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2013 Toronto Blue Jays Thread

Been thinking about this for a few weeks now that the Fire Gibby noise has picked up.  How can AA possibly keep him and this coaching staff with all that has transpired this year?  Yeah the starting pitching is problem #1 but that is only one of many problems and lot of the others rest on Gibby for not addressing.

Cox, (warning.. Cox article) went into it this morning:

http://www.thestar.com/sports/bluejays/2013/08/27/blue_jays_manager_john_gibbons_shouldnt_return_next_season_despite_his_defenders_arguments_cox.html

I tend to agree with almost all of it.  The sloppy defense, the mistakes running are two parts that the Manager should be fixing.  Other decisions like to continue with Bonifacio at 2B who had trouble turning double plays, the mishandling of struggling starters, not having at least one long reliever despite very clear issues with starters, and to me the most annoying part: the players joking around and looking very relaxed despite being taken down game after game.

The change in Boston and moving out Valentine had a huge impact.  Terry Francona has the mediocre Indians in the wild card hunt.  Looking at what Showalter has done in Baltimore... he took a hodge podge team last year and got them in the playoffs. They probably miss this year but they are still dramatically better under a solid manager vs. a weak one.

It's not all about the Manager but Gibbons and his team can't really be seen as being just fine when everything around them has fallen apart like it has.
 
Corn Flake said:
The change in Boston and moving out Valentine had a huge impact.  Terry Francona has the mediocre Indians in the wild card hunt.  Looking at what Showalter has done in Baltimore... he took a hodge podge team last year and got them in the playoffs. They probably miss this year but they are still dramatically better under a solid manager vs. a weak one.
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That strikes me as being fairly selective in it's reading of a manager's impact on a team's fortunes. If Farrell is a good enough manager to have that sort of an impact, why didn't he have it in Toronto? Why is Mike Scoscia, acclaimed by just about everyone as a terrific manager, managing a team that might be more disappointing than the Blue Jays. For every "good" manager who can be linked to his team's good record, I can find a "good" manager with a team that's underperforming.

I also feel like the central argument here, that a Manager should fix things like base-running errors or bad defense, doesn't hold up to a ton of scrutiny. There's not a ton a manager can do to teach a major league player to play better defense and he doesn't control the roster to bring in better defensive players. Bonifacio didn't cut it at 2B but who would? The difference between Bonifacio and, say, Kawasaki isn't a significant one. Likewise if a major league player is making bad decisions on the base paths there's no easy fix.

I don't care about firing Gibbons one way or the other but it seems to me that the arguments for doing so are coming more from a place of "We need someone to blame" than they are from "We can conclusively show that managers make a big difference in the performance of their ballclubs".
 
Nik the Trik said:
Corn Flake said:
The change in Boston and moving out Valentine had a huge impact.  Terry Francona has the mediocre Indians in the wild card hunt.  Looking at what Showalter has done in Baltimore... he took a hodge podge team last year and got them in the playoffs. They probably miss this year but they are still dramatically better under a solid manager vs. a weak one.
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I don't care about firing Gibbons one way or the other but it seems to me that the arguments for doing so are coming more from a place of "We need someone to blame" than they are from "We can conclusively show that managers make a big difference in the performance of their ballclubs".
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On Farrell ... if he had the team that Gibbons has, would they be this bad? Of course that is impossible to know, but my point is Gibbons is working with a lot more than Farrell was. 

I do think in Boston it was more about addition by subtraction, including subtracting an insane person as their Manager. They brought in a bunch of veteran players who appear very dedicated and focused on the right things.

Can a Manager do much about base running mistakes or weak defense? Well, he can deal with individuals by benching them and/or getting in their face about sloppy mistakes.  Gibbons is considered a very player friendly manager, so he's not likely to confront a guy for making a lazy defensive play, or tell a Bautista he needs to stop trying to take on umpires for bad calls.  Brett Lawrie finally has shut up after behaving like a hyperactive six year old every game.  Someone spoke to him no doubt. 

Gibby is a lax manager and this team has a really lax attitude.  That to me is where the Manager makes the most difference. It's about creating expectations of disciplined play and enforcing it.

I hear you on "good" managers with bad team performance and yes at times in baseball it just happens.  I just think the last thing this team needed was an overly player friendly Manager who wasn't going to nip behavioral issues in the bud, and that seems to be what has happened here.
 
Corn Flake said:
On Farrell ... if he had the team that Gibbons has, would they be this bad? Of course that is impossible to know, but my point is Gibbons is working with a lot more than Farrell was. 
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I don't know how true that is. Or, at the very least, I think that statement is giving a lot of players credit for what they are on paper. Josh Johnson is more to work with than Henderson Alvarez, I suppose, but I don't think that a manager controls how a pitcher pitches to the extent that the gap in their relative performance is within that variable range. Truth is that a lot of guys who the Jays lousy year can really be blamed at were pegged to regress by most of the projection systems out there. The real issue seems to be that people got caught up in the hype and ignored some of the warning signs about the team that was put together, not that Gibbons has taken a really good team and made them bad.

