Ken Giles shouldn't be lionized for losing it on a teammate
When the Blue Jays brought closer Ken Giles aboard, the fact he had a volatile streak was no secret. After all, this was a guy who infamously punched himself in the face after allowing a home run to Gary Sanchez. The hot-tempered closer who throws heat is an archetype baseball fans are plenty familiar with by now.
So, when Giles launched an expletive-ridden tirade at fellow reliever David Paulino for dogging it during a fielding drill on Thursday it wasn’t necessarily surprising. The response to it was a bit eyebrow-raising, though, as Giles was almost universally praised. Manager Charlie Montoyo certainly had no problem with it, telling reporters the following:
Believe me, I’ve been around the game for a long time. That happens. I kind of like it, to tell you the truth. There was a disagreement and now they’re fine. I talked to both of them and it’s all good.
GM Ross Atkins offered this:
Ultimately a teammate making another teammate accountable is part of creating a better environment. How that transpires we can’t always but accountability is certainly important as teammate.
Now, you would expect the Blue Jays to do their best to present the incident as not a big deal. It’s in their best interest for any controversial clubhouse story to die on the vine. However, it’s still interesting that there’s no condemnation of Giles whatsoever and his actions are presented as a positive.
There are not a lot of workplaces where you can completely lose your temper and confront a coworker to the point that you need to be separated because of a minor lapse in effort and be lauded as a leader. Admittedly, a baseball clubhouse is a very unusual workplace. Service time is an important currency and the same rules don’t tend to apply to rookies and veterans even though they are technically coworkers. Part of the veterans’ responsibility is to show what it takes to be successful in the majors and help the rookies along.
That doesn’t mean that Giles should be lionized for trying to get Paulino to pick it up in the least constructive way possible. It’s naive to imagine that the closer sat back thought about the situation at length and determined that out of many possible courses of action confronting Paulino like that in public was the one most likely to help him develop best as a player. It’s much more likely that this is a “if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail” type of situation.
Maybe someone needed to get in Paulino’s ear on Thursday, but there was almost certainly a better way to do it. Very few people are best motivated by being aggressively dressed down in front of dozens of people – in their second language, no less. There might be moments when that brand of “leadership” is useful, and sometimes in the heat of a moment it could be inevitable – but the stakes don’t get any lower than spring training pitcher fielding drills.
Ultimately, if Paulino is OK as Montoyo suggests, then there probably isn’t any lasting issue here. That said, by encouraging this kind of behaviour the Blue Jays put themselves at risk of having situations like Bud Norris’s infamous treatment of Jordan Hicks last year happen in their clubhouse – especially since they literally added Norris to the mix.
Giles might have been right to call out Paulino, but the way he did it was inelegant at best, and potentially damaging at worst. He probably doesn’t deserve a severe reprimand – especially if Paulino has no issues with it – but he doesn’t deserve to be held up as a model leader either.
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