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I don't feel like doing my own thinking--or writing--today, so I'm letting Mets Geek do it for me.
http://www.metsgeek.com/articles/2006/01/06/and-starting-at-second-base
]And Starting at Second-Base…
Scribbled by: Andrew Hintz @ 12:07 am | Filed under: Articles
Willie Randolph has been in organized baseball since 1972, when he was drafted in the seventh round by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Except for a one year lapse in 1993, he's spent every year of his life since the age of eighteen in the game. Over thirty-two years — more time than most of you reading this have been alive — filled with playing, watching and coaching baseball. He's been led by some of the greatest names in managerial history: Martin, Piniella, Lasorda and LaRussa. He coached under another two greats: Showalter and Torre. During his years and years and years as a ballplayer and coach he was able to soak in the calls and moves from the bench, the matchups and maneuverings in the bullpen, to the point where they were second nature to him.
Only last season, they didn’t seem to be second nature to him.
In fact, they seemed pretty alien to the guy.
Right off the bat, however, let's give Randolph his due on some aspects of his managerial game. Randolph came from the Yankees with a reputation of molding ballplayers that happened to be kids into men that happened to play baseball. He was given a lot of credit for turning Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter into the players they are today, and that was evident in his approach to guys like David Wright, Jose Reyes and Victor Diaz. He came to the Mets and preached respect for your teammates. He preached teamwork on and off the field. He preached responsibility for your actions. And it was clearly evident that he made an impact in this regard. Cliff Floyd appeared in 150 games for the first time since 1998. Jose Reyes, after getting hundreds of glares from across the dugout on television and earfuls from Randolph off it, progressed both in the batter’s box and more obviously in the field. Guys wanted to play for Willie Randolph, and almost every man on the team played their butt off for him.
So if Willie Randolph was the bench coach of the Mets, we'd be trumpeting him as one of the best in the game, and more than likely wondering why he hasn't been getting a shot at a managerial position, just as Yankees fans had been doing for a number of years.
Much like Don Baylor or Ozzie Guillen, Randolph has a way of talking to his players, and getting his player's respect, because he's one of them. He's been in the game for a long time, he put up some nice numbers in his time, he's not that far removed from his own playing career, and he's played alongside some of the best and worst players in the history of baseball. His experience comes close to being second to none — he's like the Forrest Gump of Major League Baseball. The downside to this is Randolph still thinks and acts much like the player he once was.
When you start playing baseball at higher levels, one of the first things you're taught to do is to not overthink your situation. When you're going good, you don't dare change anything — and when you're going bad, you don't dare change anything, for fear of screwing yourself up beyond repair (see: Mike Lowell's 2005 season). Second guessing your approach at the plate, on the mound, in the field, will only lead to bad things. During Spring Training, when the games don't really matter, you can screw around all you want. But during the season, you are told that even minute adjustments can throw your entire game out of whack. So you have only one option — to stay your course until things get too overwhelming.
Much of this approach is seen in Willie's managerial style — as evidenced by everyone's favorite Willie-ism, "I had a feeling". Why'd he have Miguel Cairo hitting second? Why'd Kaz Ishii stay in the game past the third inning? Why'd he let Takatasu pitch against Miguel Cabrera in the biggest spot of the season? Willie explained all of these away by stating that he had a feeling they might work out. That Cairo would hit better, that Ishii would turn it around, that Takatsu would bring the funk. And the New York media, being the blood-thirsty anarchists they are known around the globe for… simply accepted that answer and declared Randolph a resounding success as a first year manager.
You can scratch your head here, if you like.
Perhaps Randolph's biggest curse last season was that he was given a successful ballclub. If the Mets lost ninety or so games, Randolph seems to be the kind of man who would have gone to the drawing board, learned from his mistakes, and tried to come up with a few different things that might work better. Instead, most of the members of the media congratulated the guy on his good job, for turning a 71-win team into an 83-win team, while completely overlooking the fact that the Mets should have won around 88 - 91 games. They glossed over the fact that Willie has some overwhelming problems with managing a bullpen. They didn't seem to have much of a problem with two OBP sinkholes manning the first and second spot of the lineup for the majority of the year. And when Carlos Beltran took a turn for the worse after multiple injuries, it was his fault for not producing, not Willie's for continually slotting him into the three-hole despite no logical reason for letting an offense rely on him.
Granted, first seasons are not the best way to judge future results — heck, future Hall of Famer Bobby Cox finished 69-93 and then 66-94 in his first two seasons — so Randolph is not a shoe-in for immense failure. But one of the most important things about going from being a player to managing a big league ballclub is to remember that you're no longer a player. Not only is it all right to accept the mistakes you make and to learn from them, it's pretty much mandatory in order to be successful.
Managers must learn from their mistakes, and good managers learn from all of them. Tony LaRussa, for example, analyzes every mistake he and his opposing manager made in a game, and then manages the next game based on what he figured out. Randolph doesn't need to be that extreme — though it would be nice — to be successful. But it probably wouldn't kill him to take a second to see that Miguel Cabrera hits .329/.379/.565 against right-handers before sending in Takatsu (even if the funkiness of his delivery rivals George Clinton). He should recognize that constantly sending out Miguel Cairo and his .255 OBP in the two-spot isn't going to score as many much-needed runs as perhaps bumping Beltran or Wright into that spot might. And it's okay to give guys like Aaron Heilman and Juan Padilla a chance at some pressure innings instead of wasting valuable time on guys like Mike DeJean and Manny Aybar simply because they've been around longer.
Randolph is not a stupid man, and everybody in the world makes mistakes at one time or another. Mistakes are not what has everybody calling for Willie's head. Randolph consistently ignoring those mistakes, and continuing to make them over and over again without allowing a moment to pause and reflect on them, is the problem. It's important for Willie to learn, quickly, that he's no longer a player — that his gameplan is now about strategy and not about feelings and keeping your eyes and ears closed to criticisms and numbers.
Or he'll be back on the New York Yankees bench faster than you can say Lee Mazzilli. |
Exactly what he said.
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