Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 477: When Does a GM Deserve to Be Fired?

Episode Date: June 24, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about the Nationals, then discuss where the Padres went wrong and whether Josh Byrnes deserved his dismissal.

And after every plan has failed, and there was nothing more to tell, you know that we shall meet again, if your memory serves you well. We're on fire. Good morning and welcome to episode 477 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? Okay. Hey, did you see that thing about Steven Strasburg and the fastballs?

Uh-huh. I don't know, man. Doesn't it kind of feel like the nationals have just a little too much smoke like everybody who's good seems to have some sort of weird passive-aggressive hatred toward them uh well we should explain what the thing about steven strasburg and fastballs was yeah so strasburg uh was facing jason hayward threw him apparently just threw him fastball after fastball after fastball after fastball and nothing else until eventually Hayward hit a fastball. And so after the game, the reporters talked to him and Strasburg said, when asked why so many fastballs, he said, I guess it was the plan going in. I don't think it's the right plan, but that's what we went with.

Definitely with exactly that intonation. Well, how else can you say those words? Probably in the monotone voice of an athlete. All right, let's try it. You say those words. I don't have them up in my... All right, I'll try again. I'm going to channel Jared Weaver answering. Yes, okay. I guess it was the plan going in. I don going to channel Jared Weaver answering this. Yes, okay. I guess it was the plan going in. I don't think it was the right plan. That's what we went with. Pretty good.

Sounded like a player to me. I could do it. You could do it in the way where you're saying the words, but you're saying it in a completely positive voice. I guess it was the plan going in, and I don't think it was the right plan, but that's what we went with. It could have been it. We should dig up some audio or some video.

But, I mean, that's like super passive-aggressive. And it just doesn't feel feel I don't know maybe maybe it's saying like unless he's implicating himself in the development of the plan unless it doesn't sound like he is but conceivably he could be saying that that was their collective plan that he signed off on I mean clearly he he followed the plan he didn't object to it strongly enough to deviate from it in the game and i guess it sounds like he's sounds like he's throwing his catcher or pitching coach or or a stat guy who told him to do that uh under the bus a little bit but it's

possible possible that there's some other interpretation. Yeah, he could refer to his own plans in a third person. Yeah, yeah. So what did this make you think of? Did this make you think of other nationals incidents? I mean, other than the Strasburg shutdown plan? Well, just the general occasional Bryce Harper tension, basically. So, yeah, I don't know. And, yeah, I don't know.

I don't have anything more to say about that. I don't know. It's conceivable that I only noticed this because it was Strasburg. Like, if Kevin Correa had said this, we wouldn't be talking about it. And so the reason that the Nationals might seem to have more types of this controversy is because they have more players that we pay attention to, perhaps. Yep. By the way, speaking of the Nationals, we've talked a few times about some of the out there, out of left field, effectively wild listener emails or topics that we've discussed that have

subsequently come true or happened in a game. And one of them, it seems sort of has the, the nationals hired LaVon Hernandez as a, to quote from the article in the Washington post by James Wagner and ambassador slash spring training coach slash all around good guy. an ambassador slash spring training coach slash all-around good guy and part of his duties when he is with the nationals in washington is to throw batting practice so we got we got a question about this last july it was from a listener named woody and then we got follow-up emails about this from listeners named matthew and matt by the way there's a there's a running joke in the facebook group about the fact that all of our listeners are named Matthew and Matt, so this will not help.

But Woody suggested that teams use actual pitchers to throw batting practice. Other listeners suggested replacement-level pitchers, like calling up minor leaguers to do it or using college guys to do it or something. But the Nationals are actually using LeVon Hernandez. And again, to quote from this article, it isn't just any regular batting practice.

Hernandez actually pitches. Although he is closer to the plate than a standard mound, Hernandez throws almost as if he was in a game. Unlike coaches or bullpen catchers throwing fastballs, Hernandez throws curveballs, sliders, and change-ups too. Sometimes hitters will ask to simulate and at bat and counts. A hitter struggling with breaking pitches might ask Hernandez for help and he will throw only curveballs to them.

