Perhaps he can retain Schilling as a consultant.Jeter has pissed away all the good will he got as a Player (especially from the media)
Shame.
This is laughable. The Marlins aren’t rebuilding, they’re intentionally fielding The cheapest team money can’t buy in order to pay down debt.I'm not a Jeter defender but reporters and the public have been intentionally obtuse in not understanding what rebuilding looks like. It's been the goal of everyone to try to get Jeter painted into a corner and admitting how bad his team is. Yes, calling BG mentally weak is absurd but for whatever reason, Jeter is not being treated the same way other owners typically are. I don't feel bad for him but its time to stop taking interviews.
No one is saying that Jeter is ordering his players to lose, which is what he characterized the conversation as being and Gumbel (for some reason) let him do it. What he's been accused of is casting off the team's best players--an epic gutting--with nothing but debt service in return. Jeter turned that line of questioning into a pencil-neck geek questioning the decorated veteran about what happens on the field of battle.DEREK JETER: “Now, you can think -- now-- now, I can't tell you how you think. Like, I see your mind. I see that's how you think. I don't think like that. That's your mind working like that.”
BRYANT GUMBEL: “No, I get that. But I guess not in so many words--”
DEREK JETER: “But you don't. But you don't get it.”
BRYANT GUMBEL: “I do.”
DEREK JETER: “You don’t. We have two different mi-- I can't wait to get you on the golf course, man. We got-- I mean, I can't wait for this one.”
I will agree that there is a lot of intentional obtuseness going around among those who do not understand what rebuilding looks like.I'm not a Jeter defender but reporters and the public have been intentionally obtuse in not understanding what rebuilding looks like. It's been the goal of everyone to try to get Jeter painted into a corner and admitting how bad his team is. Yes, calling BG mentally weak is absurd but for whatever reason, Jeter is not being treated the same way other owners typically are. I don't feel bad for him but its time to stop taking interviews.
The other thing he was able to lean on as a ballplayer was being a ballplayer. As we all know, mere everyday folk can never really understand what it’s like to be a professional athlete and the pressures involved, blah, blah, blah.The "I don't think like that" garbage though--the fascinating thing about Jeter's media mastery is that he never played people-pleaser, he played himself off as rarified air and they all bought it. He just never gave them anything so they filled in the blank with "amazing" and "leader" and yada yada.
Now he has to talk. Good ballplayer, and kinda just an asshole.
Not sure how many Brockmire fans there are out there, but there was some good Derek Jeter-related comedy in the opening sequence of the Season 2 premiere, although it is definitely NSFW.Gumbel should have asked him what his hopes and dreams were for the Marlins.
I don't follow this side of the game too much, outside of the high profile cases. Is this an apt description of the good ol boys club? How much power do the existing owners have in approving/blocking new ownership stakes?I believe we have a pattern here: MLB owners are a very picky and exclusive lot and it's apparent that they do not want anyone too wealthy or bright, especially if they have no existing connection the baseball into the club, which might upset the status quo. So we see a parade of somewhat under capitalized and not too bright owners welcomed, like the former Dodger ownership, which keeps teams weak and unlikely to challenge the teams with older ownership. It helps if you get someone 'baseball credible' to front such a group, so Jeter is their Sarah Huckabee Saunders who will take the abuse, smile and, at least, won't lie, just deflect and cash the checks
Changes in ownership require approval by 75% of the existing owners...period. They have absolute control.I don't follow this side of the game too much, outside of the high profile cases. Is this an apt description of the good ol boys club? How much power do the existing owners have in approving/blocking new ownership stakes?
Going to have to ask you to show your work here.I believe we have a pattern here: MLB owners are a very picky and exclusive lot and it's apparent that they do not want anyone too wealthy or bright, especially if they have no existing connection the baseball into the club, which might upset the status quo. So we see a parade of somewhat under capitalized and not too bright owners welcomed, like the former Dodger ownership, which keeps teams weak and unlikely to challenge the teams with older ownership. It helps if you get someone 'baseball credible' to front such a group, so Jeter is their Sarah Huckabee Saunders who will take the abuse, smile and, at least, won't lie, just deflect and cash the checks
And JD Martinez would beat him out.He's [Yelich] been on an absolute tear, and has a legit shot at the NL Triple Crown.
