“Jerry Remy’s approach to broadcasting is similar to the way he played the game—with great intensity. He’s not afraid to be honest, and the players and the fans respect him for that.”
SEAN MCGRAIL, PRESIDENT OF NESN
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y - S E V E N
The basic job of the general manager is to put together a baseball team, working within the budget made available by ownership. A good GM has to be skilled at negotiating deals and contracts, including hiring and firing the field manager and coaches.
Today’s general manager is more than ever likely to be a young college graduate; many of these GMs have never played the game at the professional level. They rely heavily on numbers and statistics—something I don’t always agree with—and try to surround themselves with advisors who have played or been involved in player development, scouting, or coaching.
The field manager looks at his team all the time and thinks about how it can get better. At the end of the season, he might make some suggestions to the front office. And if the general manager and the owners agree, and if there is money available, they may try to follow up on his suggestions. Or they may go down a completely different path.
In the end it is the general manager who has to negotiate the deals and stay on budget.
Of course the general manager’s shopping list has to be realistic. A team in Florida might struggle under a budget of $20 million, while the free-spending New York Yankees might have $190 million or so in the kitty for 2007; the Red Sox payroll for the same year was north of $143 million. Thus one team may have difficulty holding on to its stars when it comes time for contract renewal, while another may be able to go out and hire the best available free agents.
If the GM is working with a virtually unlimited budget, his job assignment is to get the best players. He has to convince them that his town is where they should be playing. Actually it’s a matter of convincing not only the player but also his family and his agent.
Then there’s the GM who has to work with a tight budget. He is not going to get the big-name superstar player; a superstar’s salary alone could eat up a quarter or a third of the team’s entire budget. Instead this sort of team may rely very heavily on scouts to make good draft picks and on player development staff to teach kids how to play at the major league level.
In general, when you see an organization that has a solid minor league system, you will likely see a general manager who has done a good job; the organization has scouted well, drafted well, and developed its players well, and their homegrown players have had success at the big league level.
Unfortunately, when these good young players get to the big leagues, they’re not likely to stay with a club that doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on salaries once they have enough seniority to become free agents.
Baseball is a statistical game, but there is more to it than that. As far as I am concerned, it is just as important to know the player as a person. You need to know what this guy brings to the plate other than the numbers. Is he a good citizen? Is he a good presence in the clubhouse? Is he a guy you’re going to have to worry about in the community?
Sometimes a second-tier guy may be able to help the team a lot more than a troublesome superstar. You might have a player who put up great numbers last season, but now he’s going through a divorce. If he has offthe-field problems, how good is he going to be this year?
Billy Martin once told me that he learned more about his guys when they were struggling than when they were going good. That’s when he knew the character of his players.
And there is something to be said about having a general manager who played the game. He knows what it feels like to be in a prolonged slump. He knows what it’s like to blow a play with the game on the line. He knows what the clubhouse feels like after a team loses a tough game.
Teams don’t make trades just to make trades. The best reason to move a player is to do something to improve the club. That could mean plugging a hole in the lineup or the defense or sometimes getting rid of a bad influence in the clubhouse. And, increasingly, trades are made for economic reasons.
Sometimes a team makes a trade when a player is getting to a point in his career when he is going to command more money than the club is willing or able to pay. Or a team may have a good player under contract for another two years, but management is convinced that he will not stay with the organization when he next negotiates a deal. In that sort of a situation, a team may choose to trade him with a few seasons left on his contract in order to get something for him before he walks away. It is probably going to be an unpopular move, but one that makes sense from a business point of view.
Players understand that trades are part of the game, but it is an uncomfortable part. It can be very unsettling to have their names floated around as part of possible trades.
For many players in the prime of their career, life is pretty good. If they’re lucky, they enjoy their situation. They love living in the community. Their wife is happy, and the kids are in school and have made friends. They get along with their teammates. They like their manager.
But hanging over it all is the uncertainty of knowing they could be traded. Unless they have a no-trade clause in their contract or a limit on the places to which they can be traded, players can be dealt anywhere at any time. It is not fun for them to pick up the paper and read that they may be involved in a deal.
In my career I was traded only once, from the Angels to the Red Sox in 1978. It was a good trade for me. But if it had never happened, I would have been happy to stay in California. That was the organization I had been with from day one as a professional. I was with guys I had played with in the minor leagues and the big leagues.
When I was traded to Boston, though, I was going to my home team, the club I grew up watching when I was a kid in Somerset, Massachusetts. The idea of playing at Fenway Park with guys I admired made it a nice trade for me.
When I had traveled to Boston with the Angels for six games a year, the pressure to have a good game was tremendous. In those days not every game was on TV, so my friends and family weren’t going to see me play very often; those six games were what they were going to remember.
My trade didn’t come out of the blue. In 1977 the Angels had put together what looked to be a real good team but injuries killed us. We had Don Baylor, Joe Rudi, and Nolan Ryan. The team had signed Bobby Grich, an All-Star second baseman, but he was going to play shortstop while I stayed at second. Grich ended up hurting his back and couldn’t play short; the Angels wanted to put him back in his natural position at second base. So I became expendable.
I had a pretty good sense something was in the works. I remember there was talk about San Diego, which didn’t excite me. And then when it started to heat up with Boston, I was very anxious for it to happen. I had a good relationship with the Angels, and I think they accommodated me by sending me to Boston. The Red Sox were happy because I was a local kid, and I was young and had speed.
I was traded in the off-season, which gave me a couple of months to prepare. A midseason trade is much tougher. It’s like living full-time on the road. The player is living out of a suitcase, staying in hotels away and at home. He is put into a situation where he is supposed to be an immediate help; that’s why they made the trade. He is trying to impress his new manager, his new teammates, and his new fans.
Sometimes the guy a team traded away was very popular in the clubhouse. But players don’t take it out on the new guy coming in; they know he had absolutely nothing to do with the trade. Some of the coaches, though, may ask him about the signs and strategies of his former team.
After winning the World Series twice in four years, some people are wondering if the Red Sox have replaced the Yankees as a dynasty in baseball. That’s not close to being true, at least not yet. But the Red Sox have become a very, very solid organization. How many repeat winners are there in championships in any sport? Not many. The new owners, of course, deserve some credit for fostering a winning team. From the play-er’s point of view, a good owner is a guy who signs a big check. It’s also nice to have a guy who is interested in you as a person, and cares about your family
To the fans, a good owner is a guy who puts a winning team on the field. They wish for owners who have the resources to spend, and spend wisely.
It is hard to find anything negative to say about the new owners of the Red Sox. They came in as outsiders, which is never an easy thing to do in Boston or anywhere else, but they immediately understood the team’s history and Fenway Park.
A couple of years ago, all we were talking about was getting a new stadium: Instead, they took a special place and made it better, adding the Green Monster seats and rightfield roof seats, and making lots of other improvements.