"In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence."
Well, it is apparent that nowhere is this more evident than in the world of sports. You can point to announcers, AAAA players who are too good to keep in the minors, but maybe not good enough to make it in the majors, and, most importantly, executives.
Isiah Thomas is a hall-of-fame basketball player, but as an executive, he was horrific. Now, to be fair, Isiah did have his strengths. He was a great talent evaluator. His drafts with both the Raptors and Knicks were well-above average. Ariza, McGrady, Chandler, all far outperformed their draft spots and expectations. He was also apparently great at whispering in old rich guys' ears and getting them to turn over basketball operations to them.
What he wasn't good at, was running a team. Now, if Isiah were simply a draft guru, or even a GM, with a strong President of Basketball Operations above him, things would have been very simple, and we would all be raving about his ability to find gems in the draft. A veritable Jerry West, pre-Grizzlies. But we're not. We're talking about his miserable failure and eternal skullfucking of the Knicks. And the Raptors. And the CBA. Fuck.
The other recent example of this is now Omar Minaya. Like Thomas, Minaya is apparently blessed with the ability to find some diamonds in the rough, and evaluate some young talent. Maybe not so much with pitching, but definately with hitters and fielders. He has a great track record of landing the big fish: Bartolo Colon and Cliff Floyd in Montreal, Pedro Martinez, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, Johan Santana and Francisco Rodriguez in New York. He has a decent track record with reclamation projects and finding cheap talent.
However, He has recently proven that once those diamonds are found, and the big fish are caught, he simply can not properly evaluate the baseball marketplace and find good trades to make his team better for the long term. This all culminates with Ryan Church for Jeff Francouer. Francouer might be the worst everyday player in the National League. There is general debate about just how good of a defensive outfielder he is, but the consensus is that he is above-average. Hey, guess what? Ryan Church
is an above average defensive outfielder...who actually can hit a little. He's no world beater, but, come on, Jeff Francouer has sucked horribly for two years! And it's not like he has the track record of Gary Sheffield, a worthwhile reclamation project, who had no cost to acquire. Many news organizations were speculating that the Braves had soured on Frenchy so much that they were going to release him.Let me say that again. Omar just traded our most consistent outfielder, and our only regular playing above-average defense...for someone who was going to be released...Well, I guess you could say that we needed a right-handed bat in a division with such tough lefties like...Scott Olsen? Sure, the Phillies have lefties, but those lefties rely on changeups, which actually makes righties WORSE matchups! But the final nail in the coffin for this trade...is that Jim Bowden thinks it's a good trade for the Mets!
