The Marlins’ Necessary(?) Disaster

When a team has had four owners in its history and the most committed and consistently dedicated to winning was Jeffrey Loria, you’ve got bigger problems than you realize.

That is the current situation with the Marlins.

Admittedly, the club’s ownership history is pockmarked. Wayne Huizenga built a World Series winner within five years of the club coming into existence and blew it up immediately after that World Series. Huizenga is the same guy who, as Dolphins owner, told Jimmy Johnson that there’s “no money in sports.”

John Henry owned the team for a blink and, with Major League Baseball’s shady help, traded up to buy Red Sox while passing the club along to Loria. Loria won a World Series in 2003. His teams were up and down; he fired and rehired managers like a mini-George Steinberenner; he surrounded himself with sycophants; he pocketed revenue sharing cash; and he at least tried to win here and there. He succeeded in getting the new ballpark built, festooned with gauche art and the gaudiness of a tourist trap Miami nightclub including a collection of star players Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle, Giancarlo Stanton and Hanley Ramirez along with a World Series-winning manager in Ozzie Guillen only to detonate it immediately when the team finished in last place. 

Then Sherman bought the team, installed Derek Jeter as team president and part owner and set about…doing basically the same dysfunctional things his predecessors did. 

The state itself is partially to blame. Florida is not interested in baseball to the degree to make it viable. Even in years where the teams – the Marlins and Rays – have been championship contenders with significant star power, they have never drawn well, almost always finishing at or near the bottom in attendance. The ballparks can’t be blamed for it as the new Marlins stadium has every amenity imaginable and people still don’t go. 

Now, the team is again in turmoil and the park will be empty except for when transplants to the state who are fans of other teams make the trek.  

After Tuesday night’s loss to the Yankees, the Marlins are 1-11. They sit seven games behind the first place Braves in the National League East and 5.5 games out of a Wild Card spot.

It’s April 10th.

Sherman is under siege from the national media. Other teams are waiting for their chance to beat on his beleaguered club while scrutinizing their roster to see who they want when the inevitable housecleaning begins and all veterans are traded off to boost a flagging farm system. Reigning Manager of the Year Skip Schumaker and the club agreed to void his 2025 contract option, all but guaranteeing he’ll be managing elsewhere (the Cardinals) next year. 

Whoever the new manager is, they’re well-advised to not win Manager of the Year. In Miami, it’s been a death knell for every manager who’s won it.

Joe Girardi won it after Loria had fired him.

Don Mattingly won it in 2020 and lasted two more before he and the club mutually agreed to part ways.

Schumaker will be out after 2024 no matter what happens. 

All told, there’s reason to be outraged.

Still, the decisions are grudgingly explainable.  

The optics are undeniably atrocious. Discounting the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, the 2023 Marlins made the playoffs for the first time in two decades. They did so under the stewardship of the dual ceiling-breaker, general manager Kim Ng, who was not only the first female GM but the first Asian-American GM in North American sports history.

Buster Olney tweeted the following after the Marlins lost their first seven games:

Following their first playoff appearance in decades, the Marlins tried to demote GM Kim Ng. She turned that down and left the organization. The Marlins are behind early today and if they lose to the Angels, they'll be 0-7 to start this season.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) April 3, 2024

Technically, of course this is accurate. It is also representative of the faction that neither knows nor cares about the sustainability of the Marlins’ fluky playoff appearance in 2023. Olney understands this. Fans? Some do. Some don’t. Some are looking at it from the perspective of how Bendix plans to run the club based on his past with the Rays. Others are angry at what Bendix plans to do and that the numbers will take precedence to a far greater degree than they would have under Jeter and Ng.

But is Sherman wrong? On the surface, the detractors say the Marlins did it with a limited payroll and a patched-together roster under a female, Asian-American GM and think the team should simply have stayed the course regardless of whether that course was wise or repeatable. 

A playoff appearance at 84-78 in which they were bounced in two straight games by the Phillies when they were last in the National League in runs scored, tenth in on-base percentage, tenth in ERA, 13th in stolen bases and 14th in fielding percentage is not going to happen regularly, if at all. 

Farm system rankings are arbitrary, but every relatively reputable voice labels the Marlins’ system as one of baseball’s worst. Overall, they are not good. They weren’t very good in 2023. So what was Sherman supposed to do? He had discarded all of Jeter’s people and Ng was a Jeter hire. For all the justifiable anger at the team’s horrific start, refusing to throw more money into the thresher is not indicative of being cheap in this case. It’s indicative of knowing the facts. 2023 was not the culmination of four or five years of work as the team took its next step into the upper levels of MLB. Objectively, it was a freak occurrence. 

Could they realistically have made a few more signings or acquisitions and risen from 84 wins to 90?

Forget the top tier of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Aaron Nola or Josh Hader. They didn’t have the goods to trade for Juan Soto. They weren’t even reasonable options for the next level free agents Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman or Sonny Gray. They did not even make a cursory effort to retain Jorge Soler. 

Where were the improvements coming from?  

After restructuring the team’s operations and rebuilding the farm system, Jeter expected there to be financial flexibility to make drastic improvements to the big league roster. They were not fulfilled and he left. With Jeter gone, Ng’s fate was sealed no matter what happened on the field and that was proven when Sherman decided to hire a president of baseball operations to be her boss. Essentially, she was fired because there was no way she was going to accept that power structure in which she had none of the power. For her, being an underling just happy to be invited to the party ended 15 years ago. It’s beneath her. She declined the mutual option in which she would have been a lame duck and undoubtedly discarded after 2024 had she stayed. That’s what Sherman wanted. 

Bendix arrived with the sabermetric pedigree and the 15 years of working for the Rays. He is not looking at it from a player’s perspective as Jeter was. Nor did he claw his way up from the very bottom after 30 years of toil in various roles as Ng did.

Sherman was looking for someone who might be able to achieve success under the mandated payroll constraints and found that in Bendix. The Jeter faction is a memory. Given the financial realities the owner put in place and are legitimate based on their market, you can unload on them because they’re clearly tanking, but you cannot say they’re wrong to do it when considering the circumstances. 

These Mets Won’t Fight

As I begin this post at precisely 9:55 a.m. on Sunday, March 31, it’s possible – though extraordinarily unlikely given the history – that by the time many of you read it after this afternoon’s Mets-Brewers game scheduled to start at 1:40 p.m., the Mets will finally have stood up for themselves and begun to shed the well-earned reputation as a flaccid laughingstock.

In the first two games of the 2024 season, the Mets are already justifying the widespread perception throughout baseball that they can easily be pushed around and will meekly and perfunctorily stand up for themselves without actions to back up their talk. This is not a recent phenomenon.

Jeff McNeil’s complaint about Rhys Hoskins’s slide was not without merit. The circumstances muddy the waters in determining who’s at fault. Hoskins did slide late and collapsed McNeil’s knee. McNeil seemed to have lost his flow for the attempted double play when he tried to transfer the ball from his glove to hand. The screaming match that followed was indicative of what the Mets have become and why the rest of MLB mocks and humiliates them at every opportunity. 