Hernandez can even mimic the delivery and times of that day's opposing starter, which is really kind of cool. I mean, it's cool that it's Hernandez who is just a famously rubber-armed pitcher who could just throw any amount of pitches on any amount of rest throughout his career. And it's hard to find recently retired pitchers who are willing to do this. I don't know what they're paying him, but presumably it's nothing like he was making as a professional pitcher. But Hernandez says, I love it. If they left me there, I'd throw the entire day. So if you could find more LeVon Hernandez's who would do this,

I would think that that has to be an advantage to have a guy who was, until recently, a major league pitcher throwing batting practice like a real pitcher. I was going to ask you this before you even even mention it but what would you pay for that i'd pay more for that than i think coaches typically make i don't know i mean the coaches are already under the coaches essentially get zero for pitching batting practice, right? Right. I mean, I'd pay more than most coaches make just for a dedicated batting practice pitcher. The guy who just comes in and does that. Yeah, you'd pay more for Levo to pitch batting practice than you would pay for Roberto Kelly to coach first base. Yes.

But you wouldn't pay more than you would pay, say, a pitching coach, right? Probably not. I don't know. I might be equivalent, I think. All right. So if you're that close on pitching coach, then definitely more than hitting coach, definitely more than third base, definitely more than bullpen coach, definitely, wait, bench coach? Hmm.

Huh. Yes, I think so. I think, yeah, I'd pay, I wouldn't pay major league. See, I don't know what the average salary for each type of coach is, and I don't know who the high earner is for each type of coach. I would pay probably close to major league minimum for this. So I don't know the answer to these either. I just Googled it, and let's see if I can find it before it's too late.

All right, major league baseball teams carry 5 to 10 assistant coaches including two base coaches, bullpen coach, hitting and pitching coaches. Each earns between $150,000 and $700,000 per season, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. Dave Duncan got paid $750,000. He was baseball's

highest paid pitching coach. Rudy Jaramillo made $800,000 for the Cubs in 2010. That's good pay. $150,000 as the floor is pretty good. Yeah. Jaramillo had a reputation as a guru for a little while, it seems to me. Yeah, he did. Yeah.

He turned Vernon Wells around after 2011, as I wrote, before 2012. I wrote in the winter of 2011 and 2012 how Rudy Jaramillo had turned Vernon Wells around. And you all remember Vernon Wells being turned around. Yep.

One of those magic mechanical changes. Nobody better to this day. So yeah, so I would pay close to the high end of the coaching pay scale for a guy who just comes in and throws batting practice like a major league pitcher would. would uh and uh no knock on batting stance guy but if batting stance guy can get as many you know youtube views or whatever as he does just think how many page views pitching wind up levo could i mean this is 30 30 premium gifts waiting to be made somebody is i don't know who's gonna get who's gonna get this is it gonna be like is know who's going to get this. Is it going to be like, is MLB Network going to get this? Or is like, will Conan O'Brien get it? Is Conan O'Brien still on?

Where is this going to show up? Because this is going to be gold. And wait till you see, I have good on good authority. Wait till you see Levon Hernandez, Tim Kirchhan impression. There's a good video of Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen mimicking each other's windups recently. I would pay to see that sort of thing. But you'd think that batting stance guy must have tried it and failed, right? I mean, it had to have occurred to him at some point, hey, I can double, I can more than double the number of

impressions that I can do. If I could just do pitching-wide. I could be everyone guy. You definitely work on the Hideo Nomo before you get to dance Shaughnessy and Jonah Carey. Yeah, so he must have just not been good at it. Or it was just hard. Let's say, the way you phrase that makes it seem like the problem's him. It must have been too daunting a challenge challenge is what you're going to say. Yes.

So I will be looking forward to this. Every Nationals beat writer who has not already done this, you're dead to me. Disappointed in you. Yeah, I also, I think I would pay more. I wouldn't pay more for this than for a hitting coach. I just wouldn't. I think that the scarcity is, I don't know. I suspect it's not quite as scarce.

I don't know. I could see it being very valuable, but I could also see it being not all that valuable. I would not pay him more than a pitching coach. I would probably not pay him more than a hitting or a bench coach. I'd be comfortable in the like 225 range. I might just pay coaches more in general. Actually, I'd probably pay minor league coaches more.

