10 Comments
Nov 4, 2022Liked by Craig Brown

Well-said. Now, to pull form those trees in which Q has coached and bring in experts on the pitching side.

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Thanks. I am extremely interested in where the rest of the staff will come from. Pitching coach, yes. And bench coach.

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Nov 4, 2022Liked by Craig Brown

Assuming it's not someone in the CLE/TB pipeline, I'd love to see them do something interesting for bench coach, and add someone like look to winning orgs like NYY (Rojas), Boston (Vasquez, or even Roenicke?), or ex-Royals like Carlos Febles or Sal Fasano? My guess is they'll look for someone more experienced, but could be out-of-the-box. I know Vasquez loves analytics.

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I’m wondering if they go the White Sox route and get a former manager in the bench coach role, or do they have supreme confidence in Q and just turn him loose and let him be the driving force in the selection? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter.

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Nov 4, 2022Liked by Craig Brown

Great point about Moore that wasn't visible to me while he was employed and failing on the field. It's incredible that a team owned by the Walmart Glasses had such a good and caring culture for the employees. I even experienced it as a fan. It made an absolute difference to people and it made the highs of 2014 and 2015 even higher, and the lows a little less low.

"... and it creates more questions ..." is the phrase that gets me pumped. It's one thing to passively receive data, it's another to, well..., collaborate in the discovery and interpretation of it. I can only imagine how pumped the analytics team will be to get their first inquiry from the coach.

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The Glass family ran the team exactly the way they operated their retail outfits. Moore got them to change that. Will never stop being amazing.

Yeah...The open lines of communication from Quatraro's field staff to the behind the scenes personnel is going to be so key. I expect to see some unique and hopefully successful baseball.

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Nov 4, 2022·edited Nov 4, 2022Liked by Craig Brown

Could be a long ways off, but I think the day may come when we appreciate and revere John Sherman nearly as much as Mr K.

I think it's fair to say that both of them saved Major League baseball for KC. And "yes baseball" no matter how pedestrian it appears, is way way better than "no baseball." So thank you for that, Mr K and Mr S. Take it from a guy who still has gruesome memories of the summer of 1968 when KC had no MLB team! As if listening to radio broadcasts of Twins and Cardinals games would be an acceptable substitute! I'm still pissed at Charlie Finley over that!

Now, as we turn our attention to winning a few of those ballgames an entirely different conversation emerges....

.... And I will merely note without comment that winning the press conference requires entirely different skills than winning baseball games. We'll soon find out if Q has both sets of skills.

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Nov 4, 2022Liked by Craig Brown

I've heard it said before that new managerial hires reflect the organization's criticisms of and disappointments with the previous manager. I think it's pretty clear that Matheny was a poor communicator and while he understood the math behind the analytics he didn't understand the "why" and "how should I apply this knowledge?"

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Picollo has been so forceful and consistent in listing what he needs from a new manager, it’s impossible not to read that as a critique of Matheny. Which is merely confirmation of what we all feared when he was hired three years ago.

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For the record, I heard the same undercurrent in those quotes. So you're not nuts here. The things JJ's been saying are VERY telling. I wonder how frustrated he was last season in particular.

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