Clubhouse chemistry still plays an important role in making a winner, writes Bob Nightengale of USA Today. Multiple players — in rather thoughtful and interesting quotes — tell Nightengale that it is unwise to reject that factor as having causative effect simply because it can’t presently be measured. Indeed, while some adages have been questioned, the ever-changing capacity to measure and value various components of the game has in some cases validated “traditional” viewpoints (as in the case of catcher framing). And it’s not hard to imagine how a positive work environment could help boost play over a long season under often-stressful conditions. Of course, valuing that impact remains a highly inexact science, and it is difficult to separate out true “chemistry” from the generally positive aura of a club that happens to be winning games (due to whatever combination of talent and luck it may have enjoyed). Regardless of one’s feelings on the subject, the piece provides good fodder for thought.
For more reading on the topic, I highly recommend a 2013 piece by Sam Miller for ESPN, which goes into outstanding depth on the opportunities and limitations in this arena. Here are few more notes from around the league:
- Baseball America’s Ben Badler looks in at the latest on the developing market for Cuban talent. There’s too much to summarize here, but Badler includes updates on several of the players who are preparing to sign with major league teams as well as the latest developments and intrigue on those still in Cuba.
- We are in the midst of a historic season for Rule 5 prospects, writes BA’s J.J. Cooper. As he notes, with just days to go until rosters expand, it appears that a remarkable ten of fourteen picks from last winter will be kept by their new teams. Even better, several players — Odubel Herrera and Delino DeShields Jr. chief among them — have been real big league contributors.
- This season, like every other, has featured apparent breakouts from numerous players, only some of which will prove sustainable. In an Insider piece, ESPN.com’s Keith Law lists the nine men who are most likely to build off their big 2015 campaigns. Two of the names on the list — Shelby Miller of the Braves and Nathan Eovaldi of the Yankees — were acquired in offseason trades in hopes that they could regain upward trajectories.
On the chemistry issue……
MLB today reminds me so much of American movies in the 70’s. The studios hired a bunch of MBA’s that had people reverse-engineer popular movies and then wrote and developed movies that were sure to be constant winners. It was the decade that produced the disaster movies with 8-12 name actors/actresses in them playing small parts as the marketing studies showed people liked to see known faces. The 70’s movies were terrible. The 80’s brought a return to independent films and the creativity that went with them, and a revival of American movies that were again respected world-wide. A similar analogy was in the formation of ‘The Traveling Wilbury’s’ rock group. They wrote and performed the songs spontaneously, and made the decision to leave the imperfections in, rather then overdub.
Like the movies and recorded music, baseball is a sport and an art. Scientific advances are for the good. Bur when science takes over, the joy leaves – both the performers and the audience. While I’ve watched numerous front offices that enjoy the battle of statistics with each other by telling the players where to stand and when to swing, the teams that have been winning are doing it the way they always did – with strong execution of fundamentals by players making good – and smart – instantaneous choices on the field of play.
Chemistry between performers happen when they’re empowered to work together, and they succeed at it.
I like this line of thinking, but baseball is essentially a 1-on-1 game, batter vs pitcher. There’s no “working together” unless you want to get into defense.
To further your point a bit, the hyper-spending era Yankees (2002-present), who fall into the “70s” era have 1 title. The “rebuild the farm” era right before them won 4 and fall into the 80s category.
I feel dumber for reading that article. Baseball is, has and will always be decided by who performs better on the field. There’s so many downright ridiculous statements like:
“You look at the Giants, and they’re not more talented than everyone else every year” – they have Buster Posey & Madison Bumgarner, they are absolutely more talented than anyone.
Then this “All they have is a great education and they’re really good at math. Some of these front offices crunch all of these numbers, and think they’ve got it all figured out.” followed by asking how the Cardinals can win after losing key players, who have one of the best FO’s in the game in eying players like Grichuk, who math helped them find.
The Giants made the WS in 02 with Bonds and Kent trading punching in the dugout. The A’s & Yankees won 5 titles in the 70s with every player fighting each other. Then they being up the Jays, who haven’t made the playoffs since ’93 and how AA focused on chemstry? He got Donaldson who is MVP and Tulo who is borderline HOF and Price who is a certified ace. Talent over everything, always. Nightengale’s article is utter nonsense perpetrated by the anti-intelligentsia.
Jake Peavy didn’t understand Moneyball either, the A’s DID win in the end, by not folding under and actually being a contender against all odds in an era where hyper-spending was birthed.
The Yankees won two titles in the 70’s.
He was totalling the A’s and the Yankees.
They aren’t all the best-conceived opinions, but I found some interesting. How do you account for teams’ valuations of David Ross? Can’t a positive, encouraging, bonded atmosphere help spur younger players to harness their talents early on, help guys battle through slumps/injuries, etc?
