Quote:
Originally Posted by raybec 4
It's a great way to lose the clubhouse. All those things should be handled in the family, not in public.
|
You have to have such a good handle on your players to pull that shit. And a nearly perfect feel for what motivates them.
LaRussa was actually great at that, but even he had his missteps. He could go out there and pull that stuff with Edmonds and it fired Edmonds up to go out there and kick ass. Edmonds never took it personally and LaRussa absolutely transformed his career.
He tried it once with Rolen and it backfired spectacularly.
He never did it with Molina or Pujols and some folks would say because he had favorites - I think it was because he know how prideful those guys are and that it would simply go very poorly for him. He'd have never done it with Carpenter even if warrented; he might have with Wainwright, though. I never saw it as playing favorites as much as I think it is a simple case of utilizing different approaches for different people.
Your feel for the individual players on the team has to be virtually spotless and frankly you have to have a TON more cache than an organizational puppet like Marmol will ever have. Regarding his feel for the players, O'Neill's reaction made it quite clear that Marmol didn't read the room correctly there.
It was just monumentally ****ing dumb.