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La Russa has lost his marbles
Posted on: August 22, 2016 at 12:21:32 CT
Jed Smock KU
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Weren't there a few reports of him during the 2011 season forgetting things in the middle of a game?
6:55 AM MT Keith Law ESPN Senior Writer The Arizona Diamondbacks have some major decisions to make on the future of their front office, including a contract option for GM Dave Stewart for 2017 that must be exercised or declined by Aug. 31 and the soon-to-expire contract of "Chief Baseball Officer" Tony La Russa. These decisions should be incredibly easy for an organization that has done nothing but go backward since their hires. The La Russa/Stewart Reign of Error has been as mistake-filled as any front office regime in the last five years, with most of their gaffes becoming public embarrassments to the organization, contributing to the perception around the sport that Arizona's front office is a laughingstock, falling well behind the rest of the industry in its processes and capabilities.
Just look at their track record of bad decisions: Yoan Lopez fiasco
No mistake has loomed larger than the constant stream of errors around Cuban right-handed pitcher Yoan Lopez. The brand-new front office reached to sign him for $8 million after the 2013 season, even though it appeared that he was priced by other teams at about one-tenth that number. The Diamondbacks didn't understand the international bonus pool rules, and thus were unaware they would have to pay an $8 million penalty on top of Lopez's bonus AND would be prohibited from signing any July 2 free agents for the next two signing periods until after Lopez's deal was official.
As it turns out, Lopez has not only underperformed, but he has also earned negative reviews from within the Diamondbacks' own system, as coaches and players alike have had problems with him. He contemplated quitting baseball last month, which spurred a series of comments from La Russa where he claimed, "we have three guys in that scouting group in the last year that have rated (Lopez) in the Top 3 as far as potential arm strength/variety of pitches/body type, in our organization and compared to (other) major-league (organizations).”
As I said on Twitter at the time, this can't be, because Lopez isn't even a top 3 prospect in Arizona's system or a top 200 prospect in all of baseball.
The Lopez disaster had a ripple effect a few months later, when the team packaged 2014 first-round pick Touki Toussaint, a very high-upside but raw teenage pitching prospect, with the injured Bronson Arroyo in a "Weekend at Bernie's" pairing that allowed Arizona to shed much of Arroyo's dead money, but at the cost of a significant prospect.
Stewart's unfamiliarity with the rules hasn't just applied to the international pools. According to multiple sources, in early 2015 he tried to make a trade with another team that would have violated MLB rules, and the GM of the other team had to explain to him that such a move was not allowed.
The 2015 draft debacle
The 2015 draft was a huge opportunity for the Diamondbacks to restock their farm system, as they had the top overall pick and one of the draft's largest signing budgets. Before the draft even began they squandered part of that, trading a competitive balance pick to Atlanta just to rid themselves of Trevor Cahill's contract. The two trades came a few days apart, where Arizona sent Cahill to Atlanta for minor leaguer/org player Josh Elander, whom they released after 14 games, and then sent the pick to Atlanta for outfield prospect Victor Reyes.
That pick's slot value was $814,300, which the Diamondbacks could then not spend on their own picks … and the trade also meant that was one fewer chance for the Diamondbacks to use some of the savings on pick No. 1, Dansby Swanson, to sign a first-round player who fell for financial reasons to an over-slot bonus at that pick. This was a complete failure to understand how to properly play the current draft system.
How complete? The Diamondbacks failed to spend up to their full allotment of signing bonuses in 2015, leaving $1.7 million on the table, money they could have spent on players without penalty. That's equivalent to forgoing an entire first-round pick, all because of poor planning. Most teams will take at least two or three players with high bonus demands later in the draft for just such a scenario -- if they have money left over from their pools after they sign their picks in the top 10 rounds, they go spend it on one or more players from later in the draft. The Diamondbacks didn't do this. They just pocketed the money to the detriment of the farm system.
