Belief Systems
This post might meander a bit. I have a lot of disjointed thoughts in my head, most of them tangentially related to each other, but haven’t yet figured out how to make them into one cohesive post. Hopefully, it happens as I write. We’ll see.
Don Wakamatsu says the words belief system so often that it’s become a punchline, but he doesn’t care. He keeps repeating the phrase, using it as an explanation for why he does things the way he does, even those things that appear quite curious on their face. But while this Wakism might not be the verbiage that most people use, he’s really just describing a trait that most good leaders have – confidence.
The man has the courage of his own convictions. When he believes in a player, he goes out of his way to let everyone know that he has confidence in him in an effort to transfer some of his own confidence to the player himself. He carefully protects the minds of the core players on the team, creating an atmosphere where they believe they can fail without being punished. By allowing room for failure, he believes that he is actually cultivating success, and he has a lot of successes he can point to where his belief system in a player has paid off.
This steady brand of leadership is a really good trait to have in a manager. While some react to every perceived problem, tinkering with roles or jerking players around, Wak holds true to what he believes, even if the present results aren’t necessarily a match for what he expected. We’re big process people around here, and constantly talk about not judging players on small sample sizes or results they can’t control. Wak might not use the same words, but his belief system is essentially the same philosophy.
It’s one of the main reasons why I believe he’s one of the better managers in baseball. Steady decision making and the ability to instill confidence in a player can create an environment where players can develop into more than what they’ve been before. We saw that last year with Branyan, Gutierrez, and Aardsma, and may be seeing that now with Kotchman. A manager who can help players improve their talent levels is far more valuable than one who makes the right strategic decisions or uses his bullpen perfectly. Wak’s belief system, as cliche as it may be at this point, is a boon to this franchise.
However, it’s not just enough for a manager to believe in a player – there has to be underlying truth in the belief to begin with. Believing in Gutierrez’s defense, Branyan’s power, or Aardsma’s fastball is one thing, as they all have plus plus tools that are among the best in the game in a particular area. The things that Wak believed in were real, and his beliefs were vindicated by their natural abilities when he gave them a chance to shine.
It’s when he starts believing in things that are not real that the belief system becomes something of a problem. A leader with the courage of his convictions is a double-edged sword, because while he has the ability to stand his ground when the results are not matching the process, so too can he rely too heavily, and for too long, on something that is not able to justify the faith.
His belief system in the ability of Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Sweeney have led to the team placing two bad hitters in the middle of a line-up that is struggling to score runs, while his lack of belief system (to date) in Milton Bradley and Casey Kotchman have left the team with two of their best hitters setting up RBI opportunities for the catchers and Jack Wilson. His belief system in Sean White has led him to put an inferior reliever into high leverage situations while better pitchers sit as leads disappear. And it can be highly frustrating to watch. Believe me, I feel it too.
But if I had to choose between a manager who showed too little patience with good players or too much patience with bad ones, I’d go with the latter every time. And so, while the batting orders can be frustrating and we all sit around and wonder how much longer the team will put up with a DH platoon that can’t hit, keep in mind that this is the downside to a philosophy that brings with it more good than bad.
We can get caught up in the minutia of the day day to aspects of line-up construction, bullpen usage, and things of the like that we miss the big picture. This is why almost every single fan base has a problem with their manager. It’s much easier to focus on the things they do wrong, that we’re confronted with everyday, than those things that they do right, which only get born out over longer periods of time.
Wak does some things that frustrate all of us, but he’s an excellent manager. I have a belief system in the man, and I hope that we don’t take him for granted.
138 different lineups to be exact.
I count 15 different lineups so far. As for last year, look at all the injuries and roster turnover.
I think it’s a pretty clear distinction between showing patience with a Catcher in his mid-twenties and showing patience with an overweight 40-year old DH.
Unfortunately the most likely scenario under which the “belief system” fails for Griffey and Sweeney is that they suck for a few more months, the M’s kind of flounder on offense and fall out of the race, and Zduriencik comes to Wakamatsu in late July and goes “might as well play Saunders every day in LF and DH Bradley since we’re not going anywhere, oh, and I am trading Cliff Lee for some kids”.
I think it’s pretty unlikely that if they aren’t hitting but the M’s are still in contention that they’ll be replaced. After all, it must be the hugging and chemistry that’s helping the M’s contend, right? I mean, if they were garbage last year and that didn’t get them replaced because (according to the belief system), their leadership was critical, what’s going to get them replaced THIS year? Seriously- I think that if it’s late July, and Sweeney and Griffey are OPS’ing under .600 but the team’s still in contention, you won’t see anything happen other than more hugs.
And this is the cruicial part of the evaluation. Why did Wak believe in Branyan, Guti, Aardsma, and why does he believe in Griffey, Sweeney, White? Plus, why didn’t he believe in Yuni, why doesn’t he seem to believe in Bradley, etc.
I’m not necessarily criticizing Wak here, but anyone can get lucky. Was he lucky last year, or good? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
Process isn’t just making a choice and sticking with it, though the “sticking with it” part certainly matters. Process is about how you make those choices. Hargrove once had a “belief system” that Julio Mateo could get groundballs in a situation that called for a double play. All the confidence in the world didn’t make that work. The old organization had the belief, noted already, that Richie Sexson still had productive ABs left in him. The old org had all sorts of bad belief systems, like veteranosity, firey clubhouse guys, good defense defined by how hard the guy made the play look…
I want to know what process is behind the belief system. The team did not come into the season with a plan that – to my eyes – optimized their chances. What flaws in their process have led to the mistaken beliefs, and are there strengths in the process that will correct those?
