Jack Morris Pitching to the Score, David Eckstein Doing All the Little Things: The Baseball Intangibles Thread

Agree with all of that...but I'd still like to see a large-scale study of teams that lose a number of games because of blown saves within a short time-frame. Another way to say that: part of me thinks the primary difference between the 1983 Jays, an up and coming young team that suddenly found themselves in first place in late June and then had to contend with a bunch of nightmarish losses out of the bullpen--the Joey McLaughlin year--and the 2023 Orioles is Felix Bautista.

Again, I think it comes down to whether or not you think athletes have some special ability to not get down on yourself (or, in the aggregate, a team not get down on itself) when things take an ugly turn. That is a very human thing to do. Sometimes I'm willing to believe they do have that ability--I remember Kyle Lowry missing the championship-clinching shot in the finals and then coming out next game and hitting his first three or four shots--other times, no.

I don’t think baseball players are any more special than other athletes in that regard but the sheer volume of games played necessitates the old “turning the page” cliché, right?

In keeping with that, possibly it would have far more effect on a young team (like the '83 Jays).

Intangibles = grit, character, momentum, choking, leadership, mystique, a million things.

my sense is that these things only matter insofar as you believe in them, and that baseball people, who are inherently conservative, overwhelmingly do. also i doubt there's an athlete on earth who would say confidence isn't vital to performance.

('leadership' matters whether you believe it or not, though, as in the willie mays and trevor story anecdotes above)

until recently, most people in baseball management were former marginal players -- the backup catchers, the gritty utility guys (there are obvious exceptions, e.g. joe torre). and they valued the things that gave them their (slight) edge, like 'bulldog mentality'. but actual talent is better.

scouting reports historically have been essentially phrenology (and similarly racist). you can say a guy throws 91 or goes from first to third in however many seconds, but beyond that it's all 'tremendous mound presence' or 'peerless makeup' or 'parents are good people' or 'won't look people in the eye'. the astros took everything too far, but one can see luhnow's point about scouts -- they had electronic tracking in all their minor league parks first and could get actual data rather than whatever some dude who just drove eight hours had to say about a kid's body language.

otoh, unless you have godlike ability (and even griffey jr. had his struggles coming up) it *does* take a certain mental toughness to deal with all the failure, the inevitable unfairness, etc. before reaching and remaining in the majors. but that toughness doesn't look the same in everyone, and baseball tends to look for it in only one way.

if i had a point when i started i guess i've lost it now? essentially agree with clemenza that intangibles don't matter until they do, or vice versa

in “knuckleball!” - a not very good movie that nevertheless has a few nice pieces of film footage from games where wakefield was striking guys out etc - r.a. dickey talks a lot about the confidence to “be himself” particularly with the kind of skepticism that the knuckleball provokes. joe niekro and charlie hough served as mentors for awhile and niekro recalls telling dickey that before every pitch, imagine that one might be the best pitch you ever throw. there’s a lot of that in baseball, like “i hope the ball is hit to me” - you have to throw yourself into it 100% despite the likelihood of failure. it’s certainly very easy to see how any crack in that mentality could split and widen into a real problem

Geez, I loved Knuckleball.

One thing I've had to question myself on is the way the whole Jays culture changed when they traded away Teoscar and Guriel. I was definitely tired of the home run jacket and all the bells and whistles--Marcus Semien seemed like a beacon of sanity in the midst of all that--but after a year of this team's comparative blandness, maybe there's a tangible value to that stuff after all.

there's a lot of great footage in it but the interviews are pretty stilted and it's just pretty artlessly put together - totally worth it to hear these guys though obviously

Only saw it the one time...What I loved was the secret-society subtext of it, that these four guys--Wakefield, Niekro, Hough, Dickey--possessed some rarified knowledge that wasn't available to anyone else in the world, like they collected early blues 78s from a specific region of the country or transcribed ancient Aztec scrolls that no one else could decipher.

otoh, unless you have godlike ability (and even griffey jr. had his struggles coming up) it *does* take a certain mental toughness to deal with all the failure, the inevitable unfairness, etc. before reaching and remaining in the majors. but that toughness doesn't look the same in everyone, and baseball tends to look for it in only one way.

