Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 702: The Significance of Scioscia Deposing Dipoto

Episode Date: July 7, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about trade arbitrage and Jon Lester, then discuss the Angels’ front-office overthrow.

Because the high heel he used to be has been ground down And he listens for the footsteps that would follow him around The man of my love is a crime But will you still love the man I've climbed? You're still alive, a man out of time. Good morning and welcome to episode 702 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, brought to you by the Play Index at baseballreference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Howdy, Ben.

Hello. Any leftover banter? Well, a follow-up to a bit of banter from yesterday, the Cubs-Pirates-Clayton-Richard trade. We talked about how it seemed rare for two teams that were competing within the same division to make a trade. Turns out there actually is an explanation for why that happened, and it's not that they were just very open-minded there was a

clause in richard's contract that required the pirates to either call him up or offer him to every team and they didn't want to call him up so they had to offer him to every team and the cup said okay i wonder what that means offer him to every team because they did still work out a trade right like there was cash considerations. Yeah, so presumably they got to say, all right, you can have him if you give us something, right? Yeah, well, there must have been. I don't know whether there were no other takers.

I'm going to say the Cubs were the only taker, so they took cash. I guess we know that. But even if the Cubs were the only takerer i wonder if the clause was offer him to every team and then take whatever they give you like i i guess it is i guess if you demand a trade if you have the right to demand a trade that means that you have the right to demand a trade even if the return is not very good otherwise that would not be any sort of thing at all that would just be state of existence in baseball where they can trade you when they like to what they get for you. Anyway, however, if two teams were interested, you'd think.

Now, you know what? I wonder if there was an arbitrage situation where a team could have taken him and then traded him to the Cubs. For some small profit of cash consideration? Yeah. So let's say the Cubs... Yeah, you're right.

I mean, it sounds absurd. But however, let's just game it out. Let's say the Cubs said, we'll take him. We'll give you $30,000. And they're like, oh, come on. You're the Cubs. And so then the Royals step in and go, oh, we'll take him. We'll give you $5,000.

The Pirates would definitely trade him to the Royals instead of the Cubs. And then the Royals could trade him to the Cubs and make a cool $20,000. Which is, like. We're laughing, but what would $20,000 do in your life? It would do a lot. It would change things for you and for me.

These teams are so cavalier. It's crazy. These players these days make so much money in these teams. I heard somebody complaining the other day. Not complaining. Yeah, kind of complaining.

This is an ironic complaint because ironic. You can tell me if it's ironic. Yeah, I think it was. The Giants, you know, have had some travel issues this year where they've been set to play night games and then play on the other side of the country the next day. And in one case, they were mad at the Mets because the Mets, they played a Thursday game, and normally you'd expect a day game getaway day, but the Mets scheduled them for a night game.

And the Mets said, well, you know, we don't sell tickets for day games, even though the Mets do have day games when it's their getaway day and they have to fly across the country. And so the Giants were mad about that. They thought there should be a rule. This was disrespectful to us. They had to fly all night, and they landed at like 5.30 or something West Coast and then had to play again that night.

The second time was last night when Major League Baseball and ESPN changed the time of their sunday game from a day game to the sunday night game and so they ended up having to uh instead of flying out basically like that afternoon they had to stay the night in washington and then fly out today today being monday and then play a night game in san francisco and so there's been a lot of like hey we're not complaining, but this sucks. And we're not going to use it as an excuse, but it makes us play worse.

And that sort of stuff. And so I heard somebody going, hey, these guys are making $30 million. They shouldn't be complaining. And I just want to, in case anybody is thinking that, which they're probably not, because you haven't heard this story until I told you. If anyone's thinking that,

the point is not that it is an inconvenience that they don't want to put up with for their money. The point is that it is an inconvenience in the competitive pursuit that they're going up against other teams in. Others don't have to do this. It'd be like if you went, you know, you can't use a glove. And the Giants were like, that's not fair. And a bunch of fans were like, I don't use a glove at my job. Like, of course you don't. They do. They're baseball players playing against other baseball players who have gloves. It's like they're complaining within the context of it's an unfair rule.

So don't complain about them complaining. Let them complain. It's a good complaint. Yeah, sure. Right? Valid complaint. Good. Okay.

