Now, as a Yankees fan, I enjoy seeing the Red Sox mocked as much as the next guy, but is it REALLY a story that pitchers who weren’t going to be playing were goofing off, playing video games, eating fried chicken and drinking beer in the clubhouse during games in September?
I’ve never been inside a major league clubhouse during a game, but it wouldn’t shock me if things like this happen regularly with LOTS of teams, including teams that are still in the playoffs now.
When the Red Sox were winning championships, many people would have seen this kind of thing as charming, as a sign that the team was a lovable bunch of loose “happy idiots.” Instead, since the team collapsed in September, the team will probably hire a whip-cracking disciplinarian as manager in the off-season, one who’ll make sure Josh Beckett is on the bench watching the game with his teammates, on off days.
There aren’t any excuses and a lot of directions to point the finger of blame for the Red Sox’s September. Even if they’d have backed their way into the playoffs, I think this story would have come out eventually. If they’d have kept up their pace and won, or at least got to, the World Series, we probably wouldn’t see that story.
I’m curious what the clubhouses of other MLB teams look like in comparison, though.
Here’s David Ortiz, confirming what I already suspected:
Essentially, Ortiz is saying “What’s the big deal? Red Sox pitchers who weren’t scheduled to play have ALWAYS hung out in the clubhouse, playing video games and drinking beer during games. That didn’t hurt the Sox at all in their championship seasons of 2004 or 2007, and it wasn’t hurting them for most of the 2011 season.”
Are we to believe that, all of a sudden, this caused the Red Sox’ collapse in September?
When teams win, nobody worries about silliness like this. When they lose, people obsess over it, and start ascribing their problems to all kinds of unimportant things. When a Randy Johnson is striking out 350 batters a year, nobody cares about his long hair or moustache. But let him have a bad year, suddenly people start saying, “It’s because he lacks discipline- look at that hair.”
If Josh Beckett had just won one or two more games in September, the Sox might still be in the hunt for the World Series, and nobody would care a whit about pithcers goofing around in the clubhouse.
Are these reporters just making up the controversy? It seems to be a big deal on the radio and talk shows, but I imagine that most of these reporters have (or had) enough dealings with baseball teams to know whether or not this is the norm. I’ve also heard numerous former players saying this isn’t professional. They could all be pumping up the controversy for ratings, though you’d think some of them would downplay it just to be the “voice of reason”.
Now, whether or not it’s the norm, guys who are:
a) paid a shitload of money
b) performing like a shitload of shit
c) on a team collapsing like a house of cards
should probably show a little bit of interest, and moral support for their teammates, rather than hole up in the clubhouse playing videogames.
So far as I am aware there are no ex-major league ballplayers on the SDMB so the fact is that we’re just not equipped to discuss what is or is not appropriate clubhouse behaviour.
But I’m inclined to believe this is all post-facto bullshit. You don’t win or lose games in the clubhouse, you win them on the field, and the same players were thirty games over .500 from April to August doing the same shit.
People are searching for deep reasons for something that’s really just one of those things. It’s baseball. Shit happens.
This quote from the article is particularly telling:
[QUOTE=Bob Holher, Boston Globe]
But the epic flop of 2011 had many faces: a lame-duck manager, coping with personal issues, whose team partly tuned him out; stars who failed to lead; players who turned lackluster and self-interested; a general manager responsible for fruitless roster decisions; owners who approved unrewarding free agent spending and missed some warning signs that their $161 million club was deteriorating.
**How a team that was on pace in late August to win 100 games and contend for its third World Series title in seven years **…
[/QUOTE]
(Emphasis mine)
So the team was on pace to win a hundred games and they were supposed to somehow know they’d play completely differently in September?
This sort of thing is the worst sort of bullshit sports journalism, looking back and picking out 50 things true of all teams to explain the results, things that would be cited as reasons for the success of teams that made the playoffs.
You now what would impress me? If someone like Bob Holher could show us a column they wrote on August 31 saying “Hey, the Rd Sox may be in first place, but these things they do in the clubhouse are a sign of impending collapse.” Show me that and I’ll think Holher has some insight. Until then, it’s just post facto baloney.
