Playing the Blame Game

The Padres currently have the second worst record in the major leagues. They have a few good players, a few average players, and a bunch of replacement level players. Although June has ended, the gloom hovering over the Padres has not. Someone must be to blame.

It is easy to point to manager Buddy Black. His team nearly made the playoffs last year, but this season the team has “underperformed.” Easy as it is to make Buddy the scapegoat for the team’s struggles, I do not see how the losing is his fault. He is the same manager that won 89 games last year. It is unlikely that at some point between October and April he forgot how to manage teams to victories. All Buddy can do is put the best players on the field and manage the bullpen effectively. Just because his best players cannot get on base, and his bullpen, aside from Heath Bell, is horrendous, does not mean he is doing a poor job managing.

If the managing is not sub par, then it must be the general manager’s fault; right? Most fans, including myself, would like to believe that the job of the general manager is to acquire the best players possible every season. The reality is that the general manager’s job is to follow the instructions of the owner. John Moores may have tasked Kevin Towers to maximize profits over the long-run, or at the very least, to keep the team at break-even once the appreciation of the franchise’s value is accounted for. Regardless of Towers’ specific job description, he must work within the confines of budget constraints, and take more than a one-period outlook. Towers must balance the success of the team this year, with the success of the team in future seasons.

Towers’ moves this off-season did just that; balance the current season with future seasons. The Padres lost only two significant contributors: Milton Bradley and Mike Cameron. They probably could have afforded to sign at least one of them. Bradley was offered $4 million, but took $5 million with Texas instead. With Chase Headley nearly ready to assume LF duties, it did not make a lot of sense to fork over big bucks for a guy who has never been able to stay healthy and is always a threat to blowup mentally. I am a big Milton Bradley fan, but at a certain point the risk outweighs the reward. Yes he is having a great season in Texas, but that does not necessarily suggest he would be having the same great season in San Diego. San Diego presents a less hitter-friendly ballpark, and an entirely different set of environmental circumstances. We also don’t know if he will lose a significant amount of time to injury, suspension, or something else later in the season.

The bigger loss was Mike Cameron. I don’t think any of us know exactly what transpired in the negotiations. The Padres offered Cameron a deal that they thought reflected his true value, but instead Cameron took a one-year deal that paid him slightly more than what the Padres ended up paying Jim Edmonds. Perhaps the Padres mishandled the negotiations, or maybe Cameron just wanted to move on. Whatever the reason, Cameron did not accept the deal the Padres offered. Once Cameron declined the Padres best offer, the club was forced to make its next best move. They decided to bring in Jim Edmonds. Edmonds did not pan out, but there were not many better options available. It’s not like the Indians were offering to stick a ribbon on Grady Sizemore and drop him off at Petco Park. Again, the club made the proper decision at the time. Just because the results have not been great does not mean the GM is to blame.

As long as the process is right, and decisions are made that incorporate all relevant information, winning seasons will be more common than losing seasons. Sometimes though, even good decisions do not result in good outcomes. Paul Depodesta, Padres Special Assistant for Baseball Operations, compared this “paradox” to gambling and the operation of a casino in his blog:

Many years ago I was playing blackjack in Las Vegas on a Saturday night in a packed casino. I was sitting at third base, and the player who was at first base was playing horribly. He was definitely taking advantage of the free drinks, and it seemed as though every twenty minutes he was dipping into his pocket for more cash.

On one particular hand the player was dealt 17 with his first two cards. The dealer was set to deal the next set of cards and passed right over the player until he stopped her, saying: "Dealer, I want a hit!" She paused, almost feeling sorry for him, and said, "Sir, are you sure?" He said yes, and the dealer dealt the card. Sure enough, it was a four.

The place went crazy, high fives all around, everybody hootin' and hollerin', and you know what the dealer said? The dealer looked at the player, and with total sincerity, said: "Nice hit."

I thought, "Nice hit? Maybe it was a nice hit for the casino, but it was a terrible hit for the player! The decision isn't justified just because it worked."

Well, I spent the rest of that weekend wandering around the casino, largely because I had lost all of my money playing blackjack, thinking about all of these different games and how they work. The fact of the matter is that all casino games have a winning process - the odds are stacked in the favor of the house. That doesn't mean they win every single hand or every roll of the dice, but they do win more often than not. Don't misunderstand me - the casino is absolutely concerned about outcomes. However, their approach to securing a good outcome is a laser like focus on process...right down to the ruthless pit boss.

Much like the process of a casino ensures a high likelihood of profitability, the process of the Padres’ front office ensures a high likelihood of being consistently competitive. The decision making process is the right one. Firing the key decision makers should not be done because the team is losing, but only if there are different people who can do a better job in the future. The Padres may be terrible this year, but there is no other group of people I would rather have trying to fix the problem going forward.