Done. Settled. Speaking of the Giants, Chris Heston just attempted a pickoff with no one on the bag. This is the anti-Lester. That was hours ago, Ben. That's recent. What are you watching? People who listen don't know.

Now they do. You can't do this when I'm watching the game. I'm going to call you out. You don't know about the Bryce Harper pickoff, but you know about the Chris Heston pickoff. I was watching it. The thing is, it was a 3-2, 2-out count, and so the runner was going to go on the pitch.

And so that's why the first baseman played back, and Heston didn't get the message. Maybe that's an underrated time to make pickoff attempts. I think that that is absolutely an underrated time to make pick-off attempts. I think that that is absolutely an underrated time to make pick-off attempts. I don't think nearly enough... I think that when the base doesn't

matter, the defense doesn't make nearly enough pick-off moves and so on. Because the base doesn't matter, but the out absolutely matters. Me and one of our scouts were just talking about this yesterday at a game in Vallejo. I would be, I would, if I, like I'm surprised Joe Maddon doesn't do this, frankly. But every so often, I would, when a guy, you know, takes second base on defensive indifference

in the ninth inning in a seven run game, I just throw him out. Like I'd pitch out and then throw him out. And then like that out counts and then the game's over. I know you don't care that he takes second. I know you don't really want your fielders to be out of position because they're fielding the ball. You know what? If they're out of position, they're in another position. The ball might go where they're running. You don't know where the ball's going. It might go where they were standing or it might go where they're running. I also know that you don't want your pitcher to be distracted and all that but and i know that it would probably

only work like once but i just do it like if it's a because sometimes defensive indifference comes in games that are still very much alive you know three run game runner on first that run doesn't matter and so he takes second to get out of the double play or to take off just throw him out do it once do it once for me you don't need to look I'm not this is not a moral crusade you don't have to do it every time I get it it's fine but once

just once so yeah I would definitely be picking off everyone's wall on those sorts of things I might in fact have I might have had Brandon Belt the first baseman run back you know like play back but then Brandon Belt, the first baseman, run back, you know, like play back, but then have Justin Maxwell, the right fielder, run in and have him pick him up.

All right. Speaking of Lester, he got his first hit. Good for John Lester. Yeah. Have you been following his pickoffs this year? Not closely. Yeah. I was just wondering today if he's done another one

i haven't heard in a long time i have not heard since april 14th whether he has thrown another one yeah do we know anybody that keeps these i think i can check i'm looking at lester's game logs so he had two on april 13th and those were the two that he threw one away, right? And he has not attempted a pickoff since then. Unless he did tonight. He pitched today, Monday. Unless he did that, he has not. And yet, somehow,

still not the worst in the game at keeping base runners from going. Close, but not the worst. Tyson Ross is undeniably worse. There are a couple others who you could make a case for, including Tim Lincecum you could make a case for, Sam Dyson you could make a case for, AJ Burnett you could make a case for.

Lester's got as good a case as anybody except Tyson Ross. But still, as we talked about, it's kind of mind-boggling that it's not an absolute runaway. And he has been much worse. They're definitely exploiting this. His next stolen base, unless he had one today, his next stolen base will be a career high for stolen bases allowed. And it's July 6th. His caught stealing rate is a career low and so and his attempts are pretty close to a career high so they are definitely like they're

they're basically doubling maybe close to tripling what they're doing and yet tyson ross is worse yeah well rice ross is a righty so i'd be curious to know if lester were a righty or if there were a righty who did what lester does what that would do because i do think there's just some residual fear just deeply ingrained conditioned fear that batters have of left-handed pitchers the guy is looking right at you. I mean, just the eye contact has got it for a great deal. Yeah. Alright, so, anything else? Nope. Alright, let's talk about the...

I'm going to check to see if he allowed any stone bases real quick. Hang on. It was not a close game, so he probably didn't. He did. Allowed one, two, three. Three for three. New career high for single season. History has been made. He is now 24 for 28 against him. Yeah, career high.

