Tag Archives: Shohei Ohtani

Michael Jordan on load management

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This video aired last night on NBC.

Load management is an individual athlete’s choice. Michael Jordan has his opinion from the perspective of an all-time elite athlete. Most athletes are inspired by his example but simply can’t live up to his standard. That’s what it means to be the best at what you do.

If you are hurt, you really can’t prove yourself because you’re hurt and can’t perform. NBA players are entertainers, but not like Broadway entertainers, where there is no real physical punishment & required recovery as part of the gig. Fans need to understand athletes are human beings, and sometimes they really can’t perform– and need rest. If a fan can’t understand that then that ‘fan’ is really a hater. There’s no point in trying to please haters, and you really aren’t going to shut them up either. You can quiet them for awhile, but they’ll be back and you’ll be more hurt trying to prove yourself over & over to people who don’t respect you.

Michael Jordan retired twice during his playing career, after his age-29 season and after his age-34 season. In that sense he load manged his career. He didn’t want to play when he was burnt out, or after his father was murdered, or when his back-stabbing GM Jerry Krause broke up the Bulls after 1998. Michael Jordan came back with the Wizards as a player/owner, which was something much different than MJ with the Bulls. Actually it was similar to when Michael Jordan first came to the Bulls in 1984 and the franchise was a joke.

Michael Jordan performed as best he could for two seasons with the Wizards from 2001-2003, then retired for good after 15 seasons and cashed in his Wizards chips to buy the Charlotte franchise. It’s clear Michael Jordan didn’t fully respect his ‘new school’ players as a NBA team owner. His standards were too high, so inevitably that clashed with new school attitudes of players demanding a trade, or a coach be fired, etc. Players’ grievances deserve to be heard, and their concerns honestly addressed, but there are too many egotistical players who haven’t helped their team win anything, demanding to call the shots for the organization. I’m sure that never sat well with team owner Michael Jordan.

The Charlotte Bobcats/Hornets stunk and never drafted well during the MJ tenure as owner. Being a NBA player means something different as compared to Michael Jordan’s era. Players are paid MUCH better, and many are celebrities, and all that is due to Magic Johnson, Larry Bird & Michael Jordan. Dream Team 1992 finally put those rivals on the same team, and basketball has never been the same since. I believe Michael Jordan feels that too many modern NBA players don’t give him enough credit for making them millionaires.

I believe that’s why MJ walked away from the NBA as an owner in 2023. He has since gone into racing where he has been much more successful as far as winning goes. He looks happier too, which is probably the most important thing for him now. Keep in mind, Michael Jordan made a $3B fortune for himself as a NBA franchise owner, much more than he made in salary as a player, so in that sense he was a successful owner. It all depends on your perspective & definition of success.

From a medical & physiological perspective, Michael Jordan is super-human as compared to any other basketball player. Even LeBron James needs load management rest, as any 40-year old athlete would. Would you rather him retire? I’d rather see Lebron James keep playing as long as he wants, even if it means he needs to sit for extended times during the regular season. The pace of play is much faster in this era, making the up & down 82-game grind even more punishing. The NBA is a punishing marathon in terms of what it does to a player’s body.

Any athlete that feels his/her body needs rest should not feel badly about not playing. It’s a professional athlete’s obligation to know their body and we all have limits. To try to push beyond those limits to entertain others while meeting a professional standard one has set for oneself is an ethical choice every athlete faces. There is a point where winning isn’t worth it, and that’s what Michael Jordan is talking about when he says he has a competitive problem.

Winning & leadership have costs, as Michael Jordan has pointed out, but winning at the cost of sacrificing ethics & bodily health isn’t healthy. The allure of glory & financial reward can mask those ugly costs for a period of time, but they won’t sustain excellence in the long run because they’re unrepeatable. You aren’t as talented as MJ at basketball, so you can’t criticize what he did as a player, even if it crossed ethical lines with his teammates at times. Winning & his greatness justified the means as long as they could be covered-up, but knowing what we know today, teammates in this era wouldn’t tolerate what they would consider abusive behavior from their superstar player.

