Player Morale and Management's Role

The Blue Jays wrapped up their 2014 season being known for something. They are now known as the team with the longest playoff drought in North American Big 4 sports. With a drought standing at 21 years and counting these are not good times to be a Toronto sports fan.

Obviously in this world on fire this is a very trivial matter. But the question does beg an answer. Does Alex Anthopolous deserve to keep his job?

Generally I am not someone who is knee-jerk. I might be rather impulsive in my real life, but when it comes to sports I am a bit of a pragmatist. It is difficult to have a long term plan for your franchise if you are bringing in someone new every year. This is why companies don’t fire the CEO for having a bad quarter or two.

That CEO must have the confidence of his board of directors but he also must have the confidence of those that work under them. A workplace is reliant on morale to keep it running at maximum efficiency. While it appears Alex Anthopolous does have the confidence of the people who pay his cheques I am not convinced he has the confidence of the player he signs the cheques for.

Obviously I don’t know what is going on internally in the organisation. I am just someone sitting in their apartment waxing poetic about a team that I care about. But what is the morale in the Blue Jays club house and how is that effecting how they go to work every 

day?

In the lead up to the 2014 season A.A talked about the Blue Jays’ need for starting pitching. There was the documented debacle that was the Ervin Santana attempted signing. A situation where Alex claims that everything was going smoothly until Santana abruptly decided he wanted to pitch in the National League. Which is understandable. If I was on a one year contract where my performance dictated how much I would be paid the coming year I would certainly choose the path of least resistance. Instead of getting knocked around the A.L East and taking a pay cut the coming year.

We all saw how displeased Jose Bautista was when no major moved were made at the trade deadline (unless you count Valencia as a major move.) It reminded me very slightly of the owner in the Charlie Sheen movie Major League not bringing in reinforcements to end the season. While I am certain Jose Bautista wasn't the only one upset by the lack of reinforcements he speaks for the team as its leader. So really this is a question of morale. Can we expect the 2015 Blue Jays to play inspired baseball for an organisation that didn’t do much to help them? Based on how this year’s team went into the tank not that long after it is hard to come to any other conclusion. In the military a commanding officer that doesn’t command the respect of his privates isn’t very useful.

Jose Bautista is frustrated because the prime of his career is being wasted. He is arguably the greatest player that has ever worn a Blue Jays uniform. While he hasn’t worn it for that long he is setting almost every record concerning “fastest to _____.” Jose Bautista is a player who has never been to the playoffs and he certainly wants to see his team do everything it can to get there. I am not sure how much Jose Bautista cares about the long term future of the Blue Jays when he might be gone or retired. This is where a bit of the divide between player and management lies.

While we hope that athletes getting paid more for one game than most of us make in a year would play inspired no matter what. But consider a job that you had where you had little respect for or confidence in your employer. It probably impacted the job that you did. While maybe not even consciously. I am talking about small things that cumulatively add up. Morale is a big thing in any work place. Why do you think companies stress its importance? No matter how much you get paid the respect level for your employer impacts your performance. Optics is everything.

The 2015 Blue Jays are going to look very different than the team we saw this year. Two-thirds of the starting outfield may be different. The bullpen is going to have to be reworked and the Jays should work to bolster their bench. Gibbons appears to be coming back but if there is a new General Manager I doubt he wants a manager from the previous regime. Whoever is in the post of General Manager certainly has their work cut out for them.

Alex Anthopolous has done a great job of replenishing the Blue Jays from when he took over. But if A.A does stay he certainly has some fences to mend.  

Toronto Maple Leafs Unsustainable Special Teams

Toronto Maple Leafs Unsustainable Special Teams

What can I say about about the Toronto Maple Leafs unsustainable run that has not already been said? It is obvious to anyone who watches. Let alone individuals who actually analyse the statistics that are so incredibly damning. The Maple Leafs were successful for a period last season and earlier this season but they have, as expected returned to where they were expected to reside. They were expected to reside on the bubble of being a playoff team or being on the outside looking in. Overall their special teams is just unsustainable and is already showing it’s effects. Their powerplay efficiency, and penalty kill have a great indication on the success that they will have. With the Leafs current system they must take less penalties.

Not only do they rely too much on their powerplay (28.6% of their total goals) which is 7th highest in the league. I don’t believe this is sustainable in a league that acknowledges that it has less penalties in the post season. It might be an effective way to score a lot of goals in the regular season, but when the playoffs come you cannot expect to receive the same calls that you get in the regular season.

If Toronto is a team that survives on special teams they are not doing a great job of it on the penalty kill. The penalty kill was something that they prided themselves on last year (87.9%) which was good enough for 2nd in the league. And was a component of their team that was greatly improved with Randy Carlyle’s arrival. This season they are currently residing at 78.4% which ranks them 24 in the league on the penalty kill. This penalty kill efficiency is around Ron Wilson PK levels. Personally I thought this was one of Carlyle’s biggest upsides but it certainly isn’t this year.

What makes this especially troublesome is the amount of time that the Leafs spend on the penalty kill. The Leafs have had 111 penalty kills which is the 5th most in the NHL. They also lead the league in times short handed (119) which is the best stat for this.