The game is certainly decided by on-field performance, but I don’t see why on-field performance can’t be impacted by off-field matters — in fact, I think it very clearly is.
David Ross is an outstanding backup catcher who is a marvelous defender. He’s not paid to hit. His fWAR from 09-13 was: 2.0, 1.4, 1.4, 1.4, 0.8. That is absolutely incredible value from a role playing backup C and definitely worth a 2 year $5M deal, which is actually nothing at all.
But he’s also 38 and has been a roughly replacement level player since the start of 2014. I agree he’s more or less worth his contract just based on his performance levels, but the fact that he was something of a hot commodity (relatively speaking) does speak to other factors.
$2.5M is literally nothing to all teams and a backup C who accepts his role and is outstanding defensively makes perfect sense that he’d be wanted by many teams. Saying “look at his batting average, he stinks” is just shoddy journalism, but there are no “other factors”: he’s good at what he does and is cheap.
I believe that was what Peavy said, not Nightengale (and certainly not me).
Regardless, I’ll have to disagree that teams don’t place any value on “other factors” (within reason). And I think they should (within reason).
Right, Peavy said it, Nightengale reported it – and you’re a much better reporter than him, obviously not you 🙂
I’ve played the game, I’ve worked in the game, I understand it very well. Sometimes there’s personalities that clash, and sometimes there’s other factors that create tension within the dugout between people, just like there is in an office. But my point is if they both have a .900 OPS, it doesn’t make the team any better or worse. Ross is clearly a fantastic person that teams want, but his numbers don’t lie: he’s great at being a defensive backup catcher and isn’t being paid at a premium so bringing him up in this article is just asinine.
I never thought of 2.5 MM for a back up catcher as being cheap. Most get less than that.
“trading punches”
“bring up the Jays”
Wish the edit function stayed active longer 🙁
Sam Miller tweeted this out … does far more than I could to make the point: espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9749026/oakland-athleti…
Excellent article. Thanks for sharing it!
Of course you need talent to win – that’s a given. you can’t win without it. BUT – what about those teams that are loaded with talent that never live up to expectations. The Dodgers, with their huge payroll should be killing everyone in sight, but they are bumping along 2.5 games ahead of The Giants. Boston was thought to be the team to beat this year – on paper. How about their chicken and beer collapse? Seattle spent a ton of money on talent, and they are 10 games under .500.
Yes, you have pointed out a couple of exceptions, and may I suggest that those teams had enough talent to overcome any shortcomings in chemistry? I think there are a lot more teams that succeed with less talent because everyone is pulling in the same direction.
The chemistry piece was pretty shallow. Is chemistry something like Aaron Rowand rallying his teammates together and racing R/C cars in the CBP outfield? Is it secret handshakes and pies in the face? Is it establishing a bridge within the dugout between Americans and Latinos? Is it building a roster of selfless players who will hit the ball to the right side to advance a runner, or role players who will go out to the mound to calm the nerves of a frazzled multimillionaire? Is it establishment of mutual respect between coach and players? Is it an old guy who embraces a young guy vying for his position? Is it a GM compiling intelligent baseball players instead of “toolsy” athletes? Is it Hunter Pence leading a pregame war cry? And what is this “character” the article references? All I saw in that article was a below the belt attack on “numbers guys”. There was zero legwork put in to describing the chemistry factors on the teams mentioned.
Exactly right, ever notice how they never talk to bad teams in these articles?
Good team = good chemistry
Bad team = bad chemistry
Therefore, “chemistry is important”.
No. Just, no. Chemistry is not important, being good at baseball is important. Asking the Jays GM about how good his teams chemistry is after Donaldsons hit 2 home runs, Price has thrown a shutout and Tulo has gone 4-4? Chemistry has zero to do with any of that.
Yep. And on the flip side, these are the same sportswriters who absolutely vilify a losing team that looks like they’re having even the slightest amount of a good time. If they laugh and have a good time when winning, chemistry is important and a cornerstone to a good team and talent is marginalized. If they laugh and have a good time when losing, that chemistry no longer important and the players should care more about winning and they need to change their attitude.
Are you referencing Fried Chicken video games and beer for a certain team, I guess they took the chemistry part too far. I do not buy chemistry in the locker room or clubhouse, but I do think something can be said about chemistry between a catcher and his pitching staff, or a 2B and a SS or Outfielders on the field that is.
Trammell and Whitaker is a good example of the kind of Chemistry that does exist, would they be really good players separately? Most likely would they have reached what they did together? I doubt it.
They WERE good players separately. They never swung the bat together. This is the problem: its a team game made up of largely solo performances.
