LINK: Kevin Towers Makes Embarrassing Comments
I’m just going to leave this here, sans commentary. Except I’ll note that the Diamondbacks hit opposing batters 60 times this year, and were hit by their opponents 43 times. Okay, proceed.
Arizona Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers has not shied away from venting frustration about his team’s lack of fight.
Towers has pointed to many instances where his pitchers did not hit a member of the other team after a perceived slight or beaning of a D-back.Toward the end of the season, the L.A. Dodgers clubbed six home runs in an 8-1 drubbing of the D-backs, which was a game that saw the eventual NL West champs look a little too comfortable in the dugout.
“I was sitting behind home plate that game and when it showed up on the Diamondvision of stuffing bananas down their throats, I felt like we were a punching bag,” Towers told Arizona Sports 620’s Burns and Gambo Tuesday. “Literally, if I would have had a carton of baseballs I would have fired them into the dugout from where I was sitting behind home plate.
“That’s not who we are as Diamondbacks, that’s not how — I mean, it’s a reflection on Gibby, on myself, on our entire organization. They slapped us around and we took it.”
Towers said that has to stop, and following the game he had “a few choice words for the (coaching) staff.”
Nothing changed.
“You’d think the GM comes down and makes it a point to talk to the staff about it that at we need to start protecting our own and doing things differently,” he said. “Probably a week later Goldy gets dinged, and no retaliation. It’s like ‘wait a minute.’
“Not that I don’t take any of our guys from a lesser standpoint, but if Goldy’s getting hit, it’s an eye for an eye, somebody’s going down or somebody’s going to get jackknifed.”
Read the whole thing. You can bet the commissioner’s office is going to.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
he sounds coo-coo
”Arizona’s batters were hit by 43 pitches in 2013 while Arizona’s pitchers hit 60 batters. So apparently he doesn’t want an “eye for an eye.” He wants something more on the order of two eyes.”…..
But how many of those 60 batters hit were just bad control by the pitcher, rather than being done as retaliation? Seems Towers wants a player who will enforce a “right way to play” ethic, you know, like the Braves try to teach everyone. Hmm, Brian McCann is a free agent. Who better to get pitchers to throw at batters at the right time than a catcher?a free agent. Who better to get pitchers to throw at batters at the right time than a catcher?
And how many of those 60 batters hit were from Ian Kennedy? (that’s rhetorical, the answer is 10)
That Prado/Upton trade worked out well for these guys. Lol. Lost all respect for Towers a long time ago and he should be long-gone from managing any baseball organization.
Want to hear a joke?
Kevin Towers.
But remember, Upton wasn’t “gritty” enough. Prado was a “gritty” player, and “gritted” them right to 81 wins!
Oh boy. How about he looks in the mirror and accepts blame for a mediocre roster.
Isn’t it likely that most major league players agree with this sentiment?
Probably not Bartolo Colon. He’s hit 4 guys in 3 years. And he’s pitched a zillion years in the majors to Kevin Towers zero.
I have a vague memory of Pedro Martinez making a comment (years ago) about Bartolo having the stuff to challenge him for the Cy Young if he was willing to pitch inside more. My google-fu sucks, but I’ll try to look for it.
Ha! Found it.
Pedro:
“I think his biggest problem is that he doesn’t pitch inside enough. It’s like he’s afraid to throw inside because he thinks if he hits someone with that fastball, he’ll kill him.
“I’m serious. He’s such a good person that he’s afraid that he’s going to kill someone, or at least hurt them.
“I try to tell him you can’t worry about that. When they hit a line drive back to the mound going 150 mph, they don’t worry about it. So why should you?”
“People don’t realize how good he is. Bartolo should be giving me the biggest competition for the Cy Young award every year. He’s got the best stuff of every pitcher in the big leagues.
“Nobody can do what he can do. When you throw 98-99 mph in the ninth inning, nobody can match that.”
This sounds like conclusive evidence that Charles Nagy is a ninny.
In about 10 years at this rate Colon will match Pedro’s career WAR.
No
This Guy’s brilliant!
Eye for an eye? KT must have missed the sermon on the mount.
Sermon on the mound, surely?
Ye have heard it said, an eye for an eye, but I say unto ye, whoever smite-eth your ungritty righthander, offer him your situational lefty.
He wants his players to act morose and think about what they’ve done every time they lose a game to a division opponent? The best teams in baseball lose 70 games a year, so that’s a lot of beating yourself up. Maybe his temperament is better suited to football?
The Dodgers were eating BANANAS? In their DUGOUT??????
That is, without hyperbole, the single greatest act of disrespect on a baseball field in the history of the sport. Towers would have been in his rights to charge onto the field and summarily execute every member of the Dodgers’ roster and coaching staff. I mean, c’mon, bananas? BANANAS!!!!
