Players-only meetings are a cliché. They are also barometers of how the season is going.
If a team gathers without its coaches and/or management, as the Detroit Tigers did Wednesday after losing to the White Sox, 13-0, you can bet the team is struggling. The Tigers are struggling; this is an understatement, I realize.
The history of the players-only meeting is a bit fuzzy. Their results are fuzzier, still.
One of the best coaches in Detroit’s history abhorred them. Then again, Chuck Daly’s Pistons’ squads were stocked with players who would say anything to anyone — anywhere. They didn’t need the cover of anonymity.
They were also really good.
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When Daly coached the Orlando Magic in the late 1990s, he got wind his players wanted to meet without him, according to the New York Times. He told them no.
“Players-only meetings?” Daly said, according to the Times. “No good. Not needed.”
“Daddy Rich” was old school that way. Then again, he had players that nicknamed him “Daddy Rich.” He also had the benefit of coaching Isiah Thomas and Bill Laimbeer, two of the best locker room cops in the history of the NBA.
Not that Thomas and Laimbeer toed any company line. They enforced their way of doing things because they wanted to win, as much or more than anyone else in the organization.
A.J. Hinch may have players that want to win, but he doesn’t have the kind of personalities that freely — and routinely — patrol the team’s psyche. Thus: the players-only meeting.
Why did the team gather Tuesday?
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“Just a broad range of issues that we feel like we’re facing as a team,” catcher Eric Haase told reporters after the team’s ninth shutout Tuesday. “Kinda getting it in the open. We just need to play better is the basic consensus, but yeah, nothing else. Nothing else really.”
Haase said that “no one likes getting their ass handed to them every night. We feel like we’re a better team than that. For whatever reason, we’re just not clicking.”
And there it is. He and his teammates feel like they are better than what they’ve shown — 24-38. Maybe they are. Maybe they are not.
What everyone can agree on is that everyone — from owner to general manager to manager to players to fans — thought they would be better. Expectation is the key.
If a team is losing like the Tigers are, and no one thought they should be winning more, then the players don’t have a reason to meet, unless some aren’t competing. But because general manager Al Avila and several of the players talked about trying to make the playoffs back in spring training, the expectation was set.
The Tigers are nowhere near meeting it.
Players-only meetings can help, of course. Look no further than the NBA Finals for proof.
The Boston Celtics, like the Tigers, entered their season with expectation. They stumbled early, gathered for dinner at the behest of their coach, Ime Udoka, and took time to vent to each other before the coaching staff arrived.
That led to monthly meetings with the players and the coaching staff, according to ESPN, meetings that kept the tenor and honesty of a players-only meeting.
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“It’s not always a negative connotation,” Udoka told reporters in late April. “If we’re doing something well, we show them the numbers. … I give them 15 minutes to talk amongst themselves then I’ll walk back in and then, ‘what’d you guys got for me?’ We’ve had quite a few of those and I think it encourages leadership and those guys being communicative.”
So, an impromptu players-only meeting led to a different kind of meeting with everyone. The coaches and the players think it helped. It also helps that the Celtics have more talent relative to the NBA than the Tigers do to Major League Baseball.
No number of players-only meetings will help heal the team’s pitching staff, or speed up Riley Green’s rehabilitation, or teach Spencer Torkelson how to handle off-speed pitches. That kind of work must be done daily, with a hitting coach, or with conversations with Hinch or veteran players or a family member.
Or whomever anyone who is struggling can find to lean on.
But players-only meetings can act as a group therapy, which has different benefits from individual “therapy,” if you will. They can remind players they are not alone in the struggle. They can offer accountability and encouragement.
Haase said the team wasn’t “clicking.” Again, this implies belief that the Tigers are more talented and capable than they are showing. It also implies that there are fissures within the team.
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Not animosity, exactly, but cracks in the bond that holds together a group. Losing can do this. Losing under expectation can do this more.
Players-only meetings, then, are meant to develop some scar tissue. And even if the scar tissue doesn’t lead to more winning, it can lead to a healthier space if everyone is doing everything they can.
The Tigers showed a flash of winning a couple weeks ago. The starting rotation, despite missing four members because of injury or personal reasons, found ways to keep runs off the board. The lineup produced a (light) flurry of (timely) hits to sneak enough runs across the plate.
The team won seven of nine and 12 of 19, a .632 clip. We … no, I (I’ll take responsibility) wondered if there was a little magic stirring.
It wasn’t. Not yet. Maybe not at all this summer.
At least they gathered to talk about it though. It may do nothing. It may do something. If nothing else, it gave the players the chance to acknowledge to one another that things need to change, all due respect to Chuck Daly.
Said shortstop Javier Báez, who is muddying through the worst few months at the plate of his career: “It’s about getting focused and doing the right thing.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @shawnwindsor.