A few writing instructions implore that the best novels have their endings written first. In that manner, the author knows where he or she is clearly heading.
There is a growing philosophy in baseball that games are decided at the end, so management must concentrate on the bullpen in order to win. The development of a pitching "staff" is still relatively new to baseball. In the early days, each team had three starters and a mop up reliever. That was it. Pitchers were expected to throw 9, 10, 11, 14 innings a game, whatever it took. Yes, considering it was a dead ball era and scoring was light by today's standards, the pitchers were still throwing complete games as common place. There was no concept of a specialist in the pen to bail out a starter.
The modernization of pitching structure began when starting pitchers started to make more money than their position player counterparts. When a team invests so much money on an injury waiting to happen, owners hedge their bets. As a result, teams started to baby their starters. No more expectations for complete games. Since starters were not going to go the distance, teams had to retain more pitchers on the roster to close out games.
Those "closers" were in fact failed starters or end-of-career veterans who were paid little. The advent of a bullpen cut back on more expensive position players. But it also hindered a manager's ability to double switch, pinch hit or add defensive replacements at the end of games.
The modern bullpen came into being when pitchers were no longer expected to throw 7 or 8 innings per start. This led to a standardized routine of having a middle reliever, a set up man, and a 9th inning closer. Since a starting staff has five pitchers, a team would need six relievers in order to cover for them. Today, the norm is actually a 12 man pitching staff, with the added emphasis on pure specialists, like the lefty that can get out left handed hitters.
Dan Duquette, the Orioles GM (and whom the Blue Jays tried to acquire this winter) has built many franchises into contenders. He has adopted the bullpen strength philosophy the past few years in Baltimore. The O's have been quite successful with a strong bullpen. Britton (Closer), O'Day, Hunter, Matusz, and Webb combined for a staff WAR of 6.0. Reports from Baltimore state that the O's pen will be even better this season.
There is some logic in the concept of making a bullpen a priority than the roster development bastard child. But one of the things one must do is fully commit to the quality of the pen and not treat it as an after thought. But many teams would rather focus the resources on front line pitchers (those are the ones fans like to see).
Showing posts with label Duquette. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Duquette. Show all posts
February 3, 2015
January 19, 2015
THE OTHER OFF-SEASON
The Toronto Blue Jays have been an aggressive front office for some time. But it seems the high powered owner, Rogers Communications, wants to add some real quality bench support to the management ranks.
Numerous reports indicate that the Jays are trying to hire Dan Duquette from the Orioles. The team wants Duquette to become the new President of the club. However, Duquette is under contract with the Orioles thorough 2018. In order to get Duquette, Toronto would have to "trade" for him.
Orioles owner Peter Angelos adamantly denied that the Orioles are in negotiations with the Blue Jays regarding Duquette. Angelos told the Baltimore Sun:
Current president Paul Beeston is still set to represent the Jays at the upcoming owner’s meetings, Morosi adds. Of course, it would be a stretch to expect Duquette to be up and running in such short order, and a transition period will obviously be necessary regardless of when (and with whom) a contract is signed.
Duquette is the unsung hero in the Boston Red Sox championship seasons, He was ousted prior to the first championship season due to conflicts with Red Sox executives. He has been credited with the fine turnaround with the Orioles franchise in recent years. He has a good resume of rebuilding clubs, so it makes sense for the Blue Jays to be interested in his services.
Numerous reports indicate that the Jays are trying to hire Dan Duquette from the Orioles. The team wants Duquette to become the new President of the club. However, Duquette is under contract with the Orioles thorough 2018. In order to get Duquette, Toronto would have to "trade" for him.
Orioles owner Peter Angelos adamantly denied that the Orioles are in negotiations with the Blue Jays regarding Duquette. Angelos told the Baltimore Sun:
“We are not negotiating with them in any way. They have expressed interest in Dan Duquette, which we understand because Dan is an exceptional GM. But we are not in any negotiations with Mr. Rogers. We have a contract [with Duquette], and that’s the end of it.”Angelos did concede that if the Blue Jays made an offer, he would take a look at the proposition, but he is not actively negotiating and has no intent on allowing Duquette to leave for a division rival. It is believed that the Orioles would have to be blown away to part with Duquette, and historically speaking, compensation for parting with executives has been minimal.
Current president Paul Beeston is still set to represent the Jays at the upcoming owner’s meetings, Morosi adds. Of course, it would be a stretch to expect Duquette to be up and running in such short order, and a transition period will obviously be necessary regardless of when (and with whom) a contract is signed.
Duquette is the unsung hero in the Boston Red Sox championship seasons, He was ousted prior to the first championship season due to conflicts with Red Sox executives. He has been credited with the fine turnaround with the Orioles franchise in recent years. He has a good resume of rebuilding clubs, so it makes sense for the Blue Jays to be interested in his services.
