like the Tigers. I mean, even if they fall behind the Nationals, they still have the #1 draft pick next year (where they can draft and try to sign Strasburg again XD). People talk about playing for pride, but that’s such an ephemeral concept that it’s not enough to jump-start a team. I feel like the Royals are in that purgatory state.
I would be interested to hear from the players of programs like the Bengals, Lions, or Clippers. I honestly don’t understand how an attitude of defeat pervades a team. I understand how a team could have a down season or an unexpected injury; but to be defeated before the season even starts? To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, we’re really just cheering for laundry here. I mean the Celtics were awful for a couple years there, then all the sudden they get Garnett and Allen and all of a sudden Doc Rivers is a genius again, and Celtic Pride is back? If the Clippers and Lakers switched uniforms, would they switch places in the standings?
I am in whole-hearted agreement with #21 Nani.
Everybody makes a big deal about contraction, but if an owner and a market cannot put a competitive team on the field, how does that help MLB (or any sport) sell it’s product? The game should be about competition, not equality.
The winners of each AAA league should be granted promotion to the bigs, and the three doormats should have to win their way back in. This model isn’t much different to what MLB already employs, just with a comprehensive collective bargaining agreement, and it works fine for European soccer. Teams who go out and invest in top talent are rewarded with a superior product on the field. The only difference is that clubs would no longer be encouraged to field mediocre teams to cash in on revenue sharing and high draft picks. Surprisingly communist.
Sure, the occasional Derby County may happen, and the ‘62 Mets may be threatened, but then major league baseball spawns a new market. And for those who think it would be impossible to build a contender from a minor league club, check out the ascent of 1899 Hoffenheim.
Funny… in a recession, the MLS keeps adding teams, yet basketball, hockey, and baseball look broadsided and belly-up.
Sorry… rant over. Back to regular programming.
Others have mentioned this here, but a funny blog post (well, funny if YOU wrote it, not me) would be on all the name changes in channels. SyFy is the best example of this. It seems to me that they (it?) are trying a bit too hard to be hip, sort of like the guy who wore parachute pants after Dillard’s starting carrying them.
“See, we’re not geeks anymore! We’re SYFY, not SciFi! We’re cool now. Honest!”
Re: #21 and #29
This really wouldn’t work at all in baseball, just because the farm system is an integral part of the whole thing. The nature of the sport is such that young talent needs to be developed in the minors, and if teams didn’t have minor league teams they could draw from, they wouldn’t be able to perform effectively.
@ pokerpeaker – I’m thinking Outdoor Life Network’s change to Versus.com would be a strong contender as well.
@ E3H (#19) – Pujols is a cheater? Care to expand on that one?
Ajn @ 27… nice point. A team without a goal, feels a bit broken or lost… but if they feel they have something to play for… a reasonable goal they believe they could reach, well… the team will play better. So maybe someone should tell the Royals they need to play a little better so they aren’t known as worse than Pittsburgh when Pittsburgh couldn’t win LOL
I got home just in time for the Yankees 8th inning last night. Damon homers to tie it. Then Tex hits one to take the lead.
Look, I know all the sabermetrics of the Yankees line-up and I understand all of that. They are built to win.
But Nick Swisher and Cabrera (I think) did this little dance in the dugout after the second homerun and freaking Tony Pena Sr. has a handshake for everyone and I looked at my sig other and said, “Well, now we have a problem.”
The Yankees currently have the “anti-quit,” an embracing of the nihilistic “none of this means anything” with the idea that complete acceptance of that idea makes things more fun. So why not dance a little?
@Devon Young; you would think karma would be at work here. As in, Pittsburgh has the Steelers and Penguins, therefore they deserve the wretchedness that is the Pirates.
But that theory doesn’t account for KC having the Royals AND the Chiefs…or Seattle(all of Seattle) last year.
I was wondering about “NatGeo” just the other day. I’d never heard it before either. I remember thinking it was kind of silly.