It seems like the pay scale is sort of screwed up where you have coaches who are tutoring very impressionable young players who need the most work done, who are making nothing, and the coaches in the major leagues who get these guys when often they're close to finished products make a lot of money. It doesn't totally make sense. Yeah, I would agree with that.

So how much would you pay Levo to just hang out with you? And I ask you not with the hypothetical that you are a major league team. I'm asking you literally specifically right now. How much would you pay? And you are, as established yesterday, you are a guy who can't afford the $80 train to Washington, D.C. So I appreciate that resources are limited, but what would you pay Levo to hang out with you for the next, let's say, 60 days?

Maybe $200. I think I'd pay him $3,500. Just to mimic pictures and talk to you? Yeah. Just those things. Okay. I think I would... Actually think, wouldn't it, actually, this is not realistic, but wouldn't it be fun, you're a baseball writer, wouldn't it be fun to just take the next two months and

do nothing but write about Levon Hernandez with Levon Hernandez? Like, all you do is just do this incredibly granular detailed retrospective of his career as a pitcher and and his pitching style and everything about pitching he knows and him him there with you and helping you out as well just make it a book you probably would okay nobody would publish it excuse me all right I'm sure more obscure athletes than Levon Hernandez have had books. We should probably check to see the most obscure baseball players who have had books. Less obscure writers, though. Yes, okay.

I'm right there with you. Ben, let's talk about a topic. Okay. I want to talk about the Padres general manager change. This is one of your microbeats, the lack of general manager firings. Although, let's be fair, I pointed it out. Yes, you did. All right. So, three years without a general manager being fired almost. Close.

Two and a half. 938 days. And the Padres snapped that streak. Did it surprise you that it was the Padres? And I mention that because when we talked about teams that should be going full Astros, if I'm not mistaken, we actually didn't mention the Padres. And in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that we would have. So did it surprise you that it was Josh Burns?

It surprised me in that I'm kind of surprised it wasn't Kevin Towers. It seemed like the signs were pointing toward him going first. So yes. When I reflected on it and wrote about it a bit it didn't strike me as very surprising that it was Josh Burns but I do kind of have a more

positive impression of Josh Burns than maybe his work actually deserves yeah well okay so well geez then it deserves I don't know that's that's subjective but um the the reasons that it would surprise me i'm not committing to being surprised but the reasons it

would surprise me one is that we've talked on this show generally pretty complimentary about moves that they make um and clearly the results were not there but But there are very few moves that they've made that I haven't liked at the time. And I think that's more or less how you should attempt to judge a general manager. I feel like they've been really disciplined and really consistent about making good moves, about being proactive enough, and about really never committing to anything that they couldn't handle. And so that's one reason. For instance, if I couldn't see any stats or records, if I only saw transactions and then had to turn off my computer, I would have guessed that Burns was like a top 12 general manager at this point,

just based on the moves, just based on the transactions at the time they happened. If I were just rating them at the time they happened. The other reason is that Josh Burns is like almost the last GM hired, right? I mean, how many guys have been hired since him? Like, I guess, Lunau, has anybody else been hired since him? Yeah, Lunau was anybody else been hired since him uh yeah Lunau was very shortly after Burns they were they were hired over the same offseason um or yeah Burns Burns was hired on October 26 2011 Ed Wade was fired on November 27th so just a month later, there have been a couple non-firing changes.

I mean, you know, like guys getting promoted, like Mike Hill with the Marlins got promoted. Dan Jennings took over. Right, same thing with the White Sox. So there have been some new guys, but not guys brought in from outside the organization. new guys but not not guys brought in from outside the organization um so normally the the rule of thumb that we've talked about is that a gm gets you know in in ideal situations uh he basically it's five years for before the franchise is his um and before you can really judge what he's done with the team and and that his stamp is completely on the team. And Burns didn't get that. And so I guess I would say that that's somewhat surprising, too.