The potential for Power is more pivotal later in games when outs are scarce. With dwindling oppotunities to manufacture runs the team needs that ‘one-swing’ production. A team does not need power up and down the lineup to be successful. But no power in a power league?!?!?!?
When was the last time an AL team made the playoffs with this bad of offense?
9 HR (29th place), 82 Runs (24th place) the M’s have scored 3 runs or less in half their games. What silver lining do you guys see in this offense?
Side note the M’s are in 28th place of K/9ip with 5.71. Thankfully the defense offsets this a little by making plays on batted balls.
There’s one more aspect that isn’t getting much attention–the ‘triangulation’ of the belief system.
The fundamental way we’re considering this is the individual relationship between manager and player. In other words, how much ‘belief’ does the manager exhibit for a struggling player before he pulls the plug?
But during that time, there are also beliefs being challenged elsewhere in the clubhouse.
To remove this from our own biases, take for example the Phillie’s continued reliance on Brad Lidge to close last year. When a guy blows more than a quarter of his save opportunities, when is enough enough? How did this affect the starters’ belief systems? For a minimum salary guy on the bench (if the Phils had any of those), how did it affect that player’s belief in whether he’d receive a World Series share?
Every individual decision also has group ramifications.
15 different lineups, maybe, but not with the randomness in order that we dealt with last season. Injuries and turnover aside, even at the beginning of the season, we basically had Ichiro batting first, Beltre at 4 and multiple guys switching all over the place.
That’s not the same thing we’re looking at with the 15 that have been trotted out this season. Figgy is always 2, and Guti’s been sitting in 3 for the most part. Jack Wilson’s also consistently sitting at 9 with the catching tandem at 8. All the other randomness has more to do with platooning than anything else. Or maybe I’m crazy. Sorry to waste the comments space if that’s the case…
When was the last time an AL team made the playoffs with this bad of offense?
Off the top of my head, the 1985 KC Royals won a World Championship with an offense that was 13 out of 14 in the AL.
Yes, in an ideal world, you’d like the 2001 Mariners. But sometimes, you have to take what you can get- and the roster the M’s have is light on power and heavy on defense and pitching.
Not really. Run production doesn’t get harder each innings. It’s no harder to score a run with 6 outs left in the game than with 24. What matters is how many outs are left in the inning because the situation resets every three outs.
For instance, the highest scoring innings for the M’s this year are the 5th, 9th, and 3rd. Half their runs have come in those three innings. They average 0.417 runs per inning the 1st through the 6th, and 0.458 r/inn from the 7th through the 9th.
You can score runs with the longball, you can score runs stringing walks and singles together. The problem for the M’s is they aren’t doing either very much right now. 24th place in offense is certainly not going to cut it. But 14th would probably be okay, given good pitching and defense.
They don’t *have* to score a league average number of runs. It’s not unreasonable to project slightly below average offense (better than we’ve seen so far) and stellar runprevention. The M’s play in a pitcher’s park, have two of the best starting pitchers on the planet and great defense at multiple positions.
I’m not holding out hope for the team pushing Junior off the team and onto the golf course before the all star break, but I’ll still hope everytime I open this blog that I’ll be reading a post about Mike Sweeney riding off into the sunset.
Eponymous Coward- Fair enough about the 1985 Royals. But was it more of an anomaly or actual skill?
JMHawkins- I understand that it isn’t harder to score in any inning…. What is different is the amount of outs/time to string 2 walks and 2 singles together. Especially with a team that HAS to manufacture runs (trade outs for bases) and take lots of risks on the basepaths (SB, 1st to 3rd).
There’s no more or less time to string the hits/walks together than any other point in the game. If you mean there are fewer innings to do it, well sure, but there are also fewer innings left to belt a home run too.
Home runs are no more or less powerful late in the game. They’re just another way to score a run. If you’re down by two to start the 8th, it doesn’t matter whether you typically score your runs with a bloop and a bomb or a string of singles, all that matters is how frequently you score them.
I prefer to score the runs early in the game (especially at the beginning of a series) to chase out the starter and wear out the bullpen. In that case, walks and singles are preferable to a home run.
Eponymous Coward- Fair enough about the 1985 Royals. But was it more of an anomaly or actual skill?
Well, we don’t really have advanced metrics to judge their defensive abilities, but using ERA in their league as a proxy for pitching+defense (and realizing that it’s at best only indicative but not definitive):
1985: 2nd
1986: 1st
1987: 2nd
1988: 3rd
1989: 3rd
You can also note that the 1985 Royals had Dan Quisenberry and a rotation with the following Triple Crown numbers:
167-117, 3.34 (Bret Saberhagen)
140-119, 3.71 (Charlie Leibrandt)
121-116, 3.84 (Bud Black)
132-136, 3.96 (Mark Gubicza)
112-131, 4.01 (Danny Jackson)
Yes, I know, win-loss and ERA. The point is that a five man rotation where EVERYONE hung around MLB for 2000+ innings pitched (so ~10 full MLB seasons or more) is an awfully good rotation. Everyone was a legit #3 starter or better.