Davidi: the Snider Saga

[YogiStewart]

Snider and Cito both look like petulant children. an interesting read.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/2012/0 ... to_gaston/

[Fairview4Life]

Snider WAS a petulant child. He was like 21/22.

Cito needed to get away from this attitude and be a better communicator:

"I’m certainly not going to mess with someone and their career if they’re going to do it their own way. They will either succeed or won’t succeed."

[satyr9]

Sounds a lot like Rasmus/LaRussa with a few different moving parts. Probably more than enough blame to go around and I think the older school manager guys don't react well to young kids, obviously in need of coaching, who try to dictate how they're coached. Add on when the coaches get squeezed by a GM on the other side trying to keep close tabs and have some input on the development process too.

What confounds me is how poor the communication appears to be among people who work together every day. How is it possible that once things were strained, they couldn't have a sit down and go through how to make it all work. Cito and Gene must know a kid like Snider isn't intentionally trying to ruin his own career and Snider must be aware the coaches want him to do well, if for no other reason than to secure their own jobs. How hard can it be to figure out how to get each other on the same page?

I just wish the Farrell/AA combo had been able to repair all this. I guess we have to wait for parts 2 and 3, but based on what happened, they didn't ever get this sorted out.

[MikeM]

See this is why managers are hired/fired for more than things like bullpen management.

This is why managers are important. These players aren't robots. This is sort of an unrelated point but please everyone remember why managers are important.

On point, blame for everyone involved. Snider's a wimp. Gaston's a dolt. And Snider still can't catch up to fastballs.

[BigLeagueChew]

Good article, can't wait for part 2 and 3. I know people didn't like the trade and maybe they still don't, but his OPS is .651 for the Pirates and he's not even playing everyday.

[SharoneWright]

Already losing patience with his role on the team, things went from bad to worse for Snider when he reached his breaking point with the plan for him to discuss his approach for each at-bat with Gaston before stepping into the on-deck circle.

As Gaston recalls, then GM J.P. Ricciardi asked him to keep tabs on both Snider and Adam Lind, to see where their heads were at, and the pre-AB discussions is what he came up with.

"It was never me telling him what he wanted to do," says Gaston. "And if he said I want to hit the fastball, I’d say well hit it, just don’t swing at those breaking balls."

The whole approach was new to Snider, and he hated it.

"It put me in a position to overthink situations.

No kidding. I can't imagine having to preview each at bat with my coach. Perfect way to screw up a young player's head.

[Geddy]

It doesn't sound like Cito was was treating him negatively, but rather sounds like Snider couldn't deal with the criticisms. At first he didn't like the critiques of his swing, and then he was upset that Cito had washed his hands of him.

At the moment he can't even cut it as a regular with the Pirates, and lately has been doing more pinch hitting than anything. Even in his limited at bats his K% is higher than it should be.

[Homer Jay]

Already losing patience with his role on the team, things went from bad to worse for Snider when he reached his breaking point with the plan for him to discuss his approach for each at-bat with Gaston before stepping into the on-deck circle.

As Gaston recalls, then GM J.P. Ricciardi asked him to keep tabs on both Snider and Adam Lind, to see where their heads were at, and the pre-AB discussions is what he came up with.

"It was never me telling him what he wanted to do," says Gaston. "And if he said I want to hit the fastball, I’d say well hit it, just don’t swing at those breaking balls."

The whole approach was new to Snider, and he hated it.

"It put me in a position to overthink situations.

No kidding. I can't imagine having to preview each at bat with my coach. Perfect way to screw up a young player's head.

That approach had been with Cito for a while. It helped turn Bautista around, and even Jose says so, as he felt coaches had been the opposite most of his career... not having him properly prepared for each pitcher and situation. Sounds like Snider is the "Just let me go **** hit already" type. If you say the average salary of an everyday position player is 5 million a year, and they get 500 ABs a year, that is being paid 10k per AB. I think someone can sit down for 4-5 mins with the hitting coach, to make the most effort, for the 10k they earn.