As far as quiting goes (not exactly the same but along those lines), I’ve often wondered whether there has ever been a player or a team that “wanted it more” lose anyway. You know, in the history of organized sport. Has there ever been a time when the team that “wants it less” came out on top anyway?
Mark W @ 14 : I think Radio Shack changed its name because “Radio” is considered old fashioned. And since Pizza Hut now serves pasta, I suppose it wanted to get “pizza” out of its name.
Seems pretty silly to me, although I don’t doubt that it has an impact. A consumer doesn’t think PIZZA Hut serves pasta, but is well aware that THE Hut serves pasta?? Kinda like Kentucky Fried Chicken changing its name to KFC. I suppose a consumer wouldn’t want to go to Kentucky FRIED Chicken to eat because it sounds unhealthy, but is perfectly content to go to KFC and eat fried chicken?
There are some fascinating books out there on these sorts of subjects.
Sports have cut off syllables as much as anyone – Niners, Sixers, A’s, Canes, ‘Cuse. I blame Brent Musberger.
Red: The “impact” that I presume that these changes create are new signage, letterhead, menus, etc. More cost for the franchisee to pass on to the consumer…
@ Mark W. (#14): Watch this (you don’t have to listen to the music). The opening has an agent for Sum 41 telling the band that “number” bands are out and “The” bands are in, so he suggests that the band changes their name to “The Sums.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7W3Ahx05vg
@ Nani (#21): Let’s say the Royals get demoted, and the Twins Triple-A team, Rochester, wins the championship and gets to join the AL Central. Now you have the actual Twins and the Rochester Red Wings, of which Red Wings players could still be “called up” to the Twins. It’s an interesting thought, but not very practical, especially when many Triple-A players are considered to not even be ready for the majors. (In other words, agreement with Alex, #31)
Sorry, if you want to avoid hearing heavier music than what you’re used to, stop the video around 1:02.
It amazes me that you people think the best AAA teams should be promoted to the big leagues you must not be true fans of the sport of baseball and it’s beauty. Even the the royals right now are the worst team in baseball they would beat any AAA team 9 out of 10 days,come on people stop being such fair weathered fans either like the royals or not it’s as simple as that.
With respect to “the Hut”, “the Shack”, etc., see the tale told by Ben Franklin to Thomas Jefferson when he complained that a committee was messing up his inspired language for the Declaration of Independence:”I have made a rule, whenever in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words, ‘John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,’ with a figure of a hat subjoined. But thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to thought the word ‘Hatter’ tautologous, because followed by the words ‘makes hats,’ which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed that the word ‘makes’ might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats. If good and to their mind, they would buy them, by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words ‘for ready money’ were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit. Every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, ‘John Thompson sells hats.’ ‘Sells hats!’ says the next friend. ‘Why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What then is the use of that word?’ It was stricken out, and ‘hats’ followed it, the rather as there was one painted on the board. So the inscription was reduced ultimately to ‘John Thompson,’ with the figure of a hat subjoined.”
Ted – Good one…Joe had a great piece on editing and editors a few months back…Joe’s words were great and then some of the comments were also high level enjoyment!
If one was ever to open a retail store maybe it would create some curiosity by calling it “The a, an or the Store” or better maybe just “a, an or the”
Yeah, probably not…
Offensively I think a lot of it comes down to faith in your team-mates. A hitter will swing for the fences rather than trying to get a walk because he doesn’t think the next batter will be able to drive him in.
It’s similar to a basketball team where one player will try to go past 3 defenders because he doesn’t think anyone else can score.
When the belief in each other is gone the rest goes downhill quickly.
my quitting take on the royals. i was recently in seattle as they played kansas city. i sat at some random bar (13 Coins, nice) in seattle and watched the highlights of the game. the highlights: they showed a cat running around the field from guards unedited for about a minute and a half.
What you’re describing is “learned helplessness.” You’re saying, in effect, that the Royals are depressed. Or at least dysthymic. And, in that environment–not necessarily when they go home, not when they drive go karts or play poker–they probably are just that.
