Congratulations, Frankie

Congratulations. Yours is a fearless job, surrounded by a multitude of opportunities for failure, and recorded by those incapable of placing an agreeable value and merit on your contributions. Ignoring them, you succeed.

Too many are fast to judge what you do and how you do it, but utterly ignorant of the reality that you live your career exclusively in the most leveraged environment of your industry. In spite of them, you succeed.

The glory moments of your peers – strikeouts and hits and home runs – are measured pound for pound as though every increment is of equal value, regardless of whether they contribute to a team win, regardless of whether they occured in meaningful or difficult situations, regardless of whether they occured against the best available talent the opposing manager could throw at them in the moment. And the failures of your peers are allowed to far outweigh the glory moments. Your glory moments, by definition, must always result in a victory for your team. And they must far, far outweigh your failures or you are unemployed. In spite of this, you succeed.

You are dismissed because your value to your team is a consequence of circumstances: how your teams fares on offense in relation to how your team fares on defense, adjusted for how your coaching staff manages pitching duties. Because those factors favor you, your detractors ignore that you work as hard, as often and as long as anybody else in your role. Ignoring this, you succeed.

You are abused because your method of achieving success does not match an ideal profile created by those who are not in your shoes, who could not match your ability, who could not compete against your ability, and who have a long record of failed predictions with respect to where your career would take you. Where you actually are reveals that they continue to be wrong, and you continue to succeed.

You are ridiculed for your exuberation. But those who ridicule your behavior have, themselves, long histories going back into the dark ages of this sport where the moment of failure of anyone in your role is celebrated as though a championship has been secured. They are hypocrites. They are small. They are envious. They are ignorant. They are unworthy. You overcome them. You overwhelm them. You succeed.

The vast majority of observers take the easy way out and proclaim that your contributions are unworthy of the value that you desire. It’s easy to prognisticate failure (like your ever-imminent arm failure). And fashionable (as fashionable as dismissing saves). But they forget the lesson of Al Campanis. Further, 5 years from now, what price would a team pay to win just 5 more games and NOT miss the playoffs? When all of the top 25% of team payrolls are over the $150 million mark, would the extra $4million (between what you wanted and what your replacement is getting paid then) to get into the playoffs be worth it then?

This has been one of those years that the fans of your team will look back on and remember, long after you have departed. A career record. In the middle of a record career. It’s been great watching you and rooting for you. Knowing how our team approaches offensive plate appearances, I hope we never have to root against you. Thanks for the year. 58 and counting is not something I will forget. I hope it gets even better. And that will be hard to do, because any player that makes the typcial Mariners fans and typical A’s fans gnash their teeth and pound their fists into walls out of sheer frustration, is EXACTLY the kind of player on I want on my team.