And really, he's never been great at keeping base runners from stealing. But this is pretty, I mean, by far, career worst. Interesting. So far, the simulations that I ran with the help of those baseball simulation games are turning out to be kind of right. Like he is he's never throwing over and he is allowing more stolen bases and probably making him worse as a pitcher. I don't know how we haven't tried to quantify how much worse it's made him, but but it's made him a little bit worse. It hasn't made him a bad pitcher or anything and that's exactly what the

simulation showed. I wish we could figure out a way to know how much it's made him worse as a pitcher. We could, I think. We could look at all the run expectancy changes. That's not what I mean. I mean apart from that, apart from all the base running

and the stolen bases themselves, has it made him worse? Has he become distracted when he's got a three-ball count? Is he thinking, oh, no, this is going to be a double if I walk him. Does that make him better perhaps? It's hard to know because there's so much fluctuation from year to year. I mean much has been made by the fact that he is much worse this year than he was last year, and not just on base running but you know as a pitcher his fifth is worse his era is worse however he was worse still in 2013 and 2012

and last year was the the you know the outlier in his late career and so it's really hard to know whether he's just that pitcher so i wouldn't like and so i'm i'm saying that i'm not saying boy i wish someone would tackle this as an article i'm saying this is beyond our scope i wish i was god is what i mean and that'd be your top priority god and like and i'd do it with a spreadsheet like i would i would do it like a blog yeah you'd have some pivot tables or something. You'd have some V lookups. One of my favorite things about writing an article about the angels late in my, like when I was with ESPN, after I had quit covering them, is that I got to see a couple of articles, not articles, a couple of studies that Jerry DePoto had done. And they were on his

own. He just, he'll close his door, his office door, and he'll get his spreadsheet out. And he'll do basically unpublished blog posts on topics that he's interested in. I don't want to give away what they are. But the sorts of things that you or I or somebody at Fangraphs or Baseball Perspectives would do without the narrative, but just like a question. I'm going to try real quick to think of something that would be fake. So it would be like, how do international signees that are 200 pounds by the age of 16 do? That's not it, but something like that.

And then he'll go through all the historical data and he'll put out a report and some of these are really long i saw one that was like i think i as i remember it was like 40 pages or something and i just love the idea that jerry depoto is like kind of kind of he is kind of like god right like he's a gm he gets to do real baseball. He should probably be using past tense throughout this anecdote. In this scenario, he is. It's impressive because in the scenario where he's in it. And he's got access to all the data and database people and everything like that. And his top priority is literally to do what I just said.

And I love that. That was always one of my very favorite details. I think it was one of the things that made him, in my mind, probably a really good GM and a GM that I would love to hire if I had a team and among other things. And so, segue. On the other hand, I would rather have an analytics department doing that probably and the GM coming up with the idea and then handing it off and doing something i don't know i don't i totally disagree and when there have been so many times where i like i've i've needed a some sort of research done and it would take me six hours and i'll ask rob mccune like okay would it take you 10 minutes and, no, it'd probably take me an hour and a half. And I go, okay, I'll just do it then.

Even though I have six hours, I'll take six hours and he'll do one and a half. And that's because doing it familiarizes you with the data, familiarizes you with the exceptions. It helps you figure out the little flaws, the parts where there are nuances that you have to figure out what they mean. And it often leads you in different directions. I think that doing the data input on these reports is really helpful. And I know that when you're writing as much as you are and on such topics as you are and doing the data that is often beyond your scope,

it's great to have help too. So there's absolutely that. But I think that, I mean, look, it's not like he's doing all of the club data work. It's like a hobby. You know, he's kind of got a little hobby that is like his job. Maybe he's looking for an outlet. You could give him one. So let's talk about the Angels.

Okay. This is, I'm trying to think, can you think, well, I'm trying to think. It's not like I've been thinking about it for four days, racking my brain. Can you think of another situation where there was a power struggle in, say, the past few years that the front office lost and the manager won? No, this is a very unique, ahistorical incident. I mean, it goes completely against the trend. goes completely against the trend. And do you really think that it's just as simple as Socha is the bigger personality and Artie Moreno likes him more

and has more investment in him? Or is it conceivable that Socha really won the war of ideas in that front office? It's possible. And everyone knows this story by now, but just in case there's been a long simmering sort of dysfunction in the Angels the information that the front office was supplying and tried to convey that information to the players directly. And the coaches resented that and evidently the players also resented that. And either he just gave up at that point and realized that it was not going to happen for him in this place. Or he just was encouraged to leave. We don't know all the details yet,

but Jerry DiPoto has resigned as Angels GM and been replaced by an old Angels GM, Bill Stoneman. And Mike Socha is still the manager, has always been the manager, will always be the manager. Unless he wants to be the GM. Yeah, in which case he could probably do that now. Yeah. Yeah, it's a unique situation because usually the GM, the GM's world these days, the GM gets to pick the manager.

