Author Topic: Mike Rizzo, shifting from Theo to The Boss on a dime, sort of  (Read 662 times)

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Offline EasyAce

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Mike Rizzo, shifting from Theo to The Boss on a dime, sort of
« on: August 10, 2018, 07:44:33 pm »
By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/08/mike-rizzo-shifting-from-theo-to-boss.html


Mike Rizzo (left) with Jayson Werth as Werth joined the
Nationals---are Rizzo's dubious moves adding to what-
ever clubhouse void Werth left behind?


One moment, Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo looks like a genius. The next, he looks like a fool. One moment, he looks like the best of Theo Epstein, shaking off the little things to build and sustain an agreeable powerhouse. The next, he looks like the worst of George Steinbrenner, running people out of town because he came down with a splitting headache for no sensible reason.

Rizzo looked like a genius for not sending Bryce Harper to the non-waiver trade deadline wolves right after Harper began wringing out the bugs in his first-half hitting. But he looked like a fool for the way he dealt with two of his better relief pitchers on the first half, Shawn Kelley and Brandon Kintzler.

And that was before we learned that Rizzo himself was the likely instigator of the confrontation with reliever Shawn Kelley that ended in Kelley's designation for assignment to be picked up by the Athletics. And, that Rizzo pointed to the wrong whistleblower when he ran Brandon Kintzler out of town and into the arms of Epstein's National League Central-leading Cubs.

Standing pat with Harper, his free agent-to-be, looks even smarter when you figure that Harper since the All-Star break is 21-for-62, a .338 clip, with four bombs and seventeen steaks. Purging Kelley and Kintzler over dubious charges looks even dumber now that we know a few more gory details.

Kelley didn't slam his glove to the ground in frustration and then glare a moment toward his dugout to show up his manager. Kintzler wasn't the Nat who suggested to Yahoo! Sports's Jeff Passan that the Nats' clubhouse was a ball of confusion, or to the Washington Post that rookie skipper Dave Martinez is a work in progress whose bullpen moves could use a lot of refinery. Either Kelley or Kintzler would have been more than happy to tell that to Rizzo. But they might have needed a ball peen hammer to drive the point home.

Kelley looked at first to have been none too thrilled about being sent to the mound for the ninth while the Nats were trying to finish July with the big bang of nuking the Mets. Kelley's gig began with a 25-1 Nats lead. It ended when two of the final three Met runs came on a home run by recent Met acquisition Austin Jackson, and Kelley slammed his glove to the ground and shot a quick hard glance toward his dugout.

Kelley said publicly he regretted doing both at once. Even Martinez admitted later that he didn't think his pitcher was trying to show him up. Rizzo still wasted little time in designating Kelley for assignment.

The concurrent message at the time seemed to be, too, that if you're one of the team's bigger stars you can get away with murder. Harper, Trea Turner, and one or two other Nats of more glittering name than Kelley have shown Kelley-like frustration in particular field or plate moments, but Rizzo never wired them into his electric chair over them. Smashing Gatorade buckets in frustration gets lesser sentences most of the time.

Thanks to Jon Heyman of Fancred, we know now that Rizzo himself went spoiling for blood the moment the blowout ended. Heyman cites people "aware of the incident," meaning people in the area when the confrontation happened, as saying Rizzo went looking for a shouting match with Kelley, found and started it, and, apparently, didn't want to hear what really angered the pitcher---one umpire rushing him to pitch while another threatened balk calls on his set positioning before he surrendered the Jackson bomb.

Kelley himself has said since that his look toward the dugout was to wonder why Martinez couldn't come lend a hand on clarifying things with the arbiters. Not exactly the same thing as looking to put the skipper in his place. Rizzo didn't want to hear anything from Kelley, perhaps short of a genuflecting apology accompanied by a butt kiss, and even those might not have done Kelley any good.

So the GM designated Kelley for assignment. Apparently, the A's---who happen to be surprising a lot of people by yanking themselves into the American League wild card race at minimum---were more than willing to hear Kelley's side of the story. Rizzo dismissed him with a flat, "You're either in or you're in the way," after seeking, finding, and reaming him. 