Never forget that Mays started his career 1-for-26 and crying in front of his locker. Never forget that after his incredible rookie of the year season, Willie McCovey struggled so much that he was demoted to Triple A for 17 games. And when you look at, let’s see here, the hundreds of thousands of prospects who didn’t have careers quite that accomplished, most of them struggled in a way that they eventually couldn’t overcome. Baseball is hard. Calm down.

Corey Seager must have used the word "resiliency" six times in a post-game interview I saw last night as explanation for the Rangers winning. I assume he's referring to a) their schizophrenic season, where they looked dead a few times, and b) the injuries they had to get past: his and deGrom's in the regular season, Garcia and Scherzer in the post-season.

1) Is resiliency an intangible, or is it more a skill, the ability to not be distracted by negative developments (perhaps helped along by Bochy's calmness that everybody talks about)?

2) Did that play a big role in their success, or did it have far more to do with the fact that, after Atlanta, they were able to mash the ball like no one else? They just needed a couple of weeks of good pitching at the right time to go along with that.

1) bit of both, I have lots of thoughts on this but I need to finish work & get my nails done

2) as above, but I don’t think you can be a successful team without resiliency. Regular season’s a marathon, players slump, postseason is another month on that if you go all the way.

1) cf “short memory” or “goldfish brain”

By your definition, I would call it more of a skill. Bochy was a master of it in SF too: remodeling the team he was given after the trade deadline, finding new roles for players during the postseason, working around injuries/slumps.

You probably could set up some kind of study that tries to measure this. Track how a team responds to losing streaks, to especially tough losses (e.g., squandering a big league), and to injuries. No idea how you'd do that, though--for an eight-game losing streak, say, what about the sixth, seventh, and eighth losses inside the streak? Why would they be treated differently than the win that ended the streak? (if that makes sense).

Corey Seager must have used the word "resiliency" six times in a post-game interview I saw last night as explanation for the Rangers winning. I assume he's referring to a) their schizophrenic season, where they looked dead a few times, and b) the injuries they had to get past: his and deGrom's in the regular season, Garcia and Scherzer in the post-season.

1) Is resiliency an intangible, or is it more a skill, the ability to not be distracted by negative developments (perhaps helped along by Bochy's calmness that everybody talks about)?

To quantify my bit of both comment, and to refer specifically to Bochy:

Fellas, you have taught me to look beyond impossible, to never say die, to never stop believing, and never, never give up on what you're trying to accomplish. ..Fellas, you've challenged me, you've entertained me with your backwards personalities, and you've had me in awe of your talent. Managing you guys has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Thank you for making me a better manager and a better person.

The Rangers were coming off their sixth straight losing season, but Bochy talked only about moving forward. He made it clear: I’m not coming out of retirement to lose. And he added, even more meaningfully: I know this team can win.

“It was really empowering,” pitcher Jon Gray says. “I felt like I was a part of something way bigger than myself.”

Combine that empathy with consistency, and a certain calmness comes over a club. Players are in tune not only with Bochy’s in-game strategy, but also the routines he establishes, reducing the physical strain on players by ordering a late bus to the field, or canceling batting practice. Again, it sounds simple. But Heaney, a 10-year veteran, says he has never played for a manager who understands the rhythm of a season quite like Bochy.

“That’s something that is hard to explain, but you feel it,” Heaney says. “It puts you a little more at ease.”

Earlier this season, during a rare time when the Rangers were not hitting well, Bochy called over Hyers(the hitting coach) in front of the other coaches.

“Man, I’m looking for a really good hitting coach,” Bochy said. “Have you seen one lately?”
…
“There is a lot of banter that goes on,” Wilson says, laughing. “He jokes with you, messes with you, and that makes you feel comfortable when situations do come up and you can have a serious conversation.”

Bochy's approach obviously works for him, or at least has in select years. Other managers succeed with very different approaches. Famous counter-example: Earl Weaver got what he wanted from Jim Palmer by preying on his insecurities. Or Casey Stengel, who, in the '50s (according to James), used a kind of creative anxiety: do better or suddenly find yourself dropped in the order, or platooned, or worse. Those last two approaches might not work so well today. It's like teaching kids, though, or probably any kind of leadership/managerial role in any context. Somehow, you have to get everyone on board. (Somebody, can't remember who: "I keep the half of the team who hates me away from the half that's not sure.") I've seen teachers do that countless different ways. And you have to have the talent, obviously. Based on Ball Four I take it that most of the Pilots loved playing for Joe Schultz as much as Bouton did, and you couldn't get more easygoing than him. Did not translate into wins.