Even more impressive when those 6 guys can be your 1-7. That said you're right IF they could have afforded that core for a couple of additional seasons while perhaps risking losing them to free agency and getting less than they thought the trade market should bear. Next question would be did they get good return on those trades? I would have to defer to someone else on that matter. But the current situation is largely on Jeter and the guy had to know that this situation (at the very least in the short term) is exactly what he would be facing.Their potential 2019 lineup 1-7
Gordon
Yelich
Stanton
Realmuto
Dietrich
Ozuna
Add some free agents to fill holes, let prospects like Sixto Sanchez and Victor Victor Mesa develop and you’re a championship team. All Jeter has to do was nothing.
They got Sanchez in the Realmuto dealTheir potential 2019 lineup 1-7
Gordon
Yelich
Stanton
Realmuto
Dietrich
Ozuna
Add some free agents to fill holes, let prospects like Sixto Sanchez and Victor Victor Mesa develop and you’re a championship team. All Jeter has to do was nothing.
Yes, I should have phased that differently. Not so much afford from a financial standpoint, but afford in a baseball sense. Risk losing them to free agency or move them with time still remaining on their current deals and perhaps get more value in return rather than try to trade them as rentals at the end of their contracts. Whether or not Jeter ultimately achieved the best possible outcome for the team remains to be seen, but the fact remains is that he has to own the position that he's placed them in.Oh they could have afforded it.
He wanted the dogs out of the clubhouse. No, it was worse than that. Gary Denbo, the Marlins’ vice president of player development and scouting, could not tolerate the dogs, who had been a popular part of the Greensboro Grasshoppers’ scene since August 2006, fetching bats, carrying buckets of balls to the plate umpire, running the bases after every game.
The dogs are such a phenomenon that the bucket of the late Miss Babe Ruth, a Labrador Retriever who once worked 638 consecutive home games, is on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But Denbo, making an unannounced visit to the Marlins’ Low-A affiliate in June 2018, was not interested in upholding tradition. He took one look at the two dog kennels in the clubhouse and demanded that they be removed, berating a clubhouse attendant, a longtime employee of the team who is in his 50s.
The exchange was the breaking point in the Marlins’ 16-year relationship with Greensboro, according to the team’s president and general manager, Donald Moore, who said he simply could not work with Denbo. Moore subsequently made a deal with the Pirates’ organization, and the Marlins settled for a much less advantageous affiliation in Clinton, Iowa, where the ballpark is considered outdated and remote.
That dispute was not an isolated incident for Denbo, 58, a longtime mentor and confidant of Marlins CEO and former Yankees great Derek Jeter. Denbo has transformed the organization with his brusque and at times overbearing manner, and he remains a polarizing figure in his second full season with the Marlins, eliciting strong loyalty from those who support him and strong enmity from those who do not.
“I’ve never encountered someone in baseball — or in life, honestly — who seemed to go so far out of their way to treat other people badly, to the extent where you think, ‘Why would anyone do this?’” one former Marlins employee says.
More than 75 employees in baseball operations have left the Marlins since Major League Baseball approved the $1.2 billion sale of the club to Jeter and Bruce Sherman in September 2017. A high rate of turnover is not unusual after a team changes owners, and the Marlins, who have not had a winning season since 2009, had particular reason to seek a new direction. But while more than half of the departed employees were fired or not renewed, nearly 35 left of their own accord, many joining more successful organizations — and many citing Denbo’s personality and decision-making as primary factors.
A consistent portrait of Denbo as an unyielding authoritarian emerged in interviews The Athletic conducted with more than 20 former Marlins employees and a dozen others in baseball over the past 11 months. Those former employees say Denbo engaged in verbal abuse, fat shaming and blatant favoritism toward certain Marlins personnel.
With the Marlins, the chain of command is less of a concern for Denbo. The team empowered him to oversee not only player development but also amateur, professional and international scouting. The increased responsibility only exacerbated some of the communication issues that Denbo had with the Yankees; two baseball people who worked with Denbo believe his volatile behavior with the Marlins stems from the inferior state of his new team.
