Don Wakamatsu. We don’t know anything about him. The one thing I get from reading the papers is that he’s detail oriented, which I guess puts him more on the roto-geek side of things than the gut feeling side. But that doesn’t tell us whether he’ll be any good; you can be a good roto-geek manager or a bad one, and you can be a good gut feeling manager or a bad one.
He’s worked for every single team in the American League West. He says he thinks it helped him get the job, but I don’t understand how being the bench coach in Texas a while ago helps you beat Texas now.
As a minor league manager, he compiled a losing record. That goes against Jack the GM’s claim that a history of winning would be a primary consideration, but minor league managers’ records don’t mean anything. Your personnel is moving around all the time, and the emphasis is on developing players, not winning. So let’s give him a pass on that for now.
In short, I see every reason to be optimistic. So far, it looks like the Mariners did right by hiring Jack the GM. And it looks like the organization is committed to building a long-term winner instead of a short-term loser. So that’s be a nice change.
I do have one concern. Well, concern is too strong, but it might be something to watch. Everybody has heard the rumors that Ichiro gets special treatment, and that that’s the main reason the players were having fist fights in the clubhouse last year. The next step in that speculation is that there are larger issues between the Latin players and the Japanese players. Wakamatsu is Japanese, and it makes you wonder how the Latin players—Felix, Yuni, Beltre, Jose Lopez—will react. Or how Ichiro and Johjima will react.
On the other hand, Wakamatsu is a relatively young guy who grew up in Oakland. Somehow, it seems like he has a better chance to deal with any cultural complexities that might arise than the old white dudes from bumblefuck who we’ve been hiring to do the managing.
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2 comments:
It makes you wonder how much autonomy GM Jack had with this hire. Did the owners in Japan push for someone who would stroke Ichiro over someone who might better relate to the team's Latino players?
It doesn't sound like that was the case with this hire. He seems to be saying all the right things although I think even the worst of managers can't screw up the day 1 press conference.
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