Blind Dayn Perry Discovers Proverbial Nut
Dayn Perry? Dayn Perry? The FoxSports.com Dayn Perry? Surely you jest. Did he actually write a decent article that comes to a very sensible and logical conclusion? Next thing you know, Mike Celzic will reveal his fondness for VORP and FRAA.
Re: the shoving match that took place in the Brewers' dugout between Prince Fielder and Manny Parra last week:
As sure as the smog in Beijing, there's going to be someone who attributes whatever happens to the Brewers in the coming days to the near brawl in the dugout. If they fritter away their lead in the NL Wild Card race and fall hopelessly behind the Chicago Cubs in the Central, then it'll be because there's too much infighting. If they hawk down the Cubs for the division lead or pull away in the Wild Card, then it'll be because Fielder's tantrum "lit a fire" under the Brewers or some such. The underlying assumption — that the shoving match has any bearing on what will happen on the field — is a faulty one.
So here's the thing: if there's any correlation between clubhouse chemistry and winning, then it's either A) so weak as to be unidentifiable, or B) so weak as to be meaningless. Winning baseball is about scoring runs, pitching well, playing defense, staying healthy, and strategizing properly.
I'm as shocked as you are.
19 comments:
Coming up next: Jay Mariotti claims that Ozzie Guillen's rants have no effect on the team's success. Stay tuned, everyone.
As a Red Sahx fan, it's cleuh that yew and mistah Dayn Pehry haven't huhd of a litta situation called Manny bein Manny.
In all seriousness, though, I will say this:
naming a bunch of teams that are infinitely better than the 2008 Brewers (1920's Yankees, 1970's A's) as proof that teams can win despite infighting doesn't do much to PROVE that chemistry isn't important to teams like the 2008 Brewers, who aren't incredibly good.
It ISN'T important, don't get me wrong, but that's a bad way to try to prove it.
It's like saying "pitchers decline in skills as they get older? Tell that to Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson!"
Someone really needs to send this article to Theo Epstein.
I put "chemistry" in the same category as streakiness and clutch hitting. It's not inconcievable that sometimes a group of guys really like each other and jell together or the reverse just like it's probably true that guys get locked in at the plate or on the mound sometimes (or go into terrible slumps where they don't use their skills effectively) and some guys rise to the occasion under pressure than others.
But really all of those things are very small factors that are constantly way overblown in the media.
I think ballplayers are professionals who are motivated by money and know they get paid based on the numbers they put up. Is Parra gonna pitch worse if he doesn't like Fielder? probably not because he probably wants to stay in the big leagues and get a good contract. Talent is always much more important than over-rated intangibles to me.
Anyone who has ever played on a baseball team knows that chemistry doesn't make a ton of difference.
Maybe in the like 1900's when you had guys with relatively small contracts, guaranteed starting positions, no minor league system, and full-blown assholes like Rogers Hornsby and Ty Cobb, you'd get people actually playing bad on purpose to make dudes they hated look worse.
For instance, I read in Al Stump's "Cobb" that there were swirling rumors that guys on Cobb's own team would play worse on purpose to make Cobb's numbers suffer.
That said, I can't imagine that going on today, not with millions of dollars at stake.
The most, the MOST chemistry might do is distract a player slightly. Now, distractions are a very real detriment to successful play, but the kind of player who would be distracted at the plate or on the mound because they don't like Prince Fielder or Manny Ramirez or Barry Bonds would have probably gotten distracted by their wife overcooking the roast the night before, their investment portfolio's flagging performance, or whether the strange bumps on their ding aling might be herpes.
In short: Go Bulls.
It seems to me that the players who get distracted by chemistry issues don't make the majors.
If you regularly get distracted by a teammate you dislike, you aren't even going to succeed in high school baseball, much less the pros. The pros are the pros because they can zone in.
Nuke LaLoosh!
I will remind you all of this long ago memory though... after Carlos Zambrano beat the shit out of Michael Barrett last year, his ERA stood at 5.62 after 73.2 IP and he was 5-5. In his next 12 starts, he went 9-2 with a 1.40 ERA and 0.93 WHIP. Not saying it's not a coincidence, and I agree that chemistry is HUGELY overrated - but I also think for certain hot headed players, it's a factor.
Zambrano not getting along with Barrett probably was a much bigger deal. because the pitcher and catcher have to work together so much so "chemistry" (at least to the point of not hating) each other) seems more important in that case.
I would think though that Parra can pretty much ignore Fielder except for the odd ground ball though so it's not really a similar situation.
Well the question is, when you hate your teammates, or when you get into a big brawl, will it fire you up or distract you?
The thing about Zambrano is that he could have just as easily got distracted by the Barrett incident as fired up, so to a certain extent, Perry's right--it's only an after-the-fact judgment that causes this "team chemistry moment" to have any meaning.
That is to say, there's no doubt that off-the-field and in-the-dugout things affect Zambrano. However, they all affect him in different, seemingly random ways.
If your'e a Cub and you call Zambrano a dickhead, he might go out and pitch a great game to stick it up your ass, or he might implode, as he's done so many times over slight "irritants".
That seems to say that "chemistry" is less about actual chemistry and more about Zambrano being the kind of guy who might go off on a tear or get distracted and suck for any possible reason. (instant messages?)