Managers aside, can you quantify resiliency? I don't know.

It's a group dynamic that relies on its constituent parts, and is pretty unpredictable as a result. I've certainly seen it in a business context.

baseball is probably the most paranoid of professional sports in that anybody can be benched or sent down at any time, really, unless you're on a big long-term contract. It breeds superstition and a kind of jumpiness that guys mitigate in a lot of ways but which is still the background ambience to your working life. if a manager like Bochy can come in and make you feel secure, that's absolutely enormous

I was watching this (very good btw, watch it) interview with Lucas Giolito by Chris Rose & then ended up watching one with Tyler Glasnow (who I love) and Glasnow had interesting things to say about this topic. He used the word resilience several times.

Glasnow was asked about how he reacts to getting lit up because he is visibly distressed when he’s doing badly. He gave a pretty long answer on the subject that basically boiled down to: he is naturally a pretty emotional pitcher and when he was a Pirate he spent a lot of time trying to be stoic and spending effort on that instead of his pitching. He says his whole family are “If you feel something (negative), get it out, and you’re fine” and he finds that approach better if he makes a bad pitch in terms of being able to play through it and keep going. He leans strongly on the side that resilience is a learned skill and that you should channel your natural strengths into what can help you build it.

That's interesting because I was thinking only about team resilience, rather than individual resilience. For a team, it's definitely a skill acquired by the manager and the front office. They need to juggle a lot of moving parts and do so every day for six months.

Related to Tracer's point: baseball isn't like football or basketball, where the team revolves around one or two players who are bigger than the team and essentially can call their shots. On even the best teams, there will be key players who will win or lose their jobs over the course of the season. A closer might get demoted but he becomes a 7th or 8th inning guy and the manager needs to shuffle the roles of his relievers and get everyone to buy into it without letting ego and jealousy get in the way. Teams have to navigate through maybe dozens of situations like that every year, and it's all on the manager to make it work. That's definitely a skill.

Clemenza will roll his eyes when I post this (no shame, I’m doing it at myself), but this story immediately came to mind reading your last part. From 2019, the Bochy retirement:

As a former player still coming to terms with the incandescence of his career, Lincecum is hardly unique. But his spirits lifted when asked to name a time when Bochy inspired him or made an impact on him.

Lincecum pointed to a game in late May of 2012 when he gave up six runs at Miami to raise his ERA to 6.41 – when he showed the first real cracks in his Cy Young armor. Bochy and Sabean called him in for a summit.

“He just kind of lifted me up to get me to believe in myself again,” Lincecum said. “You know how emotional I can get. I can get down on myself and it turns into almost a hurricane or a wave and you can’t get out of your own way. And the belief they had in me definitely pushed me to want to be out there more. They knew who I was. I was an emotional player and they wanted me to continue to be that guy.”

Lincecum rode that trust when Bochy asked him to embrace a bullpen role that October, and it translated to this: six appearances, 14 2/3 innings, one run, three hits, two walks, 19 strikeouts and another parade ride on a Cable Car bus to City Hall.

I'm all for managers who are sensitive to every last player. I was the 12th man on my high school basketball team, rarely played, so when I coached kids in school, I made sure that if you were good enough to make the team, you played every game. (I may have bent a bit the one year we made the finals in baseball--but everyone would have played in the games leading up to that.)

I'm still trying to figure out what an intangible is, and it makes my head hurt after a while. It's often used as a pejorative: something that doesn't really exist, like clutch hitting as a repeatable skill. I'm more inclined to go with something that can't be numerically quantified, so you rely on the eye test, faith, etc. (Why I wondered above if you could quantify resiliency somehow.)

Which immediately leads to a problem. Clutch hitting can be quantified in a number of ways--people have studied it, and they've concluded that with the overwhelming majority of players, it's purely random from year-to-year. So under my definition, it's not an intangible; it can be measured. Under the other definition, it is an intangible; it's not real, not in the sense that the ability to hit HR or steal bases is real.

If you find that confusing, you should. I do.

It may be quantifiable, but if it's truly random it's not predictable.

Maybe that's the defining attribute.

"Leadership" and "grittiness" are two classic intangibles, neither of which can be quantified.

