The Collaborative Team

At The Athletic, Peter Gammons reviews how teams moved from command to collaboration in dealing with players.

This spring we have a chance to examine the cultural change between front offices—and their billionaire owners—and the millennial players. No longer are players blindly doing whatever the manager tells them “because he’s the manager.” Theo Epstein, who despite his modest denials many credit with being the first general manager who could walk into his clubhouse and talk the players’ talk, says, “what’s happened is that we’ve begun the process of breaking down the barrier between front offices and players. Players today want to know Why? Which they should ask. It’s the way it should be. Everyone needs to listen to one another, respect one another, be on the same page.”

Asked to describe the Cub culture, Ben Zobrist called it “Collaborative. The relationship between the front office, the manager and coaches, the players and everyone in the organization is a collaborative effort. Theo and Jed [Hoyer] can walk the clubhouse, talk to the players and everyone understands where everyone is coming from. There’s no feeling that upstairs they’re constantly critiquing us. We clearly understand that we all have the same goal—to win—and can discuss how we can better reach our goal. Trust is really important in this game, and the ability to talk things through with people on every level of management from coaches to the top floor of the offices is a part of everyone working together.”

That’s all for the good, and may eventually act as a balance to the acrimony over this season’s free agency decline.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2HqcKdk