Honestly, I think there's a much better case to be made for firing Anthopolous than Gibbons. If for no other reason than I think who the GM is actually matters.
 
Nik the Trik said:
Corn Flake said:
On Farrell ... if he had the team that Gibbons has, would they be this bad? Of course that is impossible to know, but my point is Gibbons is working with a lot more than Farrell was. 
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I don't know how true that is. Or, at the very least, I think that statement is giving a lot of players credit for what they are on paper. Josh Johnson is more to work with than Henderson Alvarez, I suppose, but I don't think that a manager controls how a pitcher pitches to the extent that the gap in their relative performance is within that variable range. Truth is that a lot of guys who the Jays lousy year can really be blamed at were pegged to regress by most of the projection systems out there. The real issue seems to be that people got caught up in the hype and ignored some of the warning signs about the team that was put together, not that Gibbons has taken a really good team and made them bad.

Honestly, I think there's a much better case to be made for firing Anthopolous than Gibbons. If for no other reason than I think who the GM is really matters.
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Absolutely.

I don't think you can really blame Gibbons for the team's failure this year. That being said, Gibbons should never, ever have been hired in the first place.
 
Andy007 said:
I don't think you can really blame Gibbons for the team's failure this year. That being said, Gibbons should never, ever have been hired in the first place.
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As I started out saying, he's not the only problem or the only one to blame but you can't say he's blameless, and he should not be back if he was never the right guy to hire in the first place, no?
 
Corn Flake said:
Andy007 said:
I don't think you can really blame Gibbons for the team's failure this year. That being said, Gibbons should never, ever have been hired in the first place.
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As I started out saying, he's not the only problem or the only one to blame but you can't say he's blameless, and he should not be back if he was never the right guy to hire in the first place, no?
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Doubtful he was.  In the immortal words of Dr.House, he "could do better".
 
Good, I'm glad they're keeping him.  He doesn't need to fire his guy just to satiate some fans' need for someone to blame or take the fall.  The vast majority of this team's troubles this season had nothing to do with him, and I don't think there is a single person who could have changed it from the manager's position.
 
Potvin29 said:
Good, I'm glad they're keeping him.  He doesn't need to fire his guy just to satiate some fans' need for someone to blame or take the fall.  The vast majority of this team's troubles this season had nothing to do with him, and I don't think there is a single person who could have changed it from the manager's position.
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Can't say I disagree.
 
What has the guy done to show he deserves to be here? Gibbons is on pace to have a worse season this year than in any of his 5 previous seasons as manager. Anyone who's watched the Jays this season knows their pure fundamentals are off. The Jays have marred by bad baserunning, horrible plate discipline from some of its players, and poor defense. Where's the accountability here? I understand Gibbons is a very laid back manager, but is he too laid back for this particular group? Not only that, but this team looks like a bunch of saps night in and night out. They don't look like a team that believes in themselves like the Orioles or Rays. Why isn't Gibbons able to motivate these players? What's worse, I think we can all agree this is a severely under-performing team. Isn't it a manager's job to get the most out of his players? Gibbons hasn't accomplished that one iota.

You can blame this season on injures but every team has injuries. You can blame it on AA but the talent is (was?) here, the team is just simply under-performing. Gibbons may not have been a Valentine-esque train wreck but he's done a poor job and hasn't shown he deserves to be here. This team needs a fresh start next season with a new manager. Gibby's gotta go.
 
As much as I'm not really a fan of Gibbons, most of the issues the team has had have been for things that he's not directly responsible. He doesn't really work with the infielders in terms of their defensive play or even their defensive alignment. He doesn't work with the pitching staff in terms of working on their control, pitch selection, etc. He doesn't work with the batters in terms of improving their discipline, base-running, etc. A manager is much more of a strategist than someone who coaches the players. It's the rest of the coaching and training staff that are really to blame here. While Gibbons makes for a nice scapegoat, because he's the figurehead, it's just about everyone else that needs to be improved upon if the team is going to be able to move forward.
 
KoHo said:
The Jays have marred by bad baserunning
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They've actually ranked as the third best base running team in baseball by according to baseball prospectus' Base Running runs stats so while I'm sure some mistakes stick out in your mind, the reality is that every team makes those kinds of mistakes and it doesn't seem to be hurting them too badly. ,

KoHo said:
horrible plate discipline from some of its players,
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But as a whole the plate discipline isn't bad. The Jays actually have the 8th most walks and 6th fewest strikeouts in all of baseball. Sure some players have bad plate discipline but no manager was going to come in and get guys like JP or Rasmus to not strike out. Some players, like EE, have by far the best K% of their career this year.

