Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 600: If You Love Your GM, Should You Set Him Free?

Episode Date: January 16, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Gabe Kapler and Chris Tillman, then discuss the Orioles’ dilemma about whether to let GM Dan Duquette leave (with help from The Good Wife).

Let's see what it is. I'll work up an offer. We'll think about it. We'll talk on the phone later. And that's it. No pressure. Nobody's doing anything wrong here, Alicia. This is how America works. Good morning and welcome to episode 600 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by The Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg Of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller Of Baseball Prospectus. Hello Hello How are you? Pretty good, how are you? Alright. Good

So we had tentatively talked about Having a guest or two on today Some scheduling stuff came up We're going to do that next week instead So it's just the two of us Just rapping at each other About baseball Ending on a multiple of 100

That's right Always good to end a week on a multiple of 100 I try to do that every 7 months or so Or a multiple of 300 Alright So I mentioned Gabe Kapler the other day. We won't talk about Gabe Kapler every day on this podcast, probably. But I wanted to mention something else

because there was an article written by John Weissman at Dodger Insider. I will link to it in the places where I usually link to things where he's talking about the Dodgers winter development program. And there's a picture of Gabe Kapler at the front of a room full of minor league players. And he is lecturing them about advanced stats. And he and some other members of the Dodgers front office are talking to them about how the team evaluates them using advanced stats. And therefore, they shouldn't be scared of advanced stats and this is this is exactly what we talked to gabe capler about on

episode 249 in july of 2013 we had him on to talk about selling advanced stats to players and it was semi-theoretical then and he is putting it into practice now. So that's kind of cool. I agree. Right? It is. It is as cool as we thought it would be. Not that cool for us. I mean, I imagine it's very cool.

For him. For him. For Dodgers minor leakers. Yeah, I mean, it would be fun to be there Oh we got a sneak preview A year and a half before they did Yeah Alright well this is going to be a very

Orioles centric podcast The main topic is Orioles Related Oh interesting and AJ Ellis Did you mention AJ Ellis AJ Ellis is there too Oh I guess led a session. Okay.

Kapler and Ellis led a session. I was thinking that Kapler and Ellis were leading the whole thing, which would have been cool, but they're not. Yeah. So before we get into the main Orioles topic, there is an Orioles topic that we should touch on briefly, as we are obligated to, because it's one of those effectively wild inside jokes. So Chris Tillman was in the news for legitimate reasons. He is interested in an extension, and his representation is empowered to talk to the Orioles about an extension. But more relevant to effectively wild listeners, we received a tip about a fat player photo of Chris Tillman. I have just sent it to you here.

This is from the Orioles winter camp or whatever it is. It's a picture of a few guys standing around. Tommy Hunter, who is not a svelte player, and he is not svelte in this picture. He is the one in the orange? He is the one in the orange? He is the one in the orange, the one in the beard. And, of course, I will link to this, too, in the Facebook group. Actually, someone else linked to it in the Facebook group already. Chris Tillman is standing with a water bottle and some orange leggings of some sort.

and there is a protuberance below the water bottle and above the leggings, which was not there the last time I saw Chris Tillman, I don't think. I had to Google Chris Tillman because I don't have a really sharp mental image of Chris Tillman's physical fitness level, but from what I can tell, this is certainly suggestive. I think that, I will say that the shape of the upper body, to me, is not quite convincing enough because, you know, it's all black, so it's hard to get a lot of definition there. I mean, there's certainly some puffing, but it also, you know, like, it sort of just looks like, well,

maybe he's just sort of like, uh, you know, he's going, uh, like that, you know? And it might not be as bad as it looks, and it might be windy, but I will say, though, that the arm, in combination with the arm, because the arm, the left arm sort of has a

an out-of-shapeness to it. Right? To me, the left arm is the damning part, is the left arm. Like, it just sort of hangs there. Like, arms do, I guess. Yeah. Arms are mostly just hanging there. But I don't know.