And this was a case where the GM came in. There was an existing manager and a manager who was deeply entrenched. He'd been there forever. He had tons of contract security. He was signed forever. And he won a World Series with this team. So he could, that was a while ago. And that was a long time ago with teams that barely resemble the Angels of today or the style of the angels today. But he can point to that and he can say, I won a World Series and my way works. And DePoto can't necessarily say that. So there was this equal footing or unclear footing.

And that's a strange situation now. It used to be commonplace. It used to be typical for the manager to be the the decision maker long ago and then it was more of a maybe an equal power relationship and now it's totally skewed toward the gm who usually hires his guy and this was not jerry depoto's guy and they didn't see eye to eye and yeah the gm lost and maybe this will be the last time that we see the GM lose. So you take it, it sounds like you just take it as a given that the GM should not lose. It's hard to say without, I mean, it could be that DePoto is a bad communicator.

Maybe some other GM could have explained these things. I assume that he had something to add or that the front office had something to add. I think in general, that should be the way it works. The manager has his knowledge and perspective and he's going to have some holes in that knowledge and perspective that the front office can fill and should fill. perspective that the front office can fill and should fill. And so if there was not much of a collaborative relationship going on here, then that's not ideal. So I don't know who to blame for the failure to communicate. Maybe DePoto was just as responsible as anyone. I don't know. But I do kind of take it for granted that there should be communication and that in certain areas, the knowledge should probably be flowing from upstairs to down. So there's two ways that a person can agree to do, if you're a boss or whatever, a person in authority, there's two ways a person can do the thing that you're asking. One is they can listen to what you have to say, listen to your explanation, and say, okay, I'll do that. You've convinced me.

I'll do that. The other is to hear you ask them to do it and say, you're my boss, and I will do that because I'm following orders. And I sort of feel like the first one is what people think is the better one like oh this is isn't this collaborative isn't this great uh you know we're listening we're sharing ideas and i guess in a team of rivals way you want that maybe and but on the other hand i i sort of think that maybe that's not the better way because the that guy the guy who listens to you and agrees to do the you know agree he comes around he is still holding out the, but I won't do it if I don't want to. I won't do it if you don't convince me a card. And I think as a GM,

you sort of want to not have that. You, you want them to do it. You, it, I don't even know that, I don't know how much you care if they believe in it or not, uh, or if they listen to your rationale, you want them to execute it fully, and so I guess that means that you do need to convince them that it's a good idea. But at the end of the day, you don't want them to hold the card that says, until the going gets rough and then I'm going to turn on you. And so I sort of feel like maybe that's why GMs are getting progressively more powerful. They need that power. They need to make it so that this is not a conversation or a negotiation. And they're not there yet, and they're not even close to there yet.

We talked to Travis Sochik about his book about the pirates, which was much cited in the wake of this Angels turmoil because the pirates have had a completely different relationship. They basically convinced Clint Hurdle, who was not like that kind of guy, to go along with that kind of stuff, and he seems to be purple-faced and happy about it ever since. But we also talked to Travis and said, I asked him, seriously, was there a moment where they went to him and said,

but we're going to fire you otherwise. It wasn't really that huggy-kissy. Did they go to him and say, you can buy it or not. We're going to fire you if you don't. And I don't remember if Travis answered that. And I don't remember what the answer was if he did. But ultimately, the collaborative nature between GMs and managers that we think of as the ideal working relationship at this point in time, it is the ideal working relationship at this point in time. Because is the ideal working relationship at this point in time, because GMs who'd come from non-traditional backgrounds, especially, and who don't wear a

uniform, don't have maybe the force of authority that players and managers are willing to accept right now. And you don't want to have to fire, you don't want to liquidate your whole team over this sort of a controversy. However, only at this point in time, I think 15, 20 years from now, it's going to have to be, well, it doesn't have to be, but I think the ideal would be that the GM is considerably stronger than he is now. And that this sort of thing would be kind of unthinkable. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that's the future, the GM sets the lineup or, you know, the front office sets the lineup and makes the bullpen moves or at least tells the manager what the bullpen moves should be. That wouldn't surprise me at all.