[MGD24]

good read. Thanks for posting

[Schad]

That approach had been with Cito for a while. It helped turn Bautista around, and even Jose says so, as he felt coaches had been the opposite most of his career... not having him properly prepared for each pitcher and situation. Sounds like Snider is the "Just let me go **** hit already" type. If you say the average salary of an everyday position player is 5 million a year, and they get 500 ABs a year, that is being paid 10k per AB. I think someone can sit down for 4-5 mins with the hitting coach, to make the most effort, for the 10k they earn.

It's not about making the effort, it's about confidence. There ain't another creature in sports as dependent on self-belief as a big-league hitter, and this amounted to the Jays telling Snider that he didn't know **** about how to approach hitting at the major league level. That it was likely true (as it is for all youngsters) isn't really the point: the problem is that they didn't allow him to figure that out for himself. IMO, you don't start tinkering with a player's approach until after they've gotten their first taste of failure...otherwise even the most open-minded kiddie is not going to react well. And worse still, the player is likely to start doubting the things that got them there; it's something that we saw with Snider, as he got more and more tentative over time, and a good many of us asked whether he was questioning his approach and his reads on pitches before every swing, so late were many of them. It now appears that he was.

That's why I suspect that there's such a gulf between the reactions of Bautista and Snider: certainly, there's some difference in personality, but the primary difference is that Jose had been through it. He'd failed, been traded, been demoted, been a journeyman for years. He was ready for that sort of questioning, because he'd been in baseball long enough to know that he didn't have the answers. Snider was not, and nor should he have been expected to be; it's poor man management for practically the first interactions with him to be "okay, now here's what will hold you back."

The Lewis saga is another example of bad management, IMO. He was a solid player having a solid season. Problem being that he was a solid player having a solid season on a team that was itself solid, in a division that required far more, and an impending free agent to boot; he was a transient piece, and it really made little sense long-term to give him the number of at-bats he received, especially because his performance in the field (at best) edged Snider's by the smallest of margins. As a standalone event, making Snider fight for his spot isn't egregious...as part of an overall pattern of actions, it was. By 22, a couple years removed from being one of the top prospects in baseball, Snider had already been given all the evidence a person of that age needs to come to the conclusion that they aren't really wanted. That Snider was headstrong doesn't help, but it's something that should've been anticipated...bloody hell, there isn't a newly-promoted wunderkind in history (or a 18-23 year old, for that matter) who wasn't both confident in their talents and rife with insecurities.

None of this is "JAYS RUINED SNIDER" stuff, though; there's a good chance that he'd have flamed out anyway. Many top prospects do. But it's somewhat shocking that management at the time seemed to be so unaware of the cause-and-effect of their treatment of a kid who -- at the time -- was considered to be the future of the franchise.

[J-Roc]

On one hand you have Cito who has proven an ability to get hitters to hit. On the other hand you have...Travis Snider.

Anyway cue Gregg Zaun ranting about how you get players to play better by being a hardass. lol

[Randle McMurphy]

On one hand you have Cito who has proven an ability to get hitters to hit.

Some hitters to hit. There's a reason Shawn Green hated him and was driven out of Toronto and there's a reason why they had a clubhouse mutiny in 2009.

[Randle McMurphy]

It's not that surprising that Cito and Tenace were screwing around with him (I think we always assumed that to be the case), but the notable thing for me was how immature Snider was at that time. It sounds like it was his own mindset about their criticism/his situation as much as anything else that set him back (though, of course, this attitude has to be expected and accounted for by management and it wasn't at all).

Despite it, though, Snider still put up better numbers in 2009 and 2010 with Cito as the manager than he has at any point in 2011 and 2012 (and numbers that were much better than what this team has gotten out of LF for the last two seasons). I'll be interested to know what happened last season when he didn't get a prolonged opportunity at the MLB level and this season (when he didn't even get an opportunity at all to inexplicably give Thames and Davis time).

[satyr9]

Forget everything that happened subsequently, that first call-up was a dramatic mistake if this is how it started. If Snider moved so fast Tenace had never even seen video of his swing, how on earth did they decide he was ready to be called up?

Barely two hours into his first day in the big-leagues, having just finished a second round in the batting cage at Yankee Stadium the afternoon of Aug. 29, 2008, the much-hyped 20-year-old prospect is staring at Blue Jays hitting coach Gene Tenace in disbelief.

"Have you always finished your swing with two hands?’" Snider remembers the veteran coach asking. "I said, ‘Yes I have, my whole life.’

