New York Yankees And Mets: With Young Talent, Intangibles Count

Beyond in-game strategies, the biggest responsibility a manager has is evaluating the talent on his roster. Young talent is prevalent in both the New York Yankees and Mets rosters. To evaluate it, a manager and his staff need to look at the intangibles.

Intangibles. We hear it so often. What are the intangibles that make up a true and successful major league ballplayer? Often overlooked in a manager’s job description, evaluating talent on his roster takes up the bulk of his time.

When the general manager goes to a manager and says, “I’m thinking about trading so and so, what do you think?” He’d better have an answer and that response needs to be based on his observation of the player’s intangibles because the general manager and everyone else know about his numbers.

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The game itself takes only three hours, but life in the big leagues is a ten-hour day, not including travel. In the course of those three hours, a manager might make one or two decisions that affect the outcome of a game. Otherwise, it’s the players and what they do on any given day in the field that determine a win or a loss.

For the other seven hours,  the manager is the Principal Observer. From afar, along with his coaching staff, he observes what his players are doing, or sometimes not doing that goes into his determination as to whether or not this player can help the team.

Here’s a video that speaks to the intangibles staffs look for in a player. It’s a bit dry, but he does make the point.

More often than not, except through trades, a player arriving to wear a major league uniform comes with a pre-defined skill set that includes an assessment of what he can and can’t do with his bat or pitching arm. Hopefully, but not always, the player arrives with the same definition and he doesn’t try to pull the pitch on the outside corner or insist on throwing his third pitch on a full count.

It’s true in all sports too. Listen to NFL legend Steve Largent.

With the Mets, we are probably talking about players like Michael Conforto, TJ Rivera, and Ty Kelly just to name a few. For the Yankees, the list gets longer and more complicated because of their farm system depth. But players on their current roster, including the likes of Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez now fall under the watchful eye of Joe Girardi and his staff.

So, what are you looking for? Let’s go through the list.

For example, is the player one of the first five or last five to enter the clubhouse to report for work? More importantly, what does he do with this pre-game time? Is he stopping by the weight room for a few reps? And does he move on to the video room for a few minutes to watch some film (if he’s a position player) of the opposing pitcher that night? Does he seek out a coach or two to get more information? Does he gather with a small group to simply “talk baseball”?

When you take a leisurely stroll through the clubhouse on your way to tell one of your pitchers that he’s first up in the bullpen that night, do you observe him sipping a cup of coffee with his head buried in his iPhone?

Maybe, he’s a regular member of card games. Or, maybe, he’s only half-dressed when you tell him to take some ground balls at third because “I might need you there tonight”?

Basically, you are trying to quantify something that is subjective. It’s the hardest thing a Manager and his staff is charged with

A host of other things come into play as well. Basically, what you are trying to do is figure out is if this kid has his head on straight and whether or not he’s figured out that raw talent has taken him this far, but it’s hard work that’s going to keep him here for a long and lucrative career. Because as Yogi Berra so eloquently said,  “90% of this game is mental and the other half is physical.”

So, you don’t look at the video of him being interviewed following a game in which he went 2-4 with a blast driving in two while making an athletic turn on a double play to end the game.

Instead, you want to look at the postgame video after his line reads 0-4 with three strikeouts, 5 left on base and one boneheaded play in the outfield that allowed two runs to score.

By definition, intangibles mean they are something you can’t touch. To weigh them in judging a player’s value can only be subjective. But more than deciding whether or not a sacrifice bunt should be called for, this is how managers like Girardi and Terry Collins earn their keep.

Again, intangibles count. How many players, for example, never reach their full potential because some things are a little “off” about them? For the Mets, we’ve witnessed the premature burnout of both Darryl Strawberry and his teammate Doc Gooden, who both have much to regret these days because they didn’t quite “get it” back then. Is Conforto the next in line with that kind of an ending before his career even begins? Probably and hopefully not, but you have to wonder.

The Yankees may have a similar situation on their hands in trying to figure out why Michael Pineda and Nathan Evoldi, both of whom appear to have all the talent in the world, end up causing everyone to scratch their heads wondering, “What’s up with these guys. It can’t be about talent.”

And don’t think for a minute the Yankees have forgotten the inexplicable “Pine Tar Incident” with Pineda, or the fact that both players come from teams that discarded them in trades to the Yankees.

At some point, a manager or one of his coaches with his direction will step in and tell the player, “Look, that’s just not the way we do things around here. And, here’s what you need to do to make yourself better because your way is simply not working.”

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From there, it’s up to the player. He either heeds the warning, or he packs his bags heading towards the unknown having learned nothing except for the fear that his career is in jeopardy.

Over the next year or so, we’ll see how it all plays out. To be sure, these will be chapters in the Yankees’ and Mets’ history books that we won’t want to miss.

You can read more here in an article published by Baseball Think in which they go through the top five intangibles that are evaluated in young talent.