Clock928 (11:38 PM): hey buddy, you up for some soccer practice?
CarlosZMan (11:39 PM): why de fuck are you on me buddy list
I was thinking that since after that fight the Cubs traded Barrett that getting rid of Barrett might have helped Zambrano and been a good move on their part; Since Zambrano would have to work with Barrett during a game a lot more closely than he would with, say, Derek Lee.
I'm not saying that Zambrano somehow pitched better because he got "fired up" by the fight. That whole idea seems dumb and even more non-sensical to me than the idea of clubhouse fights being a distraction.
Chris - the thing you are saying about Zambrano ties into the whole team chemistry thing - you never know how he's gonna handle a situation with teammates, and that can be dangerous, especially when a player as immensely talented can be as easily and negatively distracted as Zambrano. Same could be said for Manny - you can say "Manny being Manny" has no affect on winning and losing until Manny decides he doesn't feel like playing anymore, and you're best player gives up on the team.
Andrew - if Manny were to lie down on the team and cause them to lose in some very public way how would that look when Manny was trying to negotiate his big new contract in the off-season? He's not stupid, if he does badly and makes the Sox lose he also hurts himself in the long run.
I hated the Manny trade from a Sox standpoint when it was first done but I've come around to see some advantages to it so look at it more neutrally now. But I still think the whole "Manny is a clubhouse cancer and a distraction and we had to trade him because of that!" is BS. Just come out and say you're trading the guy because Bay is younger and cheaper and almost as good at this stage of their respective careers.
But if the Sox had just said to Manny "you're playing here for the rest of the year whether you like it or not" he would have sucked it up and played hard. He wouldn't want to kill his potential free agent value by lying down.
If they'd excercised his option though, that may have been different so they may have pretty much had to let him go at the end of the year. I can't imagine anyone being crazy enough to give Manny the 100 mil over 4 years he wants but Boras has seemingly convinced him he can get that.
andrew--
That's true. But that's an individual player, not "chemistry."
Usually when pundits talk about "chemistry" in re: Manny it's as in: "Manny brings down team chemistry and makes it harder for the team to play well." Not: "Manny's a bad chemistry guy because he will play poorly."
Now, it's debatable whether the knowledge that Manny is deliberately tanking might make other players discouraged and thereby play worse...or whether the knowledge that Zambrano's a hothead and might pitch like shit because he's angry might make his teammates frustrated and thereby play worse. But that's not normally what people mean.
So you're talking about Manny and Z, and how they could, for whatever reason stop playing well. Well, OK, that's totally true, but is it any difference within the team atmosphere from someone like Mike Cameron or Paul Konerko who are prone to really long slumps, even though they're trying really well?
I guess the question regarding chemistry is this:
Is a team less likely to win with Manny quote/unquote deliberately going 3 for 17 or with Paul Konerko trying his hardest and going 3 for 17? Or will the team do exactly the same as long as their on-field production is the same?
Me personally, I think, it will be the same. Zambrano could have found something else to light a fire under his ass than Barrett and gone on a tear, or would have no matter who was managing, or could have no matter who his SS was and whether they've ever gone golfing together.
I'm not necessarily saying it WOULD have...but that it's not any more or less likely based on whether the teammates like/trust each other.
Maybe at P/C or 2B/SS or in the OF where communication issues can be disastrous....but that's about as far as I'm willing to take the issue of chemistry.
Such civilized debate! Maybe it's good that we banned anonymous and Anonymous.
they were just here to rouse rabble.
I don't really agree about the whole "clubhouse chemistry" concept in baseball, and I'm not trying to advocate it - just think that clubhouse cancers can have a negative effect on a team, although nowhere near the extent most sportswriters would have you believe. However, at the same time, we're just a bunch of dudes sitting here commenting on it.
If guys who had spent their entire life involved in professional baseball and around the game felt the same way as us, all time HR leaders with a .480 OPS last season would have been able to find a job working for the major league minimum. Then again, Joe Morgan's been around the game for like 45 years... and well.... yeah.
well..at the same time, players don't make the decisions whether to sign a player that would cause a huge amount of fan backlash and might not even have been healthy enough/out of jail enough to play....
I read a very good article by Bill James on his web site about how it is very unlikely that Bonds would produce anything close to even his 2007 numbers if signed this year and from a purely statistical point of view Bonds isn't such an obvious upgrade to sign him unless a team has a really terrible DH.
He's at the age where he can be expected to decline a lot and decline fast and a lot of his OPS in 2007 came from intentional walks that he got as part of a pathetically weak Giants lineup. No one would pitch around him that much if he signed with a decent team this year so just from that his OBP would take a big hit. Combine that with the inevitible age decline and you could expect his OPS to plummet this year.
And then as Chris said there's the fan backlash aspect of it. A lot of people just hate Bonds so much that they really don't want to be forced to cheer for him and some would even turn against a team that signed him. So I think those are much bigger reasons why he is unemployed than worries about how he would get along with his team mates.
It's also that Bonds, the prototypical "cluubhouse cancer" was on a team that almost won the World Series and made the playoffs a few other times while he was publically feuding with Kent and others. Did he really make the other players on those Giant teams perform so much worse then they would have with Sean Casey/David Eckstein caliber leadership? Surely, that's evidence against clubhouse chemistry being a big deal?
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