Demoting Kawakami A Sign Of Desperation

(from SB Nation Atlanta)
The title more or less says it all. Go read it if you like.

I do hope this move works out, but the thought process--or lack thereof--is problematic.

almost 2 years ago Jacob Peterson 42 comments 0 recs |

Comments

I really have a problem with the treatment of KK

He hasn’t been bad, he is a good 4th or 5th starter, hands down. What the hell is Bobby’s (not a fan of) problem. This is the kind of stuff that loses us chances for the playoffs. Everyone will bring up the past , but that doesn’t mean a damn thing when you stop and think about it. Now is what counts. If the team is handled right we have a good chance of making it. If favorites are played despite a player performance(Norton, now Glaus), we will not make it to the playoffs. I really don’t get the management sometimes. Play your best players and sit the ones that are not making it. But his attachment to some players isn’t a good thing if they suck. Put the best lineup you can up there. Bobby didn’t take this club to multiple championships, the PLAYERS did despite him. How many trips to the World series and how many wins? OH! Yeah freaking one is all. Sorry, Braves management pisses me off sometimes. You spend $11,000 on season tix and lets see how calm you’d be.

Senator, we have another old saying,"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining." Fletcher

by jimmontg on Aug 6, 2010 2:20 AM EDT reply actions

yeah, Bobby Cox is not a leader of men and knows almost nothing about baseball.
and mega kudos on the expensive season tickets. that’s real impressive.

by fandave on Aug 6, 2010 7:01 AM EDT up reply actions

I don't think anyone's implying that BC knows nothing about baseball

The problem is, when a manager plays favorites, it has negative consequences. For example, he loves Venters so much that he’s going to make his arm fall off. He apparently hates KK so much that he’s never going to use him. So we have to start MM’s arb clock early. I could understand playing favorites IF the favorites were the only ones who had any talent, but all 25 guys on this team are average or better. No one is going to hurt you with their play.

Don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you.

"…aren’t worthy enough to hold his (Pujols) ass cheeks apart while Playboy models wipe him with thousand dollar bills after he craps out the cure to whatever previously-incurable disease." by royhobbs 1/7/09

by buzzdeadwax on Aug 6, 2010 11:17 AM EDT up reply actions

and that’s your point of view – which I appreciate and know is shared by others. you call it playing favorities. fine. however, my take is different.

we have a hall of fame manager. now I wouldn’t suggest for a millisecond that he’s infallible or never makes a mistake. but he’s more than a little extraordinary. he has a depth of knowledge and a feel for the game that (with all due respect, of course) far exceeds yours. or yours and mine and another few hundred TCers’ combined.

So, the big problem with KK is that Bobby lost confidence in him. why is not neccessarily known, because Bobby is not going to discuss it, but it seems obvious that’s what happened. and I’m more than willing to give Bobby the benefit of the doubt on this one – just like the decision to dump Yunel, which I personally thought shouldn’t happen, but when it did, I said not one word of criticism.

by fandave on Aug 6, 2010 1:10 PM EDT up reply actions

Oh, it’s obvious that BC lost all confidence in KK. Of course BC’s knowledge of baseball exceeds mine, but it’s very hard to justify this move – based on any metric, KK is a pretty good pitcher and a potentially valuable trade asset. I have a request: defend this move without deferring to BC’s intuition, i.e. use tangible, observable facts. Perhaps you can make an argument that will make us all stop scratching our heads…

Don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you.

by buzzdeadwax on Aug 6, 2010 1:21 PM EDT up reply actions

it wasn’t about metrics, obviously. if you think Bobby makes managerial decisions primarily based on metrics, I’d say you’re wrong.

interestingly, you could pick out managers that are much more metric-oriented. but if you compared their and Bobby’s historical, year in, year out track records, you likely would find than none have done as well as Bobby.

SCRATCH YOUR HEAD WITH THAT ONE FOR AWHILE.

by fandave on Aug 6, 2010 1:38 PM EDT up reply actions

I’m sensing some hostility here, and I’m not real sure why. I wasn’t asking for anyone to give me an algorithm to explain why BC didn’t use one of his pitchers for 6 weeks, just something performance-related. However, if you can’t have a discussion without getting pissed off for no particular reason, then I will stop trying. I mean, I wasn’t even disagreeing with you. Sheesh.

Don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you.

by buzzdeadwax on Aug 6, 2010 4:14 PM EDT up reply actions

The problem is you’re using “metrics”. Decisions like this are based on a mulititude of factors completely unrelated to something you might have cherry picked off of fangraphs.