So what would you say was the Josh Burns doctrine in San Diego? Is there anything that separates him that you could identify as a style of his GMing, either in his career with Arizona and San Diego or just in San Diego? In San Diego, I mean, I don't know, nothing. It's kind of hard to say because he didn't have a lot of money to work with. So, I mean, they were, the Padres raised their payroll substantially this year and they're still 22nd in the majors. The 2010 to 2013, they were 30th, 27th, 28th, and 25th. So he hasn't, he hasn't had the money to make big ticket moves if he, if he had been so inclined to make them. So I don't know.

He tried the extension thing. We've talked about all the extensions they handed out and how that didn't work in almost all cases, although it seemed like it should at the time. I mean, he's, I don't know, he's made some decent trades and signings, but I don't know that anything really stands out to me as a unifying principle of any of them. Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind,

the thing that I would think of as the most distinguishable thing is that he was extending players that were worse than generally considered extension candidates. He was extending role players and, you know, role 50 guys, you know, third starters and, you know, average or slightly worse catchers and, you know, brittle outfielders. And you could, I mean, all of those fell apart on him that's a big reason he's probably fired is because all of those fell apart on him none of them turned out to be bargains all of them turned out to be guys who were um you know the highest paid players on the on the on the

roster and contributing nothing uh but those are i mean those are moves that i think generally i think teams should be making i think teams should be signing more extensions, should be expanding the pool of extension candidates, and I really like the aggressive way that he turned non-famous players into extension candidates. So that's the main reason that I have a hard time judging him is because I think that the moves that he made are moves that I would have praised at the time and that I still think make sense. And they just

didn't work out. The other thing is that he was blessed when he came in to have an exceptional farm system. And you could say, well, and now the farm system's not very good. It's average, it's mediocre. And he definitely gets some blame for that because there hasn't been a lot of praise for the Padres drafts over the last couple of years. However, I don't know that I would blame him for the fact that that farm system, which was really rated one to third, depending on your source, at the time it came in, produced nothing. I mean, those guys were all more or less finished products, and they all flopped. It's sort of incredible how little they got out of that class.

Yeah, the other thing I guess that maybe distinguishes him is that he was not afraid to make challenge trades. He made moves for like the Matt Latos trade, the Anthony Rizzo, Andrew Kashner trade. He traded talented young players for other talented young players, which is a kind of move that we don't see made all that often. But yeah, to talk about the farm system, right, he was ranked, or the system was ranked first going into his first full year, 2012, as the GM. And then Jason Parks ranked it third the next year, and then it fell to 11th heading into this season. And I asked Jason when I was writing about it what what the trajectory has been this year and he said down uh so so yes presumably it's now somewhere in the middle of the pack and

a lot of it is that the the top prospects got hurt and that's also been kind of a hallmark of the Padres major league teams yeah the the Tommy John in in the Padres organization was, as I recall, much mocked in the baseball prospectus annual this year because everybody gets one. It's like the Oprah thing. And I'm using a really dated joke here. Right, right. Yeah. Corey Luebke's gotten a couple since his extension.

And I don't know, Reimer Liriano and lots of other players. And at the major league level, they are first in injury days or days lost to injury. From 2012 to 2014, they had 3,500 days lost, and they were third in percentage of payroll loss to injury as well. So I don't know whether a GM deserves blame for that or not. Could be a completely random thing, could be a bad training staff thing, in which case it's, I suppose, kind of the GM's fault for allowing a subpar training staff to stay around.

Or it could be even more of the GM's fault it could be his fault for going after injury prone players which you could kind of make the case that he did that at least in in certain cases trading for Carlos Quentin and extending Carlos Quentin who's been productive when he's played but uh but out of the lineup pretty often and the Josh Johnson signing which a lot of people liked at the time. I didn't really like it because I had made my resolution not to believe in injury-prone pitchers anymore. But that's not why he got fired.

I mean, he didn't get, like, they would have either been in fourth place with an $83 million payroll, or they'd be in fourth place with a $91 million payroll. That's not why he got fired. Yeah, right. I don't know what the – there was a lot of talk today about the expectations that Mike D., the president and CEO, said that the results on the field have been mixed at best and clearly have not lived up to expectations.