October 20, 2014
INCREASE THE FLOOR OVER THE CEILING
Fangraphs has an interesting article on the Orioles rise to contention in the highly competitive AL East.
Fangraphs concluded that GM Dan Duquette has done an excellent job in focusing on raising his team’s floor while many clubs are more focused on raising the ceiling.
I have always thought Duquette was one of the brighter GMs in the game. He has not gotten the glowing press that other big market GMs tend to get. Most teams are looking to obtain All-Star caliber talent. A team of quality players, like the Yankees and Dodgers or Angels, should win a boat load of games.
The Orioles are not in the same financial atmosphere to try to buy a pennant. Instead, how a roster is created and sustained can yield very good results.
No doubt Duquette has created a deep Oriole roster, many relatively unknown players.
Fangraphs looked to see how it could calculate the floor for a team. It used negative WAR as a means of illustrating the base talent level for a squad. If you have negative WAR players on your roster, then your floor is lower than Replacement Level (AAA) talent.
Over the past three seasons, the Orioles have received the sixth-lowest cumulative negative WAR total, suggesting that while they may not always have a lot of star power, they don’t stock up on expensive stars while punting roster spots at the bottom of their 25-man group.
Fangraphs noted in 2014, Baltimore gave just 3.2 percent of its innings to negative-WAR pitchers (league average, excluding Baltimore, was 13.4) and 3.2 percent of its plate appearances to negative-WAR position players (league average, excluding Baltimore, was 19.4).
This follows a pattern that new Dodgers GM Andrew Friedman used when he was with the Rayswho have had the lowest negative WAR total over the past three seasons.
In contrast, the 2012 Cubs who lost 101 games had 22 players with a negative WAR. In 2014, with 89 losses, the Cubs had 19 players with a negative WAR. The 12 game improvement shows that the bottom was raised by 3 less negative WAR players and better performance from higher ceiling starters.
Fangraphs concluded that GM Dan Duquette has done an excellent job in focusing on raising his team’s floor while many clubs are more focused on raising the ceiling.
I have always thought Duquette was one of the brighter GMs in the game. He has not gotten the glowing press that other big market GMs tend to get. Most teams are looking to obtain All-Star caliber talent. A team of quality players, like the Yankees and Dodgers or Angels, should win a boat load of games.
The Orioles are not in the same financial atmosphere to try to buy a pennant. Instead, how a roster is created and sustained can yield very good results.
No doubt Duquette has created a deep Oriole roster, many relatively unknown players.
Fangraphs looked to see how it could calculate the floor for a team. It used negative WAR as a means of illustrating the base talent level for a squad. If you have negative WAR players on your roster, then your floor is lower than Replacement Level (AAA) talent.
Over the past three seasons, the Orioles have received the sixth-lowest cumulative negative WAR total, suggesting that while they may not always have a lot of star power, they don’t stock up on expensive stars while punting roster spots at the bottom of their 25-man group.
Fangraphs noted in 2014, Baltimore gave just 3.2 percent of its innings to negative-WAR pitchers (league average, excluding Baltimore, was 13.4) and 3.2 percent of its plate appearances to negative-WAR position players (league average, excluding Baltimore, was 19.4).
This follows a pattern that new Dodgers GM Andrew Friedman used when he was with the Rayswho have had the lowest negative WAR total over the past three seasons.
In contrast, the 2012 Cubs who lost 101 games had 22 players with a negative WAR. In 2014, with 89 losses, the Cubs had 19 players with a negative WAR. The 12 game improvement shows that the bottom was raised by 3 less negative WAR players and better performance from higher ceiling starters.
November 3, 2013
MYTHS AND LEGENDS
In the after glow of the Red Sox third championship in 10 years, there are some pundits in Chicago who pose the question of how much of the current success can still be traced to Cub President Theo Epstein. For the Theo-heads, he is the mythical savior who is going to turn the Cubs around just as he did for the Red Sox.
But the problem with that thinking is that is it based on myth and spin.
The architect who lifted the Curse was Epstein's former boss, Dan Duquette.
Duquette became the GM of his hometown Red Sox in 1998. Duquette, not Epstein, built a baseball operations department which has allowed the Red Sox to be the only team in MLB to set attendance and revenue records every year since 1998.
The Red Sox went 656-574 in the eight seasons under Duquette, winning the AL East once and finishing 2nd behind the Yankees five other seasons. The Red Sox won the AL East pennant in 1995 before bowing to the Indians in the ALDS. The Red Sox were wild-cards in 1998 and 1999, only to lose to the Indians in the ALDS and the Yankees in the ALCS.