Bobby has closely watched every pitch KK has thrown. He knows the calls, the gameplans, the scouting reports, etc. He watches him during warmups and side sessions. He watches his training and knows his conditioning. In short he knows what he is capable of and what he is supposed to do.

We only see the tip of the iceberg and it seems like most of the KK defenders don’t even watch the games – they just look at stats.

Keep in mind that Bobby can point to his 40 year track record of great pitching in MLB and pretty much tell anybody else (especially the internet hero crowd) to shut up and go worry about their pissant jobs. Honestly, at this point questioning Bobby’s acumen when it comes to starting pitchers is about as rationale as going down to your local hospital and telling a cardio-thorasic surgeon he’s screwing up or driving to the construction of a new suspension bridge and telling the engineers they don’t know what they are doing. Not that these people don’t ever make mistakes, just that’s it’s laughable arrogance for anyone here to presume even a hint of knowledge or importance in these matters.

That’s what this all boils down to. “I think I’m smarter than Bobby Cox”. Well, his job is opening up and it pays $3 million, so all you geniuses need to get your resume into the Braves organization post haste.

by DCP916 on Aug 6, 2010 1:42 PM EDT up reply actions

Because 40 years of experience somehow makes a person immune to making errors in decisions.

Furthermore, again, if you’re going to use big words to puff yourself up and sound intelligent, perhaps you should spell them properly. Otherwise, you come across as a pompous jackass.

"Jason Heyward was a Greek philosopher reincarnated as a baseball player." - Don Sutton

by UMDBHIK on Aug 6, 2010 1:49 PM EDT up reply actions

Are you uniquely qualified in pompous jackassism?

by fandave on Aug 6, 2010 1:57 PM EDT up reply actions

Nowhere near as much as you.

"Jason Heyward was a Greek philosopher reincarnated as a baseball player." - Don Sutton

by UMDBHIK on Aug 6, 2010 5:50 PM EDT up reply actions

actually, I’m pretty positive that is a true fact, by any objective measure, but probably not for the reasons that you may have in mind.

by fandave on Aug 6, 2010 6:21 PM EDT up reply actions

(1) I clearly noted that Cox, like every other swinging dick on the planet, is not immune to errors. That doesn’t mean anybody here (myself included) is qualified to second-guess him, particularly from the vantage point of a computer screen versus all of the real work that actually goes into these decisions.

Having an opinion is fine. That’s one of the reasons we all like to waste our precious downtime on sports message boards. Attaching any weight of authority or credibility to that opinion is a fucking joke. Some of the people here seem to have trouble making that distinction.

(2) Big words? Really?

(3) Spelling? Really?

by DCP916 on Aug 6, 2010 3:36 PM EDT up reply actions

I just thought of another hobby

Collecting antique dolls. Scintillating!

Don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you.

by buzzdeadwax on Aug 6, 2010 4:20 PM EDT up reply actions

As long as you realize your opinion is a fucking joke like the rest of ours.

"Jason Heyward was a Greek philosopher reincarnated as a baseball player." - Don Sutton

by UMDBHIK on Aug 6, 2010 5:51 PM EDT up reply actions

Again, with the hostility

It’s a freaking baseball blog, where people discuss baseball-related things. If you can’t have an intelligent disagreement about baseball without going ballistic, perhaps you should find a less stressful hobby. Maybe knitting.

Don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you.

by buzzdeadwax on Aug 6, 2010 4:18 PM EDT up reply actions

Non metric response

A long time ago I found myself in the uncomfortable position of debating the “stat guys” on the board about Kelly Johnson. I’m not trying to be derisive with that term and I also believe that there is merit to using stat analysis. I just think that it should be balanced with what we actually see with our eyes.

I have defended KK as a guy who has been unlucky. I still think that’s true. I do think there is more to it than that, though. It is easy to compare KK’s ERA to D Lowe and see them as similar pitchers who have different luck. What you don’t see is KK pitching to his run support (he gets 3 runs then he gives up 4), his lack of success as the sees hitters the 2nd or 3rd time thru the lineup, etc. Should his record be better than it is? Absolutely. With reasonable luck, he should be something like 4-8. But for all the talk about how he isn’t that bad (which I agree with), he isn’t that good either.

