I remember a few years ago the threads that used to pop up here at Royals Review when a guy like Gobble was DFAed.

Wow, did you see Luke Hudson was DFAed? We ought to grab that!

The team has come quite a way in the last two years.

Oh, and I object to Gobble being called trash! He is at worst “vintage” goods.

Posnanski on Gobble and Hillman


Joe Posnanski has an article up at SI on Jimmy Gobble, Trey Hillman, and the differences between good and bad managers…

In particular, he talks about how Gobble was successful at the thing he was supposed to do — get lefties out — and was terrible at the thing he wasn’t supposed to do — get righties out.

The problem, Posnanski says, is that Hillman didn’t utilize him properly, which highlights his bigger point:

    In many ways, the Jimmy Gobble story is a perfect little synopsis of good managing and bad. A good manager has an uncanny way of consistently putting his players in positions where they can succeed. There are no perfect players, but more than that, there are very, very few players who do not have serious and easy-to-define weaknesses in their game. Some hit but don’t field, some field but don’t hit, some cannot catch up to hot fastballs, some cannot lay off the outside slider, some throw too many pitches, some cannot get lefties out, some do not walk, some are not aggressive enough, on and on and on and on forever. Seems to me that the part of managing that matters most — and maybe this is where Bobby Cox shines — is setting up game after game after game so that more of your players get to play to their strengths.

Thanks to Dirk Diggler for pointing out this story