Cultures of Winning

The 2012 Red Sox season was a disaster.  The team went 69-93 for a last place finish in the American League East and they had the third worst record in the AL.  The 2013 Red Sox, by contrast, currently have the best record in baseball and lead the AL East by 9.5 games.  So, what happened?

The 2012 season came directly on the heels of the apocalyptic 2011 season.  After acquiring sluggers Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, hopes were high for the team.  The Boston Herald and Michael Holley (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) both anointed them the "Best Team EVER" (2:14 in the WEEI link for the audio).  Mikey Adams predicated 103 wins for the Sox.  They even announced over the offseason that they were aiming to win the World Series, which of course is always the goal, but most front offices don't outright say that.  The season was largely a success and the Sox held a 9.5 game in the AL Wild Card race over the Tampa Bay Rays on September 3rd.  The team, as everyone knows, wound up missing the playoffs due to a 7-20 record (.259 winning percentage) for the month of September.

After this historic collapse, a range of controversial topics emerged.  Manager Terry Francona, whom many consider to be the greatest manager in Red Sox history, was fired, as many thought he had lost control of his clubhouse.  General manager Theo Epstein was traded to the Cubs.  The chicken and beer scandal emerged (it's worth noting that since that article was published, we found out that John Lackey pitched most of the season while needing Tommy John surgery.  I'm willing to give his shortcomings a pass on that basis).  And, Bobby Valentine was hired as the team's new manager, which would later lead to speculation that new GM Ben Cherington was not given his pick of manager, instead being overrode by team president Larry Lucchino.

Despite having basically the same talent as the previous year, the 2012 Red Sox stunk.  The clubhouse was, by all accounts, toxic.  From Bobby V.'s "Nice inning, Will" comment to Carl Crawford constantly complaining that the Boston media was too tough on him, there was not much clubhouse cohesion.  And then, on August 25th, the Los Angeles Dodgers threw the Red Sox a bone.  The Sox were able to trade the Dodgers proverbial turds Gonzalez, Crawford, and Josh Beckett (as well as Nick Punto, who was not a turd) for some pocket lint and a couple of half-smoked cigarettes.

This trade basically let Ben Cherington press a reset button on the team and allowed him to build it from the ground up in his mold.  His first move was, not surprisingly, to fire Bobby Valentine and replace him with former pitching coach John Farrell.  Cherington then went on a binge of signing "good guys": David Ross, Johnny Gomes, Mike Napoli, and Shane Victorino.  The general feeling around the city--and my hunch--was that this group of ball players wasn't talented enough to contend for the playoffs, much less a world title, and that the 2013 season would be a "bridge year" until youngsters Xander Bogaerts and Jackie Bradley, Jr. (amongst others) would be ready for full-time jobs in 2014.

Bridge year indeed.

The Red Sox have reverted some to their 2003-2004 form when they were a bunch of Idiots who rallied behind the slogan "Cowboy Up".  They've stopped shaving as a form of brotherhood.  They breathe baseball and don't want to think about anything else, unlike Josh Beckett's famed "My off day is my off day" golf outing on an injured back the previous year.

Throughout the season, Tony Massarotti has been saying that the Red Sox didn't have enough talent to be a serious contender; that their lack of talent would eventually catch up to them.  And I agreed.  But what both Mazz and I did not account for is the importance of culture in an organization.  That culture can make up for shortcomings in other areas.  The 2013 Red Sox are the prototypical example of this.  Not only do they have a winning attitude, their culture is one of hard work and success.  Career coaches will say that people who work hard are often more successful than those who try to coast by on talent, and the Red Sox have shown us exactly that.

A classic example of over-the-top talent is the original Dream Team.  Coach Chuck Daly was worried that his group of NBA superstars would march into the Olympics thinking they were invincible due to their obscene talent level and might get surprised.  To combat this, he held a scrimmage against a group of college all-stars and through his coaching decisions, he threw the game.  The lesson he wanted to have reach his team was that despite their potential, a poor attitude could lead them to failure.  The rest of the story is history.

Throughout my life, my father has preached to me the importance of culture in organizations.  That establishing a healthy culture in an organization is of the utmost importance and that failure to instill such a culture will ultimately whittle away at the success of the organization.  When I worked at Infinity and asked citizen-owners (Infinity only has employees insofar as they have people they submit W-2s for; instead, they have citizen-owners.  This is a major part of the culture there because it implies that the workers take ownership over the company, their work, and that they all work together as a team) what their favorite part about Infinity was, the unanimous response was the culture.  They said that working at Infinity was unlike any other company they had worked for, and, as a result, they were happier.  A happy worker is a productive worker.  And to circle back around to the Red Sox, the players are happy playing baseball, and who would have guessed that they are now playing baseball well.