In ways that are hard to quantify, the Braves tend to have a better chance of winning when someone else pitches instead of him. I think there are psychological effects at play here. The lack of run support may have hurt his confidence and gotten into his head. The team may not believe in him and it effects their play when he is on the mound. Whatever the case, the wins and losses are hard to ignore.

by niekromurphy on Aug 7, 2010 3:17 PM EDT up reply actions

We stat guys were usually the ones defending KJ. It was the batting average crowd who was against him.

This guy wants to suck all the cubs dick can he not have an unbias some what partition reguards
by RWH2 on Apr 5, 2010 10:20 AM CDT

by justincredubil02 on Aug 8, 2010 1:22 AM EDT up reply actions

If anything....

this is an excellent decision by Wren.A left handed starter may be a valuable new tool to he Braves coming down the stretch.Why not find out on August 7th or 8th, as opposed to Septemeber,or not at all. The upside to this fact finding mission could pay huge dividends come the last 12 games of the season.By putting KK on the same pitching schedule as Minor/Medlen, the front office will have a plan A.B and C.
Desperation happens when you resort to an unknown option,because you think you have no other option.This decision actually may provide another option. The Braves know they have a good chance this year and are acting appropriately. KK is a a professional who gets paid quite a bit of money,and will do his work to get ready.

by mikie baseball on Aug 6, 2010 8:23 AM EDT reply actions

Good point

I like working a lefty starter into the mix.

by niekromurphy on Aug 7, 2010 3:23 PM EDT up reply actions

According to O’Brien’s twitter, this is not a demotion so much as giving Kenshin a number of starts in the minors to rebuild his stamina before adding him back to the major league rotation (if Minor is very good, then that plan could certainly change). I’d certainly rather have him pitching for Gwinnett than wasting a roster spot in Atlanta like he has been for the last month.

by redwards95 on Aug 6, 2010 8:49 AM EDT reply actions

That's a lie...

if they were worried about his stamina, he could have gotten action several times over the last month. But for whatever reason, that didn’t happen. And I disagree with mikie above on it not being desperation. The Braves are resorting to an unknown (a guy who’s never pitched at this level and has shown inconsistent control in AA and AAA this year), because they have no other option. They wasted Kenshin for weeks just rotting in the pen, which left them with no other option that turning to someone from the minors to fill in when a starter was needed. If Kenshin was a legit option right now, he wouldn’t need to go to AAA to “rebuild stamina”.

by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 6, 2010 9:50 AM EDT up reply actions

This.

Dude, did we just become best friends?

This guy wants to suck all the cubs dick can he not have an unbias some what partition reguards
by RWH2 on Apr 5, 2010 10:20 AM CDT

by justincredubil02 on Aug 6, 2010 9:59 AM EDT up reply actions

Every now and then,...

you get something right. It’s rare, but it happens.

Just keep away from my drum kit!

by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 6, 2010 10:05 AM EDT up reply actions

RAAAAAAAPE!!!

This guy wants to suck all the cubs dick can he not have an unbias some what partition reguards
by RWH2 on Apr 5, 2010 10:20 AM CDT

by justincredubil02 on Aug 6, 2010 10:19 AM EDT up reply actions

Sure after not pitching for a month a pitcher can just jump right back into the rotation and pitch 6-7 innings.

by redwards95 on Aug 6, 2010 10:01 AM EDT up reply actions

Please reread what I wrote and tell me where it says that.

by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 6, 2010 10:10 AM EDT up reply actions

Mr Sanchez...

are you saying the Braves could not have put this vetern pitcher put on the mound on Monday,and let him attempt to go 5 or 6 innings? Of course they could have.The front office made a choice,to see if they had an option going forward.I applaid that choice,regardless of the outcome.Again, 6of the last 12 games this season are against the Phils. They have a strong lefthanded bias in their lineup, which at the margin shows weakness towards lefthanded hitting. This all sounds like good decision making on the Brave’s part.

by mikie baseball on Aug 6, 2010 10:10 AM EDT reply actions

Letting KK rot away on the bench and now be in the position to not have the ability to contribute at the MLB level due to inactivity over the past month and a half is terrible decision-making on the Braves’ part.

This guy wants to suck all the cubs dick can he not have an unbias some what partition reguards
by RWH2 on Apr 5, 2010 10:20 AM CDT

by justincredubil02 on Aug 6, 2010 10:17 AM EDT up reply actions

I'm saying they backed themselves into a corner by failing to use Kenshin...

more than once in a game for 6 weeks. Because of that lack of use, Kenshin was no longer a viable option to start should an emergency arise where he was needed to start and they were left with no other option besides resorting to calling up someone from the minors who had pitched more than 1 inning in more than 40 days.