We've seen some sort of encroachments in that area. And, I mean, DePoto is a former player, so he has the former player's background. So he doesn't necessarily need that perspective because he has the former player's background so he doesn't he doesn't necessarily need that perspective because he has it himself that's one of the things that seemed to make him a great gm or a great gm candidate is that he would combine all of these things he'd combine the player experience and the doing a study at your desk with baseball reference experience or whatever he does. So there's that. I think you might want the manager to disagree if you think that the manager is so much, I mean, if you really respect him and think he's very smart and would consider things

that you wouldn't consider and sees things that you wouldn't see then you you wouldn't necessarily want you wouldn't want just an unthinking order follower a yes man who played the game at one point i mean there's an advantage to having a very perceptive former player who's there and he can communicate and he's also he sees things that you don't see and and he's you know in the clubhouse every day so he can tell you what the mood of the team is maybe better than you know and and he's you know in the clubhouse every day so he can tell you what the mood of the team is maybe better than you know and and he knows how guys are feeling a little better that sort of thing and that can inform your your decisions because you can factor those things in so you that you want the collaboration in that sense but i guess you're saying you don't

want the collaboration in the sense that you lose ever. You hire the guy that you think is going to be open and receptive and who also is going to, in a lot of ways, align with your way of thinking about the game. And also maybe will give you some team of rivals pushback, but also the one who doesn't mistake his role in the decision, I think. I think that's hard to do. I don't know, maybe somebody who's got experience in management might know better than I whether that's realistic or whether that always backfires. But it seems to me easier if you get to be a tyrant. Tyranny always does if you are the tyrant. So two quick details on this. Everybody's talking about how it's going to be impossible to find a new GM now that the limits of the GM's power are so well established. That's probably true and it's probably not true. But bigger issue

is that DePoto basically brought in the entire front office. There was a total clearing out. I think one guy survived. And so I wonder, it, I wonder if you're already Moreno, how much more do you have to lie? And I don't know to put it so that there wasn't a ultimatum and, and, and all that, but it does seem like there was something either stated or not stated that one of, you know, Moreno had to choose. And, um, so if you're Moreno, how much more do you have to like Socia in order to basically choose the one guy in uniform and maybe three guys in uniform if we're talking about his coaches, although one of them wasn't brought in by him,

how much do you, over the entire front office from, I mean we're talking roving instructors on down, DePoto brought in service to do player development and scouting, service turned over half the player development department in the first year. So, I mean, that's basically like an entire organization of DePoto's guys that you wonder how many of them survive if there's a new purge or if they leave or what.

Does that heavily factor in to this choice? If you're a Marine? Yeah, probably. I don't know how many of those people are so loyal that they will walk away or they'll not do their jobs well or whatever. But yeah, I mean, you do have to think about the owner's role in this because this is, I guess this is the second time you could kind of lump this in with the Josh Hamilton situation, if you want to say that. And we don't know all the details of that situation. And Mike Socha made a cryptic comment about how Josh Hamilton should apologize to Artie Moreno. We don't know what that refers to other than the obvious, which seems strange again. But that seemed like a case where Moreno sort of put personal relationships ahead

of the team Hamilton gets hurt all the time but he's you know maybe still a productive player better than they have at that position which is zilch so you could make the case that Hamilton made the Angels better and maybe DePoto made the Angels better and maybe Moreno chose the people that he disliked less or whatever it was instead of making the decision that benefited the team and that could not be the case depending on

the intricacies of the situation that we don't know but yeah I mean that's the manager doesn't, manager gets to have some input in the coaching staff sometimes, less so than in the past when it would just be a bunch of cronies. Now it's not. There's definitely input, but the GM will keep guys or bring guys in. So the manager doesn't have that wide-ranging power to hire the front office or hire the whole organization.

The GM does. That's because of the different power structure that generally the GM has more of it. So this is an unusual case. All right. And quick last thing. My favorite detail out of this whole thing came from Jeff Passan, of course. And he talked about, did you see the Mike Trout and the Nerf hoop? No. Mike Trout put up a Nerf hoop in the locker room, in the clubhouse, sorry. And it disappeared, implication being at Socia's hand or orders.