KoHo said:
and poor defense.
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Team defense is a hard thing to get a hold of in a contextual sense but just in a personnel sense this seems like more of a AA thing than Gibbons. If we accept the premise that the most important defensive positions are up the middle than the team that AA put together is just a bad defensive one. JP is not a good defensive catcher, there is no good defensive second baseman on the roster and Reyes, who was hurt for a good chunk of the year, is an ok defensive shortstop at best. Toss in injuries to Rasmus and Lawrie who are probably the two best defensive players on the club and I'm having a real hard time coming up with why the manager should be blamed for a poor overall level of defense(if that is indeed the case for the Jays).

KoHo said:
Where's the accountability here? I understand Gibbons is a very laid back manager, but is he too laid back for this particular group? Not only that, but this team looks like a bunch of saps night in and night out. They don't look like a team that believes in themselves like the Orioles or Rays. Why isn't Gibbons able to motivate these players? What's worse, I think we can all agree this is a severely under-performing team. Isn't it a manager's job to get the most out of his players? Gibbons hasn't accomplished that one iota.
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Well, ignoring for a second judging the team on how laid back they seem or their believe-in-themselvesitude I think the real problem with that thinking is that there are a bunch of Jays who are having good years. Four guys made the all-star team. The bull-pen has been great. Rasmus has had a very good year. So has EE. Adam Lind is on track to have his best statistical season in five years.

So if Gibbons is a bad motivator, if the performance of the under-performing guys is on him, what explains all the guys having great years? If player performance can be credibly linked to a manager's motivation then how come he seems to be able to properly motivate some guys and not others?

The reality is you're just repeating catch phrases and buzzwords as stand-ins for any actual hard facts to lay at Gibbons' feet. A guy like Josh Johnson, whose lousy year has probably cost him 50-60 million dollars, hasn't had a bad year because Gibbons didn't motivate him enough. Players have bad years. Throughout baseball history it happens to players of all sorts even when there are no changes in who is managing them. Look at San Francisco this year. They're the defending World Series champs. The talent is there. Bruce Bochy has "motivated" that great pitching staff to great results in the past. So why is Matt Cain having the worst year of his career? Did Bochy forget how to manage him? Did he get super-laid back this off-season? Or are players just subject to huge swings from year to year as they have been for the roughly 143 year history of professional baseball?

Anybody can list what the Jays haven't been good at this year. What people can't do is make a convincing case that it's the fault of the manager. The concept of firing someone just to satisfy some sort of nebulous concept of accountability can work, sure, but really only if a team has tuned their manager out. Change for change's sake can have a benefit but so can stability. Firing Gibbons could say to players "This year is unacceptable and people have paid the price" but it could also say "See, this guy was to blame, not you guys for playing like crap".

Right now, this is on the players. If you're looking higher up than that, it's the guy who put them together.
 
bustaheims said:
As much as I'm not really a fan of Gibbons, most of the issues the team has had have been for things that he's not directly responsible. He doesn't really work with the infielders in terms of their defensive play or even their defensive alignment. He doesn't work with the pitching staff in terms of working on their control, pitch selection, etc. He doesn't work with the batters in terms of improving their discipline, base-running, etc. A manager is much more of a strategist than someone who coaches the players. It's the rest of the coaching and training staff that are really to blame here. While Gibbons makes for a nice scapegoat, because he's the figurehead, it's just about everyone else that needs to be improved upon if the team is going to be able to move forward.
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Very good points. My thinking in moving out Gibby is to move most of that staff as well. If they make big coaching staff changes and he stays then fine, I can live with that.  But the responsibility does lie with him in those coaches were his choices to hire and if he doesn't like the job they are doing he should be working with them to fix it.  Maybe he is but Gibby doesn't seem like the type to get into the details like that.

 
Potvin29 said:
Good, I'm glad they're keeping him.  He doesn't need to fire his guy just to satiate some fans' need for someone to blame or take the fall.  The vast majority of this team's troubles this season had nothing to do with him, and I don't think there is a single person who could have changed it from the manager's position.
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Okay, but based on everything you've seen from Gibbons this year and maybe even in his previous run, if they fix all the other issues, do you believe he is the guy who is going to lead this team to the world series?

 
Corn Flake said:
Very good points. My thinking in moving out Gibby is to move most of that staff as well. If they make big coaching staff changes and he stays then fine, I can live with that. But the responsibility does lie with him in those coaches were his choices to hire and if he doesn't like the job they are doing he should be working with them to fix it.  Maybe he is but Gibby doesn't seem like the type to get into the details like that.
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I'm not sure how true that is. Other than DeMarlo Hale, the rest of the coaching staff were already in the organization and were simply promoted or reassigned to fill the positions that were emptied when most of the staff decided to join Farrell in Boston. Gibbons was obviously involved in the discussions, but I'm not convinced any of them were his top choice (considering they only brought in one guy from outside the organization, I'm not sure he was even given all that much leeway). On top of that, the biggest area of concern is probably the medical/training staff, and I'm relatively certain that Gibbons had pretty much no say there. I'd say AA is much more responsible for the issues with the team, the coaching staff and the medical/training staff than Gibbons is.
 
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