Kelley had a reasonable 3.34 earned run average and a walks/hits-per-inning pitched rate below 1.00, indicating he'd been pitching in occasional hard luck. He's pitched two thirds of an inning for the A's so far with one walk and no further damage.

Kintzler didn't last long enough to be a witness to however the Kelley-Rizzo showdown began, never mind ended. Rizzo traded him to the Cubs before the fateful blowout and before the non-waiver trade deadline passed that day at four eastern time. "They're ticked off at me," Kintzler is said to have told friends, "so they traded me to the Cubs!" A team known for having one of the most agreeable clubhouses in baseball.

If Rizzo was foolish enough to believe Kintzler was the whistleblower on the Nats' clubhouse condition, sending him smack dab into a higher rung of a pennant race looks just about the same as purging Kelley without anything even close to a fair trial to be plucked by a fresh contender. Rather like a father punishing his drunk driving son by buying him a Corvette.

In fact, according to Heyman, the first thing Passan did when Kintzler joined the Cubs was to call Cubs president Theo Epstein "to tell him it wasn't Kintzler who gave him that quote, and that in fact he didn't even know Kintzler and had never spoken to him or texted him." Which is almost exactly what Kintzler himself said when the word first seeped forth that Rizzo believed he'd been Passan's whistleblower.

The Nats are 6-3 since the Kelley/Kintzler purge. They've been playing up to their capability. Harper himself has a .367/.457/.767 slash line since the non-waiver deadline passed. But they've also been playing under a search for clubhouse leadership that assorted observers have said Max Scherzer isn't comfortable assuming and others aren't sure they can handle as well as now-departed/now-retired Jayson Werth did.

Rizzo hoped to send a message with the Kelley and Kintzler purges. What message did he send shortly afterward by picking fading reliever Greg Holland---long enough removed from his days as part of the Royals' once-vaunted H-D-H bullpen (the second H, Kelvim Herrera, is also a Nat, now) from the Cardinals' DFA scrap heap? Holland joined the Nats with an ERA twice as high as Kelley's and Kintzler's, Heyman noted. Remarkably, Holland's first two innings' work in Nats silks have been scoreless. But still.

"No one has characterised the impact of the surprise changes on the clubhouse yet," Heyman concluded. The good news is that it's not beginning to resemble North Korea or Steinbrenner's 1980s Yankees. Yet.

Even after Gio Gonzalez finally shook off his earlier frustrations to beat the Braves Thursday, Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post could write, "Before the game, the Nats' clubhouse was filled with the mournful country music wailing of 'Like a Wrecking Ball.' Ominous, especially before a Gio Gonzalez start. Manager Dave Martinez might have been tempted to change the lyrics to, 'my rotation got run over by a train, in the rain, and my bullpen's drivin' me insane'."

Martinez might be too green, still, to say something about his GM driving him to the rye bottle over moves that now look as petty, childish, and selfish as the GM accused the purged of having been. But if Rizzo could trade one falsely accused whistleblower to the lords of the NL Central before bothering to get his facts straight, what would he do with the next one he only thinks let it leak that all might not be hunky dory in the clubhouse still? Trade him to the Red Sox?
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Offline Slip18

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Re: Mike Rizzo, shifting from Theo to The Boss on a dime, sort of
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2018, 02:45:55 pm »
Sheesh, Easy!

Two years ago I donated $100 to the Rizzo Foundation.  I believe it was for some disease for which he recovered.  I do hope I did not donate money to a jerk!

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Re: Mike Rizzo, shifting from Theo to The Boss on a dime, sort of
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2018, 02:53:27 pm »
Quote

Kelley didn't slam his glove to the ground in frustration and then glare a moment toward his dugout to show up his manager.


Then who was wearing Kelley's number that night?

You could ask anybody able to fog a mirror what that childish act looked like to people watching in the stands and home on TV.

Kelley needed to take that whooping to save the bullpen going forward.

He's in The Show.   You do not behave like that in the MLB.   Save that Charlie Sheen crap for the movies.
"It aint what you don't know that kills you.  It's what you know that aint so!" ...Theodore Sturgeon

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