There's something about the... Like, he's got a very low waistline in this. It looks like a sort of beer bellyish like like his pants it it looks like his shorts are a little lower than they than they then he might like them because he's he's got a he's got a belly keeping them from i'm not i'm like i said though i'm not convinced that any of this is happening I feel like this could all be bad photo Rarely are we completely Convinced that one of these is legitimate

But this one is More suggestive than most I would say Also in this other one he looks Yeah so I just sent you another one He doesn't have fat face Although he has grown a beard So that could be covering

It's hard to say In this other photo I just sent you He is kneeling with a Gatorade towel around his neck So there's really no way to see much of anything I'm saying I'm going to say nothing I'm just saying there's nothing here The face to me looks clean

Okay So I'm going to say there's no fat Chris Tillman. Okay, all right. I'm not sure. I'm equivocating a little bit more. I think there might be. But there might not be by the time he reports to spring training. These tights are kind of shocking.

It's just how orange they are. I mean, I don't think I've seen ballplayers wearing tights before. It doesn't look familiar to me. Hunter is wearing the same ones, but he's also wearing stirrups or high socks or something. So there's no skin visible between the leggings and the shoes. Whereas Tillman is wearing ankle socks black ankle socks and so there is this gap and it does look does look sort of strange so you know how when you're a kid you might dress up for halloween as a as a pumpkin and you've got that

sort of baggy a blousey orange pumpkin top that goes down to just below your knees and then you you wear black socks underneath it to set it off you know i didn't do that i was but you know what i'm talking about i mean you know what pumpkin on halloween you know what a pumpkin costume looks like though sure i'll send you one i'm gonna send you one just in case you're not clear. This looks like, there you go. What he is essentially wearing is somebody reversed the colors. You've got this baggy garbage bag over his upper half down to his knees. Then you've got these really tight orange tights. The whole thing is unflattering. You see what I'm saying here?

Yes, I see what you mean. This is exactly what, I mean, this is the opposite. He just got his pumpkin wrong. Okay. All right. Well, you can all be the judge for yourselves. We don't want to tell you what to think about whether a player is fat or not. Why are they, what is Chris Tillman doing on a field?

Are they reporting there have been a bunch of teams at winter camps right voluntary completely yeah but i thought those are for kids voluntary camps i hate how the the voluntary camps there's always someone who doesn't show up to the voluntary camp and people are sort of annoyed about it and think that he should have showed up at the voluntary camp. Like Pedro Alvarez didn't show up to the pirates voluntary camp. And that was sort of a thing. Some of these comments are great. Yes. The commenters on the tweet, which is a this picture is a rock rock about code that the Orioles writer for Masson, he took this picture and the comments on it seem to suggest that the internet thinks there's something here.

I like the one guy though, who says simply that is not Tillman. Tillman. Right. Well, there are a couple of people who say that, but it could be, I don't know, I trust the Orioles writer over Twitter. Maybe they're just deceived by the beard and the new physique. Uh-huh. Yeah. Or the leggings. Right. Okay. So the real Orioles topic today, probably not one that will make Orioles fans feel any better than the possibility of a fat Tillman. Although there's some good Orioles news, right? Manny Machado said he's feeling better than he has in a while. I don't think that a fat pitcher is that bad a thing anyway. No, it might not be.

Fat pitchers aren't as bad as fat shortstops. That's true. And there's plenty of time for him to work himself into shape. So the main news surrounding the Orioles is this ongoing, off-season long, will he or won't he, Dan Duquette going to the Blue Jays. The Blue Jays have been looking for a team president. They've been rumored to be interested in just about everyone. These reports first surfaced around the beginning of the winter meetings, and Duquette was just one of a few names mentioned at the time.

Kenny Williams was one of the names mentioned at the time. But Kenny Williams quickly made a comment about it, and he came out and said that he had considered it, but that ship had sailed, and that was the end of the Kenny Williams speculation. Whereas Duquette never really denied it. At the time, he made one of those, I'm the Orioles GM, and I'm putting together the best team I can for 2015, one of those sort of statements, without saying that he would continue to be the Orioles GM indefinitely. And so these reports have now resurfaced and have got a little more substance to them. There was a report that there are actual negotiations going on here. negotiations going on here. Ken Rosenthal and John Marossi reported that there are negotiations between the Orioles and the Blue Jays about compensation for Duquette. Presumably,