I called this article "Cultures of Winning" because there is not one distinct "winning" culture (and "winning" can be more broadly defined as success).  Each organization will be strong in certain cultural areas and weak in others; the organization (both leaders and what I'll call followers) need to work to come up with a culture that will lead to its success.  Once a winning culture is established though, the organization must continue to work to maintain that culture.

David Ortiz is not a Hall of Famer

A recent hot topic on Boston sports radio is whether or not David Ortiz is worth of induction in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.  I don't know what the national perception of Ortiz's career is, but in Boston, most people seem to think he deserves to be in Cooperstown one day.  Ortiz was also reported to have tested positive for PEDs in 2003, but I don't think he belongs in the HOF regardless of PED use.

Ortiz made his MLB debut in 1997 for the Minnesota Twins and played his first full season in 2000.  In 2000, he hit .282, belting 10 home runs and driving in 63 runs.  He had a WAR of 0.7.  For the next two years, Ortiz put up somewhat similar stats (his power numbers were increasing) and he was hankered by a wrist injury.  After the 2002 season, he was released by the Twins.

A little over a month after his release, the Boston Red Sox signed Ortiz.  He entered the 2003 season in a position battle over DH with Jeremy Giambi.  By July, Ortiz had beaten out Giambi for the starting job and his Red Sox career took off.  As we all know the Sox would go on to win two rings with Ortiz being a major driving force.  In 2006, he hit 54 home runs to lead the American League.  He has been a 9-time All-Star since joining the Red Sox and finished second in the MVP voting in 2005.  At the time of writing, Ortiz's Red Sox career has seen a .292 average with 369 home runs.  He's gotten 1613 hits (average of 147 per season) and has a WAR of 41.0 over that time.

So he's got pretty good numbers.  And baseball is indeed a numbers game.  But when I think of what makes a Hall of Famer, I think of longevity*.  Greatness over the span of say, 15 years.  Ortiz has greatness over the span of roughly 10 seasons--not cutting it, in my book.  And I'm not even sure I'd classify Ortiz as "greatness"--more like "really really really good."  There is a difference.  He just doesn't pass the eye-test for me.  Baseball-Reference similar players for every player, and the top 5 similar batters for Ortiz are Lance Berkman, Carlos Delgado, Jason Giambi, Jim Edmonds, and Paul Konerko.  Most people can agree that all of those players are really nice players, but none of them are HOFers.  With the exception of Giambi due to his off-the-field issues (read: doping), those players probably won't even be remembered in 20 years.

*There are, in certain cases, situations where longevity can be replaced by complete dominance and the unfortunate case of a career being cut short.  The obvious example of this is Sandy Koufax, who wins most kitchen debates of "Game 7 of the World Series, who do you pitch?"  I call this being a transcendent talent--a once in every 50 years type of player--and in the absence of longevity, you'd better be transcendent to make the Hall of Fame.  Another more recent example of a transcendent talent would be Ken Griffey, Jr..  While he played 22 seasons, Griffey demonstrated the amazing talent he was in the 1990s before running into injuries.

Now there is also the issue of Ortiz's position.  He is, through and through, a designated hitter.  His job is to hit.  When forced to, he is a below average fielder at first base, he's slow, and I'm going to guess he doesn't have the best arm.  So we're looking at Ortiz fulfilling 1 to 2 of the 5 "tools" that are deemed essential to baseball players.  Based on this, he better be the best hitter of the last 20 years to get into the HOF, but we've already deduced that his numbers don't put him anywhere near this category.  Failing that longevity, he needs to be a transcendent talent, and I don't think anyone will argue with me if I say that he is not a once-in-a-generation type of hitter (he wasn't even the best hitter on his team for a good chunk of his career).

There is something to be said for the best player at each position getting into the Hall of Fame.  Ortiz is certainly in the discussion for best DH, the other major candidate being Edgar Martinez.  There are two issues with this argument: first, the DH has only been around for 40 years, which is a short period of time in the history of baseball and second, the number of players who are only DHs is few.  Teams simply don't sign players to play DH because they aren't that valuable; they're better off signing a good hitter who can also play in the field to platoon with another player (think carrying four solid outfielders).  So saying that Ortiz is the greatest DH of all time is a little bit of a misnomer because there simply haven't been that many players defined as DHs.  Another thing to consider is that Ortiz has never won an MVP, which might be indicative of the way baseball writers value the DH.