(When Thermo and I went to a Jays game a couple of years ago, we were talking about how there was, historically, an unspoken racial bias to the concept of grittiness--it was almost exclusively granted to white players. We had a hard time coming up with Black or Latin players from the past who were admired for their grittiness (past maybe the most obvious example of all, Jackie Robinson...we eventually came up with a couple of good examples, but it took a while).

I'm still trying to figure out what an intangible is, and it makes my head hurt after a while. It's often used as a pejorative

it's literally never used as a pejorative

Completely, emphatically disagree. In the earliest days of sabermetrics--late '70s--one of the stated goals was to strip the evaluation of players of all those intangibles like "clutch," "grittiness," etc.

If it wasn't something that could be measured, quantified, and--as Jim Beaux points out--repeated, it was a complete myth.

*checks calendar*

agree with you that things that can't be measured are often dismissed by statheads but the word "intangibles" exclusively refers to the positive qualities you cite eg grittiness, leadership, being a good teammate etc

So you've gone from "it's literally never used as a pejorative" to "well, that was a long time ago" in record time.

Yes, James changed over time--demonstrably so. But I wouldn't have a hard time finding a quote from an old Abstract that's very different to what he says now. (Which is understandable, not having ever worked on the inside when he started out. I think even he'll admit that.)

Huffington Post, sorry, but I think this piece (from 2014) outlines the evolution of sabermetrics pretty well:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/can-baseballs-intangibles_b_4918434

Critics of sabermetrics often focus on the inability of quantitative approaches to determine the value of real or imagined parts of the game like leadership, chemistry, team dynamics and the like. These aspects of the game are often overstated and generally hard to measure, but that does not mean they are not real. Determining how these aspects of the game can be measured and how it can be determined which players have these elusive characteristics is the next frontier for sabermetrics.

And that's not all that long ago. If you go back a decade or two before that, early sabermetrics not only didn't know how to deal with such concepts, they were often ridiculed.

I was curious about ILB's attitude towards the word going back. For the past 15 years, most posters seem to take a positive attitude towards the concept, or at the very least neutral. But going back to 2006 and earlier, I think it's routinely used as a pejorative: people either make fun of it explicitly or implicitly, often put scare quotes around the word, or seem apologetic about even broaching the subject.

>these are the very-same intangibles that Billy Beane was interested in
'gax, what I was specifically mocking is that THOSE AREN'T INTANGIBLES! Injury history or drug/alcohol problems are ascertainable facts; they're data that the New Analysis breed has never ignored. You hear meatheads talk about anything outside of the triple crown stats as "intangibles." They should save that word for horseshit like "character" and "making players around him better."

― Dr Morbius (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 10, 2005 9:18 AM

That is very representative of the posting around that time. So maybe my mistake was in stating that very generally, like it's always been true and remains true today. But, to me, "it's literally never used as a pejorative" is simply factually wrong.

Of possible interest to gyac, a post of mine from 2014 trying to figure out the Giants' third WS win:

Whatever you think of the playoffs in general--and no argument, some of the WS winners are clearly not the best teams--I don't think I'd put the Giants' three-in-five down to random luck. Mathematically, that seems extremely unlikely. There's something there I don't see. Maybe the make-up of the team--something about them that's suited to the post-season--maybe (sorry) intangibles that can't be measured. One obvious thing that you can put down to luck: they've drawn WS opponents that won 89, 88, and 90 games. But my own opinion is that there's more to it than that. What, I don't know.

clemenza what i am trying to say is that no one in baseball or covering baseball, in the 70s or now, has meant something negative by the word “intangibles”. grumpy sabremetricians may dump on the concept that the word represents. but the word, and what it refers to, are a collection of POSITIVE attributes. “we’re not interested in him” “why?” “his intangibles” is a non-sequitur. instead one would say “problems off the field” or something. the word is not ever used as a pejorative.

Okay...maybe there's a nuanced gap between your original statement and the "what I am trying to say" that I missed. The Morbius quote I pulled--"They should save that word (i.e., intangibles) for horseshit like 'character' and 'making players around him better'"--seems like a clear enough example to me of one common attitude at the time, an attitude that grew out of early sabermetrics. Which I guess makes him a grumpy sabermetrician in your eyes. Inside the game, I agree, the concept of intangibles has always been treated with respect. If you go back to the statement by me that started all this--"It's often used as a pejorative"--I don't think there's any kind of suggestion there that I'm talking about the word as used by players and managers.

let’s just agree to, not disagree exactly, but that i’m completely right and you’re completely wrong

Absolutely--and disregard any evidence to the contrary. We're good.

