Chemistry 101

With Jason Akamanis recently being dumped by the Bulldogs due to a 'lack of chemistry', I thought it would be a good time to look at chemistry on the baseball field. Does it matter? Does having a team united help in the march toward a championship? Now there are obviously a few varying opinions on this subject. There are those of you out there that believe that a team with good chemistry is a good baseball team and that by having a good chemistry the team will perform better.... well I'm here to disagree with that opinion entirely and offer some views on the subject.

Now a lot of people point to the fact that winning teams have good chemistry, which is true. It appears fairly obvious that a team that wins more games than it looses will have good chemistry. However, what causes a team to win games? Is it the fact that Albert Pujols is a nice guy and bought one of his team mates a soda before the game? Or the fact that Derek Jeter laughs at Robinson Cano's jokes? Or is it more likle the fact that those guys are awesome baseball players. and help their team when it really matters? For mine, winning is clearly dependent on the talent of the team, if you have a good team you win, regardless of whether or not guys within the club like each other.

Now some people bring up that 'winning teams have good chemistry'. Now there is no denying this, however why do winning teams have good chemistry? Well it seems pretty obvious, when you win, your team generally has more fun which leads to an increase in perceived 'chemistry'. So it can be said that while chemistry doesn't change a teams ability to win, it can be said that if your team is winning, then it will have greater chemistry. You might notice that last year the Seattle Mariners improved with the addition of Ken Griffey Jr. Now, there were reports that by bringing Griffey into the team, Seattle's team chemistry had improved, thus they had won more games than in the previous season. However, this season, Griffey was struggling at the plate and the so called chemistry that he brings to the team was not resulting in wins, which forced him into retirement.

The reality of baseball is that it is essentially a group of individuals playing within one team. While there are small instances where performances overlap, generally speaking, the performance of one member of the team will not effect the performance of another. A pitcher will throw strikes regardless of the catcher, an infielder will field balls at the same rate regardless of the pitcher, and a hitter will hit for the same percentages regardless of who is in the lineup with him.

With that said, I'll throw it over to Jim Leyland, who seemed to sum up the situation fairly well recently when asked about Pud...

"Take all that clubhouse [stuff] and all that, throw it out the window. Every writer in the country has been writing about that [nonsense] for years. Chemistry don’t mean [anything]. He’s up here because he’s good. That don’t mean [a hill of beans]. They got good chemistry because their team is improved, they got a real good team, they got guys knocking in runs, they got a catcher hitting .336, they got a phenom pitcher they just brought up. That’s why they’re happy."