Dem GM Blues

Dave Paisley

I can see how rough it must be for baseball GMs to deal with the rough and tumble of the off-season. First, there are the free agents to deal with, which means, of course, the free agents' agents. If there's a profession on this earth that ranks higher than car salesman on the slime scale, it may be that of baseball agent. What they're selling and how they sell it is very similar to the car business, but without the ethics.

As for the GMs themselves, it's been proved over and over again that they act more and more like the innocent dupes who wander into a car dealership with open checkbooks.

If you're an agent with a veteran player who just happens to be a free agent this year, it all depends on which GM comes calling first. If it's Pat Gillick (or his new Oriole doppelganger, Frank Wren), then sure, your player's got a few miles on him, but they're all highway miles that were racked up by a little old grandma who only played him on Sundays and never let him go over sixty pitches. Gillick and Wren fall for this line where ex-Mariner relievers are concerned. The theme seems to be "dump good relievers, get what's left of the Mariner bullpen (a.k.a. the Arson Squad)." If it's a 50-50 proposition, and it didn't work last year, then it's bound to work this year!

Even worse, Wren took two instead of just one this year, and for a lot more money. D'oh!

No doubt other GMs breathed a sigh of relief as some of the worst inventory went off the shelf. The downside is that every time Gillick or Wren overpay for mediocrity it raises the price for everyone else. Call it inflation from the bottom.

Another pitfall for the unwary GM is that, if you're buying, and if the guy is a pitcher that once played for Jim Leyland, beware. It's like buying a shiny two year old Cadillac with an engine that's been run with no oil. The agent, of course, will simply point out what a "workhorse" the guy is. In this case "workhorse" means the poor guy has been ridden hard and put away wet. Just look at poor Alex Fernandez.

Once you get past the free agent hurdle, there's the off-season trading swap meet. Or is that swap meat? In this grand fiasco, most of the players are on the block for a reason, and it's not usually a good reason. Let's take a look:

This guy is over the hill and has a long, expensive contract the team wants to dump. This guy can no longer hit his way out of a paper bag. Wet paper bags aren't threatened by this guy's fastball. This guy is in danger of having his head put up on a stick by irate fans.

You see how few of these traits are really desirable in a player you'd like to acquire. Nevertheless, most GM's feel compelled to rearrange the deck chairs on their particular Titanic, and so the merry-go-round of mediocrity begins, also known as Let's Trade Problems Syndrome.

The next phase of the off-season is the dumping of players that can't be traded for somebody useful. However, no matter how bad these guys may be, no matter how dumpable, there's someone out there who'll snap them up. The trick is to avoid being one of those dupes, but it seems the lure of the waiver wire is a siren song for most GMs.

The odds on picking up a diamond among all the cubic zirconia are infinitesimally small, but still they try. At least most of the dreck picked up here only gets a minor-league deal and an invite to spring training, so the downside is pretty minimal.

The next phase is arbitration. Here's where you have to convince an independent arbitrator that a player you like, and wish to keep, isn't worth the eight billion dollars he's asking for. Here's where life gets tricky. First, you really want this player to be happy, but in order to get him for what you consider a reasonable price, you have to badmouth him to the arbitrator.

It's much like car dealers who want to sell you an extended warranty. On the one hand, they claim they have the most reliable vehicle since Ben Hur's chariot, while at the very same time, they try to convince you that you need the very expensive extended warranty so that when it breaks down, it won't cost you an arm and a leg. The trickiness of wading through this minefield is what has caused the pre-arbitration phenomenon called "split the difference and call it even". Some teams have managed to avoid arbitration altogether for several years.

So you make it through arbitration safely, there's still all the remaining last-minute wheeling and dealing, and the spring training roster cuts. And if you survive that, there's the shark infested game of chicken to be played as the trading deadline approaches.

And as if that wasn't enough, there's the small matter of keeping tabs on your manager's performance. If it seems that he's screwing up the team that you so carefully masterminded and built for him, then you'll just have to fire his sorry behind and replace him with someone who'll dance to your tune. Or maybe he has more pull with the owners than you do, in which case you better keep him happy or you're out the door instead.

So pity the poor GM. It's a hectic job if you want to do it well, and the rewards aren't great if you succeed. If you do it badly, you might end up with a mob of villagers with torches beating a path to your office calling for your head on a pole. However, if you can't be bothered to do a good job, just follow Seattle GM Woody Woodward's plan, and mail it in. With any luck it'll be a decade before anyone catches on.

about the author

Dave Paisley is currently moonlighting as David Copperfield's assistant, and is looks forward to the magician's next TV special, in which Copperfield makes Cecil Fielder disappear. Express your awe at drdjp@strikethree.com.