“My opinion is the guy was born and bred a Yankee, and he didn’t want to leave,” one of those former colleagues says. “Then he goes to the Marlins, and it’s like, ‘Are we in the big leagues?’”
One morning, Farjad was training with a minor-league conditioning coach, repeatedly sprinting 90 yards, then walking back and touching a line. At one point, to his surprise, he noticed a Marlins official standing on the line, “mean-mugging” him.
It was Denbo.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked Farjad.
“No, but nice to meet you,” Farjad responded, introducing himself.
Denbo then informed Farjad of his name and title, and asked him if he thought he was in “top-notch shape” for spring training. Farjad, a bigger-bodied type who was listed at 5-foot-11, 205 pounds, said he felt he was in pretty good shape but was sure he could improve. To which he recalls Denbo replying, “Good. You better get your ass in shape or you’re not going to be there.”
Farjad says the Marlins released him a few weeks into camp, after Denbo had seen him throw only once. He has yet to catch on with another club. Word of how Denbo had dressed him down — “he just came out there and ripped me for no reason, absolutely no reason,” Farjad says — spread quickly through Marlins circles.
https://theathletic.com/962897/2019/05/06/rosenthal-derek-jeters-right-hand-man-is-tearing-up-a-franchise-and-creating-enemies-along-the-way/?redirected=1But former Marlins employees, however, say that Denbo takes his attention to fitness to another level, disdaining people who he saw as overweight. His opinions of major- and minor-league players and coaches, front-office personnel and draft prospects, even bat boys in spring training, are framed by his perceptions of their appearance. One former employee, upon his departure, made the Marlins’ human resources department aware of Denbo’s treatment of people he perceived as overweight. Another former employee says, “You can’t say, ‘I don’t like fat people,’ and have that be OK.”
Two incidents offer additional insight into Denbo’s perspective on physical conditioning.
In meetings to prepare for the 2018 amateur draft, a number of Marlins scouts liked Ryan Weathers, a left-handed pitcher from Loretto (Tenn.) High School. Weathers, in the scouts’ parlance, is a “soft-bodied guy,” much like his father, former major-league pitcher David Weathers. But the area scout assigned to Ryan’s territory noted that the pitcher was a good basketball player, an average athlete despite his body, maybe better.
Denbo proceeded to humiliate the scout, mocking his evaluation — an account Denbo denies but which was confirmed by multiple sources in the room.
Weathers, 19, went to the Padres with the seventh overall pick. Before this season, MLBPipeline.com named him the 10th-best prospect in the game’s top-ranked farm system. In his first five starts for Class A Fort Wayne of the Midwest League, Weathers produced a 1.82 ERA. He currently is on the injured list due to fatigue.
Denbo also has raised weight as a concern for Marlins employees. In January 2018, during his initial meeting with about 10 high-level regional and national amateur scouts known as cross-checkers, he delivered a PowerPoint presentation that included rudimentary scouting advice: Look for pitchers with big arms, good deliveries and projection bodies. But to the cross-checkers, virtually all of whom had at least 20 years of experience, Denbo’s Scouting 101 perspective was not the most disturbing part of his lecture.
Denbo, according to multiple sources who were present, said that as he scanned the room, he observed that many of the scouts would benefit from getting to the gym more. The implication was clear: They were overweight.
Timing may be part of it as well. It's early in the year, injuries may not have come into play yet.Not to take the other side of the argument, but Farjad was released and no one has picked him up and that doesn't mean anything? Of course it was handled badly, but that outcome suggests the releasing might not have been a mistake.
The rest of it is ridiculous and shouldn't be allowed
None of this is really new. You should read "Inside the Empire" for a really great read on the Yankees and thorough review of the Jeter, Torre, Stanton, Boone and Girardi situations.Seeing Jeter preside over such a disaster and not be associated with the Yankees is such a doubly satisfying turn of events.
I’m friends with one of the writers who covers the MFYs and recently asked him why Jeter left the mother ship. His answer was that Jeter is a huge grudge keeper and never forgave Cashman for “hard balling” him in their last contract negotiation. As if Jeets was underpaid.