Time will tell what the lasting opinion of David Ortiz is.  If he has another 5 seasons in line with what he's been doing the previous five, I could be convinced that he deserves a slot.  But, he'll be 43 at that time, and if he's hitting the way he is now at that age, I think some people will be scratching their heads as to how natural he is (that is, if they weren't already, based on the previously mentioned allegations).  I also am unsure of how the voters will rate post-season productivity: Ortiz's post-season numbers are pretty much in line with his career numbers, but his World Series numbers are better than his career averages (albeit with a small sample size--28 at bats and 34 plate appearances).

Thanks to baseball-reference.com for the stats.

What SI's Oklahoma State Report Has Taught Me About Critical Sports Reporting

On Tuesday, Sports Illustrated's George Dohrmann and Thayer Evans dropped a bombshell on the sporting world with the first of five segments of their Special Report on Oklahoma State Football, entitled "The Money." In the report, Dohrmann and Evans unveiled a slew of allegations against the program under former coach Les Miles -- ranging from cash incentives to academic fraud to a team-run escort service. The report set off an equal and opposite slate of reactions (SB Nation has collected them here, for convenience sake), as Oklahoma State officials scrambled to defend the program and those cited in the report alleged journalistic wrongdoing.

At this point, we have no reliable way of knowing if Dohrmann and Evans actually committed the journalistic no-nos that they are being accused of. To be honest, it seems more realistic that the cited former players simply didn't realize the scope of what they were involving themselves in when they agreed to be interviewed, and I have no problem with that.

As this firestorm continues to unwind though (the second segment was released today), some of the backlash  directed at Dohrmann and Evans' has centered on their motivations for beginning the inquiry in the first place. The most succinct and visible instance has come from an unusual -- but really not that unlikely -- source:

The first and only time that T. Boone Pickens -- oil king, television
personality and Oklahoma State booster -- will appear on this blog

This, I feel no small amount of shame in admitting, is the more interesting question. I also think it's one that merits a consideration of the recent history of investigations into wrongdoing in college football.

With the near-constant turnover of college football rosters and -- increasingly -- coaching staffs, it's very hard for anyone to catch any of these programs actively doing anything wrong. In fact, this might be the closest we're going to ever come. For one, Les Miles is still among the college ranks, which is more than can be said for the other big-name NCAA investigations of the past several years. History has shown that these things take time to unfold and the college game is inherently uncooperative over such large swaths of time. If this is the high-water mark of NCAA action taken against a coach -- a combination of the most brazen violations with a clear and readily-punishable perpetrator -- it remains to be seen if that will actually amount to anything. Even given the involvement of a household name like Miles', the emerging sentiment is that it still looks like there's going to be very little that the NCAA can do about it.

So what's the point of writing pieces like the SI report? Does the unlikelihood of meaningful recourse mean that investigative reporting simply doesn't have a place in college football? These questions are where we are starting to get to the core of the journalistic issues involved in this episode, and where I have to address the uncomfortable feeling I got when I read the SI report for the first time.

There's something inherently unpalatable about witnessing someone being accused of something. While we accept enforcement and uphold it as necessary, there is also an instinctual tendency to scrutinize the accuser's motives, and I think that's a good thing. It seems to me that the case for the SI report being for the greater good of the game is pretty strong -- the rules should be enforced and offenders held accountable -- but in the back of my mind I realize that this need should be balanced out by the necessity of preventing the game from deteriorating into an ongoing public search for cheaters.

The accusation that Pickens and others are making is that this report is a little bit too much a witch hunt and not enough a well-intentioned act of honest journalism. Given the facts, I disagree with that opinion, but I had to sit and think it all out before I realized that I disagree.

When Bryan asked me to contribute to this blog, he was clear in saying that we weren't going to let this turn into a forum to throw out accusations -- baseless or otherwise. I think that's an important point, and one that I need to consciously remind myself of from time to time. The fallout from the SI report has shown me that I am not the only one who has to do this, because -- at the end of the day -- our goal is to improve the games which we write about, not to destroy them.

Photos courtesy of ESPN and Twitter