And I know – I think Dave Cameron wrote something about how they shouldn't have had high expectations. I wrote in my article that, I mean, Pocota projected them to be an above 500 team, 82 and 80, and they have been much, much worse than that. So I think it's fair to say that they have not lived up to expectations. We don't know whether Mike D's expectations were playoff team

or just taking a step forward. But, Ben, that sort of gets to the point of the question. My impression, and I might be wrong about this, but my sort of impression from the last few years of having done predictions of my own is that they underperform Pocota every year. That Pocota's been a little bit higher on them every year. And so the question is, if all intelligence about the players suggests that they're pretty good

and then they perform pretty bad, is that the GM's fault? Isn't the GM's job to put together a team that should do pretty good? And when they fail, that could be somebody else's fault or it could be nobody's fault. It could just be one of those things. But, I mean, what does he have better to go on than the data at his disposal? Yeah, sure. I think it's a fair firing. I didn't have a problem with the firing.

I wouldn't... Wait, I was saying the opposite. Oh. Oh, you mean... Oh, okay. I thought you were saying that what else does Mike D have to go on other than the underperformance, but you're saying Burns. Yeah.

So, right. So I mentioned in my article, and RJ wrote about this in May, how many of the Padres hitters have underperformed their projections this year, not just getting hurt, but even when healthy, just like over half of the hitters who've had 100 plate appearances for them are hitting their 10th percentile Pakoda projections or worse. And, yeah, it's sort of hard to blame anyone for that. At the same time, I don't know.

If part of the reason is that they're underperforming is that they get hurt a lot, maybe that's something we're not accounting for that they should do a better job of accounting for. Or with the extensions even we've talked about how historically teams spend more efficiently when they're extending their own players because they know their own players better than they know the players in other organizations they know their their own players better than other organizations know their players

so so maybe it's an especially black mark against him that the extensions haven't worked out because that's where teams are supposed to make their money. Yeah, but we're talking about a sample of five, Ben. I know. I mean, they didn't work out. That feels like we should be sympathetic to him. Maybe.

Not using that as evidence for his failure. I don't know. It's hard to say. I mean, if you take that line of reasoning to its conclusion, then there's almost, I mean, how many cases are there where you can ever say that a GM did a bad job? Well, sure. No, that's, you're right. It's probably really hard to make a compelling case. but that's why five years makes more sense than three look i mean i i agree you're right he's got he's got a team that's doing nothing and uh they're all

his guys for the most part even though you know even though i say five years i mean one of the reasons that they say five years is because that's how long it takes for the roster to really be yours. And there's been enough turnover in the Padres, and especially with the problems, a lot of the problems you can trace back to him. So that's fine. I'm just saying that if those five extensions hadn't all been injured and or flopped unexpectedly, we're having a different conversation.

I want to ask you one more thing, though, about the Latos deal. The Latos deal, as you pointed out, is one that has favored the Reds probably at this point. It's not a done deal. Masarocco could turn out to be, not Masarocco,ahl, could turn out to be useful for many years. But so far, they haven't gotten a lot out of that deal. What's your recollection of how you felt about that deal? And do you think in retrospect, without being swayed too much by the results, in retrospect, do you think they got a good return on that or is that a black mark on him?

I think, I don't recall being particularly negative about it. I think my recollection, I think I saw Jeff Young say something or wrote something about how the trade was panned by Padres fans at the time. I guess it wasn't a particularly popular trade is my understanding. I don't recall thinking that it was especially lopsided either way because I tend to like the position player for pitcher trade. I generally like the position player side. your trade. I generally like the position player side.

Yeah. I don't remember exactly what I felt at the time. I remember thinking, well, Edison Volquez is never going to turn into anything, but there were enough other parts in it. A couple days ago, I happened to stumble across a blog post on Hardball Talk in which the case was made that Billy Beane sucks and should be fired because he had so undersold on Trevor Cahill, which is false, 100% false. But the point was that the A's return on Cahill was so much less, according to this post, than the Latos return had been. So that just, I don't know, I mean, there's like a thousand things wrong in the 45 words I just said.

