What makes a team a winner or just an also-ran?  Lots of teams look great on paper, but never actually come into their own, and then a team like the Yankees of the late 1990’s looked unstoppable with few players that could ever be marked for the Hall of Fame during those years.  Tyler Kepner, who is out exploring the cactus league writes a really interesting piece about Troy Tulowitski- the Derek Jeter of the West.

In this piece, Kepner asks Tulowitski’s GM, Dan O’Dowd, about the young short stop, and gets an incredible answer, both about the young member of the Rockies and about what you need when you put a team together.  Its a very short piece and yet it says so much.  It hits on those intangibles that we always talk about with Jeter- the one that make him an unequalled superstar player. (I hate to add to the rhetoric surrounding him, but every now and then you just have to be honest and admit how good he is for his team- no matter how his skills have begun to diminish.)  The piece though also hits on what it takes to build a good, winning ball club.  O’Dowd,  speaks to working for the Indians -yep there they are again- in the 1990s and how their only philosophy about building a team was to find talent.  Yes, if you are a smaller market team you have to focus on making sure you get that part right.  But O’Dowd also mentions that that was their only philosophy.

In my teaching, I often talk about the importance of a mission statement for an organization.  The Yankees have one, and perhaps that helped the young Jeter find his way to the leader he now is.  If the Indians hadn’t clearly defined the mission for themselves, how did the young players brought in to carry that out stand a chance?  I know.  You are saying to yourself that baseball players all must know that their mission is to win- and it is.  But sometimes the how or the why needs to be spelled out.  One team I recently spent some time with told me their mission was to build a loyal, determined ballplayer. But no where in there was the phrase “winning.”  One could have very loyal teams without ever winning.  The opposite is also true.

Perhaps I read to much into a piece like this.  But, as fans we get so little insight into what it takes to build a winner- I mean real insight, that I look for it where ever I can find it.  O’Dowd’s words tell the truth.

Hopefully, now that the Rockies are no longer an afterthought, we will begin to see Tulowitski more often.  Hopefully, he will begin to get some national press and we can find out if he truly is the next Derek Jeter.  One thing is for sure, the Rockies will be a story all year.