And Trout put it back up and it disappeared again because such things are not allowed in the Angels clubhouse. And I think you can make too much of this. Socha has had a lot of extremely successful baseball players play under him. And a varying type. It's not like, like, we all think of Socha as being, like, the Eckstein-Erstad guy. But, you know, since then, it hasn't really been like that.

It always had a huge range of players play under him. And even if he's not a players manager, a lot of them have been very happy. So definitely could make too much of it. But man, oh man, Mike Trout. Mike Trout. Mike Trout wants to put a nerf hoop up. And you pull it down. I guess you can say that it sets the example that no one is more, you know, even though it's true that he is more valuable and more important than any other player.

It at least sets that example that no one can get away with something that some other player couldn't get away with. So in that sense, the consistency is good. I wouldn't mind the nerf hoop clearly not affecting Mike Trout's performance. is good. I wouldn't mind the nerf hoop clearly not affecting Mike Trapp's performance. Yeah, you also though do want, even it's a delicate line between not wanting it to look like

some guys get away with more, but also you do want some guys to be more than the other guys. You want some guys to be enforcers or leaders or, you know, veterans in the clubhouse and you need to cultivate that somehow. And I don't know, maybe their thinking was,

well, we've got Albert, and he's that guy, or we've got Weave, and he's that guy, or we've got somebody else, and he's that guy. But I don't know, it sort of seems like Trout fills a role on a team because he's A, so good, and B, just so guileless. He's just this kid. He's still this kid. And I sort of would think that you'd want to cultivate that.

Somebody named Lester's John just followed me, speaking of John Lester. Yeah, no one would mind, I don't think. I don't think you'd see angry comments to the press about how Mike Trout gets to get his nerf hoop. And I don't get to get my locker entertainment. Because everyone knows Mike Trout is amazing. And I don't think they would mind. It's a very, very slight show of favoritism.

So it does, I mean, Mike Socha, it's been a while since Mike Socha had a reputation as a real difference maker as a manager, right? I mean, he had that when there were those classic Socha teams that ran and slapped the ball and did all that. And that was his distinctive style. And not many managers have a distinctive style. And he was one of the ones who did. have a distinctive style and he was one of the ones who did. And since then, I don't know whether his style has changed or the roster has changed around his style, but he hasn't been regarded as anything, right? He hasn't really stood out in any way other than tenure and social face. I don't think of him as a great manager or a poor manager. He's just there.

And maybe he's a little bit opposed to new school stuff if the DePoto example is reflective of that. And that, I would generally say, is not a good thing. So that's maybe a strike against him. And I don't know what the counterbalance to that is other than, I don't know, no major clubhouse issues, I guess. He polices the place all right. I think that, yeah, just real quick. I think that the one thing that I would say is a Socia quality as a manager that is consistent and stands out and has been whatever group he's had has been the case is that Socha is a guy who who keeps his guys from being distracted he takes up so much of the oxygen uh with you know the media and with that kind of uh with the local with the local area

that I think guys mostly feel like he is between them and any distraction. And I think that's probably part of, you know, you might say is part of the Nerf thing is that, you know, he runs his clubhouse in a way that is tight. It is not fun. It is quiet. And he might say that it's no distractions. It's serious.

It's professional. And I think that generally speaking, I don't know enough to say whether guys like playing for him or not, but I think generally guys feel, I don't know enough to say this either, but seem like they're happy in A9. So whether they attribute that to him or not, it does seem like a place where a lot of guys stay for a long time uh and and um and do so with a generally steady uh demeanor they haven't had trouble attracting free agents

you could make a case that it would have been better for them if they had had some trouble attracting free agents but but yeah there's no there's no reluctance to go there so you really have to think that socia if you're arty. So you really have to think that Socia, if you're Artie Moreno, you really have to think that Socia makes your team, either that he makes the team much better, and he's signed for, what, two more seasons after this? He signed for 2018, right? So that's three. Three with an opt-out.