Sure, they could have put him on the hill Monday and seen what happened if they wanted. But using him one time in 6 weeks kind of made that a pretty unreasonable option.

by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 6, 2010 10:26 AM EDT up reply actions

Okay...

fair enough.So then they should have sent him down 6 weeks ago,and would be faced with this option….Minor/KK. Frankly, this is probably what they would have done anyway. In a week or two, both the knowledge of a highly thought of prospect’s ability to pitch at this level now,and KK ‘s ability to return to the rotation will exist from his “rotted” state. What is the big negative? Didn’t this happen to the Phils last year with Moyer?

by mikie baseball on Aug 6, 2010 10:34 AM EDT up reply actions

No, they should have used KK out of the pen.

KK to the minors should have never happened.

This guy wants to suck all the cubs dick can he not have an unbias some what partition reguards
by RWH2 on Apr 5, 2010 10:20 AM CDT

by justincredubil02 on Aug 6, 2010 10:51 AM EDT up reply actions

Since Venters is not being used as a LOOGY, perhaps KK could have made some appearances to help offset the workload the rookie is getting this year.

"Jason Heyward was a Greek philosopher reincarnated as a baseball player." - Don Sutton

by UMDBHIK on Aug 6, 2010 1:06 PM EDT up reply actions

And for more thought...

if Bobby called on KK instead of Chavez 3 or 4 times out of the 9 games Salary Relief pitched in since Kenny left the rotation, among other opportunities to give him work, maybe they wouldn’t be FORCED to call on Minor and could pick and choose whatever option they felt was best. Minor may still have ultimately been the choice to start Monday, and I’ve never said he’s a bad choice to replace Medlen in the rotation, but because of KK’s lack of use for 6 weeks, he was no longer a viable option.

by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 6, 2010 10:29 AM EDT up reply actions

Mr Sanchez...

A couple of quick opinons. I believe the reason KK did not pitch out of the pen intially was to see if Medlen was a better alternative. That probably ate up 2 or 3 turns and a couple of weeks. Thereafter, he might very well have been someone they tried to peddle during the trade season.That is all conjecture on my part. I do not think that KK has the kind of makeup to be particularily effective from the bullpen, nor do I think the innings would have made much a difference in where he is now. We simply disagree on this being an act of desperation. Thank you for your opinon.

by mikie baseball on Aug 6, 2010 11:00 AM EDT reply actions

Man.

Dave Cameron went and wrote basically the same article as me. Thief.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/where-in-the-world-is-kenshin-kawakami/

"Yeah, and I have an enchanted jock strap." -- Karl Karlson

by Jacob Peterson on Aug 6, 2010 12:36 PM EDT reply actions

I doubt yours had the same number of mistakes

so kudos for being better.

by Mr. Sanchez on Aug 6, 2010 12:55 PM EDT up reply actions

Not to belabor this...

but since KK has been removed from the rotation, the Braves are 44-26,or 18 games over 500. Cox, made a decision then,and is making one now. I like his track record. While wins and losses are not at all a good measure of a pitcher’s performance,it certainly has an effect on a pitcher’s psyche.Again, early in their careers,Cox used to pull Smoz and Glavine from games in order to preserve just that aspect of wins versus losses.While I am sure Cox and Wren cosidered this an important choice, I am fairly cetain they do not perceive this a decision of desperation.

by mikie baseball on Aug 6, 2010 2:13 PM EDT up reply actions

…I am fairly cetain they do not perceive this a decision of desperation.

I am fairly certain that they do not perceive their desperation.

Most people don’t.

What is both surprising and delightful is that spectators are allowed, and even expected, to join in the vocal part of the game.... There is no reason why the field should not try to put the batsman off his stroke at the critical moment by neatly timed disparagements of his wife's fidelity and his mother's respectability. ~George Bernard Shaw

by Chopaholic on Aug 6, 2010 3:06 PM EDT up reply actions

C’mon, true desparation is desparate. whatever the big problem may be, it is appreciated and something – wrong, right or indifferent – gets done, desparately, urgently. then, on the other hand, there is the quiet desparation of the mass of men who go to the grave with the song still in them, but that’s something else again.

by fandave on Aug 6, 2010 3:34 PM EDT up reply actions