Under Duquette, the Red Sox made exceptional strides in improving their dismal history of poor race relations as an organization in the hiring of both coaching and administrative personnel with minority candidates. The minor league facilities and coaching availability were upgraded at every level during his tenure. This sounds like the plan the Cubs for their Arizona facilities.
But Duquette had a good eye for talent. Under this tenure, he drafted Nomar Garciaparra, David Eckstein, Adam Everett, Hanley Ramirez and Freddy Sanchez. He also made several major acquisitions that would ultimately play a part in the Red Sox 2004 World Championship, including acquiring knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon. Duquette built up his minor league system with talent that he traded over 35 players from the farm system to acquire major league talent and to put a competitive team on the field.
Duquette was let go by the Red Sox in 2002 when the team was sold to new ownership.
The current Red Sox championship team has little connection to Epstein. New GM Ben Cherington inherited a lot of big money, bad contracts from Epstein's management era. The Red Sox imploded in 2012. ESPN.com stated that Cherington deserves to be in the conversation for a series of transactions that helped propel the Red Sox from a 69-93 civic disaster to a team that got to the World Series.
Cherington revamped the team by several bold moves. He traded for manager John Farrell to replace Bobby Valentine. He then sent an All-Star roster of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett to the Dodgers to get rid of a massive amount of payroll. The new payroll flexibility that allowed Cherington to acquire Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, Koji Uehara, Jonny Gomes, Ryan Dempster, Stephen Drew, Mike Carp, Jake Peavy and David Ross.
A more realistic view of Epstein's Boston tenure is like the thin filling between two layers of cake. He is not the perfect wunderkind that the media parroted from the PR releases. One of the keys that pundits still point to with affection is that they like that Epstein is always trying to find a loophole in the rules, an edge, "game the system," to get talent. Except the glaring problem with that notion is that why would a competent front office need to "game" the system if they knew how to acquire talent by traditional means in the first place? It seems to be an attempt to cover up weaknesses by telling the world that the front office is smarter than the rest of baseball (a familiar quote from owner Tom Ricketts).
But the problem with that thinking is that is it based on myth and spin.
The architect who lifted the Curse was Epstein's former boss, Dan Duquette.
Duquette became the GM of his hometown Red Sox in 1998. Duquette, not Epstein, built a baseball operations department which has allowed the Red Sox to be the only team in MLB to set attendance and revenue records every year since 1998.
The Red Sox went 656-574 in the eight seasons under Duquette, winning the AL East once and finishing 2nd behind the Yankees five other seasons. The Red Sox won the AL East pennant in 1995 before bowing to the Indians in the ALDS. The Red Sox were wild-cards in 1998 and 1999, only to lose to the Indians in the ALDS and the Yankees in the ALCS.
Under Duquette, the Red Sox made exceptional strides in improving their dismal history of poor race relations as an organization in the hiring of both coaching and administrative personnel with minority candidates. The minor league facilities and coaching availability were upgraded at every level during his tenure. This sounds like the plan the Cubs for their Arizona facilities.
But Duquette had a good eye for talent. Under this tenure, he drafted Nomar Garciaparra, David Eckstein, Adam Everett, Hanley Ramirez and Freddy Sanchez. He also made several major acquisitions that would ultimately play a part in the Red Sox 2004 World Championship, including acquiring knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, Jason Varitek, Manny Ramirez and Johnny Damon. Duquette built up his minor league system with talent that he traded over 35 players from the farm system to acquire major league talent and to put a competitive team on the field.
Duquette was let go by the Red Sox in 2002 when the team was sold to new ownership.
The current Red Sox championship team has little connection to Epstein. New GM Ben Cherington inherited a lot of big money, bad contracts from Epstein's management era. The Red Sox imploded in 2012. ESPN.com stated that Cherington deserves to be in the conversation for a series of transactions that helped propel the Red Sox from a 69-93 civic disaster to a team that got to the World Series.
Cherington revamped the team by several bold moves. He traded for manager John Farrell to replace Bobby Valentine. He then sent an All-Star roster of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett to the Dodgers to get rid of a massive amount of payroll. The new payroll flexibility that allowed Cherington to acquire Shane Victorino, Mike Napoli, Koji Uehara, Jonny Gomes, Ryan Dempster, Stephen Drew, Mike Carp, Jake Peavy and David Ross.
A more realistic view of Epstein's Boston tenure is like the thin filling between two layers of cake. He is not the perfect wunderkind that the media parroted from the PR releases. One of the keys that pundits still point to with affection is that they like that Epstein is always trying to find a loophole in the rules, an edge, "game the system," to get talent. Except the glaring problem with that notion is that why would a competent front office need to "game" the system if they knew how to acquire talent by traditional means in the first place? It seems to be an attempt to cover up weaknesses by telling the world that the front office is smarter than the rest of baseball (a familiar quote from owner Tom Ricketts).
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