Honestly, I think it’s abusive to expect NBA players to play all 82 games in the regular season anymore, and then expect them to be ready to perform at their best in the play-offs which have been greatly expanded from the era of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan retired from the game whenever he wanted because he could. Most players don’t have that ability, and therefore have to do everything they can to extend their careers and get paid. Most retired players are lucky if they can get a broadcasting job, which is a huge pay cut, but still pays normal bills.

Michael Jordan is such an icon that he can do whatever he wants because he lives a different life than most people. He does what’s best for himself, just as any other person should do what’s best for themselves. As long as you are honest & of good heart, your ethics are secure.

It’s impossible to go through life without making a great many mistakes. When an athlete gets injured, as all great athletes have at some point in their career, it’s how they rehabilitate & recover to come back that often defines them. Taking care of your body & staying healthy is a skill. It’s also a personal judgment that no one else can (or should) make for you.

The danger of heroes is that we idolize them and believe they could never be wrong. This means what’s right for Michael Jordan may not be right for you. People get consumed by their admiration and lose their heads on stuff like this. Michael Jordan needed to play every game because he didn’t want to disappoint even one fan. I’m not a basketball savant like MJ and neither are you, so don’t worry about living up to his standards, because you can’t and there’s no shame in that. It simply acknowledges his greatness which you know you can never achieve. You can still be inspired by his example without trying to copy his personal template.

Humanize your heroes instead of worshiping them blindly. Michael Jordan doesn’t want you to worship him & he doesn’t need your money anymore. Instead he wants your understanding & respect. What Michael Jordan meant in his “Insights to Excellence” interview with NBC’s Mike Tirico last night was that he is the best player ever and this is why. He played in every game he could and didn’t need load management.

Hall-of-Famers like Grant Hill did need load management. Hall of Fames have inner-circles, and then inner-inner circles, and that distinction is important to winning according to MJ. If you get that, then you are understanding load management science correctly, in a situation that is confusing & muddled because fans don’t fully understand the true greatness of their hero.

Last Thoughts on the Last Dance

Michael Jordan was only seriously hurt once during his playing career, when he broke his left foot at the beginning of the 1985-86 season. When he returned he was load managed into 7 minutes/half, which he didn’t like. Michael Jordan felt his playing time was being manipulated to gain a better position in the 1986 NBA draft. Ironically, the Cleveland Cavilers were the team that lost out to the Bulls for the playoffs, but got the #1 overall pick and selected Brad Daugherty out of UNC. The Celtics took Len Bias #2. That was what was available and Bulls GM Jerry Krause surely wanted Len Bias. We all know how that turned out.

Michael Jordan says his best teammate ever was Scottie Pippen. Scottie Pippen load managed his 1997-98 season by having necessary ankle surgery late. This created resentment with Michael Jordan which apparently still exists to this day. Bulls head coach Phil Jackson wasn’t upset by it, because he understands player’s interests and can handle it. Scottie Pippen insists he would do the same thing again because he had to protect his interests. Who is right?

Talkin’ baseball load management

Last night the Toronto Blue Jays beat RHP/DH Shohei Ohtani in game 4 after Ohtani went 9-9 in plate appearances in an 18-inning game 3 Dodgers win. Game 3 was perhaps the best World Series game ever, but I believe if Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had it to do over again he would start Ohtani in game 3, knowing he would have an off day to rest before his start. No one expects an 18-inning game, but they would have been better prepared for that contingency with RHP Tyler Glasnow starting game 4. The Dodgers can stack both starters in game 7, if necessary, so that’s not a concern. Shohei Ohtani pitched on short rest, after needing an IV after game 3, and didn’t perform anywhere near his best in game 4 the next evening after a nearly seven-hour game the night before.

I have to tell you I was exhausted just watching that amazing game. Game 3 to 4 in the 2025 World Series defines the limitations of human performance and the need for proper load management in the example of Shohei Ohtani. The World Series is now tied at 2-2, as the once-invincible Dodgers are now in a dogfight, arguably because their manager didn’t load manage his superstar correctly in a short series.

