Billy Beane will best be remembered for taking a mad scientist approach to baseball operations. It was profound enough to produce a book, a movie — a lead role for Brad Pitt, no less — and an entire era.
But, it should also be noted, he can take a more traditional approach, too, pairing people to simply get the most from both. This is a story of one of those occasions, of Beane addressing an issue by pairing a lost young player with a drifting old baseball man and rescuing two careers at once. It is the story of Marcus Semien’s tutelage under Ron Washington, as the former grew into an elite big league shortstop and the latter resumed his career less than a year after walking away from managing the Rangers.
“We needed each other,” said Washington, now the third base coach for Atlanta, which begins a three-game series at Globe Life Field on Monday. “When Billy called me, he said he had a kid that needed my help and that I needed to [help] him.”
It was May of 2015. Washington was out of baseball for the first time since he shipped off to the Kansas City Royals baseball academy in 1970. He’d stepped away from the job with the Rangers the previous September after news broke that he’d been unfaithful to his wife. He was home in New Orleans, working on his marriage, taking stock of his career, helping out around the MLB Youth Academy and the University of New Orleans. He was drifting a bit.
Meanwhile, Semien, who had been the centerpiece of a deal with the Chicago White Sox in one of Beane’s semi-annual remakes of the A’s roster, had just made his 16th error in his 42nd game with Oakland. A throw to first hadn’t quite gotten there in a loss at Houston.
“I remember seeing the notification on the phone that we hired him and I really didn’t know much about him,” Semien said. “But I wasn’t in a great place. And I was thinking this could go a lot of other ways. I could have been optioned or whatever. But we went from Houston to Tampa Bay and Wash met us there the next day.
“The first thing he told me was that Billy Beane believed I was a major league shortstop, so he was going to make me a major league shortstop. I was out there playing shortstop in the major leagues, but I wasn’t doing it at the level it needed to be done. He was right.”
And at that moment they began working on the project that would eventually make Semien a premium defender, a Gold Glove winner at another position (second base in 2021) and is this year ranked second in MLB runs saved at second.
They spoke on the bench for 45 minutes. Washington handed him a small flat “pancake” glove and explained his intent. They would start doing daily ground ball drills with Washington hitting fungoes from only a few feet away and Semien on his knees with the pancake glove to isolate and make him feel his hands more.
“I told him he had a mechanic on duty,” Washington said. “I wanted him to know that anything he felt, anything he experienced, he could come to me and we’d address it. We started Infield 101. I just wanted him to stay in the process, let me worry about the issues.
“He was hungry for reasons we did what we did. He didn’t want to be the player he was, he wanted to be the player he has become. He wanted to be the best. He has drive.”
Washington proved to be a perfect fit for Semien.
Washington loves doing the actual infield work. It was something he missed when managerial duties with the Rangers took priority. He’d already used his program of close-range fungoes before regular fielding practice to help Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez grow into their positions during his previous tenure with the A’s. Chavez eventually gave Washington one of the Gold Gloves he won with A’s. Washington has since used the same program with Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies in Atlanta. He won a World Series ring with the Braves in 2021, his first in 51 years in baseball.
The routine consists of 96 ground balls. Yes, 96. Washington said the number of different types of reps just grew to 96 eventually. And he didn’t see any reason to round it out. It takes only about 15 minutes before infield practice.
Semien is a big fan of routine and detail. Even after Washington left to go to Atlanta, Semien remained dedicated to a daily routine of ground balls. He’s more structured in that than most players. Washington’s program provided the “direction I needed,” Semien said.
“It made the game feel like practice,” Semien said. “When you can do that, you can have some success. To truly have confidence, you’ve got to have some success. Success in the major leagues can go a long way for a player. You don’t even know how good you can be until it just becomes second nature. And that’s a lot of it for me. I started to feel like I belonged.”
And, as Rangers fans know, nobody imbues confidence in quite the enthusiastic and energetic way Washington does. When you need a guy in your corner, there can be no bigger advocate than Washington.
“I lost my mind anytime he made a routine play,” Washington said. “And he’d look over at my like I was crazy. Well, the game is about routine. I can’t do anything about athleticism; you either have that or don’t. I got excited when he did what the game asked him to do. I could see it affected him in a positive way.”
Washington also spent time focusing on “presence and performance,” words which resonated with Semien. He stressed that when a player had the kind of talent Semien had, presence was as important as performance. It was a big part of building Semien into the leader he has become.
The work on the field was a lot. Semien finished 2015 with 35 errors and at -8 in runs saved. The next year it dropped to 21 errors and a +1 in runs saved. Washington left for Atlanta after that season, but the foundation had been laid. From 2017 through 2020, his last in Oakland, Semien ranked eighth among shortstops in runs saved.
When he moved to Toronto for 2021, he made a position switch to second and won a Gold Glove. Over his two-plus seasons at second, he’s saved 28 runs. It’s the most in baseball, by 11. In that same time, he’s appeared in 363 of 364 games.
Performance and presence.
Washington’s words of wisdom.
“He’s definitely a father figure to me,” Semien said. “We’d sit on the bench every day after we worked and talk about baseball and life. I know now I can call him anytime to talk. I love hearing his perspective.”
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