The Royals need to invest in a real quality hitter.
A la Manny Ramirez would’ve gone miles to help this team contend this year. Like he did for a mediocre Dodgers offense last year. And you could’ve DH’d him. Not make a deal for Mike “whiff” Jacobs and not mess with Teahan.
If you’re promoting from AAA then relegation/promotion system won’t work unless all the teams are independant; i.e no farm systems. Bill James wrote about this in one of the mid-1980’s Abstracts (and explained it much better) – it’s not fair to local fans of AAA teams when the big club calls up stars. The theory is that a AAA team could then decide what they want to excel at; one owner could pay big money to established free agents in an effort to get promoted but another could sign college players and once they showed promise sell their contracts to major league clubs.
That said I can’t really see how the promotion/relegation system would work between MLB and AAA. There used to be a AAA team here in Ottawa and they even won the IL championship one year. It’s a fine AAA stadium but it’s not really suitable for a season of visits from major league teams.
When you don’t play ‘all out’ then you’ve, in essense, quit. There is NO middle ground. These guys are professionals and they get PAID to play each game to the best of their abilities. Now I know that we all have moments where we at our jobs fail to go the extra mile. I accept this as part of human nature. But these so-called ‘players’ are supposed to be the most competitive people in the world. Part of creating a winning environment is minimizing the human tendancy to take plays off, especially when things seem insurmountable. There are numerous examples every year (A’s vs Twins last week coming from 14 back in lost season – like the Royals) of teams finding ‘it’ within themselves to ‘improvise, adapt, overcome’ to rob from “Heartbreak Ridge.”
Just watch David DeJesus and you’ll see in microcosm what the Royals are all about over the last 8-9 years. He goes up to the plate, grounds out, many times with runners on when he should be the most intense, and then shrugs his shoulders, blows his bubble gum, smiles and skips back to the duggout. Now I’m exaggerating on the ’skipping’ part but watch him. He clearly doesn’t REALLY care whether he succeeds or fails. Because he knows 2 things. 1). No matter what, it doesn’t matter as this team never has/never will go anywhere. 2). And no one is going to hold him accountable for his failure. DeJesus has been ‘institutionalized,’ to grab a quote from “The Shawshank Redemption.” He’s been groomed to play in the majors by an organization that does not know how to win. An organization that hires coaches and managers that don’t know how to hold players accountable and inspire players to perform at or beyond their capabilities. He was handed a position without ever really earning it because Glass made Allard sell Beltran off for a box of baseballs. Same is true of Gordon. These players have never had to really earn their way onto a real major league team. This kind of entitlement has, in part, created many of the problems this organization has experienced over the years. So, sub-par performance has been accepted by the organization as ‘part of the process.’ No accountability.
Hillman is the wrong kind of manager for a young team. I don’t think he relates well to this generation of American ballplayers. He’s too mild mannered to elicit intensity from the younger players and has no major league experience to confront the vets. Another bargain basement decision by upper management instead of finding and paying for the right kind of manager.
It all boils downs to the ‘bottom line’ like everything related to David Glass. Performance & execution are ALWAYS (pun intended) weighed against cost. Winning costs what it costs. The Royals, under David Glass, have NEVER been willing to put WINNING FIRST.
“cheaters like A-Fraud, Manny, Ortiz, Pujols” — One of these things is not like the other….
I think what you’ve hit on here is why the pitching has gone south. If no matter what you do out there on the hill isn’t going to matter because of your hitters, your team’s fielding, or, its base running, and you give up three runs, what’s the point? You know you are on a team that only scores 3 1/2 runs per game and you are as good as toast. Plus, even on the off-occasion that your team actually gets you some runs, your bullpen is so appallingly bad that it still won’t/doesn’t matter. I’d go out there with a hang dog, self defeatist attitude, too. Our starting pitchers have been, in effect, tortured into submission by the rest of the team, and, it shows. The degradation of the pitching has been like the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill and just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The only way the Royals stop this is by clearing the decks to the degree that it is possible with personnel immediately available, mostly from the minor leagues. That’s the only way you change this mindset, by infusing hope and/or fresh enthusiasm. Either that, or, by hiring a manager that is actually a leader of men.