Who left this peel on the mound!?
On *MY* mound?!
/fixed/
Agreed. There’s no place in baseball for that.
Why didn’t you go into the Dodgers dugout and stop this non-sense?! If no one stops it, what’s next? Apples? Tangerines?? Where does it end???
I’m pretty sure it ends with passion fruit. You can’t beat a good passion fruit eating contest as an act of blatant and utter disrespect.
Brian McCann HAS to sign with the Diamondbacks. HAS TO.
As a Braves fan, I am just waiting for him to sign with a different team so I can stop defending him and join in on this schtick.* Though it will maybe be tired by then. We’ll see. I feel sorry for all the fans of his next team who have been relying on this for comedy the past month. They are in for a rude awakening.
*obvious joke, I irrationally hope we sign him no matter what it takes
So Beans + ? = wins.
Right.
At least he didn’t demean all autistic kids everywhere and include Zack Greinke as one. It’s all relative.
Why trade me? I’m second in baseball in HBPs over the last 2 years.
I hit 277 batters in my career.
These guys don’t take any pride in being a D-back!
People know I’m a D-back. Ya want proof – everywhere I go, people call me a D-back.
And THAT’s the kind of player I’m looking for!
They call you a D-bag Kevin, not a D-back, a D-Bag.
Thanks, I wouldn’t have caught that.
Hey, you’re not Dayton Moore, I am!
Gibson was 14th in HBP in the 80s with 42. But he wasn’t anything like Don Baylor, who was hit well over 100 times. His longtime teammate Jack Morris was 77th among pitchers in HBPs in the 80s with 23. So it doesn’t seem like he plunked someone every time Gibby got plunked.
There you go for his Hall of Fame boosters: Jack Morris, Non-Violent Resister.
While on the surface this seems like an impossibly stupid thing for Towers to say, it is actually a shrewd move that will make the Diamondbacks better. While a host of poor decisions and mediocre play may not have gotten Towers fired, this probably will, improving the Diamondbacks chances of success manifold going forward.
What does “jackknifed” mean in this context? Is he going to stab people in the parking lot?
Tell Towers I’m available
http://www.sbnation.com/2008/6/19/1640756/jerry-manuel-is-not-to-be-trifled
Think an inside pitch at the waist – standing batter throws his hips back so they are behind the plane of head and feet.
So the body is bent at a ~90 degree angle. Like a partially opened knife.
I was thinking one of those high leg take-out slide at second base.
Kyle Farnsworth demonstrates the art of jackknifing:
http://sports.cbsimg.net/images//visual/whatshot/Kyle-Farnsworth-Paul-Wilson.gif
Perhaps he had some evil designs involving a Semi-truck.
Towers is a fool, there’s not much else to say. He got an exorbitant amount of credit of the Dbacks playoff run in 2011, yet a majority of the moves he’s made since have been questionable and most haven’t paid off.
Maybe if he hadn’t stocked up on mediocre outfielders and shortstops, the team could’ve addressed more pressing needs that they had.
He acts as if a baseball game is like a fight, based on toughness and character, but it’s not. For a talent evaluator, he sure misses the mark a lot.
“Literally, if I would have had a carton of baseballs I would have fired them into the dugout from where I was sitting behind home plate.”
Unfortunately, Towers did not get his asking price for Justin Upton.
Gritless. Get rid of all of’em. They got no grit!
I guess I don’t think it’s especially surprising that there are people in front offices who think this way, but I cannot believe a GM was stupid enough to make these comments.
MLB brings some of this on itself by suspending pitchers for such a short time that they don’t even miss a start. This whole situation is embarrassing.
Yeah, penalties do need to be harsher.
However, at this point – are they not all adults out there? Like actual, responsible people who don’t need to punch a waiter because they served from the wrong side? You are being paid how much cash to win? And you need to do what to your opponents if you lose? Why do they need threats of punishment in order to prevent them from physically assaulting your competitor?
I guess we need to have the perfect marriage of Brian McCann and Kevin Towers to make things right.
Obviously not, mental age isn’t obvious.
LOL.
Has anyone ever called Kirk Gibson a pussy before?
My exact thoughts when reading it. If retaliation is needed I’d expect Kirk Gibson would be just the manager to get it done. What a bizarre rant.
I’m still confused. If pitchers don’t hit enough batters (only 1 every 2.5 games), why fire the pitching coach?
Was the coach coaching the pitchers not to hit batters? Was he asking them to retaliate by “striking out the side” or something like that?
Why fire my pitching coach?
Because “IRRATIONAL OUTRAGE, I’M KEVIN F’ING TOWERS!”
Seriously, I don’t recommend trying to get inside the guy’s head, it can only lead to whatever brain damage he has. Hopefully we get all these guys out of the game who think MMA + baseball = win.
