Winning has to be above everything
On piggyback starts, bruised egos and faulty decision-making.
The Mariners beat the division-leading Athletics soundly, doing so by holding a good offense to only two runs in the windy bandbox down in West Sacramento. It was one of the most satisfying wins of the season.
And everyone is pissed.
That puts a nice bow on the absurdity around this piggybacking strategy of throwing both Luis Castillo and Bryce Miller on the same day, a storyline made in a lab to invoke hasty reactions on Twitter.
The strategy itself isn’t absurd, though.
Why?
If it helps the team win, that matters more than anything else.
Does it matter that players are pissed off? Sure. It doesn’t not matter.
But it doesn’t matter more than the ball club winning games. And every player in that clubhouse, in the organization, needs to understand nothing is more important than that.
Quickly catching folks up, though—Luis Castillo and Bryce Miller clearly do not love this setup.
The most visible display of frustration came from Castillo after an extended and animated conversation with Dan Wilson following Rock’s fourth frame of shutout ball. Miller would have the fifth.
Castillo postgame, again via Kramer:
“I was kind of asking, ‘Maybe one more inning?’” Castillo said through an interpreter. “He told me that Bryce was ready. But as a competitor, you kind of want to go out there and just continue. But at the same time, you've got to respect his position.”[…]
“It's a plan that for at least my seasons here in the Major Leagues, I've never seen this piggyback,” Castillo said. “But it's something that you'll eventually get used to. All I've got to do is continue working and just doing the plan that they set up for us.”
Having finished the game, Miller had the on-field walk-off interview with Brad Adams and said he wasn’t overly comfortable with the setup.
“I found out yesterday or two days ago, so I just didn't really know how I was going to navigate it,” Miller said. “Obviously, I think I've got [76] starts over the last four years, plus a couple years in the Minor Leagues. Like, I haven't done this in a while -- really, since college -- pitching out of the bullpen. So I didn't really know how to navigate it. But I just did the best I could.”
That item off the top, that’s the only part I don’t particularly like—guys should know, if it is locked in, if they’re starting the game or coming out of the bullpen a couple days in advance.
You know what I do like though?
16.3 IP, 9 H, 4 R, 4 ER 2 BB, 21 SO
That’s the line on this pair through the first two starts of this piggybacking strategy.
The Mariners’ #5 starter just pitched a complete game two-run 10-strikeout game agains the AL West’s first place team and people are mad.
In part, I get it.
For one, it’s a relatively new concept—though I say relatively because the baseball world’s been talking about these piggyback starts for years. Orgs use them a lot in the minors.
For another, the first taste of it stunk. It was awful, and I’m going to use the following anecdote only to tee up up the broader point.
Here’s a selection of quotes from Ryan Divish on the most recent episode of Inside Pitch on Jason Puckett’s PuckSports, where the pair was discussing Wilson sticking with Castillo for the ninth inning in a one-run game last week against the White Sox.
“Dan was trying to be rigid to the philosophy of trying to get work for his two guys to keep them stretched out, when the bigger philosophy is, hey, win the game first.” […]
“It's not like Jerry's telling him [on piggybacking], ‘Oh, you have to do that.’ They've all decided this is the best way to do it. The problem is that even if Dan understands why they have to do it and even if he understands the premise of it, he got away from what the overall aspect would be. And I'm sure that's what Jerry Dipoto would tell him.”[…]
“Let’s say that Bryce Miller went out and was struggling to throw strikes and was giving up hits, but he’d only given up two runs or whatever.
He’s at 50 pitches after three innings, but it’s been a complete struggle. Let’s say he’s walked four or whatever. You don’t leave him in just to get to 70, do you, knowing that he’s not pitching well? No, you’ve got to rested a guy that can go five so you pull him and go there.
The overall goal of the piggyback shouldn’t be to just keep these guys stretched out. It’s a mechanical thing that you use, but it isn’t like, ‘oh my god, we have to stay to this and results overall be damned.’
That’s the problem. That’s where the misstep was.”
With this setup and other similar decisions—like J.P. Crawford moving to third should he re-learn to throw—the Mariners are asking a lot of their players.
They’re doing what great teams tend to do: putting winning above all else.
It has to come before egos, before “comfort,” above pride and payment—everything.
That is not something The Baseball Club of Seattle LLP tends to do.
There are so many examples of this but among them is hiring a franchise Hall of Famer with zero managerial experience as the full-time skipper for a championship contending team without interviewing a single candidate.
And now, as the Mariners are asking a lot of Wilson—to balance the analytical approach the modern game requires with situational feel and acumen—it’s laying bare the skipper’s shortcomings and, with that, the organization’s folly in asking its employees to put winning above all else but not living up to the idea themselves.
It’s sort of a fun circular “time is a flat circle” kind of thing. Except for the mental anguish it causes Mariners fans on a nightly basis.
But anyway, you can’t argue with results.
The results are what count in the standings, not whether or not your highest-paid player with a six-plus ERA throws around his stuff in the dugout because he doesn’t get the ‘W’ next to his name in the paper.
Bless Luis’s heart, he’s done so much for this organization and in this game. But it is a results business and, right now, this piggyback setup is getting results.
How long does it stay? No idea. Definitely not through like August and September.
But it may be here for a bit if these guys keep pitching like they have in their limited stints.
The focus then, and in many other ways, shifts to Dan Wilson. Skip is clearly not a masterful in-game tactician. That’s settled in the short term.
So if he’s going to be manager, and he is going to be manager for the foreseeable future, he has to crush the other side of the job—he has to be an elite caretaker of the vibes.
He has to get everyone to buy in, to understand the club only has one goal: to win and win big.
Nothing comes before that.
The challenge: his very presence runs counter to the narrative.
Godspeed, Daniel.
Go M’s.