Did the Jays quit when they let Rios go?
Did the Pirates quit with their sale of players?
Is it possible for an organization to quit, even if their players haven’t?
Looks like the unstoppable apathy met the immovable ennui tonight, and as a result the Royals are murdering the Twins by a dozen runs. So I guess if you want some additional context for what it means to quit, there’s that.
(I was going to cop to my error — it was only a ten run lead when I posted that — but I just had to wait a few minutes for that mistake to magically correct itself into fact.)
Sorry, I don’t recall the exact wording by Belushi in Animal House…
‘Did we give up (quit) when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”
Here’s a way regulation would work:
Make MLB a 24 team league
Create a 10 team AAAA league with 6 dropped and 4 expansion clubs
Each MLB team plays 162 games:
-AAAA teams twice (20 games) rotating home field every other year
-Interleague teams twice (24 games) rotating home field every other year
-Eight same league teams 11 times (88 games)
-Three same league teams 10 times (30 games)
Each AAAA team plays 156 games:
-Every ML team (48 games)
-Every AAAA 12 times (108 games)
Regulation:
-Bottom team from AL and NL drop to AAAA each year
-Top record from AAAA advances
-Top four AAAA have a playoff, winner advances (if same as best record, runner-up advances)
-Regulated or advancing teams use the team they replaced’s home field scheduling for interleague/AAAA games
You would also probably need to drop the DH or make the NL switch to the DH.
jonas: Well, you certainly have given this some thought, I’ll give you that. However, unless the entire MLB/minor leagues system is completely overhauled, you have entered the world of “Mental Masturbation” as one of my favorite profs liked to call it…
wrt Mike @42: It takes more than one quality hitter to lead the way. The Dodgers are being managed by Joe Torre. It’s very hard for even the callow youths on the Dodgers not to respect Torre’s World Series rings and batting title. Torre preaches a strategic offensive game. Batters are asked to take lots of pitches. Deep counts early in the game gets starting pitchers tired (and more hittable) or relieved (and most middle relievers are more hittable. Getting Manny Ramirez, who is very good at Torre’s strategic approach, gave them a leader by example. Casey Blake bought in immediately, because he wants to win. Martin also bought in immediately, since even though they call them the tools of ignorance, catchers require more intelligence than any other position. Ethier (college graduate) followed, and this season Loney and Kemp are doing more of it. And the Dodgers have the best record in the NL.
The point is, you could put Pujols on the Royals and he would lead by example, but without reinforcement by the manager and buy in by the players, it won’t help. It’s really easy for (say) Tommy Lasorda or Tony LaRussa to inspire young players, because they’ve won it all. Hillman needs to be that much more inspiring because he lacks the resume. And from what I’ve seen, Hillman is anti-inspiring.
Anti-inspiring? Well, from what I’ve read, Hillman lied to his team. Early this season, after another blown save before Soria got into the game, Hillman said that he’d start bringing Soria into the game earlier to clinch victories. But he didn’t do it. So the team learned that he’ll say one thing and do another. He’ll lie to them. It makes leading that much harder.
Same with the Royals front office. They swore they needed better OBP guys, and every trade they made since that statement was for a lousy OBP guy. Okay, Coco Crisp is merely mediocre, but given his lack of power, he *needs* better than mediocre OBP to be useful. So how do the players know what kinds of on field behavior will be rewarded? Only the obvious ones: BA means more than OBP, don’t get thrown out, don’t hurt yourself diving, and in a few years you’ll go free agent and maybe latch on with a winner.
The Royals needs a complete change, both on the field and off, with the possible exception of their pitching coach. They are the Detroit Lions of baseball. And I don’t think the individual players have quit so much as they’ve stopped doing the things that risk injury to focus on the few things they know bring rewards. It’s like a prison team there. They need that call from the governor.