Poor player evaluation
Failure to properly assess talent here doesn't just apply to players outside the organization. Other executives have told me Stewart doesn't know his own players as well as a GM should. One glaring example is when the Diamondbacks placed reliever Will Harris on waivers after the 2014 season, spurring a rush of claims for him. Harris threw 52 2/3 innings in 2013 with a 2.95 ERA/2.74 FIP, missing some time and running into bad luck in 2014, but still striking out 30 percent of the batters he faced in that latter season. The Diamondbacks gave him away for nothing. The Astros won the claim and have received 117.2 innings of a 2.22 ERA/3.20 FIP from him in a year-plus since then. Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks' own bullpen has been one of those long-burning coal seam fires more or less since Stewart and La Russa took over.
Many of the moves made or proposed by Diamondbacks GM Dave Stewart have left many throughout the major leagues scratching their heads. Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports The Swanson trade was bad when Arizona made it, but it's so much worse now. Shelby Miller's mechanics went in the toilet -- blame for which should sit squarely on the Diamondbacks, because if they didn't make these changes they certainly didn't fix them -- while Swanson remains a top 20 prospect and Ender Inciarte has been a 2-win player (per Baseball-Reference) so far for Atlanta this year.
Then La Russa went on Arizona radio and said that Miller had a "health issue," and then said that "I know this is really going to sound kind of yucky and kind of mysterious, but there was an issue that came up — believe me, it was not illegal, it wasn’t anything dramatically character-wise that was a problem — but there was something that came into the way that Shelby prepared that worked against him and not for him."
These comments were totally inappropriate for a club official to make, whatever he was trying to imply.
Of course, that's par for the course for La Russa, who has been like the water supply once the main shutoff valve has broken. During a series against the Pirates, with whom the Diamondbacks have an ongoing, dimwitted vendetta over hit batsmen, La Russa barged into Pittsburgh's radio booth to argue with longtime Pirates broadcaster Greg Brown over comments the latter made on air.
This is the same group that insisted that Yasmany Tomas could play third base -- shocker, he couldn't -- and that he would hit, which he hasn't. Tomas has a .304 OBP through 831 pro plate appearances, and even if we don't dock him for his misadventures at third base, which are really management's fault rather than his, he's still been below replacement level since his debut last spring. The Diamondbacks are still on the hook for $48.5 million of the $68.5 million they guaranteed him.
Even this spring, the team couldn't handle rational projections of the team's capabilities. Before the 2016 season, Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs ran projections of the season, publishing projected final standings that had Arizona at 78 and 79 wins, respectively. La Russa's response was to question the legitimacy of the companies and said of the projections that "you don't take it seriously." The Diamondbacks are currently 49-69, third-worst in the National League, and on pace to finish with 67 wins, well below either site's projection.
Not enough for you? How about the GM's wife being the agent for several Arizona players, who were clients of the GM before he transferred the business to her to take this job? How about the $34.5 million a year they owe to Zack Greinke, a steep price even before you look at his 4+ ERA this year? Or the trade of two prospects for Jeremy Hellickson, who gave them a year of replacement-level pitching for $4.275 million?
How can owner Ken Kendrick be surprised by these results? He hired a former manager with no front office experience to oversee the entire baseball operations department. That person hired a former agent who hadn't worked in a front office in 13 years – a period of time that encompasses the entire analytics revolution in the sport – to be the general manager. In an era where teams are building entire analytics departments of PhDs with degrees in fields like signal processing and machine learning, Arizona hired a longtime friend of La Russa's to run their analytics department. There are good, competent people in the Diamondbacks' baseball ops department, but they appear to have no sway over the decisions La Russa and Stewart are making.
The GM chair here is a desirable job -- most GM positions are -- because the Diamondbacks still have a fair amount of talent on the major-league roster. You can do a lot with the talent that's here. But if they continue to mishandle their money in the draft and internationally, to lose value in the majority of their trades, to squander so much of their budget on one starter who can't solve their roster woes even if he turns back into a Cy Young candidate, then they're going to continue to move backward even as the rest of the division -- and the industry -- moves forward.