Hoskins was perplexed and dismissive of McNeil’s complaints. It was not a Chase Utley dirty play. For Hoskins, a player who lost his entire 2023 season when he blew out his knee, it’s highly unlikely he was doing anything but trying to break up the double play. Still, if McNeil was mad enough to fight, then fight. Instead, he shouted and gestured, both benches and bullpens emptied and nothing happened.

In the aftermath, the keyboard warriors thundered on X, Facebook and in blog posts as to how the Mets “had” to respond. The ancient “it’s time to retire” scribes retreated to the team’s glory days as to what this team should do in response. These are the same people who’ve never been in a fight in their lives and are staring into their bathroom mirrors playing “baseball brawl guy.” 

“Drill Hoskins!”

“The Mets need to stand up for themselves!”

“Enough of this!”

“Ray Knight would’ve…”

And of course, as if it was preordained, the Mets yapping resulted in Hoskins shoving it completely up their asses by going 3 for 4 with a home run, 4 RBI and more emasculating right in their faces. Only late in the game did Mets pitcher Yohan Ramirez throw behind Hoskins sparking more screaming and accusations, but no fisticuffs. 

Big deal. 

In the years since the Mets’ late-1980s badassery when anyone who looked at them wrong would wind up on the wrong side of a Ray Knight punch or a Kevin Mitchell chokehold, the organization has desperately tried to get back to that two-fisted “mess with one of us, you mess with all of us” attitude that had them feared and hated throughout baseball. That entire roster was not just filled with gamers who wanted dirt on their uniforms and would do literally anything they needed to do to win, but it was filled with guys who could legitimately fight. In addition to Knight and Mitchell, Darryl Strawberry was one of baseball’s most intimidating figures. Even mild-mannered types like Tim Teufel and Gary Carter wouldn’t hesitate to drop the gloves when challenged. The first base coach/batting instructor Bill Robinson essentially took on the entire Pirates roster and started a brawl after accusing Pirates starter Rick Rhoden of cheating.

This filtered down from manager Davey Johnson, through the coaches, to the team leaders Keith Hernandez and Carter down to the last guy on the roster. “We are not your buddy and we want you to hate us because we’re gonna kick your asses on the field. If you got a problem with it, we’ll kick your asses in general.” 

This team?

Pete Alonso is built like a truck but the one time the Mets finally fought back after getting drilled and buzzed repeatedly, he got thrown to the ground by Cardinals first base coach Stubby Clapp who’s about half the size of Alonso.

He got thrown to the ground by a guy named “Stubby.” 

It’s ironic that the Mets are wearing a memorial patch to the late Bud Harrelson when their behavior as a team is diametrically opposed to what Harrelson would have done and did when, in the 1973 National League Championship Series against the Reds, he challenged Pete Rose when Rose slid hard into him. Rose outweighed Harrelson by about 35 pounds. A massive and extended brawl ensued with players throwing punches instead of barking at each other, issuing limp threats and making crying gestures.  

McNeil railed at Hoskins and…did nothing.

The benches and bullpens emptied…and nothing happened.

The Mets asked for a review of the slide to see if it should have been called a double play for violating the slide rule…and lost.

They then complained to the league. 

Terrifying. 

This is not a singular experience. The Mets’ reputation throughout baseball is that they’re soft. They were constantly thrown at in 2022-23 and did next-to-nothing to retaliate or to charge the mound and make clear that it would either stop or there would be consequences. 

The Braves laugh at them. The entire league ridicules them. And they asked for it. Apart from a few random years under Terry Collins and Dallas Green, the Mets – particularly during the Bobby Valentine years – were known for not showing a willingness to fight when necessary. Former manager Buck Showalter adheres to old-school values and presumably would not have minded if a player took the initiative and charged the mound during his two years at the helm. Carlos Mendoza? His first spring training and start to the year indicate he’s another empty uniform automaton who’s going to do what he’s told by the front office and is unsure of how to respond to these direct challenges to his club’s manhood. 

Many in the media, the blogosphere and on social media are bellowing from the rooftops that the Mets just need to start a fight. For them, there’s a lack of understanding as to what built those mid-1980s teams in the first place. For the most part, they were young and reacted emotionally; they grew up together and had a bond that was crafted through the minors and making the innocent climb to championship contention; they were akin to a street gang in a close-knit neighborhood where outsiders were ill-advised to venture wittingly or otherwise. 

It’s certainly possible that Saturday, March 30^th was the day the Mets finally decided enough was enough. It’s also possible that aliens will land at Citi Field at 3 p.m. and kidnap Mr. Met to be their new deity.

Considering the team’s history, nothing is going to happen. If it does, it will be for show and not as a show of force. Until they bring in people who have that intense competitiveness within them and are willing to stand up for each other, they’ll continue to be the joke they are and teams will repeatedly shove them around with impunity. 

Russell Wilson, Sean Payton and the Broncos – the Objective Truth

Amid the mockery of the Broncos cutting Russell Wilson and absorbing the $85 million salary cap hit, several factors are being glossed over:

·      The current team ownership did not own the team when the trade was made

·      The current head coach and de facto GM was not the head coach and de facto GM when the trade was made

·      Retaining him for financial purposes or to save face only makes matters worse

·      The money is gone regardless of whether he’s there or not

You can find the gory details of the trade itself anywhere, but the Denver Post tallied up the draft capital the Broncos surrendered to the Seahawks to acquire Wilson here.

While it’s easy and cheap to tear into the trade as a horrific gaffe – which it was – the details are conveniently shunted to the side. The Broncos franchise had only just gone on the market in February 2022. Wilson was acquired on March 16, 2022. The team was officially sold to Walmart heir Rob Walton in August 2022. They inherited Wilson much like they inherited the money to buy the team. They also inherited coach Nathaniel Hackett and the football operations staff.   

The timing played a large role in the decision to cut Wilson. Once Walton took over, the 2022 team was largely set. This is not unusual when there is a new ownership in place and there was little they could do to make substantive changes immediately. They needed to live with what they had and hope for the best as they looked forward.

As the Broncos’ 2022 season unraveled almost immediately with Hackett’s ineptitude and Wilson’s seeming indifference, it was clear that the owners were going big game hunting with their new head coach. That was Sean Payton.  

Payton is ostensibly functioning as its football czar. Nothing football related is going to happen without his imprimatur or he wouldn’t have taken the job. Had the Broncos told him that he needed to make it work with Wilson because of the negative implications of cutting him and swallowing the money and ridicule, the odds are that a coach in as heavy demand as Payton would have politely declined and waited out the Cowboys, the Chargers or some other more appealing job where he’d get the power he felt he needed and the money and contract security to do what he felt was right.

Historically, Wilson is not ideal for Payton’s offense. In his heyday with the Seahawks, Wilson relied on a brutal and punishing smashmouth running game, primarily with Marshawn Lynch. He used his legs to improvise and took deep shots down the field. They had a punishing defense.

None of this is indicative of Payton’s history. Drew Brees, Payton’s quarterback with the Saints, stayed in the pocket and stuck to the game plan because he and Payton were aligned in what they wanted to do and what Brees could efficiently execute. His running backs were of the Reggie Bush, Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara ilk who are just as dangerous catching the ball as they are running it.

The difference between what Wilson did with the Seahawks and what Payton did with the Saints are not only divergent playbooks, but they’re not on the same planet. What was the team supposed to do? Just continue forward by ordering Payton to keep Wilson and figure it out? That’s not fair to Wilson or Payton.