those negotiations are going on with someone other than Dan Duquette in the Orioles front office. And this is a very uncomfortable situation for everyone, presumably, because you've got your GM. It's more uncomfortable than most. It's always kind of uncomfortable if your GM is interested in going to another team, especially so in this case, because it's a division rival who is expected to be competitive this coming year, might be the top threat to the Orioles right now, depending on how you feel about the Red Sox. So this is one of those situations where you wonder whether there's some kind of moral hazard situation where if Duquette really does want to go and all the reports suggest

that he is interested in getting a promotion and a pay bump and he has declined to comment this week so he has not denied it then you kind of wonder and of course wait wait where's the moral where's the moral hazard coming well he as long as he's the orioles gm he has to put the the best team that he can together for the Orioles. But if he expects to be the Blue Jays GM next month, then that has to be in the back of his head. No matter how honorable, no matter how much integrity he has, and I'm sure he has plenty, but when you expect to be working for your current rival in a short time or you think there's a good chance of that it's got to be in the back of your mind and uh

the perception that that's a conflict is probably not helped by the fact that the orioles have lost a bunch of free agents this winter and have not really made any significant acquisitions, which might have probably has nothing to do with this. That's kind of the pattern that they followed last winter, too. But if people are worried that he is sandbagging the Orioles somehow so that he can go win with the Blue Jays, then the fact that the Orioles haven't done a whole lot this winter might possibly reinforce that perception. So Peter Angelos, the owner of the Orioles, has said that Duquette will be with the Orioles, that he's not letting him out of his contract.

And he's signed for four more seasons. He and Buck Showalter signed extensions two years ago that took them through the 2018 season. And we've talked about how extensions for managers or GMs don't necessarily mean a whole lot that the salaries are a drop in the bucket for most teams. So you might just tack a year on so that there's no controversy about whether the guy is a lame duck doesn't necessarily mean you are committed to him or that he's going to stay. But four years is a long time. That's longer than a lot of GMs are signed for. And so there is this question about what is going to happen. Angelos says nothing is going to happen, that he's going to stay and honor the contract. There are conflicting reports about that. The people who issued those reports,

Ken Rosenthal wrote that he might, you know, Angelos' comments might just be a negotiating tactic. So it's an uncomfortable situation, and we don't know anything about what the parties involved are thinking. So we won't necessarily talk about how this will end one way or another, but I do want to just talk about it in principle, the idea that a GM might want to go to another team because you're kind of in a bind as the owner of that team, right? As soon as the GM indicates some desire to go elsewhere for a pay raise or or a promotion particularly a promotion because that's harder to match you're kind of stuck right like Angelos is entitled to

maybe feel annoyed about this if he he gave this extension to Duquette, he brought Duquette back from being out of the game for a decade and gave him a job, which a lot of people were kind of quizzical about at the time. It's like in The Good Wife when Alicia asks for a raise after Lockhart Gardner brings her back from not being a lawyer, not actively being a lawyer for 13 years, and they expect some loyalty. are not actively being a lawyer for 13 years and they expect some loyalty yeah but then that but lockhart lockhart was clearly rooting for carrie in season one and alicia only got the chance because will who was a friend stood up for her so yes good point good point uh so but you're you're kind of in a bind right because as soon as your gm indicates a desire to go elsewhere, you almost have to let him, right? Like even if he's under contract and you're totally entitled to hold him to that contract, you don't want the person who's running your team to have his eyes on some other team, particularly a division rival. So it's almost as if as soon as a gm is tempted to go somewhere he has the leverage right

i i you wouldn't say that about a shortstop though no you wouldn't well i don't know that the shortstop he only controls himself right whereas the gm is determining the direction of your team and and your winter and all of your planning and can really sabotage you whereas if the shortstop the worst he can do is refuse to play which is which is bad he can he can only hurt the situation he's in he can't poison the situation that he's leaving right and he can't like't, like, it's not like the shortstop could, you know, like, well, do anything to affect the next year's team, for instance. And yeah, like anything he would do would hurt himself because anything that you would want him to do would also benefit him. So, yeah.