The discussion veered off a little bit into Bruce Bochy, and there's no general managers thread (there should be), so I'll post this here; Posnanski on Bochy (part of a longer post today, "What Makes a Manager"). I think it's a good, even-handed appraisal of his place in history, and will be of interest to at least one person.

But...well, this is where we come back to Bruce Bochy. It seems way off to call Bruce Bochy the greatest manager in baseball history or anything close. He has a losing regular-season record, for crying out loud. He has never managed a team that won 100 games in a season and only once has managed a team to 95 wins. Here’s something crazy: He has never managed a single team to the best record in the league. Heck, in two of his four World Series seasons, his team didn’t even win the division.

That said: None of those regular-season things mean what they used to mean. It’s true that Bochy in 26 years of managing has never won what you might call a “natural pennant” — finishing with the league’s best record — but what matters now, pretty much to the exclusion of everything else, is October, and Bochy’s record in October is beyond remarkable.

-- in San Diego, yes, his teams went 8-16 in the postseason but did go to the World Series in 1998.

-- in San Francisco, his teams were a remarkable 36-17 in October, winning three World Series.

-- in Texas, as you know, his team set a record for consecutive road wins, went 13-4, and won the franchise’s first World Series.

Add it all up, that’s a 57-37 postseason record, five pennants, four World Series, all this with teams that never went into the playoffs as a favorite.

This Bochy witchcraft, like so many of the managerial traits we’ve been talking about here, is not easy to explain. Bochy’s presence inspires confidence, and he seems more or less unshakeable, and he doesn’t seem unduly tied to tradition or blind loyalty or anything else that might prevent him from winning TODAY’S game. And, I mean, you just like the guy, which can’t hurt.

But does he run wild like Whitey’s teams did? No. Does he preach the gospel of great defense, starting pitching and the three-run homer as Earl did? No. Does he mix and match and experiment and follow his gut and entertain the sportswriters like Casey did? No. Does he work over his bullpen so much that people call him “Captain Hook” the way they did with Sparky? No.

Maybe you can DESCRIBE the baseball philosophy of Bruce Bochy in that sort of pithy way. I find it hard to do.

But there’s something happening with Bochy, something that every team in baseball wants now. If a franchise could hire a steady manager who will squeeze the most of out of a team’s talents over the regular season, or a mercurial manager who will give them the best chance to win in October, I imagine most teams right now would choose the second. That is, if teams could identify such things.

"Not easy to explain," "if teams could identify such things"--so it does, in the end, circle back to intangibles.

Thanks for this.

Heck, in two of his four World Series seasons, his team didn’t even win the division.

I was rereading Giant Splash & Bondsian Blasts by Baggarly (this is what happens when you travel 10 hours by train), and remembered Bochy’s calmness being invoked itt (including by me!) so this story made me giggle:

The most galling defeat came under dark and drizzling skies at Petco Park on April 20. Jonathan Sanchez dominated the Padres, holding them to one hit while striking out 10 in seven innings. But the Giants were just as stymied by Mat Latos, a hulking right-hander with platinum blond hair and a hard fastball that traveled straight downhill. The Giants managed just four hits in his seven innings, none of them coming at opportune times in a 1–0 loss. It was the 29th time the Giants held an opponent to one hit or fewer in a nine-inning game in their San Francisco era. It was the first time in those 53 seasons that they lost. “I can’t say I’ve been in a game like this,” said Bochy, who remained stoic in front of the press but began spewing blue language as soon as the reporters filed out of his office. “No way we should’ve lost tonight’s game.”

The Giants were 47–41 at the All-Star break in 2010, which was respectable enough but only placed them fourth in the NL West standings. The San Diego Padres set a surprising pace in the division, and the Giants kept coming up short against them. The Padres beat the Giants seven times in eight games prior to the break, and after many of those losses, it took every last bit of Bruce Bochy’s self-discipline to keep from redecorating the visiting manager’s office in Petco Park.

Idk if this precisely fits this thread but it fits better than others I could think of?

