Facebook Live Episode #22: Mike Matheny blames players who aren’t the problem

Over at ESPN, Mark Saxon had a pretty good interview with Mike Matheny. The questions were fine, but the answers were a bit bizarre so I went over them in a Facebook Live video that you can see below.

The whole interview can be found here. When asked about deficiencies on defense and baserunning, he spent a lot of time not talking about defense and baserunning.

Matheny: It’s amazing how little regard people actually put into how many young players we put on the field last year. The conversation kept going all season long without people really acknowledging it. We had to throw Aledmys Diaz into the lineup at the last second when he had spent the previous season at Double-A. Kolten [Wong] really hasn’t found the traction in the league yet. Those two guys were in the middle. We had to search to find a center fielder, and Randal Grichuk hadn’t spent a full season in the big leagues. Our right fielder [Stephen Piscotty] hadn’t spent a full season in the big leagues. Four of the eight position players were in the minor leagues the previous year. Everyone wants to hold them to the level of consistency, and they’re not polished veterans yet. It’s absurd. We had smart people covering our team who don’t want to give that much credit. They don’t understand the importance of experience. It just takes time. They’re being asked to do something completely different at every level. It’s different. It’s tougher at every level. This team should be in contention, I get it, but we put people in some of the most important positions on the field who haven’t even established themselves as big leaguers.

My response is below. Our facebook page is here.