But in the sense that, sorry, getting back to that, because you don't have to let Duquette go and there's nothing that keeps him there, right? I mean, that keeps you from keeping him there. And so all he could do, not Duquette, I assume DeKette wouldn't do this, but in a theoretical hypothetical person, all he could do if you kept him there through the end of his contract is pout, right? And that's all the shortstop could do too. So in the sense that ultimately you get to choose

whether he goes to the other team, presumably. Right. It's no different than the shortstop. True. And then furthermore, let's say though that he's going to go, is it any more of a difference than if you have a programmer who works for your company and aspires to work for a different company that hires programmers? Or if you decided that you wanted to work for Baseball Digest or whatever, and you were in the same kind of semi-conflict with your employer?

I guess – I mean it has a lot in common. I'm trying to think of the other differences, the shortstop situation. If you're the shortstop, everything you do is public right so if you you're going to be a free agent at some point you you could be traded potentially so if you pout and it hurts your performance and you get out of shape and you put up worse numbers everyone sees that but do you think that you think a gm could could realistically tank and get away with it in this industry? There's that old line where Thomas Jefferson had a ranch or something like that. One of his ranch hands was stealing cattle from the neighbors.

Actually I've jumbled two analogies. One of his ranch hands was stealing cattle from the neighbors and Thomas Jefferson found out and fired him. The guy goes, I was stealing them for you though. He says, anybody who would steal for you would steal from you. That's why he got fired. But why instead of that, that's a stupid one, I should have gone back to the good wife.

I was just going to go back to the good wife myself. Yeah, that's where I was going. Because that's why the Jefferson thing was on my mind. It came up in the good wife. I was reminded of the Jefferson. So in the good wife, what, Canning wants to poach Alicia, and she says, you know, I'm unpoachable. Spoilers! Spoilers!

In principle, in principle Alicia says that the lawyers who says that she's unpoachable because she sees how lawyers that are poached get treated. They're looked at with suspicion. Nobody will ever trust you again. Here's the problem.

I see how we treat lawyers who are poached. they're the first ones out the door they're the ones we don't trust and that is why i will not be poached i'm at lockhart gardeners they treat you like a family they treat loyalty as an absolute good and it's not not at home it is at work it's talent and professionalism the matter that's why i don't hold a grudge you come come and work for me, you'll be judged on the value of your work and only your work. So there's already, I mean, that's presuming that you didn't tank. I mean, it would be like, look, we're already, there's no reason whatsoever to think that,

I mean, you don't believe that Duquette tanked this offseason, and yet you spent three minutes talking about how well he might have. I mean, he didn't, we don't believe he did. And you genuinely don't believe he did. And you genuinely don't want to imply he did. I believe that some people might believe that he did. Right. Some people do. Like some people are already probably saying that about him.

And if he went to Toronto, it would probably be something that certainly Orioles fans would bitterly complain about for the next 25 years. And you don't even want that perception if you're the Orioles. So maybe you make a change just to avoid that perception. So the point is that I don't feel like the GM...

It seems to me that it would take a particular kind of short-sighted sociopath to attempt to destroy his X team on his way out the door. I don't think that the... Not only do I think that the industry to attempt to destroy his ex-team on his way out the door. I don't think that the, not only do I think that the industry would not treat that man kindly, but it wouldn't particularly surprise me if some damages, I mean Major League Baseball is a body that has fairness, that has sort of like almost absolute power to do whatever it wants in the interest of fairness.

And so if it were clear that the outgoing GM had sabotaged his team, it wouldn't surprise me if Major League Baseball would sort of have sanctions on the GM's new team. Possibly, yeah. new team. Possibly. Yeah. Well, okay. So, so let's say that you are in Angelus's situation, or you're just in generic owners situation with generic GM thinking about leaving. So let's say that you think that your GM is an above average GM. And I would guess that, you know, every owner does probably they can't all be right, but most of them probably think that. So what would you think that the damage would be? Because there just isn't really a precedent for significant player assets being exchanged for executives. And maybe that's because of the leverage thing, that there is this perception that once the GM wants to go, the team that has him sort of loses the leverage. But what is the actual loss to the team?

but what is the actual loss to the team? If you are losing this GM, you have under contract for four years. Let's say, say he's an, even if he's an average GM, what are you losing? Just because he is your GM and you have to train a new guy. And this guy knows everything.