Denbo is a schadenfreude festivus.
Thanks. Will order.None of this is really new. You should read "Inside the Empire" for a really great read on the Yankees and thorough review of the Jeter, Torre, Stanton, Boone and Girardi situations.
Does Arod hate Cashman? I think Cashman has a pretty strong player reputation for everyone except Jeter. As a Yankee hater, you're going to love that part of the book.Thanks. Will order.
And while it’s indeed not new, it’s still quite glorious for this MFY Hater.
The PS to Jeter as grudge bearer is that his hatred of A-Rod subsided, according to my writer friend, largely because they both hate Cashman for the GM’s perceived injustices at the end of their respective careers. “Enemy of my Enemy” stuff.
The quote in the book about the negotiations is pretty amazing. Jeter and his agent were in the office, and at one point, Jeter said something like "well, who would you rather have at SS?" presumably meaning it rhetorically. Cashman started listing guys (starting with Tulowitzki, who was still good then) and after a few, Jeter got up and left.I’m friends with one of the writers who covers the MFYs and recently asked him why Jeter left the mother ship. His answer was that Jeter is a huge grudge keeper and never forgave Cashman for “hard balling” him in their last contract negotiation. As if Jeets was underpaid.
My source said he does because of the “forced retirement.” At least, from the Yankees.Does Arod hate Cashman? I think Cashman has a pretty strong player reputation for everyone except Jeter. As a Yankee hater, you're going to love that part of the book.
I don't think either of those is really true, Stanton had a full no-trade and could dictate where he went, which was a right he negotiated for in his contract because of Miami's previous teardowns. The other teams he agreed to go to (LAD, HOU, and I think CHC?) didn't want to pick up his contract, only NYY were interested after Ohtani went elsewhere. Jeter hated that Stanton had the upper hand here, but no one reputable has ever called Stanton a jerk.By the way, until our last conversation, I was mad at Jeter for effectively gifting Stanton to NY. My friend said that I had it totally backwards. Jeter was delighted to have dumped the contract and the player, who had become a jerk in Miami, on the Yankees.
Your friend could have some unique inside information but most accounts line up with how this all happened, and is very detailed in the book.My source said he does because of the “forced retirement.” At least, from the Yankees.
By the way, until our last conversation, I was mad at Jeter for effectively gifting Stanton to NY. My friend said that I had it totally backwards. Jeter was delighted to have dumped the contract and the player, who had become a jerk in Miami, on the Yankees.
I’ll be curious to see if the book lines up with that.
The book has been ordered, I will read it...and then ask him again about it.Your friend could have some unique inside information but most accounts line up with how this all happened, and is very detailed in the book.
"In Jeter's view" who had been there for a very short period of time. If I recall correctly, there are some very direct quotes from Stanton and it's pretty clear that Jeter rubbed him the wrong way. So, perhaps, that's tilted Jeter's view of Stanton.The book has been ordered, I will read it...and then ask him again about it.
He’s a very credible, dispassionate guy, and is a fan only of making deadlines. In other words, he’s got no bias and just tells me what he thinks or knows without any pro or anti Yankees agenda.
And maybe I’m not being complete. He said that in Jeter’s view, Stanton had become embittered in Miami, was too expensive and there weren’t many teams that would take his contract. So that the Marlins traded him to NY wasn’t so much as doing the Yankees a solid as it was offing the player to one of the few, or only, destinations available.
You are absolutely correct."In Jeter's view" who had been there for a very short period of time. If I recall correctly, there are some very direct quotes from Stanton and it's pretty clear that Jeter rubbed him the wrong way. So, perhaps, that's tilted Jeter's view of Stanton.
No doubt. My point wasn’t to suggest that Jeter’s view is accurate. In fact, the writer in question covered Jeter for his entire major league and has long described him as cold, calculating and almost automated in his dealings with the media and some teammates. Said differently, that take on Stanton was presented to me as Jeter’s spin on it.You are absolutely correct.
“In Jeter’s view” = “How do I spin this to a writer to make me look better?”