This past season was indicative of how the forced marriage was going to proceed. After a 1-5 start, Payton patched it together but keeping games close, constraining Wilson from his usual freelancing and limiting the number of throws he made, pulling games out late. They rallied to 8-9 and were in the playoff race until late in the season – truly a remarkable coaching job.

Toward the end of the season, Wilson was benched. According to the club, it was a football decision. According to Wilson, it was because he refused to renegotiate his contract by removing the injury guarantee that would pay him $37 million in 2025. Wilson would have been a fool to do so. Payton and the Broncos are insulting the intelligence of any reasonable person by saying they felt they would get a “spark” offensively from journeyman Jarrett Stidham.

The reality is that they were cutting Wilson and they wanted to save as much money and limit their exposure when they did. The alternative was to continue down the road with a quarterback the football boss didn’t want and didn’t suit his offense while compelling a new owner to pay for past mistakes and ignore what their handpicked football boss wanted.

It’s become trendy for sports franchises to be viewed in business terms. In that context, the Wilson contract was a sunk cost. They did as much as they could to mitigate what they needed to pay him by benching him and did what everyone with a brain knew they were going to do when they cut him. Payton will find a quarterback he wants whether that’s Trey Lance, Justin Fields, someone from the draft or a name no one has considered but has caught the coach’s eye. Wilson can still play and will get a new team among the Steelers, Falcons, Raiders or Vikings and have the offense tailored to his strengths. The ridicule ignores these facts out of convenience, ignorance or both.

What people are missing about Edwin Diaz and the WBC

The reaction to Edwin Diaz tearing his patellar tendon during the World Baseball Classic when celebrating a win for Puerto Rico over the Dominican Republic rapidly split into visceral partisanship. On one side were the rabid WBC fans; on the other were the fans who were either indifferent to the spectacle or hated it outright. Diaz’s injury became fodder for rampant logical fallacies; self-justifications; and a confirmation bias about the tournament itself. This is a rare instance where there is no “right” or “wrong.” Still, there is a disconnect between what happened to Diaz and how people reacted to it.

I have never been a fan of the WBC. I think it’s a silly, manufactured product masquerading as an event designed to take on the pageantry and status of the FIFA World Cup, the Olympics and other longstanding competitions where players at the top of their professional leagues compete for their country against other countries. For me, more than any undertones of a marketing scam or meaninglessness of it, the timing was the peak of its absurdity.

It’s played during spring training. Players leave their teams and join their country’s team. Often, their “country” isn’t even their country. They’re allowed to play based on which country they have a thin shred of a connection to – think the third cousin once removed was a quarter British so they can play for Great Britain. Or they play for a team from a country that is not really their own but for that minuscule drop of blood, they can play. This while they wouldn’t make their actual home country’s team. Marcus Stroman played for the U.S. in 2017 and is playing for Puerto Rico this time. What sense does it make? 

They’re going one-hundred percent in March, playing to win, treating the games as if they’re postseason contests for a team that is not paying them. Repeatedly, we’ve heard players say that winning the WBC for their home country means more to them than winning a World Series. I’m sure owners love hearing that. 

How about this? If they love it so much, tell them that if they get injured playing in it, their contract is voided. See how much they love it then as their agents, families and everyone else who somehow benefits from their lucrative paychecks forms a human shield to stop their plane to the WBC venue from taking off.

Before Diaz, there were no major injuries stemming from the WBC since its inception. The argument many made was that his injury – a non-baseball one where he was hurt celebrating instead of pitching – could have happened anywhere. The point being ignored is that it didn’t happen “anywhere.” It happened on the field wearing a uniform that said Puerto Rico instead of Mets and he’s lost for the season. 

Players are hurt off the field or suffer fluke on-field injuries all the time. Chris Sale flew over the handlebars of his bicycle and broke his wrist; Jim Lonborg hurt his knee skiing; Vince Coleman was run over by an automatic tarpaulin and lost for the 1985 World Series; Jeff Kent broke his wrist riding a dirt bike and lied about it saying he slipped while washing his truck; Jerry Blevins fell off a curb and re-broke his arm as he was set to return from the previous break; Duaner Sanchez blew out his shoulder as a passenger in a cab accident; Aaron Boone blew out his knee playing basketball. It absolutely does happen. 

Had something similar occurred with Diaz, the team and the fans would have been as angry and disappointed, but it would not have led to the overridingly irate response that the WBC was to blame. The tournament is not to blame, but the reality that it is a sanctioned event from MLB with clubs having limited control over their players blurs the line between what MLB deems as beneficial for its product and the employer-employee relationship.

Much was made of the announcement that the Mets and owner Steve Cohen would not be on the hook for Diaz’s salary for the time he spends on the disabled list after knee surgery. That’s very nice, but do you really think Cohen cares about Diaz’s $21.25 million salary? Or does he want the pitcher who finished ninth in the National League Cy Young Award voting in 2022, was just signed to a five-year, $102 million contract and was expected to be a key component for a World Series run?

A common sentiment from those avidly defending the WBC is the quality of play, fan enthusiasm, the excitement it has engendered and the massive ratings. Again, all true. This morphed into the preposterous argument that if you dislike the WBC, you’re not a “real” baseball fan. 

There are rules to being a fan? Ok. Here’s a rule. Fans have teams they support and they prioritize their team’s success over a country winning a tournament that I defy you to name who won in any of the previous times it was held. Owners of MLB teams are paying their players a lot of money to work for them; to play and help their team win. 

Then there were the snide responses when a player was hurt in a spring training game. “Oh, so are we supposed to cancel spring training now?”

No. But a player getting injured in a spring training game when he’s trying to get his timing down and get ready for the regular season while playing for his employing team differs greatly from a player getting injured in the WBC. In spring training, Diaz was being managed and overseen by Yadier Molina whose mandate was to win for Puerto Rico. At Port St. Lucie, he was being overseen by Buck Showalter and his staff whose mandate is to get the team ready to play from April through, they hope, October. 

See the difference?

Teams were lauded for treating their operation as ruthless businesspeople with a litany of books about Billy Beane, Theo Epstein, the Rays and the Astros. Now looking at it as a business means you don’t love the game?

I do not like the WBC. I do not watch the WBC. Am I less of a fan because I was concerned that exactly what happened would happen as one of the stars for the team I support – the Mets – was injured while off and away from the Mets’ supervision? No. It makes me rational in that I view it from an employer-employee perspective and said employee became injured taking part in an irrelevant competition away from his high-paying job and it’s having a negative impact on the Mets and the game in general for no acceptable reason whatsoever.

The Astros, Jeff Luhnow and misplaced values

In reading Winning Fixes Everything by Evan Drellich, the Houston Astros’ corporate culture is exposed as a toxic time bomb. The organization’s focus on getting to its desired destination regardless of the human cost is facilitated by owner Jim Crane, implemented by general manager Jeff Luhnow, and put in action by the obsequious underlings whose primary function is to serve the needs of the master.

The players? Eh. Who cares what they think?