This is pretty close to how I felt about the article. I hope nobody seriously doubts that a good clubhouse environment is conducive to playing the game. And yet we know of teams where players famously hated each other and they still came out winners in the end. So what’s up with that? The issue in this telling at least is the confused use of the terms “chemistry” and “character.” These seem like independent issues. Good people can dislike each other for arbitrary reasons but if they have enough character (read also: maturity) to see that, then whether they are buddies or not really doesn’t matter because they are still going to be willing to pull on the same oar.
Agree that a deeper look at the possible ways it can manifest itself would be more interesting.
But to CJCronsDisease (a most unfortunate malady): I concur that separating it out is very difficult, but I don’t see how it can be rejected out of hand. Anyone who has participated in any activity with others has experienced the phenomenon. There are moments of weakness or difficulty where good leadership helps to motivate and bring out the best in the others involved; likewise, there are some people whose talents need support and nurturing to be fully expressed. When you are walking the thin line between a line drive and a ground-out, dealing with family and public pressures, and travelling constantly with your trade on display for the world, that all seems quite possibly magnified.
I am a true believer in advanced statistics, but also do not believe they are the sole determinant (or that luck and health explain the remainder). I also tend to think that there is an element of “clutch” performance — even if not reliably found in statistics — because some individuals are better able to transfer stress into focus and motivation, while others are more prone to being nervous, etc.
Just as purely a fan, it’s also nice to see your favorite team and players having a good time and supporting each other.
And most do, this article – like so many of its ilk – only ever show winning teams and thats the problem.
I can agree with that. You can’t just cherry pick good teams with players who feel good about each other right now and point to it as clear evidence.
I will argue til I’m blue in the face that it absolutely is meaningless. Look, the correct line of thinking at the apex of this entire argument is this:
Baseball is about what happens between a pitcher (singular) and a hitter (singular). When you bring up “chemistry” you are arguing that how a teammate acts around another player effects that players at-bat, which is absolutely incorrect. Every single MLB player has played the game their entire life. They are professionals, they do not let outside influences determine their play. It might look like that in practice, but no player is thinking “Ugh, I haaaate Luke Gregerson for cutting in front of me in the lunch line and then taking the food he knows I want, oops I just grounded out” – none.
The main point that the “chemistry” people (and btw don’t think the irony is lost on me that “chemistry” people are openly hating math in this piece) are totally ignoring that a players teammates play absolutely no part in the cruz of the game (batter v pitcher). Yasiel Puig being a jackass in RF does not in any way shape or form, effect what goes on in an at-bat between Andre Ethier and James Shields in the bottom half of the inning. Not one bit. Then there’s the actual opposite of this happening, like the Kent V Bonds fights when the Giants were actually winning that prove the opposite, that negative people can win…because that’s what baseball is: its about performance and nothing more or less.
Suddendepth nailed it: this is just another anti-sabermetrics article that has team de-volution grasping at straws for ways to show that “numbers aren’t everything”, when they actually are – when it comes to determining player value. Winning games? No. MLB makes little sense when it comes to that, it really is a crapshoot. Its very funny that Nightengale is saying that numbers don’t matter, but hackneyed fake terms like “clubhouse chemistry” do, which is a label, which isn’t that far off from being a “stat”.
PS: the “malady” is not being able to take a walk 😉
Confuse “professionals” with “robots” much?
cxcx thinks MLB players aren’t all 20+ years into honing their skill.
I don’t mean to take the argument past what it’s worth — good performance is good performance, and teams can succeed without some world-beating clubhouse vibe. But that doesn’t mean it is without impact.
We hear all the time that player X struggled in part because of off-field, personal issues. Everyone can relate to that. They are professional baseball players, but most of us are professionals in some field. Personal motivation, ability to cope with failure, a sense of group purpose, etc, play a role in all manners of group endeavors, whether or not the primary actions are fundamentally individual (as is the case, as you note, in baseball).
And again, many of these considerations are magnified in the professional sports arena. It’s also worth noting that the rah-rah sports culture and locker room environment is a real thing — that is the world many of these guys live in (albeit less so, perhaps, in baseball than in other sports).
As for the anti-saber bent, I obviously agree that statistical analysis, scouting, market valuation, rules exploitation, etc, are all critical — for a front office. But that doesn’t necessarily mean all players should embrace it; they should be guided by it, whether or not explicitly, by the staff responsible for helping them to provide value. As time goes on, more and more players will be attuned to advanced analysis themselves, but even that doesn’t mean that what they do won’t be impacted by social forces (inside and outside the clubhouse, on and off the field).
Unless baseball has suddenly become a game where a hitter hits a home run on the first pitch or manages a one-pitch strikeout, the idea that nothing enters the equation other than the pitcher versus the hitter is demonstrably false. The catcher does. The pitch framing does. If the hitter makes contact, the defensive players involved in the play do.