I was watching the Red Sox winter weekend clips and there was this 2004 retrospective with Pedro Martinez, David Ortíz, and Jason Varitek. They talked about Tim Wakefield for a while, here is a clip of the relevant portion:

https://vimeo.com/905924215

Pedro saying that he was honoured to throw at batters on behalf of Wakefield, because Wakefield’s knuckleball was too slow? That’s what I call being a teammate.

Also, the Varitek story about Pedro trying to get the team going at a players’ meeting (is there any more cursed phrase in baseball than the all players meeting?) by saying, of Wakefield, “When he has nothing, he has nothing because even when he doesn’t have nothing (ie the knuckleball was working) he still has nothing!” Contrasting Wakefield’s pitch mix with Pedro’s, but Pedro wasn’t trying to insult him, he was pointing out its a team’s jobs to fill in the gaps because not everyone had it at all times and even if a player doesn’t have it he should still try his best.

Also Pedro saying “If you can lean into 77, you can lean into 97!” and you can tell he means it too. Obviously mores have changed re the ethics of throwing at guys but the point behind it remains the same: you don’t fuck with our guy.

There was a separate Pedro interview where he says that he didn’t get on with the Red Sox pitching coach and credits Wakefield with being the one to induct him into the organisation and bring him on.

Also, same event, Rob Bradford interviewed Triston Casas about his rookie season and there were two segments that are relevant to this thread and intangibles, especially for young players joining the league and adjusting. Transcripts very bad (mine!) but have edited minimally:

Bradford: What was the thing that sort of clicked for you that you feel like was the biggest reason for why you were able to take off?

Casas: I think just honestly believing that I belonged there.

Bradford: Oh you didn’t believe that?

Casas: I didn’t believe it. I mean, I was proving it to myself, just like I was trying to prove to everyone else. I mean, .197 in September ‘22 isn’t exactly, like, you know convincing everybody that I’m a great player. .197 through the first two months isn’t either, so I think once I went one time through the league…I played against Trout, I played against Ohtani, even the guys from the Blue Jays, Bo Bichette and Vlad, those are guys I look up to. The thing is I’m a baseball rat, I’m a baseball historian, so all I do is watch MLB Network, ESPN. The problem with doing that is all they show is the highlights. So I associate Ohtani and all these greats with only hitting home runs, and only doing great things but when I finally played against them, they had bad at-bats! I saw them swinging at pitches in the dirt, I saw them roll over…So once I saw all these great players making the same mistakes I did, it kind of settled me down to where I was like, they’re just like me, I’m out on the same field as them competing, and …that just calmed me down.

Casas: You know it’s funny, I made a game-losing error against Colorado randomly, I want to say it was in the beginning of May*. It was battle-tested weather, rain coming down, I remember it was Joe Jacques’ debut. I don’t remember who hit a ground ball to me but it was a lefty-lefty matchup and I bobbled the ball. We lose by a run because we went down by 2…

I was just sitting on the bench during the rain delay** and Trevor Story comes over and he was hurt at the time, he wasn’t playing. He was like, you’re an important part of this team, you’re a part of what we’re trying to do for right now especially because you’re here for a reason but especially in the future. So we talked on the bench for an hour after my game-losing error, and he pretty much calmed me down, he instilled that confidence in me, he said that in the time he’d been injured he’d been having conversations with the front office and with other members of the staff and they believed in me, he instilled that in me, and I guess that calmed me down a little bit because from that point…I felt like it was only uphill from that ***.

Grissom, the team’s presumed starter at second base, quickly joined the plans after being traded from the Braves in exchange for Chris Sale at the end of December in an effort to build some chemistry with Story before camp opens in February.

_otoh, unless you have godlike ability (and even griffey jr. had his struggles coming up) it *does* take a certain mental toughness to deal with all the failure, the inevitable unfairness, etc. before reaching and remaining in the majors. but that toughness doesn't look the same in everyone, and baseball tends to look for it in only one way._.

Who’s the kid the dodgers keep on payroll for mental healthcare reasons? A happier outcome of the Sal Fansano incident

Andrew Toles. That was a great example.

Andrew Toles. That was a great example.

It's a celebrated day every year

Tolesy was electric coming up too, seemed he had a real career in front of him. Sad but glad the Dodgers continue to do right by him 6 years on