The Front Office and "Game Planning"

[Warfarin]

 

So this seems rather relevant and something a number of us have mentioned.  The FO hirings were always going to be, by far, the biggest moves we made this offseason.  It sounds like the new FO that has been put together is rather promising.  For the casual fan, it's hard to see the degree to which this makes an impact, but I imagine it's a rather significant difference.

[RallyMo]

If they have better info headed into games, that's great. I'm enjoying this team so far.

[Warfarin]

8 minutes ago, fishbulb said:

If they have better info headed into games, that's great. I'm enjoying this team so far.

I think this is a very underrated key to why we are playing better, too.

If the new FO has better information to provide players and better game plans of how to attack certain hitters (and likewise, for hitters, how to navigate through the opposing pitchers' pitches), it puts the entire team in better position to succeed.

[nate]

Also important to not have a deadweight (Ausmus) or a neanderthal (Scioscia) at manager that can actually work with the information.

[Warfarin]

2 hours ago, nate said:

Also important to not have a deadweight (Ausmus) or a neanderthal (Scioscia) at manager that can actually work with the information.

Ha, yes.  Maddon worked alongside Friedman and Epstein for many years, so I'm guessing he is rather familiar with a lot of the advanced stats.  So was Ausmus presumably, but Maddon certainly has a lot more of a "human" aspect to him that makes him a clubhouse favorite, so he has that working for him.

As fans, a lot of times when we see various players not playing well, the immediate sentiment is to TRADE/DFA THEM!  But a lot of these forward-thinking FOs seem to look at it moreso and say, "how can we utilize this one player to generate better results," or "how can we utilize the skillset/pitches this player has and put them in position to succeed more than they have previously"?

So that's what I'm personally really excited to see.  If this FO and Maddon are as good as we hope, they can utilize the talent we have and help them achieve better results than we saw previously.  We sorta saw it for a month last year, when Walsh, Ward, etc all started playing considerably better.  This year, we have a bunch of relievers who seemed middling at best (Guerra, Watson, Cischek, etc), and we're utilizing them and getting some really good results so far - more than we could have anticipated when we effectively picked them up off the scrapheap.

[Warfarin]

After watching Cobb absolutely dice through the lineup yesterday, I'm going to give this thread a bump.  It seems to me that our new FO group helps devise fairly good plans, at least so far.  This is the best Cobb has looked in a really long time.

[Blarg]

Their game plan for tomorrow is if Perez is playing don't pitch to him.