Luhnow comes across as a truly terrible person — the embodiment of putting results over humanity; achieving one’s objectives no matter how it is accomplished; shifting blame to others; and using gray areas to shield oneself from the negative while taking full credit for the positive.

Despite that, it’s difficult to cast all the blame on him for doing what he was hired to do. He was hired to do a job and he did that job. There are plenty of horrible people in sports. There are worse people than Luhnow could ever be in the corporate sphere, politics and society in general. Does that alter how he should be perceived when assessing his tenure with the Astros and his work in baseball in general?

Maybe it should.

Luhnow was a self-promoter who was flexible in accurately relaying what he did and didn’t do.

But is that any different from Billy Beane or Theo Epstein?

His treatment of those who were below him on the food chain took the tone of a Terminator-like machine that did not care about humanity in the quest to achieve its mission. There was no concept of baseball and people at a cellular level, exemplified with his attempts to change how relief pitchers were used and not understanding or caring that they’re human beings who might not be able to do the things he was asking them to do and outright ordering his staff to implement no matter the physical toll it exerted and careers it damaged. His views came across as someone who had never watched a baseball game without a spreadsheet in front of him as if simply watching would somehow impact his ability to analyze.

His personality was a significant problem that likely superseded how he did his job. Invariably, he is shown to be condescending, arrogant and cold-hearted. That might work in an industry where he’s running a website or consulting with fellow corporate types who couldn’t care less if a guy could tell or take a joke, but it cannot work in a people-oriented industry that is directly in the spotlight like sports.

As time passed and the club came closer and closer to its goal, the weeding out of people who had some semblance of decency put the amoral acolytes in greater positions of power. David Stearns was seen as a positive influence on the club and once he left for the Milwaukee Brewers, the likes of Brandon Taubman took on a greater role. Taking his cue from Luhnow, the ends always justified the means. It was a survival of the fittest with less honor. Most of Luhnow’s edicts took on the tone of threats. If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll fire you.

There were instances where Luhnow was unfairly castigated. The Brady Aiken draft selection where the high school pitcher’s medical reports showed him to be too great an injury risk turned out to be accurate. With former first overall pick Mark Appel, the pitcher was struggling mightily in the minor leagues and the front office brought him to Minute Maid Park so the big league staff could have a look at him to try and find solutions. Not telling manager Bo Porter about it? Irritating journeyman major leaguers who were not going to be around when the team was set to contend was somehow a problem? He was under no obligation to tell anyone anything. Could he have? Sure. Was it an issue that he didn’t? No.

Regarding his changes to how players were drafted and developed, it’s not as if there was already a successful formula in place that could not be questioned. The number of players drafted and signed as amateurs who make an impact in the majors is frighteningly low. There is nothing wrong with making fundamental changes to a system that doesn’t work all that well to begin with.

The real problems for Luhnow arose when he tried to cover up these relatively minor disputes by asking people to lie outright or commit lies by omission. Going back to Watergate and beyond, the cover-up is always worse than the crime itself.

This extended to what eventually got Luhnow fired by the Astros and blackballed by baseball: the sign-stealing program.

He claims to not have known about it. Absurd given how his thumb was on every aspect of baseball operations.

Even after they were caught, the club continued its rampant prevarications, childlike “everyone was doing it” shrugs and passing the buck.

In his initial portrayal long before he became a star GM and later pariah, he was cast as a pure outsider who entered the game as its foundation was being shaken by new methods in which to analyze players and construct teams. In truth, he used various connections through his work at McKinsey and as an entrepreneur — along with family links — to be interviewed and hired by the St. Louis Cardinals.

With the Cardinals, he was viewed as an interloper with a pipeline to the owner like he was a nepotism case. To longtime baseball people like then-Cardinals GM Walt Jocketty and manager Tony La Russa, he was the owner’s mole who was untouchable because of that connection. Unlike an owner’s son or daughter who was installed in a key position in an organization, he was just some corporate asshole who sold cat toys and was parachuting in to tell lifelong baseball people how to do their jobs.

From his perspective and holding to the McKinsey modus operandi, he was hired to accomplish what the owner wanted. The idea that McKinsey and other prominent consulting firms are giving evenhanded analysis is idiotic. They are hired to achieve what ownership, shareholders and others in an entity’s positions of power want. The end result is detailed and they need to find a way to get there while providing information that justifies it. They want to downsize by firing 25,000 people? Ok. Here’s how you do it. They want to reduce costs by sending fewer advance scouts on the road or find ways to maximize the MLB draft capital by using financial sleight of hand? Here you go.

In short, he did his job as he was asked to do it.

After joining the Astros, he rebuilt the team in the image he wanted with financial constraints, brutal fact-based decision-making and turning baseball into a microcosm of the corporate world that people watch sports to escape. A clash was inevitable.

The success bred increased ruthlessness and the refusal to be questioned. More and more, the GM isolated himself by either willful ignorance or by simply not being there. This was not solely based on the sign-stealing scandal that led to his ouster. It was the case with his strangely timed vacations to Mexico, notably when the Aiken signing deadline was upon them and Aug. 31, 2017 when the club was trying to get Justin Verlander before the waiver trade deadline. He put assistants in charge to oversee both key moments and no explanation as to why he needed vacations then has ever been presented.

I wasn’t there and didn’t know about this.

This epitomizes plausible deniability, no matter how preposterous it is on its face.

There are endless villains large and small in the Astros’ tale.

Manager AJ Hinch seems overwhelmed; reluctant to openly challenge the veteran players, especially about the sign-stealing operation; and afraid to speak out beyond a certain limit due to his past managerial failure with the Arizona Diamondbacks and that he was well aware of how the Astros operated in that the manager was largely irrelevant to the point of being a near inconvenience that Luhnow needed to hire one at all.

Bench coach Alex Cora comes across as insubordinate and a borderline alcoholic lunatic nearly getting into physical confrontations with Hinch and broadcaster Geoff Blum.

Brent Strom is caught outright lying to Cora when Hinch had been ejected and Cora was managing in his stead.

Brandon Taubman is cast as Luhnow’s Sith apprentice. At age 30 and immersed in a corporate culture that was indifferent to people behaving like douchebags if it produced the desired results, it encouraged it. He treats people horrifically and gets himself fired for his verbal attack on female media members by defending the team’s ill-advised trade for Roberto Osuna after Osuna had been charged with physically abusing the mother of his son.

Is “just doing what I was told” justified? For most, it sort of was as everyone involved — save for Luhnow and Taubman — now has a job in baseball.

Carlos Beltran is now a special assistant to the GM with the Mets, the same team (albeit under different ownership) that fired him as manager before he steered a game after the Astros scandal exploded.

Hinch is the manager of the Detroit Tigers and now has power exponential to what he had in Houston.

Cora is the manager of the Boston Red Sox, rehired by the club after being fired in light of the Red Sox own sign-stealing scandal following its 2018 World Series win.

Mike Elias, Sig Mejdal, Mike Fast, Kevin Goldstein — all assistants under Luhnow who were servile in acquiescing to his bullying wishes are in baseball in varying capacities.

The key question about the Astros is whether it was what they did under Crane and Luhnow that was the problem or the way they did it? Had they been more gentlemanly in their viciously pursuing their goals, had a system in place that prevented going so far over the lines of propriety, treated people with respect and not been so despised throughout the industry, would this have been as huge a story and would Luhnow still have a job somewhere in baseball?