Thanks for the tip — I won’t try to figure out how he got from point A to [unrelated] point B.
If he doesn’t want the other team eating bananas or swimming in his pool, the solution is to win the f*ing games, not to add violence to the game.
The NFL is much more violent than baseball. It also (in my view) has much more taunting and trash talk.
But hey, give your opponents free baserunners. That will keep them from taunting you.
As a Dbacks fan, I understand the firing of Nagy. Beyond just throwing at batters, Dbacks pitchers were extremely inconsistent this year. For example, Trevor Cahill could not always find the right release point on his pitches this year and either had a decent to great outing or gave up 7 runs in 2 innings.
I feel like that is a pitching coach issue more than anything else
My post-Poolgate feelings about the Dodgers just shifted significantly.
Kevin Towers definitely isn’t smarter than the so called experts anymore.
And now he’s backing away from his comments.
http://www.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20131009&content_id=62753304&c_id=ari
I can’t imagine why people didn’t understand that when he said “an eye for an eye” they didn’t know that what he really meant was that the Diamondbacks needed to pitch inside more.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was a misquote–he probably said, ‘eye for an eyelash’.
The D Backs played .500 ball this year, 11 games behind the Dodgers. A few extra HBP’s are not going to change that.
All-GRIT Kevin Towers Lineup (please make this happen KT):
C: Brian McCann – nobody will hit homers without being kneecaped
1B: Prince Fielder – anybody who charges the Dodgers locker room is A-ok
2B: Jose Altuve – can’t be a proper GRIT team without a short guy to defend
3B: Michael Young – acquiring a “key piece” of a rival team is all GRIT
SS: Brendan Ryan – handlebar moustache
LF: Nate McClouth – just seems GRITty
CF: Colby Rasmus – because somebody has to be considered “not diamondbacks material” and get traded for peanuts midway through a season
RF: Shane Victorino – wear those HPBs!
SP: Ubaldo Jimenez – please imagine every batter is Tulo
Okay, I got pretty bored near the end and gave up. Hopefully others can suggest who they think KT actually wants, since the guy is getting pretty bizarre now.
Kennedy’s gotta be the SP, and you need to Carlos Quentin in there, too.
4th OF Eric Byrnes. UTIL: Willie Bloomquist. CF: Should stick with Adam Eaton, he’s your token short guy to defend. 2B: What’s Craig Biggio doing these days?
Bryce Harper!
Said, in so many words, his teammates and manager are p****s for not beaning back and letting him charge the mound. Said if it were up to him,Teheran would be 6 feet under.
Not a towers pitcher:
Strausburg. Could not execute hitting Simmons, launched them way behind his back. Seemed disturbed at the thought of headhunting.
Teheran, too!
You know, in terms of being a fake-tough pun who beans people after giving up a homer rather than even pretending to be a grown up and playing the game.
Even on general grounds, he’s a towers pitcher. Led the league in hbp.
Led which league?
Charlie Morton led the NL with 16 HBP
Justin Masterson the AL with 17.
Teheran was tied for 7th in “the league”.
Teheren didn’t bean anyone. To my knowledge, the only Brave involved in a beaning this year was Jason Heyward, and he didn’t try to act like a tough guy afterwards. Teheren hit Harper in a situation where it was very important to not allow a base runner. In a one-run game with a runner on second late in the game. Is that really when you intentionally hit someone for taking 2 seconds to admire a home run? The Gnats are just pissy bitches. They take after the vast majority of their fans.
Still, the Gnats hit Upton and what did he do? He ran to first base. In conclusion, go fuck yourself.
I missed the Brendan Ryan handlebar moustache last season.
“Kevin Towers is smarter than the so-called experts. That isn’t meant sarcastically. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ GM knows what he’s doing, and has both the background and track record to prove it. Skeptics panning his recent moves don’t have his 16 years of experience as a big-league general manager, nor have they been a minor-league pitching coach or scouting director.”
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/qa-kevin-towers-diamondbacks-gm/
I knew instantly that had to be a David Laurila introduction. The number of eye-rollers he puts up make his interviews not graphs-esque most of the time.
That first paragraph looks even worse today
(3) “I don’t like pitchers who walk hitters. It puts pressure on your defense. The less walks you have, the better your chances of getting through innings. More walks lead to overworking your bullpen, sometimes just by having to get somebody up, just in case.”
(4) “Strikeout-to-walk ratios are very important to me. Not just in the big leagues, but the minor leagues as well. Fastball command is paramount. You have to have it up here to be successful. In most years, the successful staffs are the ones that have low walk rates.”
Apparently a HBP > Walk
Who left the cap off my f***ing Glisten!?!
He swore by that Glisten.