The time is now for Arizona to change its direction, hire any of the numerous qualified candidates from other teams who can keep up with the best demonstrated practices of Arizona's 29 competitors, and stop embarrassing themselves on and off the field
6:55 AM MT Keith Law ESPN Senior Writer The Arizona Diamondbacks have some major decisions to make on the future of their front office, including a contract option for GM Dave Stewart for 2017 that must be exercised or declined by Aug. 31 and the soon-to-expire contract of "Chief Baseball Officer" Tony La Russa. These decisions should be incredibly easy for an organization that has done nothing but go backward since their hires. The La Russa/Stewart Reign of Error has been as mistake-filled as any front office regime in the last five years, with most of their gaffes becoming public embarrassments to the organization, contributing to the perception around the sport that Arizona's front office is a laughingstock, falling well behind the rest of the industry in its processes and capabilities.
Just look at their track record of bad decisions: Yoan Lopez fiasco
No mistake has loomed larger than the constant stream of errors around Cuban right-handed pitcher Yoan Lopez. The brand-new front office reached to sign him for $8 million after the 2013 season, even though it appeared that he was priced by other teams at about one-tenth that number. The Diamondbacks didn't understand the international bonus pool rules, and thus were unaware they would have to pay an $8 million penalty on top of Lopez's bonus AND would be prohibited from signing any July 2 free agents for the next two signing periods until after Lopez's deal was official.
As it turns out, Lopez has not only underperformed, but he has also earned negative reviews from within the Diamondbacks' own system, as coaches and players alike have had problems with him. He contemplated quitting baseball last month, which spurred a series of comments from La Russa where he claimed, "we have three guys in that scouting group in the last year that have rated (Lopez) in the Top 3 as far as potential arm strength/variety of pitches/body type, in our organization and compared to (other) major-league (organizations).”
As I said on Twitter at the time, this can't be, because Lopez isn't even a top 3 prospect in Arizona's system or a top 200 prospect in all of baseball.
The Lopez disaster had a ripple effect a few months later, when the team packaged 2014 first-round pick Touki Toussaint, a very high-upside but raw teenage pitching prospect, with the injured Bronson Arroyo in a "Weekend at Bernie's" pairing that allowed Arizona to shed much of Arroyo's dead money, but at the cost of a significant prospect.
Stewart's unfamiliarity with the rules hasn't just applied to the international pools. According to multiple sources, in early 2015 he tried to make a trade with another team that would have violated MLB rules, and the GM of the other team had to explain to him that such a move was not allowed.
The 2015 draft debacle
The 2015 draft was a huge opportunity for the Diamondbacks to restock their farm system, as they had the top overall pick and one of the draft's largest signing budgets. Before the draft even began they squandered part of that, trading a competitive balance pick to Atlanta just to rid themselves of Trevor Cahill's contract. The two trades came a few days apart, where Arizona sent Cahill to Atlanta for minor leaguer/org player Josh Elander, whom they released after 14 games, and then sent the pick to Atlanta for outfield prospect Victor Reyes.
That pick's slot value was $814,300, which the Diamondbacks could then not spend on their own picks … and the trade also meant that was one fewer chance for the Diamondbacks to use some of the savings on pick No. 1, Dansby Swanson, to sign a first-round player who fell for financial reasons to an over-slot bonus at that pick. This was a complete failure to understand how to properly play the current draft system.
How complete? The Diamondbacks failed to spend up to their full allotment of signing bonuses in 2015, leaving $1.7 million on the table, money they could have spent on players without penalty. That's equivalent to forgoing an entire first-round pick, all because of poor planning. Most teams will take at least two or three players with high bonus demands later in the draft for just such a scenario -- if they have money left over from their pools after they sign their picks in the top 10 rounds, they go spend it on one or more players from later in the draft. The Diamondbacks didn't do this. They just pocketed the money to the detriment of the farm system.