Purely transactional relationships are unsustainable for the long term. In sports, people have generally known each other for decades or have mutual friends and acquaintances. There’s an unspoken bond of trying to beat the competition without trying to fuck them. Even hard core criminals have lines they won’t cross. A clear example is the scene in Casino when Nicky Santoro pushes back on Ginger Rothstein’s cavalier entreaty to kill her husband Sam “Ace” Rothstein. Stone cold gangster Santoro responds angrily, “I know the guy thirty-five years, I’m gonna fuckin’ whack ‘im for you?!?”

Would someone like Luhnow do the same?

The Astros, under Luhnow, abandoned the pretense of any honor whatsoever. If you essentially tell your underlings that they can not only behave like dicks to fulfill their mandates but will be rewarded for it, what’s going to happen?

Even Crane, whose history in business is pockmarked with outrageous behavior and allegations of wrongdoing, accepted the Astros’ previous methods were wrong by hiring high-quality people with sterling reputations within baseball like Dusty Baker.

Ironically, of all the cast members in this saga, it’s Taubman who seems to have truly changed in the aftermath by taking part in domestic violence awareness programs and personally apologizing to the reporter over coffee after meeting by happenstance.

Part of the blame certainly falls on outside influences like the fans and media who have stoked the partisanship between those who adhere to stats above all else and old-school baseball observers who trust their eyes and history. Every executive is seemingly trying to have a Moneyball-style book written about them and this affects their behaviors no matter who is run over to get to the destination.

None of that excuses the Astros and Luhnow, but it is useful to look at it from a different perspective and ask why was this able to happen in the first place.

Luhnow still denies wrongdoing. He sued the club to be paid his contract after his termination. He’s never getting a job in baseball again. He sought to radically update the game to suit his aesthetic. And he did. The result was him winning a championship, showing that reaching the logical conclusion is about as good a thing as acknowledging one’s mortality, and getting himself canonized as the change agent who exemplifies what not to do.

Like his entry into baseball, he achieved his goal. Just not the way he envisioned. It’s not like he didn’t ask for it.

On Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Apart from Spider-Man: No Way Home, Marvel’s outings since the conclusion of Phase Three have been niche films with reviews that ranged from lukewarm to outright negative. This was inevitable. As evidenced by Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the transition from one blockbuster storyline to another is a difficult one. Without the major characters who are easily recognizable even by non-fans — Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, the Hulk, Spider-Man — and without A-list stars as attractions for ancillary characters like Ant-Man, Marvel is essentially in a retool mode where it is simply trying to bridge one phase to the next without alienating its hard-core “I’ll watch anything Marvel produces” fan.

Those who are responding negatively to Quantumania have lamented its relentless CGI, characters brought from the back to the front, difficult to follow narratives and absence of clear-cut resolution. Bluntly, those who enjoy Marvel and know these characters will take affront at the criticism, but looking at it from a different perspective gives clarity to the negativity. 

I have never seen one episode of Game of Thrones. If you dropped me in the middle of season three, episode five (this is random; don’t look it up to nitpick), I would mock the sets, the script and that I have no clue who any of those people are, nor do I care about them. The same can be said for any long-term, interlocked project where the minutiae is a large part of the entertainment in recognizing minor characters. This is what Marvel has relied on since it started the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man in 2008. 

The films and television shows of Phase Four have been gateway films to the next phase. This is where Marvel needs to regain its footing or run the risk of hitting a wall from which it cannot recover its lost luster. In the long run, small Easter eggs that were dropped in Black Widow, Shang-Chi, Eternals, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder and Wakanda Forever were the entire purpose of the films. Had they not been part of the MCU with a guaranteed, built-in audience even if the film itself was objectively atrocious, they might not have been made as standalone films at all, let alone at the massive budgets allotted. 

Marvel’s current predicament can be compared to a sports dynasty that is moving on from its core group of players and integrating newly developed talent to the roster without burning it to the ground. Comparing what Marvel is doing with how erstwhile Marvel star director James Gunn is rebooting DC and making difficult decisions such as removing Henry Cavill from his role as Superman, apparently moving on from Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman and torching Zack Snyder’s beautiful cinematography and ponderous plots for the greater good. DC is tearing it down to expansion team-level status while Marvel is trying to remain competitive until it gets to the next phase of star-level characters ninety-five percent of the planet recognizes by name. 

Quantumania is entertaining. The characters and actors are likable, but they’re basically furniture — there to complete the decor. Jonathan Majors’ introduction as Kang shows a charismatic, weirdly likable and profoundly dangerous antagonist who will be a key who Fantastic Four, X-Men and the new roster of the Avengers (however it is comprised) must confront. Still, the criticism — when looked at on its own merits — is fully justified as viewers who parachute in without prior knowledge of the comic books and an intermittent interest in the prior films wonder why there are so many characters that look like rejects from the Star Wars cantina scene, the Terminator, Ed Wood and a really bad acid trip. 

As Marvel moves forward with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Marvels, Captain America: New World Order (apparently without Steve Rogers/Chris Evans), Thunderbolts and Blade, it must-must-must make sure that it nails Phase Six starting with Deadpool 3 and Hugh Jackman entering the MCU as Wolverine in what one would hope is more than a brief cameo. To ensure Marvel returns to its glory, the studio cannot miss as it finally gets its hands on Fantastic Four and has the opportunity to reboot the cornerstone team that was a critical piece of Marvel Comics from its early days. Next come the Avengers taking on Kang and a highly-anticipated big screen version of Secret Wars.

Like many worthwhile destinations, getting there is the problem. 

Phase Five has not been a disaster. It does show hallmarks of Marvel fatigue predominately because the backups are being asked to carry the team and have run into the catch-22 of showing precisely why they were backups to begin with.

How Steve Cohen can lure Theo Epstein to the Mets

By now, it’s clear that Mets owner Steve Cohen has no intention of keeping the current front office structure in place. Initially, when he got control of the team, Sandy Alderson was brought back as team president to oversee the relatively young baseball operations crew led by Jared Porter and Zack Scott with the intention that he stay on for a relatively finite period before receding to the background as a consultant once Porter took over as president of baseball operations, chief baseball officer or whatever title they decided to use.

Alderson’s return was comparable to his first tenure with the Mets, albeit under radically different circumstances. As the Wilpons’ finances were in free fall after the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme came to light, Alderson’s hiring was tantamount to him serving as a bankruptcy trustee to keep the Mets from becoming untenable – like a failed state – and needing to be taken over by Major League Baseball itself as was the case with the Montreal Expos and the Frank McCourt Los Angeles Dodgers.

The current circumstance is exactly opposite with Cohen having enough money to buy every single sports franchise in the New York Metro area and other owners fearful of him burying them financially. Alderson’s presence was a calming influence since they knew about his aversion to overspending and he was in line with keeping costs reasonable. This was not an overt Quantum Leap-style reboot with Alderson getting the chance to do the things he wanted to do under the Wilpons but couldn’t because of financial constraints and meddling from Jeff Wilpon.