The Leafs have drawn a lot of penalties this season. While it is not easy to track penalties drawn. In terms of plays that are borderline but they embellish that extra bit to get the penalty. They are among the league leaders in opponents penalty minutes at 404 which is good enough for 4th in the league. 

A stat that is an interesting indication of how much time a team spends on the powerplay compared to the penalty kill is called “penalty efficiency ratio.” Which according to Sporting Charts is “is a statistic that measures the number of power play minutes a team has for each minute of penalty time. This attempts to measure the relationship between the time a team is on the power play compared to the time a team spends killing a penalty. The higher this number the more time they spend on the power play compared to penalty kill.” 

The Maple Leafs currently have the fifth worst penalty efficiency ratio at 0.90. And with a penalty kill that is so inefficient in my opinion it is only logical that they are going to give up a lot of goals. 

I don’t think it takes an expert to say that a team should take less penalties and draw more penalties. The Leafs do have a lot of time spent on the power play but definitely have to become more disciplined. This is especially important playing the way that they do. If you are going going to give up a lot of shots. I suggest you don’t take so many penalties. I don’t think that takes a rocket surgeon.

All statistics from http://www.sportingcharts.com/stats/nhl/team/

NFL vs. CFL

There has been a thought rattling around my head lately when I talk to people that are fans of the Canadian Football League. I wonder why people in my generation don’t have the same relationship with the CFL as they do with the NFL. The person that I can use as the most readily available is my own father. My father has an almost romantic relationship with the Argonauts that I could never imagine having, and am quite honestly kind of jealous of. There is something about the talent in the CFL that leaves a lot to be desired. The rules seem to benefit players of a higher skill level as well. Three downs is a more demanding brand of football to play. It puts more emphasis on the passing game. Which with less quality players it is harder to execute plays to the most impressive degree. Another thing that throws me off about the CFL is that it is hard to establish a connection with a player when he could be go to another league to get a bigger pay cheque. When I talk to people that are around the same age as me there is not the same interest in the CFL as there is in the NFL. Part of the reasoning behind this has to do with exposure. It is of my opinion that our televisions now show more NFL than they have ever shown. While the CFL is on television four days a week it is only on one channel. The NFL is basically inescapable on Sunday.  I cannot envision a Sunday where I turn on the television and am not inundated with NFL broadcasts. Not only is the NFL inescapable on Sunday’s it is a 24/7, 365 living and breathing machine.

            My father has given me my limited exposure to the CFL. If not for my father’s influence I doubt that I would have any interest in the game. I am in passing a Toronto Argonauts fan, but not a diehard by any means. I don’t want to cast aspersions in saying that CFL fans are old. Because I am sure there are young fans of the CFL, but most of the people that I talk to around my age have little to no interest in the CFL. Other than the Grey Cup many people do not seem to be week to week fans of the CFL. But if you were to ask them about the week to week of the NFL they could tell you a lot more than they could about the CFL.

            The CFL also seems to be a sport that is more popular in markets that do not have any many options for professional sports teams. The CFL is obviously most popular and vibrant in Saskatchewan where it is the only professional game in town. Because of this love of the game the Roughriders are everybody’s second favourite Canadian Football League team. And if they are not obviously you hate fandom. Just kidding obviously, if you are a fan of one of the other prairie teams you probably don’t have much love for the Roughriders. It isn’t just communities that only have a CFL teams. The Stampeders and Eskimos are also very popular because other than their NHL teams they are the only show in town. During the summer the NHL is in its off season so it is truly the only thing going on in the professional sports world.

            Another factor is the rules of the CFL seem to benefit a higher skill set. This proves to be a more difficult factor to prove. Three down football is harder to execute because it requires much higher accuracy in passing. It just seems to me that the CFL hardly has any time to get a drive going before it is over. Two downs, punt and repeat seems to be the most common procedure. It is a more difficult game to grasp because of the lack of sustained drives. Even if a drive stalls out they can still score which is an interesting component of the Canadian game.

            It is hard to maintain a connection with many of the players in the CFL when many of the players would give anything to even be on the practice squad of an NFL team. It increases their income dramatically and puts them in a better position to be used in the NFL at some point. Many fringe players in the CFL would probably make more money in the arena league than they would in the CFL. Their prospects of making the NFL probably diminish though because it is such a different game than the NFL. At least the CFL emulates the NFL game to a respectable degree. I think this is why guys like Damon Allen and Anthony Calvillo are so respected. These are players who are legends in the CFL that didn’t give up everything to be a 3^rd string QB in the NFL like Ricky Ray did. Ricky Ray, one of the best Canadian Football quarterbacks in a long time couldn’t stick around in the NFL for very long.

Whatever the reasoning is, I think the CFL needs to examine why it is that they seem to be losing fans. They must focus on gaining new fans because they cannot rely on their current fan base being around forever. Ultimately I believe they are hurt by the fact that they are on only one channel. Their deal with TSN makes them only accessible if you have cable television, especially if they are playing on TSN2 which isn’t on many basic cable packages. It is a crisis I am sure they are aware of. I don’t want to see the CFL slip any further than it already has but I am sure it will always have a place in the hearts of many Canadians, at least in the markets that seem to embrace it the most.