A strong case can be made that Dave Roberts should have started LHP Blake Snell (on 3-days rest) in game 4 when it was apparent that game 3 was getting crazy long. By the 15th inning or so, Dave Roberts needs to explain to Blake Snell that he now has to be the starter tomorrow night, because Shohei Ohtani is exhausting himself getting the Dodgers a win tonight. RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, their game 2 starter [!], was warming-up (team player) so Dave Roberts didn’t have to use a position player on the mound if the game went into the 19th inning. 1B Freddie Freeman homered to lead off the bottom of the 18th, so he didn’t.

I don’t know if Dave Roberts approached Blake Snell about this or not, but that’s what needed to be done for the Dodgers. Blake Snell needs to make up for it by winning game 5 tonight, otherwise he’s a bust for the Dodgers in 2025. Snell under-performed in WS game 1 and took the loss, so tonight is what the Dodgers have paid him for. That’s the pressure of the situation the Dodgers have put themselves into.

I wonder how Dodgers minority owner Magic Johnson feels about this? Magic certainly won’t reveal his true feelings to the public now, but after it’s over he’ll open up & share his thoughts, especially if it backfires into a Dodgers failure. Magic is accountable like that and that’s why even Celtics & Padres fans love him.

The best thing about the original Dream Team in 1992 was that as a Larry Bird fan, it felt great to finally have Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan & Charles Barkley on my team, because those guys have been killing Larry Bird’s team for years. Larry Bird now has a bad back and is retired, so he needs these great rivals to carry his team now. The core superstars in 1992 all wanted to play with Larry Bird for the same reason. That was the level of respect & camaraderie that defined the greatest sports team ever assembled.

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Colin Rea & San Diego Padres history

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Colin Rea just signed a 1yr/$5M contract with the Cubs.

RHP Colin Rea was the other starter in the infamous Andrew Cashner trade deadline deal in 2016. Rea was healthy when the Padres traded him, but Marlins manager Don Mattingly wrecked then-rookie Colin Rea the first day they got him, after which the Marlins front office whined & demanded the Padres take Rea back while returning pitching prospect Luis Castillo, whom the Marlins would later deal to the Reds for junk. In the wake of his heist of Fernando Tatis Jr from the CWS, and Red Sox whining over trades they won (Craig Kimbrel, Drew Pomeranz), MLB forced Padres GM AJ Preller to acquiesce to the Marlins demands. GM Mike Hill was a principal part of this sordid Marlins history and a huge reason why they stink today.

Marlins started Colin Rea the day they acquired him, on his normal 4-days rest after a cross-country flight to Miami. The Marlins were more of a max-effort staff, based on ace RHP Jose Fernandez (RIP). Rea, who had 99.1 IP as a rookie starter for a soft tossing stinky Padres staff, went directly into a playoff chase atmosphere where he was expected by everyone in the organization to go max effort to help his team win. It lasted 3.1 IP, before his elbow snapped, as he signaled to manager Don Mattingly he was hurt and needed to leave the game. Before this on Sunshine Sports Network, Marlins GM Mike Hill was raving about how Colin Rea was such an important throw-in to this trade and expected him to help them win for years. The next day, Mike Hill is demanding the Padres compensate the Marlins for their stupidity & reckless handling of a rookie pitcher clearly near his season’s innings limit.

To Colin Rea’s credit, he didn’t let all these murky MLB machinations in 2016 define his career. The Brewers deserve serious kudos for resurrecting Colin Rea as a respectable pitcher, to the point where a big market team in 2025 will pay him $5M to fill out their rotation. Colin Rea as Brewers starter beat the Padres a few years back, and AJP was quoted afterwards, “Who saw that coming?!” This from the GM who was suspended by MLB for a month over all this, No overview of Colin Rea’s MLB career can ignore this fascinating GM history.

Upon returning to the Padres, Colin Rea had his TJ surgery, but the soft-tosser was eventually released by them in November 2018. Rea pitched in Japan for a few years until the Brewers took him on as a reclamation project in 2021. He didn’t pitch in MLB in 2022, but then had two productive years with the Brewers in 2023-24.