Now, as Cohen prepares to find a leader to steer the club, the obvious choice is Theo Epstein. Despite his flaws, there is no doubt that hiring Epstein is about as close to a guaranteed championship as an executive can get. Still, Epstein has been coy and relatively consistent in that he prefers his current role as a consultant to MLB and is, ironically, trying to undo much of what he did in turning the game into a slogging, dull endeavor where players are treated as fungible entities whose attributes are plugged into an arcane formula and spit out a desired result sans personality, nuance and strategic preference. It is largely due to Epstein that managers are no longer allowed to have “their” way of play.

There’s no Whitey Herzog who wanted speed, defense and aggression; there’s no Earl Weaver with his three-run home runs and deep starting pitching pushed to throw 275 innings; there’s no Billy Martin with his in-your-face style and tightly wound personality always seeming on the verge of punching whoever got in his path; there’s no Tommy Lasorda sitting at the corner of the dugout cursing up a storm, singing the faux narrative of bleeding Dodger Blue and treating his team like a fiefdom in which he was the Emperor.

The only holdout is Tony La Russa and he’s only managing the White Sox because owner Jerry Reinsdorf hired him personally.

These are all factors in the allure Cohen can sell to get Epstein to take charge of the Mets.

The selling points are as follows:

HE CAN FIX WHAT HE THINKS HE BROKE

Epstein seemed surprised and chagrined that the “children” he sired took his strategies and brought them to its logical conclusion and simultaneously created a rote way in which every team was run from top to bottom.

He will have the freedom to run the team as he wants and put together an organization that fits in with what he’s trying to change in his current role working for MLB.

MONEY

There’s talk that for it to be worthwhile for Epstein to take over any club, he’d need an ownership stake. Owners are generally unwilling to just give away something so valuable. Often, it’s a negotiating ploy to increase the guaranteed money in the contract. It’s doubtful that it’s a deal breaker and if it is, he’s only reluctantly taking the job to begin with if he gets it.

Cohen can offer him a limitless amount of money to take the job.

THE LONG GAME

Appealing to a sense of history would not work with Epstein. He’s already made history. He’s going to end up in the Hall of Fame. What might appeal to him is the chance to run the team the way he always envisioned. One of the challenges he faced with the Red Sox was not building a championship team – he did that in year two. The challenge was to maintain. His goal was to create a sustainable operation that provided a pipeline of talent and was backed up by money within a reasonable budget. There would be lean years, but that was an accepted part of the strategy. Unfortunately, others didn’t see it that way and greed took hold.

After one championship in 2004 and breaking the Curse of the Bambino, he received one free year in 2005. By 2006, as he sought to maintain his farm system and rejected in-season trades to go all-in for another title, ownership, the media and the city of Boston grew restless. He was then forced to go for it in 2007. Winning that second title might have done more harm than good for his extended blueprint and culminated in the collection of mismatched stars to try and match the Yankees move for move, an indifferent clubhouse, a team of mercenaries and a complete collapse that precipitated his departure to the Cubs.

With the Cubs, he had a full-blown rebuild in front of him and turned the team around within four years, winning the championship in five. It looked as if he felt he’d accomplished his mission and was already looking toward the next venture. Epstein himself stated that he knows he’s better at building than maintaining. Perhaps that’s something he’d like to fix.

THERE IS A GOOD FOUNDATION IN PLACE

The Mets do not need to be gutted. Already, there are foundational pieces in Pete Alonso, Francisco Lindor and Jacob deGrom. The farm system is not overly deep, but is top-heavy with players who are already being categorized as potential MLB All-Stars in Ronny Mauricio and Francisco Alvarez. For the 2022 draft, he will be armed with the 11th overall pick as compensation for the club failing to sign Kumar Rocker. If the 2021 season ended today, the Mets would pick 14th as well. That gives him infinite options.

With the money to spend – even if Cohen prefers to remain under the luxury tax – he can do essentially whatever he wants to build a title-contender and would have the ability to do it in a way where he does not need to mortgage the future as he did in his final years with the Red Sox and Cubs.

***

This is not to say that Cohen should simply give Epstein whatever he wants. The problem with hiring Epstein has become what NFL teams faced when they hired Bill Parcells. They could deal with the ego, the pettiness, the mind games, the desire for more money and control. What they always wondered was when he would up and leave and it was an annual waiting game. This is the same challenge the Jaguars will face – probably very quickly – with Urban Meyer. His wanderlust, greed and the self-imposed stress will limit his tenure and there might come a day sooner than anyone thinks where he up and resigns only to take a major college job three years later and start the process again.

Epstein has talked about situations growing stale and that front offices need to change to get fresh ideas. That’s fine, but if Cohen is giving Epstein the power, money and opportunity, then he needs a commitment that Epstein won’t decide one day he’s had enough and leave or, worse, do what he did with the Cubs and imply he’s going to leave a year or two before he finally does.

That aside, there is much for Cohen to offer and if Epstein wants his original vision to become reality, he’d need to consider it very seriously.

Why Brodie Van Wagenen might succeed as Mets GM

As the Mets move toward the finish line in their search to replace Sandy Alderson as GM, reports are stating that Brodie Van Wagenen, Doug Melvin, Kim Ng and Chaim Bloom are receiving second interviews. It has been a ponderous process for the Mets with rumors, innuendo and the familiar mocking the club must endure as a matter of course.

The inevitable questions about control, inherited staff, financial parameters and how much influence Jeff Wilpon will have will continue regardless of whom the Mets hire.

A total outsider like Van Wagenen might be viewed as a blatant attempt on the part of the Mets to reinvent the wheel, but it does make some sense and could succeed.

Let’s look at why.

Understanding both sides.

Any good lawyer will know how to make the other side’s argument. As a longtime player agent and co-head of CAA Sports’ baseball division, Wagenen has relationships with every major-league team and its executives. When trying to maximize the value of contracts and endorsements for his clients, he also needs to understand what the other side is thinking. It’s a short step over the velvet rope from being seller to the buyer.

This is not someone who will be parachuting in with theories, demands and expectations without having the faintest clue as to what really happens in the trenches.

He played baseball at a relatively high level.

Van Wagenen played baseball at Stanford University (as a teammate of Astros manager AJ Hinch). He wasn’t great, but he was serviceable. Playing at a Division I school in the Pac-10 – especially a school like Stanford that does not provide academic breaks to its athletes – is notable.

Many front office staffers are inhabiting a persona based on their environment. Chewing dip and carrying around an empty bottle in which to spit the juice does not make one a peer of professional athletes. If anything, it invites eye-rolling and ridicule from those same professional athletes. Similarly, uttering the lingo of athletes and trying to be one of them is transparent and deservedly ridiculed.

No, he did not make it to the major-leagues. He didn’t even play professionally. But as a former player, he will have a well-rounded idea of what it’s like to play and run a ballgame on the field, limiting the reactive know-it-all responses and insecurity that is inherent from those who cannot say the same and find themselves in an undeserved position as a front office boss, top-tier executive, or well-compensated analyst.

Delegation.

It is highly unlikely that Van Wagenen will be in the middle of every single deal big and small and interfere with the heads of the baseball departments.

The best executives are the ones who hire or retain smart people and allow them to do their jobs. If Omar Minaya, John Ricco, et, al. are part of the deal and will not be replaced, Van Wagenen can accept that and let them work without looking over their shoulder, sowing discord, and making passive aggressive maneuvers and statements to undermine them.

