I Am Less Than Optimistic

The Dodgers tireless search for a general manager, highlighted by snubbs from Pat Gillick, Gerry Hunsicker, and Theo Epstein, has finally come to an end. Paul DePodesta's successor is Ned Coletti.

Oh, God.

Let's put aside Coletti's actual qualifications for a second and wonder what the heck Frank McCourt is thinking. Since DePo's firing, we've been told that we're going to emphasize the "Dodger way". I was rightfully scared by what this meant, but for the average Cora loving Dodger fan, this was a good thing. Since they are the clear majority, master of P.R. McCourt was on the right track. Then he ends up hiring a hated Giant, who has never been a general manager, as the G.M. Well, failed on that account. Consequently, any points that McCourt might have gotten for firing DePo have just gone out the window. Well done.

Maybe McCourt actually decided to take yet another hit and sign the best G.M. for the job. We don't know enough about Coletti to know if this is true or not. All we really have is an interview he did with Baseball Prospecuts, and a couple of quotes.

“This guy might be the most impressive first-impression guy I've ever met in my life. We talked for an hour in my office one day, and he never even talked about grabbing a bat. It was all about pitching."

Perhaps he should have been more concerned about Matheny's offense, considering his career high on base is .320. Matheny has a career OPS of .634, and a career OPS+ of 65. Coincidentally, this is the same OPS+ of Neifi Perez, the worst hitter of the last decade (who Colletti gave five million dollars to). A quote like this concerns me that Coletti might be a guy who values defense over anything else, no matter how fatal the players offensive shortcoming.

But when we're signing a player, especially an older one, many times it's not the dollar figure that holds you back, it's the number of years. We can't send $5 million to a mailbox because the player we have under contract isn't playing anymore.

This is a plus, but I don't know if Colletti practices what he preaches. The Giants entered this season as the oldest team in baseball, and the Giants will be handing a lot of paychecks to people over 35 in the next couple of years.

When we acquired J.T. Snow, Jose Vizcaino, Jeff Kent--all those guys were character players who had something to prove... People would tell us he's a selfish player, a loner, not a glowing report at all...He came to us as a good player, and he left as a great player, a potential Hall of Famer.

While it's good that he recognized that swallowing Kent's "bad chemistry" was a good thing, it's not like J.T. Snow and Jose Viscaino are anything to be proud of. Since 1998, Snow has been the Giants first baseman, producing largely average results (a career OPS+ of 106, mostly buoyed by his 1997 and his fluke .958 OPS 2004.). It's interesting the he mentions Vizcaino, since he was only with the Giants one year, and put up pretty bad numbers (.673 OPS, somewhat helped by a 107 rate2.) What's odd is that he promotes their character while dismissing chemistry. If this means he goes after hard workers only, I'm not too encouraged, as that starts firmly slipping into "scrappy" territory.

Having played Anaheim in the World Series, seeing them go first to third and other things like that, we wanted to bring some of that to our own team, run more, steal bases.

Gulp. Another example of learning the wrong lesson. (The Angels offense, while helped by their aggressiveness, were certainly helped by ranking sixth in baseball in OBP.)

Talking to Felipe (Alou) about him, he said Neifi could play second, short and third, that he'd be an above-average fielder, a guy who'd occasionally get a big hit and who knew how to play the game. We felt that was a player we could use.

Double gulp. Taking someone who can "ocassionally get a big hit" is not a good thing.

It's our view you can never have enough pitching. If you're short in another area, you can always trade pitching, because it's the toughest commodity to find.

Is anyone else baffled by this sentence?

(In refrence to closers)...but also to know who your people are--who has the mindset to do the job. Who can handle the toughest three outs of the game: the last three. You need the mindset, talent, and durability, both physical and emotional

"Closer mentatlity". Not a good thing. If he believes in this, why did the Giants get LaTroy Hawkins?

How a player approaches the game, how he approaches life, far outweighs what the stat line looks like.

Probably the most damning sentence of them all. While things like mental makeup do have an effect, they are not nearly as important as the stat line. What a player has actually accomplished is far more important than what they think they can accomplish. A postive mindset will show its effects throughout all levels of the baseball system, not just magically emerge once the player hits the bigs.

This interview does not inspire me. While Colletti shows some good qualities, he ignores chemistry, which gives me some confidence that Bradley will return, and he supposedly doesn't like giving 40 year olds money, there are far more negatives. He seems to cling to almost every thought that sabermetrics has long since abondoned: the importance of mental makeup, the need for aggressive baserunning, the closer mentality, the over emphasis on defense, all of these things make me unoptimistic about Colletti's reign. Maybe he'll suddenly change his ways when he gets his own team, but I won't hold my breath.

Categories: Dodgers GM Search