Poor player evaluation
Failure to properly assess talent here doesn't just apply to players outside the organization. Other executives have told me Stewart doesn't know his own players as well as a GM should. One glaring example is when the Diamondbacks placed reliever Will Harris on waivers after the 2014 season, spurring a rush of claims for him. Harris threw 52 2/3 innings in 2013 with a 2.95 ERA/2.74 FIP, missing some time and running into bad luck in 2014, but still striking out 30 percent of the batters he faced in that latter season. The Diamondbacks gave him away for nothing. The Astros won the claim and have received 117.2 innings of a 2.22 ERA/3.20 FIP from him in a year-plus since then. Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks' own bullpen has been one of those long-burning coal seam fires more or less since Stewart and La Russa took over.
Many of the moves made or proposed by Diamondbacks GM Dave Stewart have left many throughout the major leagues scratching their heads. Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports The Swanson trade was bad when Arizona made it, but it's so much worse now. Shelby Miller's mechanics went in the toilet -- blame for which should sit squarely on the Diamondbacks, because if they didn't make these changes they certainly didn't fix them -- while Swanson remains a top 20 prospect and Ender Inciarte has been a 2-win player (per Baseball-Reference) so far for Atlanta this year.
Then La Russa went on Arizona radio and said that Miller had a "health issue," and then said that "I know this is really going to sound kind of yucky and kind of mysterious, but there was an issue that came up — believe me, it was not illegal, it wasn’t anything dramatically character-wise that was a problem — but there was something that came into the way that Shelby prepared that worked against him and not for him."
These comments were totally inappropriate for a club official to make, whatever he was trying to imply.
Of course, that's par for the course for La Russa, who has been like the water supply once the main shutoff valve has broken. During a series against the Pirates, with whom the Diamondbacks have an ongoing, dimwitted vendetta over hit batsmen, La Russa barged into Pittsburgh's radio booth to argue with longtime Pirates broadcaster Greg Brown over comments the latter made on air.
This is the same group that insisted that Yasmany Tomas could play third base -- shocker, he couldn't -- and that he would hit, which he hasn't. Tomas has a .304 OBP through 831 pro plate appearances, and even if we don't dock him for his misadventures at third base, which are really management's fault rather than his, he's still been below replacement level since his debut last spring. The Diamondbacks are still on the hook for $48.5 million of the $68.5 million they guaranteed him.
Even this spring, the team couldn't handle rational projections of the team's capabilities. Before the 2016 season, Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs ran projections of the season, publishing projected final standings that had Arizona at 78 and 79 wins, respectively. La Russa's response was to question the legitimacy of the companies and said of the projections that "you don't take it seriously." The Diamondbacks are currently 49-69, third-worst in the National League, and on pace to finish with 67 wins, well below either site's projection.
Not enough for you? How about the GM's wife being the agent for several Arizona players, who were clients of the GM before he transferred the business to her to take this job? How about the $34.5 million a year they owe to Zack Greinke, a steep price even before you look at his 4+ ERA this year? Or the trade of two prospects for Jeremy Hellickson, who gave them a year of replacement-level pitching for $4.275 million?
How can owner Ken Kendrick be surprised by these results? He hired a former manager with no front office experience to oversee the entire baseball operations department. That person hired a former agent who hadn't worked in a front office in 13 years – a period of time that encompasses the entire analytics revolution in the sport – to be the general manager. In an era where teams are building entire analytics departments of PhDs with degrees in fields like signal processing and machine learning, Arizona hired a longtime friend of La Russa's to run their analytics department. There are good, competent people in the Diamondbacks' baseball ops department, but they appear to have no sway over the decisions La Russa and Stewart are making.
The GM chair here is a desirable job -- most GM positions are -- because the Diamondbacks still have a fair amount of talent on the major-league roster. You can do a lot with the talent that's here. But if they continue to mishandle their money in the draft and internationally, to lose value in the majority of their trades, to squander so much of their budget on one starter who can't solve their roster woes even if he turns back into a Cy Young candidate, then they're going to continue to move backward even as the rest of the division -- and the industry -- moves forward.
The time is now for Arizona to change its direction, hire any of the numerous qualified candidates from other teams who can keep up with the best demonstrated practices of Arizona's 29 competitors, and stop embarrassing themselves on and off the field
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La Russa has lost his marbles - Jed Smock MU - 8/22 12:21:32