Yeah. So you really have to think that either he makes your team much better or that DePoto didn't at all, or maybe he even made it worse because the, it really seems like the potential for a general manager to make the team better is higher than for the manager. And now, and we always say that you can't even really distinguish between GMs anymore. They're all good. They're all similar in many ways. You could fire your GM and go get another one who's, you know, no discernible drop off. But this might be the exception to that in that they can still get someone. There are not

enough GM jobs to go around. There are lots of people who want to be GMs. They'll get someone who probably is not completely incompetent, but they won't get the cream of the crop. So you could say that if DePoto was one of the smartest, best GMs, and who knows, because all of the mistake moves that the Angels have made have been, you know, attributed to Moreno. So who even knows what DePoto is as a GM? I don't even know. who even knows what what depoto is as a gm i don't even know i i know he likes varied bullpen arm angles that's what i know about him as a general manager you're welcome yeah i know that because of you so i don't even know what a depoto team looks like built from the ground up so i don't know whether he's great he on paper, he's got the resume of a perfect GM. But we, even after seeing him GM for a few years, we don't necessarily know because he was working with these unusual constraints of a meddling owner and a perhaps obstinate and authoritative manager.

So it's hard to say. I don't know. It's definitely something that could be the last of its kind, this whole controversy. It feels like the whole stats versus scouting thing cropping up in a kind of archaic way. But I understand his frustration. Honestly, I bet it's even not. I bet it's not stats versus scouts. No?

I bet it's just he fired mickey hatcher and it just i don't know i would i i guess maybe i don't know it's it's definitely i think it's like the stats versus scouts personalities clashing more than it's so maybe that is the same. And by stats versus scouts, I mean the caricatures that we drew 10 years ago. Right. It's the feel versus the evidence-based. Maybe. I don't even think that it's about feel or evidence-based.

I just think it's the type of personality that tends toward feel and the type of personality that tends toward evidence-based. Those two personalities are clashing constantly in ways that have nothing to do with feel or evidence or baseball. They're just two different types of personalities. And when they go out in the world, they butt up against each other. And they probably butt up against each other in all sorts of other correlative ways. And I just think that it's those, I don't know, I think that if you start with these two people who for whatever

reason didn't work together well and then work outward and go, well, what else do we know about these two people? Oh, well, one of them is into feel and the other is into evidence-based. But it's not the feel and the evidence-based that did it. Originally, it was just the personalities. That's my opinion. I have no insight into this. None.

Don't take this anywhere. It's just like a feel. Yeah. Do you have any evidence base? No. But I know that this is a widespread frustration. I mean, when I was with the Yankees, and this was five or six years ago, so don't take it as a reflection of the current state of the Yankees.

I know nothing about that. But at the time, the coaches would get the famous Joe Girardi binder and, you know, there'd be all these stat reports and everything. And there was always kind of grumbling about, you know, we're we're making we're slaving away over these hot stat reports and the coaches aren't even going to look at these things. Right. And it was always like, how can we how can we make it? How can we present it in such a way that the coaches won't completely ignore it etc so it was the same frustration that it seems like depoto was dealing with and so you can either do what he did like the direct intervention and just go down there and do it yourself which is kind of guaranteed to anger everyone. But I understand the impulse. Or you can live with it and just say, well, we hope that he has other good qualities and these coaches are competent in other ways

and it won't hurt us that much. Or you can fire everyone and hire your own people who will do what you want to do. And that, I guess, wasn't an option for DePoto, or maybe it was with Hatcher, but wasn't with Socia, and Socia was the center of power. So he couldn't do that, and maybe he just wasn't wired to have the live-with-it approach.

And maybe that's fine. Maybe the live-with-it approach is bad, and he should go somewhere where he doesn't have to deal with that. But the direct intervention was probably never a way that was going to work unless there was also a change in personnel. The one other anachronistic thing about this situation is that it's given us the old GM, which is also kind of a phenomenon out of time. Bill Stoneman is 71. Yeah. And his comments were great also.

He's kind of like, we'll see what happens. He's like, oh, this came up so quickly, and it's only a three or four month type of thing, so we'll give it a run. I like Stoneman. I like Stoneman. Stoneman did a great job when he was there, And he did a great job in what was, you know, pretty kind of well-established moneyball era. And he killed it.

So I'd be interested to see how he does. Hopefully I have the energy to do it and my mind still works well enough to do it. I did it for eight years. We'll see how much I've lost over the years. I like the self-deprecation. Okay, so that is it. You can send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com, Facebook group

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