Baseball Musings: Pushing for a GM

December 09, 2006

Pushing for a GM

U.S.S. Mariner started a campaign to replace Bill Bavasi, the Seattle GM with Chris Antonetti of the Indians.

Antonetti is going to be labeled as a "Moneyball" executive by the media, as he did not play professional baseball and has advanced degrees from elite universities. He got a bachelors in business administration from Georgetown and a masters in sports management from Massachusets, learning the academic side of how to be a successful manager. From there, he took a low level job with the Montreal Expos in their minor league operations department before joining the Indians organization in 1999 as, essentially, an intern. From 1999 until now, he has worked his way from the title of Assistant, Baseball Operations to Assistant GM (a position he earned in 2002), and has held numerous roles during that time. The Indians have had him work in both administrative and player development positions, and he's spent numerous hours working with both scouts and statistical analysts.
No one understands how to use both subjective scouting information and quantifiable statistical data together as well as the Indians, and Antonetti has been successful in both sides of the baseball operations department. Under the leadership of John Hart and now Mark Shapiro, the Indians have become baseball's most well-oiled machine. Antonetti has been a vital cog in that machine for the past seven years.

6-4-2 Is worried about Antonetti's press skills:

Having watched while the lazy, prejudiced LA media filleted Paul DePodesta from without (starting on the very first day), and very likely, Tommy Lasorda busied himself undermining DePo from within, I note in passing the author presents no evidence to support this assertion. While I imagine the Seattle reporters are far tamer than the abject hacks and character assassins masquerading as newspaper writers down here, at some point, the wins have to flow or else blood will.

Some of that is always chance; if you get lucky, your opponents have their own afflictions, and worse than yours. But Seattle is uniquely unlucky now, in that Arte has a big bankroll and is plying his trade in ever-wider swaths of the largest media market in the division, the A's hope to harvest the fruits of their new park soon, and the Rangers have a sort of idiot Roman emperor as an owner, willing to spend with or without result. The hook, no matter who they haul in to replace Bavasi, perhaps as early as the middle of next year, will be shorter in coming than it was for the job's current occupant. Giving that to someone of unknown press relations skills is perhaps asking for even more trouble.

Press skills can be learned. The difference between ESPN and Fox on air personnel is that Fox tends to take people who know television and teaches them sports, while ESPN takes people who know sports and teaches them television. Whatever Chris' abilities are right now to handle the press, he can learn how to deal with them. The Mariners, if they are going to make a change, should concentrate on hiring someone who knows baseball inside and out. Then send them for a crash course on talking to the press. Antonetti's smart enough to learn that.

Posted by David Pinto at 09:36 AM | Management | TrackBack (0)

Comments

What is one example of someone at Fox who didn't know sports when they began broadcasting it? I can't for the life of me, think of any. BTW, the pretty girl eye candy doesn't count.

Posted by: Aaron Rushin at December 9, 2006 11:37 AM

Tom Arnold.

Posted by: David Pinto at December 9, 2006 01:26 PM

I dunno about that - look at the idiots they hired from Ch 5 in St. Louis - Trey Wingo and that other loser. They didn't know anything about sports, they were all gimmick.

Posted by: JeremyR at December 9, 2006 04:28 PM

If the Indians are such a well oiled machine and have such a great farm system, what explains their 2005 season end fold-up and their completely unsat 2006 season?
As for over-rated front office boy-wonders, I've followed the Red Sox for 65 years and Epstein is the most over-rated boy-wonder of all. The man has gone thru 4 shortstops in 4 years at a considerable expense & any of the last 3 could still be the Sox SS. How does that steady a ball club ?

Posted by: Bob Shvodian at December 9, 2006 09:23 PM

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