My co-worker Raoul was griping the other day about his Ultimate Frisbee buddies. Seems that the new rage in Ultimate Frisbee (within his crowd) is forming "the stack". For those who know nothing of Ultimate, I'll just say, it's a pre-defined formation, which is a little curious, since Ultimate flows more like soccer, a continuously moving jumble, rather than the stop-set-start repetition of football. Raoul, heard someone call, "form the stack", at which point, most of his team, (as well as the opponents), began moving into their pre-defined positions. But, Raoul looked at the landscape of players on the field, and realize that his team ALREADY had a stray player standing near the endzone. So, Raoul dashes to the disc, grabs it, and tosses it to the player in the endzone for a score.

His teammate screamed, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?" And then followed up with the coup de grace of illogic, by adding, "WE WERE FORMING A STACK!". Somehow, the act of forming the stack had grown to such an enormously important point in this person's mind, that it superceded actually scoring. This is sort of like getting the "swing away" sign and getting yelled at for taking the walk on the ball 3 feet outside.

The reason I bring this up is because it is a general pattern I have noticed in life that is certainly alive and spreading throughout baseball fandom. The pattern is that of wanting to simplify everything. In this case, the oversimplification of the "how" caused this person to completely lose sight of the "why". The devil is in the details -- but the GOAL should be simple.

Obviously, having a DVR that is simple to program is a plus compared to a VCR that is a royal pain to program. Simplificiation is a benefit in many areas. The problem is that it doesn't actually take less information to program the DVR -- it's just that somebody else figured out a way to gather that information (start time, stop time, channel), in an easier format. And, of course, if the on-screen guide doesn't agree with the actual running time, (the new trend for shows to run 1 or 2 minutes long is starting to get annoying), then it's easy to miss parts of the programs anyway. The goal is to record the ENTIRE show - not to simply make recording most of a show easier.

Over the past few years, Mariners fans have had to live with a rebuilding club, which crashed from the heights of winning the most regular season games ever, (but failed to reach the World Series, anyway), to slowly climb out of the muck, make a surprise dash toward the playoffs in 2007 (88 wins), only to drop off a cliff completely in 2008, (61 wins).

Lots of fingers were pointed. Mostly, the bad times were blamed on Bavasi, (or the people who hired him). Oddly, though, Bavasi received no credit whatsoever for the success of 2007. Go figure. And if targeting the specific cause for Bavasi failing, the #1 culprit was typically boiled down to "talent assessment."

The SABRistas would decry his (and the organizations) cluelessness about number crunching. The lack of explosive performance by prospects would be blamed on talent assessment, too. Of course, it typically takes 3-5 years for prospects to work their way up to the majors, and Bavasi was only around for 4, so there is an undeniable logic gap in this regard. Even the payroll was blamed on failures in "talent assessment", because only a moron would be throwing so much money at such obvious mediocrity.

The really great thing about this approach to problem identification is that - if you identify ONE (and only one) problem, then you only need one solution. There is an underlying assumption that everything else is peachy keen. Of course, this is not surprising logic to be utilized when griping about the failures of a pro sports team. We use the same logic on a daily basis. "If I only had a million dollars, then ALL my problems would be solved!" I'm pretty sure that you'd have to add several zeroes to that number to get people like Madoff to say it -- (or most of his investors). Or the Detroit auto-industry. Or pretty much any financial institution on the planet.

This is America. We want the QUICK fix. We want the QUICK buck. We want to make our money young, and enough of it that we can retire and sit on our duffs after 50, and we EXPECT to earn 10% return on our money, while sitting on our cans. And we never even stop to think -- "Well, if I'm sitting on my can, and I'm getting a 10% return on my investment, WHO is it that is actually working to provide that 10% return?" (The answer that should scare everyone is this -- someone who is probably NOT as smart as you).

In baseball, the statheads continue to search for the Holy Grail - the SINGLE all-encompassing stat that will accurately peg how valuable every player happens to be. We WANT that single number. It's simply too much work to have to look at 3 or 4 numbers and make our own assessment. Let someone else do the work to pull it all together -- and if we lose the last out of the 9th, we'll just have to live with it.

The problem with the Mariners the past 4 years was not talent assessment. Talent assessment may have been *A* problem. But, talent assessment was somehow involved in bringing in Raul Ibanez and Jose Guillen. Talent assessment was part of the choice to get rid of Eddie Guardado and let JJ Putz close. Talent assessment is part of what brought Kenji Johjima into the fold for two stellar seasons, before his 2008 meltdown.

The problem with the Mariners is pretty much the problem with America. The owners, GM and fans *ALL* want a quick fix. They want to believe that if they simply choose better people, everything will be great. But, how many years did it take Randy Johnson to become a great PITCHER? He was always a great talent. He was fanning 220-240 players, yet he couldn't win 15 games in a season before age 29!!!

There is a LOT more that goes into being a succesful pro sports team than talent assessment. You can hire the best and brightest people in the world, but it is still possible to misuse that talent. Putting Albert Einstein at shortstop and Alex Rodriguez in charge of the Manhattan Project is not a failure of talent assessment. Each man has incredible talents. But you've got to deploy the talent where it can help the most. And Albert Einstein as a patent clerk does NOT guarantee that you've got the "best" patent clerk in the world, even if you may have the smartest.

The way the real world works is that there are a million variables, and you may get to tweak a few each day. And working to improve talent assessment of FA acquisitions may have DETRIMENTAL impact on player development. Time and effort and money directed at variable A likely means time, effort and money NOT directed at variable B.

I have personally railed against the wind about the need for Seattle to fix its defense. But, that alone will not make the team a winner. They will still need an offense. They will still need better player development. They will still need better talent assessment. They will still need better age management.

The cop-out is to say they just need better management. This may be largely true, and only time will tell whether the new regime is better. But, the club does need management smart enough to understand fixing any ONE thing is just that -- fixing (or perhaps better stated -- improving) - ONE thing. The one variable working in the Mariners' favor is that they are certainly not alone in their ineptitude. While many have complained that Seattle is the "worst run franchise" in baseball, (or for some, in all of sports), this is, of course, an oversimplification.

The Yankees spent 209 million in 2008 to finish 3rd in their division to a Tampa team that spent 43.8. Detroit was hailed as the example of a model franchise in 2006, after decades of putridness. They went from 43 wins to 95 wins and the AL Pennant in 4 years. They swooned from 88 wins to 74 last season, (not as bad a swoon as Seattle's -- but they quietly ballooned their payroll to 138.6 million, moving ahead of the Mets, (who also missed the playoffs - AGAIN), into 2nd place on the payroll list.

The top 3 teams in payroll, who have been the recent MAJOR spenders in the FA market all missed the playoffs. Of course, blaming THEIR failure on poor talent assessment would be ... oversimplififcation.