Managing the owner.

For an organization like the Mets, with Wilpon insisting that he will be involved, it takes people skills that a player agent must have to nudge him in the right direction without him knowing he’s being nudged. The idea of autonomy is secondary to this peacekeeping nuance.

Younger GMs are looking for autonomy and control in part because it grants them at least three years of on-field results being irrelevant. That’s three years of job security and blamelessness. They’re heavy on data and short on interpersonal skills. That is not an issue with Van Wagenen who understands the numbers, but also knows how to persuade.

The tactics.

There are repeated demands that the Mets tear the entire structure of the organization down to its exoskeleton and start over. Is that wise? With Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo and Amed Rosario among others, the team is not destitute at the big-league level. In the minors, the farm system is better than it was given credit for in preseason assessments.

Certainly, when there is a barren farm system, bloated contracts and declining players, it makes perfect sense to gut it and start over. The Mets are not in that position and hiring Van Wagenen is not only a signal that the Mets are serious about contending quickly, but that the Wilpons are ready to give him some money to spend to make that a reality instead of a bait-and-switch to sell season ticket plans with the same digging through the bargain bin, crafting an “if everything goes right” roster and hoping that it somehow works out.

Salesmanship.

What is an agent if not a salesman?

To take the job, he will need to divest himself of any agent-related interests in the players, but the relationships will remain in place because he got his players paid and because most players will be smart enough to realize that he might turn around and go back to being an agent after his tenure with the Mets concludes. Other organizations will know it too.

***

At first glance, the mentioning of player agents running an organization sounds quirky for its own sake. In the case of the Mets and Van Wagenen, it’s a radical departure from what the Mets and the Wilpons have done in the past and, in the grand scheme, it isn’t such a terrible idea.

The Yankees will not fire Aaron Boone and here’s why

Aaron Boone is not getting fired.

Prior to detailing the reasons why this is fact – not speculation – let’s start with a question:

If Boone were fired, whom do you want to replace him?

Before going off on a quick-fire response by saying Joe Girardi or asking for time to scour the web to see who’s available, know this: Boone got the job and will keep the job for precisely the same reasons many are calling for him to lose his job; and if, for whatever reason, the Yankees needed a new manager, they would hire someone exactly like Boone.

To understand why this is the case, it’s necessary to go back to what sparked the transition from what the manager was to what the manager is and how that impacts Boone’s job status and what general manager Brian Cashman wants.

Mitigation vs. Subjugation

When Cashman replaced Bob Watson as GM after the 1997 season, he inherited a manager, Joe Torre, who had been a borderline Hall of Fame player and had managed for two decades. Torre won a championship one year earlier and had the attitude and cachet to make his feelings known while ignoring the front office as to how the team should be run, sometimes insubordinately and profanely. George Steinbrenner was still alive and despite having mellowed ever-so-slightly from the raving mania that defined him through his second suspension in 1990, also needed to be dealt with.

In short, Cashman was in charge, but not in charge. His job was to placate, mitigate and manipulate, not subjugate as is the case today.

To say that Cashman walked into a trust fund worth billions is somewhat accurate. To gain access to that trust fund, however, he needed to subject himself to the irrational abuse of George Steinbrenner for twelve years and deal with the trustee – Torre – knowing that wresting power from the manager would take years, if it ever happened at all.

Torre had his job threatened multiple times and calls for a change grew louder and louder the longer the Yankees’ championship drought lasted. Both Cashman and Torre had grown tired of one another. Cashman for his limited influence with the manager and Torre with the lack of credit he felt he received for the Yankees’ return to glory under his command.

After another disappointing loss in the 2007 Division Series – their third in a row – and having blown a 3-0 Championship Series lead in 2004 against the hated Red Sox, Torre departed in an unhappy break that, in retrospect, was a divorce that both sides secretly wanted and did not openly express; they would have remained together had the lingering issues been worked out.

Throne of Games

The Yankees conducted a limited search for Torre’s replacement and it was the beginning of Cashman’s Machiavellian accumulation of power. Already, he was in the process of rendering impotent the Steinbrenner “Tampa faction” so nothing would interfere with, nor undo, his decisions, for better or worse. Now, he needed a manager. One year earlier, after Torre’s Yankees were stunningly eliminated by the Tigers in the ALDS, Torre’s dismissal was all-but assured and he was set to be replaced by a Steinbrenner favorite and longtime sparring partner Lou Piniella.

Had Piniella gotten the Yankees job, the roster would have been Piniella’s, not Cashman’s. The manager had no qualms about whispering to his close friends in the media – people with whom he’d had relationships for twenty-five years and for whom he was a frequent “unnamed” source for the inside scoop of the asylum known as the Bronx Zoo. The charming, handsome and quotable Piniella was the direct opposite from the nerdy, rodent-like, shifty and droning Cashman.

Whether he would have been an improvement over Torre was irrelevant. He was familiar; he was less imperious and more combustible than the taciturn Torre; and he’d basically write the media’s stories for them.

To be shunted to the side in such a way could have ended Cashman’s tenure as GM or rendered him as little more than a figurehead.

Of course, given the affinity Steinbrenner had for Piniella and Piniella’s magical touch with the media, this was the last thing Cashman wanted even if he felt a change was needed from Torre. From his viewpoint, replacing Torre with Piniella would have made things exponentially worse. Torre remained for one more year and Piniella was hired to manage the Cubs.

After Torre’s departure or firing (depending on whom you ask), the three main candidates to replace him were Tony Pena, Don Mattingly and Girardi.

Pena had managed the Royals, won Manager of the Year for coaxing an 83-79 season out of them in 2003 – their first season over .500 in a decade – and then resigned after 104 losses in 2004 and an 8-25 start in 2005. He’d become a loyal coach for Torre and did not appear to be particularly enthused about managing again.

Mattingly was a former Yankees star who was beloved throughout the organization, among the players, in the media and across the city – even Mets fans liked him.

Girardi had been a key, clutch player for Torre on the 1996, 1998 and 1999 championship teams; he was a leader; and he had the managerial experience that Mattingly lacked, also winning Manager of the Year in 2006 for the Marlins only to be fired by Jeffrey Loria, an owner whose capriciousness and reactivity harkened back to the worst days of Steinbrenner.

Girardi got the nod in part because he was younger than the set-in-his-ways Torre; because he had the experience that Mattingly did not; he was aware of the burgeoning use of advanced statistics and willing to implement them in ways Torre would not; and if it didn’t work out, Cashman could easily fire him – something he could not do with Mattingly or Piniella.

Girardi survived 2008 when the Yankees missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993 and had similar calls for his job as Boone does now and, after a half-a-billion-dollar spending spree on free agents Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, the Yankees won another championship in 2009 with largely the same core that had won for Torre.

The Yankees maintained their level of annual championship contender through 2012 and then, as Cashman finally fully consolidated his power with the death of George Steinbrenner and the full Michael Corleone-style elimination of the Tampa faction, set about a pseudo-rebuild.

