Monday, October 25, 2010

I've Known a Lot of Girls Before, What's the Harm in Knowing One More?


Let me be the first one hundredth person to welcome new Jays manager John Farrell to the fold. May his reign of terror be brutal and sweeping, ridding the land of entitled waste.

I can't pretend that I have any insight into the managerial acumen of John Farrell, aside from the various quotes and notes culled from the greater Citosphere. The Tao awesomely linked (via Twitter) to a Farrell slurp piece from 2006, when the new Jays headman was set to join the Red Sox as pitching coach.

Let's re-purpose a "telling" quote from said MLB.com article. If you want to get a sense of Farrell's managerial approach, replace all instances of "pitcher" with "players." It's all about efficiency, really:
"I look forward to the challenge of building a relationship with individual pitchers and ultimately getting them to reach their fullest potential, which many have; obviously, their track record speaks for itself in many cases," Farrell said. "I think there's a core group of young arms that are in the transition stage and beginning to establish themselves at the big-league level."
The press conference scheduled for today gives the new field boss opportunity to spit more bland platitudes while paying lip service to the rigors of competing in the AL East.

In fact, ahead of today's grand unveiling, let's play the Managerial Press Conference Drinking Game! Any time one of these shopworn clichés make an appearance, fire up an adult beverage. Note: take the rest of the day off.
  • We Know We're In Tough - in which the manager praises the divisional rivals without laying down for them.
  • Winning Culture: Expect to be told that second place isn't good enough. Expect The New Manager to disavow any knowledge of the Wild Card. "We're tying to win the division and ultimately the World Series."
  • I Didn't Come Here To... - I expect the good doctor Farrell to instruct us over and again that he didn't come here to pad his resume and happily accept third place moral victories.
  • We're Gonna Do Things a Little Differently - That's a guaran-damn-tee! It doesn't even matter what he's referring to, there's a great chance Farrell will swear up and down that things are going to run differently. Unless...
  • Not Here to Re-Invent the Wheel - Perhaps a backhanded compliment to the outgoing King, Farrell will praise the Jays prodigious power and acknowledge the achievements of last year's squad. This line of attack gives opportunity to praise Alex Anthopoulos and the scouting team not to mention spout out his own working knowledge of the Jays current roster.
If this all sounds a little cynical, you'll have to forgive me. Watching Ron Washington and Bruce Bochy lurch their way to the World Series only cements that much more deeply that the whole "managerial thing" is sort of a sham. It's the GM's world; The Manager, however iconoclastic, is just living in it.

Synergistic image courtesy of the AP and Daylife

13 comments:

  1. Except: this new manager is a guy who, by many accounts, would make a great GM. Which is kind of an interesting situation: I can't think of any other teams who have that kind of thing going on, but I'm excited to see how it plays out.

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  2. No concerns over too many cooks?

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  3. Don't forget: "We're gonna do the little things" and "It's a process" and "Alex and I..."

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  4. I didn't see the post-game interview after the Giants won the NLCS, but I remember Ron Washington's post ALCS interview was just rattled with cliches. I'm pretty sure he used "heart" and "grit" in the same sentence.

    What, a team can have grit WITHOUT David Eckstein?

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  5. Is David Eckstein the Dougie Gilmore of baseball?

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  6. nice weezer reference!

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  7. @anon - Good thing they ceased to be after that record came out.

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  8. I was listening to NFL Network on Sirius radio this morning and the host thought he was dropping hot wisdom by positing that NFL coaches are more important to team success than baseball managers. By golly I almost drove right off the road with such an idea!

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  9. A nice witty take on things. But the Tao's awesome link was to a 2006 article. In 2001, Farrell was just starting his work in Cleveland!

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  10. anon204:
    @DrewGROF - jaded weezer fan spotted, hello brother.

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