Season Greetings to all friends here!
Happy Holidays and I hope 2007 will be a good year !

 So now to some random thoughts

1)———————-
Big Table of WinShares (WS) -Dr Naka showed that A's had less players in -WSAB.
So they were better in selecting players who to play?
But wait… Look who had the worst WSAB…
Look at Pineiro…
He was one of the most promising pitcher of M's and got a multiyear deal.  
Why did he not perform as promised?
And there are lot of players who did not perform as expected in M's uniform…
Why?

If you have an answer and a method to prevent the players to underperform you could make money for sure. I see some money-ball here.

2)———————–
What’s Important to a Business? 
"Only three stakeholders of importance to any organization: Investors, Employees and Customers."

Only 3?
Why not 4: Investers,Management,Employees and Customers.

Something from Tokyo Stock Exchange:

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Here we were, figuring all anybody wanted to do was throw crumpled paper cups (full of cherry kool-aid, natch) when a baseball discussion broke out.  Weird.  We were set to lean up against the doorway sipping a cuppa for a week or two, just lean back and enjoy the cafeteria food fight.  Shame on SaltyDog for breaking it up.

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Ho-kay.  The M's are …. where?  As will surprise no one, the 2007 M's are considerably improved on paper, and even have an interesting personality.  As will also surprise no one, quaffing the 25-man roster is not unlike quaffing diluted root beer.

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=== You Read It Here First, Dept. ===

A month or two ago, the general consensus was that the M's needed to steer far clear of Barry Zito … at 5/65 type money.  Nonsense.  6 x $16-18m is the appropriate salary, sez the D-O-V mainframe.

Ah well.  Just another UNDERestimate by Dr. D.  Like last winter when we drew guffaws for recommending a $25m post on Matsuzaka…  

Now then, we hesitate to notify you that Ichiro's next contract will be a minimum of 7/$150m, unless he gives the M's a hometown discount.  And you can't possibly have a coherent vision of the future without fishing-or-cutting-bait on this one. 

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Inkblots?  Hmmm.  Personally I see the M's 2007 season without Barry Zito…

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==== Rohrshach Dept. ===

Patrick axs,

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You guys might have missed this one in all of the holiday fuss and under the radar compared to Zito talks and griping about the front office, but the Mariners have apparently acquired former first round star Sean Burroughs for $450,000.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/297043_mari23.html

He didn't exactly light the world on fire last year, but I find this a very interesting bit of news for a few reasons.

Here's Burroughs' Minor League track record:

http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/B/Sean-Burroughs.shtml

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As so many amigos have put it recently — whether the M's are fun or not, talking about them always is.  LOL.

And the best thing for me about talking the Mariners with D-O-V/SportSpot writers like yourselves?  Not the numbers, or the strategies, or the news, or the rumors.  It's the interaction with good folks.  There are a thousand different Spot/D-O-V authors and a thousand interesting ways of looking at things.  Very often, it's not just interesting, but encouraging, or edifying, or cheering, or heartwarming. 

……………………  

My son asked a Dec. 25th-type question which might be interesting to spiritual and non-spiritual people alike. 

His teacher had shown him the mathematical symbol for eternity - the sideways 8.  He got to staring at this thing going around and around and around, and it bothered him… he concluded that eternity would have to get boring.  Eventually :- )

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MtGrizzly posted:

I had a business school professor that said that there are really only three stakeholders of importance to any organization: Investors, Employees and Customers. How an organization prioritizes those stakeholders and places them in a pecking order tells you a lot about that organization. Whichever group the organization places first in the pecking order determines how the company is managed. Slots #2 and #3 will tell you a lot about the tactics that a business will use but the first slot determines strategy. (Still waiting on the book that he’s going to write on the topic.)

Doc’s classic Theory X, 20th century organization almost always places the interests of the investors first, the customers second and the employees last. Some - monopolies like Big Blue era IBM or pre-breakup AT&T, for example - will swap the employees and customers in that pecking order but the oganization is primarily managed for the benefit of the investors. All old-school business classes, from Intro to Business 101 all the way to the 600-level MBA courses, reinforce this notion. The interests of the investor reign supreme.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line this type of organization stopped being managed for the long-term benefit of the investors and started being managed based on quarterly returns. (Warren Buffet being the shiny exception that proves the rule amd Enron being the dirty example of excess.) In these organizations, folks get fired for a couple of bad quarters and it has resulted in a lack of real, long-term strategic planning. Executives like Fiorina that try to manage for the long term get ousted based on short term set-backs. Like Carly, they often look a lot better in hindsight years later.

On the flip side, we are starting to see (last 30 years or so) a new class of big business that is de-emphasizing the investor and managing in a whole different way. Companies like Costco and Southwest Airlines place the employee first in the pecking order, followed by the customer and the investor last. Their rationale seems to be that happy, enthusiastic employees will take care of the customers and that delighted customers will in turn take care of the investors. It requires a major philosophical and cultural “stake in the ground” type of attitude to implement but it certainly seems to work when it’s done right.

Similarly, some organizations are placing the customer first, figuring that the customer will take care of both the employee and investor through their loyal patronage. (And this is rarer than one might think - many organizations like to tout their spirit of service but no amount of “the customer is always right” mousepads can take the place of true organizational priority on service.) Starbucks seems to be a company that places the customer first, although that’s pure speculation on my part. They certainly make it easy to buy their product and if I need some time with the laptop when I’m on the road, I always look for the nearest Starbucks.

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This is some follow to Ice article "Team Japan : Ichiro = Bakufu : Shogun?" and Dr.D's comment "There is a certain amount of resentment against newfangled or foreign ways of doing things. If Zito brought some of the A’s style work ethic over that would be great, but Ichiro and Moyer haven’t seen their work ethic catch on much. "

If you kibitz a chess match of your friends the fastest way to loose your friendship is to make suggestions to your friends moves not asked.
If you play golf you may be sometime annoyed of partners who want to teach about your swing never asked.

Ichiro moved to CF when asked.

Ichiro was asked at AS game from A-Rod about how to prepare for game and the two made stretch together before the game.

Ichiro was asked by Munerin (M.Kawasaki Softbank) at WBC to work out together in off-season. Japanese press is reporting that from 21th Ichiro and Munerin make training.

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