And you've got to get this guy up to speed in the middle of a winter and he's taking his knowledge of everything about your organization and all of your capabilities to another team in this case a direct rival and the Orioles are already supposedly thinking about plan B GMs, and there's a list that was reported, and the list of GMs that they're considering is like if they had just plucked the internet's least favorite GMs off of a list and put them on a new list. Can I guess?

Sure. Jim Bowden. No. Are any of these people currently employed? Yes, but not as GMs. Right. Yeah. But yes. Ed Wade? No. Ned Coletti? Yes. Ned Coletti, KT. Oh, of course, KJ. Kevin Sowers. Yeah. Omar Minaya. Oh, yeah, Omar. And Kevin Malone, who... Omar, Omar. The Orioles cannot sign a GM named Omar.

I'm sorry. Too obvious. Yeah, Kevin Malone... Kevin Malone. ...is on this list. That's one you don't hear every day. It's kind of interesting that Kevin Malone's on this list because Kevin Malone replaced Dan Duquette when Dan Duquette left the Expos. And Kevin Malone had a feud, a very public

feud with Kevin Towers, who is also one of the candidates for this list. He hasn't been a GM since 2001 when he was GM of the Dodgers, and he resigned after supposedly challenging a fan to a fight because the fan was criticizing Gary Sheffield, which I'm sympathetic. I like Gary Sheffield, but probably shouldn't be doing that if you're the GM. He called the fan mouth, supposedly. He said, what do you know, mouth? And then he started challenging him to a fight, according to the fan and other fans in the area. But one of the other controversies that Malone got into was when he was hired in September of 1998, like his first press conference, he called himself the new sheriff in town.

And that seems fairly innocuous to me. It's just an expression. But this made a lot of people mad. And that seems fairly innocuous to me. It's just an expression, but this made a lot of people mad and it made Kevin Towers mad. And I'm quoting from an article from 2001 here after Malone resigned in the Hartford Courant. They remark so angered Towers that he had himself pictured alongside manager Bruce Bochy and other team officials In long rider type western Outfits on the cover of The Padres 1999 media guide No kidding we had a

We had a Sheriff Towers joke In the annual this year Yeah we referred to There was some player who isn't very good But is gritty and has a What we called a full throttle approach And we said something like, which is nice, but Sheriff Towers doesn't patrol these parts anymore, son,

something like that. Okay, so back to my question. What is the loss to a team, do you think? I mean, we've talked about how there are so many smart GMs and maybe they're all interchangeable, but what is the loss to a team taking all of his knowledge to a division rival, making you train a new GM in the middle of the winter or towards the end of the winter? What is the cost, do you think?

Well, you have, you have, well, last time we had a conversation somewhat along these lines, there was a competing hypothesis that after a few years of a GM, you've sucked up all of his best intellectual property anyway. Like, it is now yours. And what you lose in continuity, you gain in having a new perspective. I mean, like, at this point, everybody in the Orioles front office maybe has already heard Dan Duquette's best lines. They've already heard all of his management techniques. They've embraced them. They know standing desks. They've all got standing desks. Maybe 2% of his value

was that he was going to come in and bring standing desks. And maybe 1% was that he came in and he had some really great aphorism about management or something like that. And now everybody knows that. Orange leggings. Those were his. Yeah, exactly. So you could argue that, in fact, having a new GM every few years is good. You could argue that, in fact, having a new GM every few years is good. It's got a multiplier effect on what perspectives you have in the organization.

I honestly don't know. Okay. I'm shocked that you don't have an exact, precise figure. It depends on the GM. It depends on how long he's been there. DeKalb hasn't been there that long. I wouldn't consider him stale and used up, as I might consider another GM who's been in his position for much longer. So I don't know.

It's like if you have a – well, one analogy too many. I'll just say I don't know. Was it going to be good wife? No, it wasn't. It seems to me like I wouldn't really probably let Duquette go. It's weird to me because most people are allowed to go to a new job. You could go to a new job if you wanted to. It's not like if you got hired somewhere else.