As background, in the 2016 J2 (July 2) international) draft, Padres GM AJP spent $70-80M on young Latin talent. Before that, no MLB team had ever spent over $5M in a signing year. Teams got REALLY upset over that, so MLB changed their international draft rules & money allotments due to AJP. All that 2016 international draft madness happened around the time of the Colin Rea trade fiasco, and this is why some baseball people love AJP, and others don’t. He’s definitely not boring, which used to define the Padres. For a long time during AJP’s early years, there was a solid majority among the MLB owners & media that the Padres should be boring.

AJP has made the Padres competitive & relevant and kept them there, which no other GM has ever done. With all the trades AJP made to dump his veteran roster in 2016, the Padres never lost 100 games in a season during their building process. MLB media would endlessly accuse them of “tanking”, as they patiently rebuilt their entire system from within. “Why aren’t the Padres signing free agent Ian Desmond? They need a shortstop!!” These-type hysterics of irrational baseball thought would echo from every MLB & ESPN writer onto AJP. Beating the Dodgers is a monumental task, especially from inside their division. The reality of the all-powerful Dodgers has driven AJP to every extreme, and he has run headlong into the old guard of MLB repeatedly, which has done everything in their power to slow down the Padres, including tampering in AJP’s pursuit of RHP/DH Shohei Ohtani in 2017-18.

Buster Olney of the Red Sox/ESPN was lead hatchet man on that. If the Padres would have signed Ohtani, MLB would have confiscated their record 2016 international draft haul, so AJP kicked Ohtani to Angels GM Billy Eppler because it did the Padres the least harm. East coast bias markets (Red Sox, Yankees & Mets) were violently upset that Ohtani had spurned them for the west coast, and the Padres as an early favorite to land the two-way star was too much for them to stand. That murky chain of events is why no one in MLB can ever explain why Shohei Ohtani ended up with the stinky Angels in 2018.

AJP was then forced by ownership to pivot to 1B Eric Hosmer, who was handed a record free-agent contract whose main purpose was to buy the Padres ownership into the “respectable” club of MLB owners. This status was solidified when they signed 3B Manny Machado next winter. SS/2B Xander Bogaerts was another ownership splash from which AJP now has to recover. When deep-pocketed Padres owner (Peter Seidler) died of cancer in the same year their cable deal with Diamond Sports Group went bankrupt, Preller was forced to cut payroll under new ownership. First Juan Soto to the Yankees, and now Xander Bogaerts is the next contract AJP needs to move.

The Padres have taken extra care to make sure the ‘Ohtani affair’ doesn’t happen to them again in 2024-25 as they prepare to sign Japanese pitching phenom Roki Sasaki. Padres are in on him, as AJP is definitely one of the top-3 GM’s in MLB– along with Andrew Friedman & David Stearns. After Roki Sasaki makes his decision this week, the Padres will become hyperactive in the trade & talent acquisition market.

The Roki Sasaki countdown:

Mon 13 Jan 2025 06:50 PM CST

It was just reported on ESPN & MLB dot com that Roki Sasaki has narrowed his list to three MLB teams: San Diego Padres & Toronto Blue Jays, who have a $6,261,000 bonus pool this year, and the LA Dodgers at $5,146,200. No one has picked the Blue Jays, and some could view this as a respectful nod to Canada. Blue Jays fans should feel delighted they made the final list, over their rivals in New York & Boston, but they aren’t signing Roki Sasaki.

The Dodgers have been picked as the favorites in the Sasaki sweepstakes from the start, and conventional wisdom favors it. But there was a revealing sign the Dodgers are being played, or at least out-of-the-loop, when it was reported they had left $2.1M in their 2024 international bonus pool to sign Roki Sasaki early in the posting period, if possible. The Baltimore Orioles also played this losing strategy, leaving $1.9M in their pool which expired December 15.

On Wednesday morning, 9:00 AM EST, the new international signing period opens and Roki Sasaki can be signed for maximum bonus pool money, and teams can make trades to increase their signing bonus allotment by up to 60% from their initial figure.

