Makeup Isn't Everything It's Been Cracked Up To Be

By Matt Himelfarb
Posted Monday, June 11, 2007

It was an odd moment. Cole Hamels, a member of a partly dysfunctional, part prone to raising unrealistic expectations organization, seemingly ostracized his invisible boxing gloves used in a bar fight over three years ago, in return for a David Wright esque remark about Paul Lo Duca's bat flipping, propagandistic home run:

"You need to act like you've done it before. He's a veteran. He should know better. It's the old sacred game thing. There are little kids out there that are looking up to you. They look at what happens. That's not the right way to do things. It's a situation where you know you're going to face him for the next five, six, 10 years. It'll be more in his head than mine. It'll affect him more than me because I'll have the ball in my hand, controlling what happens."

Sure, it's only inevitable that when the Phillies come into town later this month, Mets fans will make out Cole Hamels to be a cheeky instigator, typical Phillies player, even spoiled southern California kid. But his comments, for anyone that has followed Hamels career from the time he dominated in the lower minor leagues, known that it's the climax of a story within a story: Overblown makeup problems.

Yes, indeed, those words are uttered not by Elijah Dukes writing under a pseudonym, but rather someone who acknowledges the fact that David Wright once threw a hamburger at a fellow student in high school.

Sure, I think it's a highly un-debatable that what Dukes did was no laughing matter and is a serious, serious issue. But what can you conclude from the millions of other ballplayers who were known to have shaky attitudes? Hamels, Clay Bucholz, Scott Kazmir.

The clear difference is, aside from the fact none of their problems even match the standard set by Dukes, is that when it comes to drafting guys with questionable character, the character element certainly needs to be considered, but talent and performance has to trump character in almost every situation. Plenty of guys have questionable character issues, but what Dukes has is an aberration of enormous proportions.

With that being said, the Mets organization will always use the supposed "lack of innings pitched" as a last result of excusing the Scott Kazmir trade, but the "family first" conservative attitude of the Wilpons, and to a lesser extent the philosophy of motivation of Rick Peterson's were the deciding factors. Peterson's philosophy is best portrayed below, in an interview he gave with Baseball Prospectus back in 2003:

"We (referring to his time in Oakland) did personality factor tests to learn more about each player. When we first rolled out these tests, there were norms for people like teachers and lawyers, but not for professional baseball players. For example one test measures whether a person is self-motivated or works better through instruction. What we found is that self-motivated, practical thinkers tend to fare well in baseball. By keeping your motivation up, you overcome the fear, worry, and doubt which can hurt performance. Then we look at an umbrella of skills in 12 major areas. Those include: keeping things in perspective, self-knowledge of strong points and limits, discipline, and ability to learn."

Like I said, I don't believe makeup is irrelevant, and I agree with Mr. Peterson to an extent, but what the Mets should've done is worked with Kazmir, and continuously defended him every time there were rumors of makeup problems, and not run away from the problem like they're doing with Lastings Milledge right now. In addition, just because of minor, over hyped problems at a very young age, shouldn't even insinuate the fact that Kazmir, Hamels, and Milledge are unmotivated or unintelligent. You speak to any reporter or official today, and they will tell you Hamels has the manner and the demeanor it takes to handle the game and its big moments. This was even evident when he was 21, when he took it upon himself to apologize to the media and showed no content with his failure. At the very least, it's hard to draw conclusions from a single scouting report of Baseball America's without further examination.

Until I see news Lastings has hit his wife or he's running a crystal meth lab out of his parents' basement, everything else whispered by the media- Big Gold Chains, a little trouble driving his hummer- will mean nothing to me, as it's the residue of a writer who has no understanding of the makeup of a ballplayer, or the far more likely reason that they have nothing better to do but start controversy and have more people read their stuff.

What's proven about Lastings? Well, he compiled a .381 OBP. in AAA at age 21. In retrospect, the guy is nothing short of a stud. As one Mets official said, Milledge is really a nice kid, and isn't a trouble maker, and is interested in charity work. Now, all we need is Mets ownership to listen to the front office personnel.

You can contact Matt Himelfarb at: matthimelfarb@gmail.com