It's not like Grantland would go, no, you have to stay four years unless they give us one of their writers back. That wouldn't even occur to you to get another person's writer back. Baseball players are their own unique thing where it's just accepted that they're going to go play wherever they're told to go play. Most employees in the world are not like that. They're presumed to have a great deal of freedom of movement. In fact, one thing I learned recently, which I trust the person who told me this, is that non-compete clauses, everybody knows about non-compete clauses, right? At the very least, your boss might have a non-compete clause. So if you do leave, you can't go to work at the competition the next day.

Those are fast food employees have non-compete clauses now. What I'm told from a person who was just on a jury that was heavily focused on non-compete clauses is that those are essentially unenforceable and basically illegal, that courts won't enforce them anymore, that they are, I don't know if they're outdated or what, but they're almost not even real. I don't know if that's true, but that they're almost not even like you could, you might sign one, but you can ignore it because you have a lot of freedom of movement. It's, uh, the, the, the constitution gives you freedom to work for people for pay at your, at your will. There's no constitution in baseball. So, uh, GMs used to be like other people, you know, GMs used to be like you and me and everybody else who has a job that is normal. But in the last some years, they've become much more like the players. They are a key part of the competitive pursuit. They always have been, but now it's more explicit and their value is seen more.

And everybody's a bit more uh i don't know occivelian about these things and they have shifted in a lot of ways to the uh to an asset that the club controls and that they're just as the club doesn't care that much about fairness to its players because their assets and everybody agrees to that agreement and the players get compensated very well for that arrangement and so nobody feels too badly about them. GMs are kind of moving into that class too. And so I think that 10 years ago, maybe it would have seemed really weird to play hardball with your GM this way. And I think that 10 years from now, it will be seen as really weird that you would expect a GM to be poachable. But right now it's like right in the middle. And I would

say that I would probably side with Angelos. I wouldn't let Duquette go. If it were a guy who was lower in the organizational ladder and was moving up, I would say sure. If it were, for instance, an assistant scouting director who had a chance to take a scouting director job, I think I'd let that guy go. But Duquette is already what is essentially the president of baseball ops, and now he's just going to go be the president of some other team that, to me, he is essentially the president of baseball ops and now he's just going to go be the president of some other team. To me, he is to the point where he doesn't get promotion deference. He can be perfectly happy with the job he's got, thank you very much, and I'd keep that asset on my books for four more years.

So it is an asset though. You do believe it's a significant asset. I mean, if it's not, then I'd let him go. Right. But, yeah, presuming he's an asset, which, sure. They think he is, so I think he is. Sure. Okay.

All right. Well, we'll see what the resolution is. But if Sam Miller were in charge, Dan Duquette would be wearing orange leggings for the rest of his four-year contract. Non-compete clause enforceable. No, I'm going to be reading this all night. All right. Will you be back on Monday?

Yes. Okay. So if you're working on the holiday, we will be in your ears. Because it's that, I guess. Sure. Yeah. Okay. All right.

years because it's that I guess sure yeah okay all right so I think that we will have one or more somewhat special ish episodes next week so tune in for that please send us some emails at podcast at baseball we're going to do that it's

not 600 it's not I thought the point was that it was the hundred do that then you are both shameful and shameless. I don't know how you've managed it. Yes. Send us some emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com and rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Join the Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And please support our sponsor by going to baseballreference.com, subscribing to the Play Index using the coupon code BP, and getting the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription. We will be back next week. Have a wonderful weekend. Excuse me, Diane. Yes, Alicia.

I have received a formal job offer from Lewis Canning. Uh, yes, Alicia. I have received a formal job offer from Lewis Canning. From Canning? He approached me several months ago and I declined, but he's been persistent. And you're considering it? I'd like to stay, but his offer would go a long way to helping me cover a mortgage payment. It wasn't Lewis Canning who gave you a chance

after 13 years away from the law. would go a long way to helping me cover a mortgage payment. It wasn't Lewis Canning who gave you a chance after 13 years away from the law. This is his offer. If I stay at the firm, it has to be more. You'll give me till the end of the week? No. I can't. You'll give me till the end of the week.

No. I can't. Yep, everybody changes. End of the week, Alicia. Or you can clean out your desk right now.