NOUN
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practical contact with and observation of facts or events:
"he had already learned his lesson by painful experience"
synonyms: involvement in · participation in · contact with ·
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Bill has graciously given us explicit permission to --- > clip his ideas for re-paste at SSI. It's not that we're best buds, by any stretch of the imagination. What's actually up is that Bill hates hates HATES the idea of copyrighting a blinkin' essay and charging people $1 every time they read it in the library.
Let's take all those authors, put all their material in Fort Knox, and make the public go through seven Get Smart security doors before they get to read anything the guy ever wrote. That'll make everybody happy. ... that's his quip, not mine.
BJOL still only $3 a month, rat cheer. We've heard tell that SSI denizens enjoy it when Dr. D moshes Bill James light bulbs against current events in Seattle. Hey, I hear translators make $200 an hour. Poetic justice.
There has been a lot of debate over Scott Servais' experience. Let's apply a bit of nuance to that word Experience, whattaya say.
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Scott Servais has been hired as Seattle Mariners manager without any experience. I used to think, and still do to some extant, that if you hire a manager without big league experience it should be someone who has managed in your system. He would get to know the players, learn game strategy and have some experience dealing with the media. I know the Mets, the team that I am most familiar with, have had about 15 managers and only Joe Frazier and Davey Johnson have gone the minors to manager route. I suspect other teams are similar. Are the jobs so different that managing in the minors doesn't really prepare you? Or is it a case of if you want to get hired, location is more important and that means as a coach or some position where you regularly interact with those who hire managers?
Asked by: ZachSmith
Answered: 10/26/2015
1) The jobs of being a minor league manager and a major league manager are VERY different. There is SOME overlap between the two, but I wouldn't say there is a lot.
2) Given my druthers, I would much rather hire a major league manager with no previous experience, rather than a manager with previous experience.
I was very much influenced by one of the best pieces of sports journalism I have ever seen, which appeared in The Sporting News about 1973, which was a long interview with Carroll Rosenbloom on the subject of how he hired a head coach. Rosenbloom hired three head coaches in his life, who were Weeb Eubank, Don Shula and Chuck Knox. Anyway, Rosenbloom said that he wouldn't even talk to anybody who had tried and failed somewhere else, because if a guy had failed somewhere else he didn't care where he had failed or why; there were lots of good candidates who hadn't had an opportunity yet.
I think that MOST managers are most successful in their first major league assignment, although there are certainly many exceptions to that rule.
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1. Now that I think about it ... James' last sentence there, it would capture a lot of guys like Earl Weaver. Earl was most successful in his first major league assignment, like, guess why. Because he only needed one major league assignment. Automatically, when you analyze "first hires" you are capturing every Earl Weaver in history. This simple light bulb had never occurred to Dr. D.
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2. If you just joined us, the MAIN job of an NBA, or MLB, or NFL head coach is relating to his players.
In the minors, in college, anyplace where the guys don't have 7-year $100M contracts, the coach just talks AT his 21-year-olds. They do what he says, or they miss out on a career. But once the TV cameras are on, it's more like a marriage. You talk WITH each other, or you wind up in court with a judge deciding who gets the family dog. (Sorry Mojo.)
In Seattle, there was a lot of talk about the 'risk' of hiring a President who had never before been President. But most of the best U.S. Presidents had never been Presidents before. There was a lot of debate on this nationally also: here's a Fox article about the 'troubling trend' of hiring inexperienced managers.
The takeaway for me here: the 'risk' of hiring an 'inexperienced' manager, isn't. ... the Rainiers' manager isn't experienced at dealing with Robinson Cano, either.
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3. When we say 'no previous experience,' let's keep it in context. Scott Servais is not exactly a stranger to a major league dugout, not exactly inexperienced when it comes to gauging when a pitcher is tired, not exactly a rube when it comes to batter-pitcher matchups. We're talking core skills here, aren't we? Marshawn Lynch may never have played a game of rugby in his life, but if we have a pickup game this Saturday at the picnic, I'll take Marshawn and you can have my nephew.
Experience, huh. :: sniff ::
BABVA,
Dr D