In the last two international signing periods, the Padres have given all their money to sign the top prospect on the first day: C Ethan Salas in 2023, then SS Leodalis De Vries in 2024. AJP will give all his pool money to Roki Sasaki in 2025, save possibly a few hundred thousand dollars to sign a kid (or two) he likes from Latin America.

Mon 13 Jan 2025 08:42 PM CST

Toronto is a brilliant third choice finalist. It neutralizes the Yankees & Red Sox from messing with AJP’s business. If MLB ruins his deal now, he’ll encourage Roki Sasaki to sign with the Blue Jays and see how fans like that in New York & Boston. No one wants the Dodgers to get Roki Sasaki except Dodgers fans, so it creates acceptance from MLB towards the Padres, which AJP couldn’t get back in 2018 when he got jerked by East Coast Bias on Shohei Ohtani. Very well played by AJP.

One ironic note, the tip-off article on the Dodgers & Orioles leaving bonus money to potentially sign Roki Sasaki early in the posting period was written by Buster Olney, and posted in the Padres ESPN page. No mention of the Padres in that article [!], so why did Olney put it in the Padres ESPN news feed?

Tue 14 Jan 2025 11:23 AM CST

Roki Sasaki has cooled the MLB Hot Stove for weeks now, until he can sign for maximum bonus money starting tomorrow. This is what top talent does, it freezes the market until a decision is made. Until then everyone has hope & anticipation, and ideas based on that, but nothing to act on. Reducing the field to three still doesn’t resolve much, even for the 27 teams on the outside, because they need partners to trade with and the Padres are MLB’s leading trade partner. The Dodgers make deals too, but notice they’ve already been active in the free agent market before the Sasaki sweepstakes started coming to a head. The Dodgers weren’t as sure on Sasaki as the Padres, so they signed Blake Snell early. Andrew Friedman is no dummy.

After Roki Sasaki signs, I see Xander Bogaerts to the Yankees who are looking for another middle infielder. Both GM’s know what they are doing and have made mutually beneficial trades in the past, namely the Juan Soto deal. AJP needs to move contract with Bogaerts and get something in return, which may involve throwing-in another good player– or pitcher. I don’t see AJP dealing any prospects at this point. C Luis Campusano needs a change of scenery and is another trade chip for AJP this winter. Perhaps the most valuable Padres trade chip is ace closer Robert Suarez who is due $10M in 2025 and team controllable through 2027. Yankees already snatched ace closer Devin Williams from the Brewers, leaving free agent Tanner Scott & trade candidate Robert Suarez as the top remaining closer options for contending teams to acquire this winter. RHP Dylan Cease is yet another AJP blockbuster trade candidate. Padres need to fill holes (or upgrade) at C, DH, 1B & LF if they want to beat the Dodgers in 2025, and that’s assuming they sign Roki Sasaki. AJP has a plan, and Sasaki (& the international draft) come first.

Tue 14 Jan 2025 12:40 PM CST

This will be my final installment of this piece. I’ve predicted & explained Roki Sasaki to the Padres, before it happens, because I’ve seen this before from AJP. At no time during this process did I believe AJP wouldn’t get Roki Sasaki. AJP is controlling the market until he gets what he wants. He does it consistently, and as a fan, it’s always exciting to witness– even when he gets screwed by MLB.

Not this time, I’ve predicted. Too many aware eyeballs on the process this time prevents Black Hand machinations in the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes. The illusion of the Sasaki sweepstakes is that it was an open process to all 30 teams. In reality, only a handful were allowed to be considered and East Coast Bias had a word on which teams would be best for MLB.

Can you imagine what MLB would do if Roki Sasaki agreed to sign with the Reds or Pirates? [!!] That isn’t good for baseball according to those who own & run baseball, and on that they have a point, but when it comes to directly interfering with the amateur free agent process through East Coast Bias leverage with the MLB commissioner’s office, that needs to be called out as tampering. In 2018, the Red Sox & MLB tampered with the Padres in their pursuit of Shohei Ohtani. That lesson hasn’t been forgotten by AJP and his Padres organization, or their fans. May the best team win the Sasaki sweepstakes!

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