But the idea, just pointing out that the idea at the time, according to one contemporary account, was the Latos return had actually been the good return of the offseason. account was the late dose return had actually been the good return of that offseason. Right. And speaking of trades for A's pitchers, the Padres did get a really good deal on Tyson Ross. Yeah, the Tyson Ross deal. Yeah, it was a crazy, crazy good deal.

Yeah. So I don't know. I think he probably wouldn't have been fired if not for the circumstances in which he was hired and the way that the circumstances have changed since then. One of the points I made in my article about how GMs were never getting fired was that owners are taking more time, more care in how they hire guys. So they have a personal stake in how those guys do. They might not want to cut bait on them quickly because they put a lot of effort into choosing them and a lot of care into choosing them because teams are worth so much money these days. They want to make sure they have someone capable steering the ship and how owners and GMs often

come from analytical backgrounds now and and they work closely together, and in certain cases, they develop pretty close personal relationships, and that this was a reason why there was less strife between owners and GMs and fewer firings. And that applies in a lot of cases, but didn't really apply in Burns' case because he was hired by Jeff Morad when Jeff Morad was the CEO. Jeff Morad was supposed to buy the team, but that deal fell through, and instead Ron Fowler bought the team. And it probably wouldn't have been unusual, historically speaking, for Fowler to change DMs then when he bought the team and put his own install his own guy he didn't do that but you have to figure that he was never quite as invested in burns as he would have been had he hired burns and there had been a report from ken rosenthal about how there was a deterioration in their

relationship and and burns was on xm uh earlier today and and talked to Jim DeKette and Mike Farron about the end of his time. And they asked him if he was surprised, and he said, not really. I think there's been an awful lot of change here as the new owners have come in and Mike D has come in. Ellipsis, ellipsis. When you are an inherited GM and your team is not winning enough, these things can happen. So that's probably part of it. I would assume that if Morad had taken over the team and everything else had proceeded the same way from there,

that Burns would still have his job, that he'd still get another year or two to work his way out of this mess. So there's that. All right, so two jobs, two firings Diamondbacks have an it's not as though he left a Diamondbacks team that then immediately thrived after he left

so does Josh Burns get another job as GM? I would guess yes my impression is that he's positively regarded in the industry I would guess yes. My impression is that he's positively regarded in the industry. I would guess yes as well. Although I will note that on his Wikipedia page,

Jerry DePoto's name is spelled with a capital P. Oh, that's your pet peeve. Not his fault, but I am having a hard time thinking good thoughts about him while looking at this. Okay, so we got a listener email today from someone who was asking whether the Astros-style rebuild will be more popular now. This was a question from George Chang in Brooklyn. And this is something that I think we touched on once or twice in recent episodes

where we said now that the Astros aren't quite so embarrassing. And if their plan proceeds and they actually start contending in the next couple of years, will we see other teams, assuming the system isn't changed, will we see other teams pursue the same strategy? Do you expect either the Padres three-headed interim GM or their next permanent GM, depending on when that person is hired to do the Astros plan. Do you expect a fire sale at the deadline here? Trades of all the underperforming veterans and another youth movement? Well, I mean, one fire sale does not an Astros make. So yeah, I would expect them to trade veterans, to trade anybody they can this July.

But that's not the same thing that we're talking about. Whether the Astros strategy of many years of overwhelming disgrace, I don't want to be too strong, will be replicated. I wouldn't think the Padres would do it. And I'm withholding judgment to see whether other teams will or not. Because, I mean, there's also the example of the Marlins rebuild, right? The Marlins have rebuilt, not for the first time, without going through an extended period of being a laughingstock of the league. So it's possible to do it that way, too.

All right. So that is the end of the league. So it's possible to do it that way too. All right. So that is the end of this episode. Please send us emails for tomorrow's listener email show at podcast at baseballperspectives.com. And please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com, subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on one- year subscription.

We will be back tomorrow. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? Pretty well. Some people asked us why we didn't talk about Josh Burns yesterday. I wrote about Josh Burns if you want to read about Josh Burns, but we will just give you the final...

Hey, idiot! Oh, is that your topic today? All right, let's start over. Who talks about Josh Burns the day after that happens? To talk about that timely protecting players topic before we could talk about Josh Burns.