I seem to recall the Oakland A’s of the 1970’s were described as playing through “strife” and “dissension” – which were euphemisms for “fistfights in the clubhouse” – but always with the note “they knew how to play together on the field.”
Video games doesn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen.
And let’s imagine that halfway through September, the pitchers decided that they SHOULD go sit in the dugout and root for the team (and the Sox lost anyway) - then the narrative would be “Sox panic, tighten up under pressure, and lose the swagger that brought two World Series wins to Boston”.
The things I might be concerned with are the allegations that the players in question were ignoring advice from the strength and conditioning coach. Beckett has had a history of getting in and out of shape, so nothing surprises me there. But Jon Lester was visibly out of shape in September. He appeared to be really laboring on the mound early in games by the end of the season. And, his stats showed it. Lackey…well…he just flat out sucks. That was a bad signing.
It’s a smear campaign by the ownership, so they could distance themselves from the collapse. They fire Francona and the next week he is a druggy with marital problems that can’t hold a team together. Next week “sources” will be probably taking pot shots at Theo. Redsocks ownership has pulled this shit for years.
That’s quite possible, and of course it would explain some bad performances (except for Lackey, who was just bad.)
But still… again, I wonder if this is a valid description or just one of the things a team always has that’s now a straw for grasping at. Lester pitched just as badly in May as in September, but nobody noticed in May because his team was scoring runs. I suspect that every MLB team has any number of players who are at odds with a trainer, or a coach, or the skipper, at any given time. I bet Milwaukee’s trainers are constantly on Prince Fielder about his apparent love of KFC Double Downs, but nobody’s talking about that because the Brewers are in the playoffs.
I have heard this from other Sox fans and I just can’t understand how putting this out there makes ownership look good. I’d have been perfectly satisfied with the explanation that it was just simply time for a change of voice in the clubhouse. Why the need to drag Francona through the mud? That part of the story, by the way, was a bit of a low blow. Francona is hardly the first manager or player in MLB to have marital issues.
And, there was already kind of a shot at Theo in the story about how someone didn’t agree with the Crawford signing but Theo was all about it. That deal could still work out very well, by the way, and I expect it to. Crawford won’t hit .250 forever.
While it is “results based” analysis, there is something valid about the concept. I’ll put up with unprofessional bullshit as long as you are helping the team/company achieve its goals. Once we are failing, and you are not hitting your individual goals, you and your BS are suddenly expendable.
I don’t know if any of this is being put out there specifically by ownership since their jobs aren’t in jeopardy, but the reporters aren’t making it up. Guys are blaming each other for what happened so they don’t get blamed themselves. It’s the same kind of thing you can see after a losing political campaign. Everybody says it was someone else’s fault. I do think you can take some guesses at where some of the information came from: notice how much time is spent on the players goofing off and Francona was distracted and stoned, and how little space is devoted to minor issues like “management signed a bunch of shitty players” and how the author reports that Tim Wakefield had the temerity to say he wants to have a job next season?
The point is, the bullshit is not what caused the decline. Good management is about maximizing performance and correctly identifying problems.
If you believe pitchers drinking beer in the clubhouse is inhibits team performance, then it was a bad thing in April, and it was bad management to allow it, and poor journalism not to report it. If it does not inhibit performance, it is bad management and poor journalism to blame it in October.
True, it’s just that the decline removed any need to gloss over or excuse the poor behavior. If things are running great, and you’re doing well, there is reason to avoid confrontation over marginal behavior.
Since they won the World Series in 2007, they have been declining: lost ALCS in 7 games in 2008, lost LDS three straight in 2009, missed the playoffs in 2009 and 2010. Certainly Epstein, Francona and the rest had a magical run that Red Sox fans will cherish but lots of times, when a successful team loses steam, things don’t end well. If you look at the Yankees, Miller Huggins didn’t end well (complaining in 1929 that the Yankees cared too much about the stock market) and Joe McvCarthy (apparently drinking problems and abrasive co-owner/President in MacPhail) I think there is something to the stories, enough goofing off to cost them a couple of games, which was enough.