He said, ‘You might want to change that if you want to stay at this level.’"

I've seen Bull Durham enough times to know the first day in the bigs is probably kind of a big deal and having this dumped on you would be pretty bad for a multitude of reasons.

What the **** was he doing there? Is there no communication between minor league and major league coaching? I'm not saying this broke him by any means. One incident in a baseball career is nothing. There's always plenty of time to right the ship, but telling Snider that A: Everything he's done to date is useless 'cause his approach is fundamentally flawed and no one bothered to tell him until now, and B: yes we called you up, but we don't know **** about you and don't really care. Either you get with the program now or your done here. These two things are moronic from any coaching staff. If you want to play hard-ass, you sure as **** better also try and appear to be omniscient. It's not like it's hard to trick a bright-eyed rook in his first day in the bigs into thinking you're the **** wizard behind the curtain. But if you're gonna give him some tough love, you can't get in his face and at the same time give him the obvious out that you know nothing about him. You're basically begging him to tell you to go **** yourself.

None of that is to say I agree you have to let them fail before the tough words. I think there's room in player development for some tough coaching even very early, but if that's the approach you want to be calculated how you approach them and knowing it's an incendiary tactic, you better be flexible enough to change tack if it creates an adverse reaction. I think letting some kids know some tough truths early can probably be quite motivational. I'd hazard a guess if we could get the 80's Jays to answer truthfully it probably helped a great deal for a Barfield, or Moseby, or Bell, or Fernandez, or McGriff, etc... I can't imagine this is a unique incident in the history of Cito and Gene's coaching career and those guys turned out okay.

All that being said, it's **** Snider's career and he was getting advice from trained proven professionals doing their job. I don't care if you're 18 or 38, you have a gigantic personal interest in improving, so sack up a bit, eat your rookie cookies and learn something.

All parties are partially responsible and no one needs to be blamed, but because so many prospects can flame out regardless of the quality of coaching, it's disappointing to see a guy whose development path was not as open and supportive as it could've been.

[BigLeagueChew]

This is why I want part 2 and 3 of the article. I want to hear about the last 2 years more than what happened when Tenace and Cito were here. Cito has always been a better manager for more experienced players and It's not really surprising how he dealt with Snider. Dwayne Muprhy is going to do the same thing to our other young players.

Also, if swinging with 2 hands is such a big deal why would it be a bad thing for him while players like Encarnacion and Granderson have switched to 2 handed swings and had success.

[SharoneWright]

I think Schad and satyr have nailed it.

You don't convey to a confident/budding kid that the big team really has no confidence in him, or that (even though it might be true) that he's in perpetual danger of being sent down.

Tell him him, rather, that he was called up for a reason and to go do his thing. It's the same game. So go ahead swing away. We'll assume to treat you in the context of a long career, not bat to bat. ---- That's the only way to see what you really have in a player - at which point you can do some potential fine-tuning/tinkering. It's true that Snider might never have reached that point of establishment, but the Jays will never know.

[Randle McMurphy]

Cito and Tenace were likely treating young players like this throughout their careers (Green and Snider are just the ones who've talked about it publicly). It probably worked for some, but it certainly didn't work for Snider. But if you're a coach, you have to be able to adapt to the situation and the individual. On that level, it's a total failure on the organization's part to allow this to happen.

[SharoneWright]

Cito and Tenace were likely treating young players like this throughout their careers (Green and Snider are just the ones who've talked about it publicly). It probably worked for some, but it certainly didn't work for Snider. But if you're a coach, you have to be able to adapt to the situation and the individual. On that level, it's a total failure on the organization's part to allow this to happen.

Fair enough and good points.... it might work occasionally. But as a general rule, if I made the Major Leagues, I would expect to be treated more like a man and less like I was back in kindergarden again. Trust your players. Cito always did with his vets, but never with his kids.

[TheMainEvent]

After reading part 1, I don't really seem to have an opinion favoring either Gaston/Tenace or Snider. Ultimately, I think both sides were at fault, not communicating well and acting like children.

Snider had some maturity issues and wasn't as humble as he often seemed in interviews, but Gaston didn't know how to handle young prospects and players. Basically, just a bad mix.

[NeverGoingToWin]

http://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/2012/0 ... gone_sour/

Part 2.