Kawakami Neukom Interview

[gp956]

talking points blog

 

[gp956]

-Q: In your tenure as owner, you’ve signed nobody to anything longer than a two-year deal. Free-agents, your own guys, GM, manager, whoever. Has that been your mandate—nothing longer than two years?

-NEUKOM: In terms of player contracts? Yeah, again, we’ll see, as they say in baseball… could be unusual circumstances.

But I think all of baseball realizes that it’s not just how much you pay a player per year, what makes the deep-pocket teams more difficult to compete with for talent is that they can go the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh year at big numbers.

And other than those four or five of them, that’s a very hard and even a dangerous thing for other teams to do.

We’re working really hard on building a culture around here of being a team where people want to play because they’re treated like professionals, because they have a chance to win here.

We want to be one of those few teams that doesn’t just write a big check, but for a lot of other reasons, plays the game the way it should be and can be competitive year in and year out. Those are the teams that player want to play for.

It’s not—’You have a tough right field for a power hitter.’ It’s: ‘Are you winners? Are you going to be like the Twins, like the Cardinals? Are you going to be there almost ever year?’

 

[gp956]

Look, the way you win baseball games is to win innings, and that means you’ve got to have good pitching—starting pitching and a bullpen. And it means you’ve got to have good defense, you’ve got to catch the ball. You’ve got to have some speed, and you’ve got to have people who can hit enough in the clutch to score runs.

Non-sequitur there. Winning innings? How about scoring more runs than your competition that day? Insert "score more runs" for "winning innings" and it makes sense.

Just a little pet peeve here.....

 

[filosofy29]

Look, the way you win baseball games is to win innings, and that means you’ve got to have good pitching—starting pitching and a bullpen. And it means you’ve got to have good defense, you’ve got to catch the ball. You’ve got to have some speed, and you’ve got to have people who can hit enough in the clutch to score runs.

Non-sequitur there. Winning innings? How about scoring more runs than your competition that day? Insert "score more runs" for "winning innings" and it makes sense.

Just a little pet peeve here.....

Exactly, you can win 8 of the 9 innings and still lose the game.

Interesting read too. I hope he's ready to pony up the big bucks to Posey and Bumgarner (should they continue this level of play) when they are ready for it. Overall, I'm not necessarily against the strategy, I'm just not entirely for it either. It seems to me that you should take things such as FA signings on a case by case basis. (imhumbleo)

 

[gp956]

Exactly, you can win 8 of the 9 innings and still lose the game.

Interesting read too. I hope he's ready to pony up the big bucks to Posey and Bumgarner (should they continue this level of play) when they are ready for it. Overall, I'm not necessarily against the strategy, I'm just not entirely for it either. It seems to me that you should take things such as FA signings on a case by case basis. (imhumbleo)

I agree. And also everything is consistent with Neukom's previous statements: the overarching strategy is to spend money to retain their own homegrown talent. Combining that with the strategy of honoring recently retired players and keeping them in the fold, and I think this is a recipe for creating brand value, both with players and fans.

And, of course, if more teams follow this route, elite free agents will be very expensive.

 

[filosofy29]

I agree. And also everything is consistent with Neukom's previous statements: the overarching strategy is to spend money to retain their own homegrown talent. Combining that with the strategy of honoring recently retired players and keeping them in the fold, and I think this is a recipe for creating brand value, both with players and fans.

And, of course, if more teams follow this route, elite free agents will be very expensive.

Nice, that is reassuring to hear. I hope Neukom keeps to his plan then and retains the younger players when they are ready for their big pay days.

I agree, I mean you have be shrewd with who you throw the big dollars at. When Jason Bay and Matt Holiday were the two biggest/best free agents out there, obviously you don't just throw whatever contract they're looking for at them or get into a bidding war. However, if there's a case like in 1992 and Barry Lamar Bonds is out there, you have to approach these scenarios in a different manner (obviously these cases don't happen often).

 

[gp956]

Nice, that is reassuring to hear. I hope Neukom keeps to his plan then and retains the younger players when they are ready for their big pay days.

I agree, I mean you have be shrewd with who you throw the big dollars at. When Jason Bay and Matt Holiday were the two biggest/best free agents out there, obviously you don't just throw whatever contract they're looking for at them or get into a bidding war. However, if there's a case like in 1992 and Barry Lamar Bonds is out there, you have to approach these scenarios in a different manner (obviously these cases don't happen often).

In going with the caretaker status Neukom has talked about, I'd set up a player salary budget, fluctuating with the trajectory of expected revenues, but when unique opportunities arose, I'd allocate some equity to finance those acquisitions, i.e. their cost would not come out of the player budget (or at least not all of it). And, over time, the return on those equity outlays would become a major point in evaluating the soundness of my baseball decisions.

 

[tzill]

Look, the way you win baseball games is to win innings, and that means you’ve got to have good pitching—starting pitching and a bullpen. And it means you’ve got to have good defense, you’ve got to catch the ball. You’ve got to have some speed, and you’ve got to have people who can hit enough in the clutch to score runs.

Non-sequitur there. Winning innings? How about scoring more runs than your competition that day? Insert "score more runs" for "winning innings" and it makes sense.

Just a little pet peeve here.....

Well...I think that's what he meant, don't you? You win innings by playing good defense and pitchers putting up zeros. It's a variation of "one game at a time."

 

[gp956]

Well...I think that's what he meant, don't you? You win innings by playing good defense and pitchers putting up zeros. It's a variation of "one game at a time."

It's just a phrase I've heard here and there, I've always hated it.

 

[calsnowskier]

In going with the caretaker status Neukom has talked about, I'd set up a player salary budget, fluctuating with the trajectory of expected revenues, but when unique opportunities arose, I'd allocate some equity to finance those acquisitions, i.e. their cost would not come out of the player budget (or at least not all of it). And, over time, the return on those equity outlays would become a major point in evaluating the soundness of my baseball decisions.

Didn't Sabes say in the infamous Razor interview that this was exactly the strategy that was used in the Zito signing? That the G's may have a 100Mil salary, but that most of Zito's sal does not count towards that on the internal financial charts...

 

[gp956]

Didn't Sabes say in the infamous Razor interview that this was exactly the strategy that was used in the Zito signing? That the G's may have a 100Mil salary, but that most of Zito's sal does not count towards that on the internal financial charts...

That's how I took it. You might recall that I put that out there way back in the Jason Bay threads where a few claimed the Giants could not afford Bay because they were already at their budget limit. What's not clear is whether the Giants choose that strategy from the get go with Zito, or not.

 

[filosofy29]

In going with the caretaker status Neukom has talked about, I'd set up a player salary budget, fluctuating with the trajectory of expected revenues, but when unique opportunities arose, I'd allocate some equity to finance those acquisitions, i.e. their cost would not come out of the player budget (or at least not all of it). And, over time, the return on those equity outlays would become a major point in evaluating the soundness of my baseball decisions.

Yes, this. You basically said for me what I was not articulate enough to say.