If everything goes as it is supposed to go, then awesome. It will most of the time, but most of the time is not always. We talk about what causes issues in a lot o different ways. When your shortstop whiffs on that routine grounder, he wasn’t focused or he didn’t have his head in the game. With relief pitchers, we constantly talk about how they need a short memory. Getting beat on your best pitch last night can not be in your head when you’re trying to throw a pitch today. Hitters are “thinking too much” when they’re in a deep slump; pitchers are “aiming” the ball, which is another way of saying roughly the same thing.
Is anybody literally standing around pouting about what happened in a lunch line? I doubt it. But I don’t have much trouble believing that having a teammate that helps you keep it loose and makes you smile in the dugout has a positive impact on your ability to stay loose and forget past failures. I don’t doubt that having veteran guys who are going to yank you aside when you boot that routine ball and let you know that you’re a professional and it isn’t acceptable to be thinking about anything but the game while you’re between the lines helps young players keep their heads in the game. And I have no particular issue calling these things “chemistry.”
The only objection I have to the idea of chemistry is that I don’t believe it is TEAM chemistry per se: It is really between any two given people. Different people respond better to different things and bond with different kinds of people. Similarly, your superstar players are probably much better at managing these things on their own than your fringey Major Leaguer or the superstar prospect getting his first taste of failure in his life during a callup.
At the end of the day, talent and luck (ie, timing) decides who wins baseball games, but I don’t see any reason to entirely discount the possibility that certain guys and certain tactics can help people play up to their level more consistently. How many wins does that amount to at the end of a season? Nobody knows. If there’s a way to measure it, we haven’t found it yet. That doesn’t inherently mean it doesn’t exist.
What you call “chemistry” I call “being professional”.
The issue with the article is that it equates winning with this flawed concept of “chemistry”, when there’s plenty of teams who support each other and have fun together while losing 9-2. Why do every single one of these anti-saber/pro-“chemistry” articles strictly feature winning teams?
I have my own reservations about the article, but it seems to me you’ve gone way beyond what is being said to support a tirade against anyone who argues that some things are very difficult to model mathematically.
The problem with all statistics, advanced or otherwise, is knowing when they are actually measuring something. I believe someone a few years ago came up with a “clutchiness” stat then concluded that clutchiness doesn’t exist because it could not be explained by their math. So does that mean our intuition about some people performing better under pressure than others is totally wrong because it’s hard to model mathematically in baseball? Sorry, no, that doesn’t pass the basic hypothesis test. I don’t see a lot of hypothesis testing in baseball, but I do see a lot of acceptance that something quantified is something modeled, even when the results don’t make a lot of sense.
I spent the majority of my life in management. No, I never managed a baseball team but people are people. The thing that separates baseball players from other people, they have a unique talents and they make more money, but people in other professions also have unique talents that many baseball players could never manage. If you believe chemistry is not important you have never managed a business and if you have your most likely failed unless you had such huge financial backing that it just did not matter. My specialty was going into places where no one could succeed, weeding out the negative and replacing it or them with positive. The majority of the people that worked for me and complained the most about the terms “attitude”, “belief” and “chemistry” were usually the ones who were most often called to the carpet for their lousy attitude, poor chemistry working with others and belief that they were the only ones that mattered. There is a need in baseball for a balance and that balance has to be between analytics and the human element but if you forget the human element…. the chemistry..,. You will fail in the long run. You may have minor success for a year or two but people are people and they will perform better when surrounded by like-minded souls.
Except no one has failed in the long run, because there is no long run in baseball, its season by season.
That’s reductive thinking when you consider that rosters aren’t completely turned over from year to year. Strategic planning exists in baseball. It’s a real thing.
Not completely, but there are massive amounts of turnover. The season ends every year in baseball, the OP was contending that their situation was similar when its structurally not even remotely similar.
Sure, because no organization assembles a team for long term success….smh.
Are you hiring?
Sorry, disabled now and “retired”
Woof, that article is… unfortunate. There is absolutely an argument to be made for valuing team chemistry (@suddendepth’s comment is a good place to start), but that was just a thinly disguised hit piece aimed at stat geeks.
When they are evaluating draft prospects, or other player acquisitions, The Blue Jays place a great deal of emphasis on “makeup.” This includes things like citizenship, work ethic, player relations, coachability, and so on. While some of a scout’s traditional duties have been overshadowed by advanced metrics, this is still an area where the boots on the ground is a valuable asset. They arrive at a score by talking to a player’s coaches, teammates, parents, teachers, and so on. They feel that players with good makeup will have the best chance to make the most of their talents.
While “chemistry” may still be an elusive commodity, building a team that works hard, out of players with a team first attitude will certainly help it to flourish.