Angels banking on team chemistry

New GM Minasian a believer in having the right mix for success

TEMPE, ARIZ. » Given the view of the game that Perry Minasian had when he got his first taste of baseball, there should be no surprise about one of the elements he thinks is important when building a team.

As Minasian introduced each of his acquisitions over the winter, there was a pattern in the way he described them. Without fail, the Angels’ new general manager would talk, unsolicited, about the player’s makeup or character or about how well he would fit in the clubhouse.

The clubhouse, you see, is where Minasian grew up. His father was the visiting clubhouse manager and then the home clubhouse manager with the Texas Rangers. Minasian grew up watching up close the way players interacted with one another and how that affected the results on the field.

“Just from being around different teams that underperform with the talent they have, and other teams that overperform with the talent they have,” Minasian said. “I’m a big believer in people, in general, and on and off the field, especially in the locker room, you go through so many ups and downs over the course of the season that you better have the right group.”

Shortly after the Angels hired Minasian, Alex Anthopoulos, one of his mentors, said that Minasian’s insight into how players and coaches interact in the clubhouse “is a differencemaking perspective that is a competitive advantage.”

Minasian and Joe Maddon are in lockstep on this issue. The Angels manager is also a strong believer that intangibles and the makeup of the players have a role in a team’s success. Not coincidentally, several of the players the Angels brought in over the winter were those who had already played under Maddon: pitchers Jose Quintana and Alex Cobb and outfielders Dexter Fowler and Jon Jay.

Maddon knows that outsiders often roll their eyes at talk of clubhouse chemistry. When many people hear that a player is “great in the clubhouse” they view that as code for “not so great on the field.”

“I’ve run into that for years,” Maddon said. “We mock what we don’t understand . ... If you’ve never been part of that transition, people say ‘Oh you win, that’s what changes (the culture). Winning solves all evils or ills. OK, then how do you win?”

Talent obviously is what wins baseball games, but the talent margin at the highest level of any sport isn’t that significant. What often separates teams is their ability to maximize talent.

That’s what clubhouse chemistry is about, according to San Francisco-based sports writer Joan Ryan. She studied the topic for 10 years to write the book “Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry.”

After interviews with hundreds of players, coaches, executives, neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists, Ryan concluded that team chemistry, while not quantifiable, is absolutely real.

It is also not to be confused with camaraderie, she said. She devoted a chapter in her book to Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, who both said they couldn’t stand each other while playing for the San Francisco Giants. They still functioned well as teammates, pushing each other to success.

“The function of team chemistry is to elevate performance,” she said. “It has no other purpose. That doesn’t mean you’re going to win. It means you’re going to make the most out of the talent you have.”

Essentially, if a team has the right mix of players, those players will make each other perform better. It could be in tangible ways, like showing a pitcher a grip, or in more subtle ways, like setting an example on the right way to prepare.

It could also be simple motivation.

“My teammates summon a fight from me I can’t willingly summon for myself,” longtime big league pitcher Jake Peavey told Ryan.

It is common sense to believe that players would influence each other, Ryan said.

“When you think about all these players in this confined space of a clubhouse, day after day after day, and all these different influences around, they are changing each other bit by bit by bit every day,” she said. “Now they could change each other in a really negative way. Or they could change each other in a positive way. That’s who we are as human beings. There’s no getting around it.

“There are reams and reams of research that is very clear about how we influence each other as human beings. So if that’s true, it doesn’t stop at the clubhouse door.”

Minasian has been inside those clubhouse doors watching it happen for years. In his early years, he worked in visiting clubhouse, so he saw different teams for three or four days at a time, but as a teenager he was in the Rangers’ clubhouse, watching the same players together day after day, year after year.

“I’m a big believer that players learn from other players, as much if not more than coaches,” he said. “I can give plenty of examples of guys who have changed their careers because of teammates. When you have the right group, it’s not just jokes and laughs and having fun. It’s the accountability.

“The guy in the next locker says ‘We need you to do this.’ They call each other out. To me, the best teams I’ve been around are the teams that have done that, so that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

Whether that happens remains to be seen. A few weeks into spring training, though, the players seem to have a good feeling about how the mix will work.

“Every single person that they’ve brought in, just in the baseball community if you talk to people, everybody has wonderful things to say about each person,” Cobb said. “We’re going to have a very good clubhouse from the mixture of veteran players to younger players. From what I’ve seen so far with the personalities and the people that are coming, this can be a very fun clubhouse to be part of.”

While a fun clubhouse isn’t as important to success as one in which the players push each other, it doesn’t hurt.

Third baseman Anthony Rendon said when he first got into the majors he “didn’t really give into it or buy into it,” but now he understands the value in how players get along.

“As I continue to grow in this game, you realize how much of a benefit, how crucial it is to enjoy being around those individuals in the clubhouse every single day,” Rendon said. “You’re gonna see them more than your family . ... Each individual, no matter what personality they may have, you have to enjoy being around them. You have to click for it to be successful.”