To his credit, Girardi kept the team competitive throughout the process and amid the retirements and retirement tours of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera; with the aging and declining Teixeira; with a patchwork of broken down and available veterans like Kevin Youkilis and Travis Hafner providing little-to-nothing; and trying to develop young players while keeping the team from falling to the depths of 90+ losses.

He coaxed a Wild Card berth with a team that was mediocre at best in 2015; he kept them above .500 for the duration. In 2017, the club made a wondrous jump that not even the front office saw coming and they came within one win of a pennant.

Then, with Girardi’s contract expired and the Yankees going full-bore into the analytics revolution, Girardi was discarded. Technically, he was not offered another contract; for all intents and purposes, he was fired.

The Self-Aware Puppet

To gain some perspective into the Yankees’ good fortune (they’d call it skill even if it isn’t) with their previous managers, the calm and cool Torre was the perfect antidote to the anal retentive and smothering Buck Showalter; Girardi checked off multiple boxes and the Yankees were beyond lucky that one candidate who might have gotten the job, Trey Hillman, took the Royals’ offer first and was a disaster on and off the field. Hillman couldn’t handle the media in Kansas City. Just imagine him in New York.

Unlike previous Yankees managerial searches, the legitimate candidates – Boone, Hensley Meulens, Rob Thomson, Carlos Beltran, Chris Woodward – to replace Girardi all had certain aspects in common: they were younger; they had no managerial experience; they would follow orders; and they would take short money for the opportunity.

Even the one veteran former manager they interviewed, Eric Wedge, had worked in an Indians organization that was run from the top-down. He was not a serious candidate for the job anyway.

All this fits into the new template for a big-league manager, one the Yankees willingly dove into.

Boone pulling Luis Severino too late; starting J.A. Happ in Game 1 of the ALDS; playing Neil Walker instead of Miguel Andujar; putting Brett Gardner in left field instead of Andrew McCutchen; using Lance Lynn instead of one of the big-name relievers David Robertson, Dellin Betances or Zach Britton; letting Gary Sanchez repeatedly get away with overt laziness and rancid defense – none of that matters.

The key question to ask about Boone is not whether he did a “good” job or not.

The key question to ask is if he did the job he was hired to do and the answer is an unequivocal yes.

And that’s what Cashman wanted.

Whereas the front office was forced to deal with managers who had the contract status and the resumes to take or leave front office entreaties, as the power and sway of the manager diminished and the men hired to do the job were disposable and pliable, those entreaties slowly morphed into edicts. No longer does a front office ask a manager to do certain things and hope he does it. They tell him what to do and masquerade it as collaboration. There’s no “buy-in” necessary for the manager because if he doesn’t buy in, he doesn’t get or keep the job.

Boone was hired to consult with the front office and adhere to the pregame blueprint as it was laid out without deviating from that. The decisions Boone made – good or bad – were made before the game started. Having never managed before, he has no feel for the rapid-fire strategies that are viewed as sowing the seeds for the Yankees’ ALDS downfall and loss to the Red Sox because he is not paid to have a feel.

When Cashman does eulogize the season, he’ll utter the familiar platitudes as to the job his hand-picked and remote controlled manager did.

Media critiques and fan anger will not change a thing. Cashman will not have an epiphany and see the “error” of his ways, turning around and hiring a manager who is the exact opposite of Boone just because their plan did not yield the ultimately desired result of a championship.

The reasons Boone was hired have not changed, therefore the manager will not change either.

Don’t expect the Cubs to fire Joe Maddon or for him to walk away

As rough a time as Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon is having with his clumsy response to questions about the domestic violence allegations against Addison Russell, team president Theo Epstein cryptically blaming him for closer Brandon Morrow being lost for the season, and the general perception that after four years and undeniable success his message has grown stale, barring an implosion, Maddon will be managing the Cubs in 2019.

Certainly, the golden reputation Maddon brought with him when he took the job after the 2014 season has lost its shine. The constant stream of canned quirkiness and ever-expanding ego wore thin in Tampa Bay to the point that once the anger of his sudden and unforeseen departure dissipated, there was a sense of relief that he was gone.

The media ate up Maddon’s hiring as part of the Cubs’ crafted narrative of going all in to break their championship curse, but once they had won their World Series, it became easier to dissect the manager with an objectivity that yielded answers to questions that had been glossed over to the degree that they weren’t even asked.

This is beyond the product Maddon sells – Joe Maddon – and into the realm of diminishing returns. As the layers are stripped away, the skeletonized remains show a good, but not great manager who is not well liked within baseball circles due to his penchant for self-promotion and “I’m better than you” condescension. As time passes, that will unavoidably permeate the team he works for.

With these factors, it would come as no surprise if Epstein is getting an itchy trigger finger with his manager. Every manager or coach, no matter the level of success, eventually wears out his welcome. Maddon’s personality only serves to expedite that process. Except it won’t be after this season.

Blameworthy or not, Epstein has never been shy about making proactive changes to his operation. Hitting coaches, pitching coaches – their names have been interchangeable under the Epstein regime. Even the managers that preceded Maddon were disposable and tossed overboard for reasons valid and not.

Maddon is not wholly at fault for much of what has ailed the Cubs in 2018. He didn’t sign Tyler Chatwood and Yu Darvish. He didn’t decide the oft-injured Morrow should be the team’s closer. That the Cubs have overcome those players’ issues as well as injuries that have hindered star third baseman Kris Bryant and made the playoffs for the fourth straight season is due, in part, to the manager.

Leveraging the cohesiveness with the Rays into the reputation as the “best” manager in baseball and exercising an opt-out with a rumored backdoor deal with the Cubs in place gave Maddon the salary, the recognition and the big market he had long sought. That it became a Faustian bargain is somewhat ironic when the Cubs very nearly lost that long elusive World Series because of his strategic gaffes. In the intervening years, his reputation and image have declined precipitously.

Still, his job is secure for two reasons: one, his salary; two, 2019 is increasingly looking to be the last go-round for Cubs’ current construction.

At a reported salary of $6 million for 2019, the Cubs will not simply swallow that money just because factions inside and outside the organization have grown tired of his shtick. That’s a lot of money for Maddon to go sit in a broadcast booth and spout his pretentious nonsense. Even a mutual agreement to part ways and a buyout with all the money being paid over several years can lessen the impact to a degree, but it’s still $6 million. Then there’s the matter of paying Joe Girardi or Mike Scioscia similar money or rolling the dice on a cheap unknown.

To win the 2016 World Series, Epstein overpaid for Aroldis Chapman by sending rising star Gleyber Torres to the New York Yankees. In subsequent seasons, to try and maintain a championship caliber club, other top prospects like Eloy Jimenez were also traded away. As a result, the farm system is depleted, their star position players are growing more expensive, and their pitching staff is aging. That impressive core of position players is still in its 20s and a retooling is more probable than a rebuild. But will they still want to pay Maddon after 2019 when his message is tiresome and his great personality for what they were trying to build has become a grating personality for what they’re going to need to rebuild? He’s not taking a pay cut and he’ll be 65. The sense of this cycle running its course is palpable.

What more is there to accomplish? He’s got his recognition; he’s got his money; and it’s preferable to jump before being pushed. This combination of factors will save Maddon when, if the circumstances were different, he could and should be shown the door, thanked for his service with an audible sigh of relief by the rest of the organization when he’s gone.