[pm129]

An interview with Antwerp Diamonds GM Fabio Noordevliet

Being the General Manager of a professional Baseball team is, in Belgium at least, a new profession. There is only a union of 16 at any one moment. Unsurprisingly, there is, within such a unique profession, a lot of learning on the job and different approaches to achieve the same end... Winning.

As I walk into the office of Fabio Noordervliet, General Manager of the Antwerp Diamonds, I’m expecting to see some reflection of this, a man grappling with trying to turn a team from one that won 3 games less than anybody else in the BBC last year into the contender that its location, it’s new stadium and it’s hefty sponsorship deals suggest it can be. Maybe he’ll be haranguing another GM on the phone, browbeating him into a lopsided trade. Maybe he’ll be telling a young gun from the Club’s AAA setup in Rixensart, south of Brussels, that he’s earned his big chance to help in pulling the team’s fortunes around. Instead, I find an unshaven 41 year old man trying to bounce a baseball off his desk and into a coffee mug.

Let’s take a look at the story of the Antwerp Diamonds so far. When the concept of the Belgian Baseball Championship was briefed to the media last winter, Antwerp was one of the key markets that the league wanted to exploit. It’s one of Flanders’ biggest and most populous cities, it is well off and it’s close to the Dutch border giving it a reach that few other teams can boast. Owner Ijs Dalerop managed not only to get the team a 14,000 capacity stadium, but managed to leverage its position on the seafront, far from the elegant city centre into part funding from shipping company Maersk Line. This was a position of strength, one from which the Diamonds could challenge the league’s expected top teams. Further to their advantage, they were given the league’s 4th largest operating budget ($13.58m), this was clearly an investment that the notoriously stringent Dalerop was taking seriously.

So what went wrong? How did the Diamonds take advantages in location, market size and finance and turn them into a team that won barely a 3rd of its 90 games, gave up 77 runs more than the Divisie Vlaanderen average and fired it’s GM and Manager after just one season?

“I wish it was as simple as going to Meneer Dalerop and getting $7m to sign Jacques Jouve (DV Best Pitcher 2013 and free agent over the break) for 4 years over the winter!” Laughs Noordervielt. “But the reality is, there are a lot of complex problems here that need to be addressed properly. Some of these could be foreseen and acted upon by the previous management, but some are just freak events that you can only weather by being in that good shape to begin with, these are the real test. 3 teams from 4 of our division made the playoffs last year! How can you account for a division that is so competitive? Slipping up, starting badly in a race like that, as we did, is fatal. Every game means something, you can’t, especially in a 90 game season like we have, hope to pick up wins against sides with nothing to play for who take their eyes off the ball.” Here I interject, you don’t give up that many runs (5.3 per game!), you don’t give up an extra half a hit every game or 53 walks over average to the rest of the league because the division is competitive.

“Of course! The factors I outlined there are not to say that Antwerp did everything perfectly, shrug our shoulders and move on as before! Look at our draft performance in the inaugural draft. We managed to take the 4th highest budget in the league and translate it into the 8th highest payroll! There’s something to be said for being smart and finding players that are overlooked, but what Antwerp did in that draft was a case of not exploiting their strengths. I think also, there was a certain edginess about the new stadium which affected the balance of the team that was drafted... The desire to have a team that people would come and see led to a lot of veteran, well known power hitters being taken and paid a lot. Now, that strategy wasn’t a complete failure. Jaak Dorst at Catcher had a great year with the bat (.287/.374/.924), but there was no attention paid to how defense or how these guys would play together. It was a collection of individuals. You can see also, that this strategy failed not only in terms of results. This park was only just over 50% full over the season. That’s unacceptable.”

So what did the Diamonds do differently for 2014 to address these issues? Noordevielt has long advocated a “defense first” approach and he’s keen to show me the workouts and drills that the new field manager, Mortiz Phillipe, has put together to this end.

“That was a quick win. Before we even looked at personnel, we simply started working on Defense. On respecting it.” The results are impressive, Antwerp are, after a 3rd of the 2014 season, top of the DV for Defensive Efficiency at .719. They’ve also recruited well to bring their bullpen ERA to 4th in the league at 2.77, although the starter ERA of 4.76 must still concern the management. Most tellingly from a distant last, the Diamond’s runs against column has climbed to 4th in the DV.

So what were the key moves in shoring up the soft belly of the side and maintaining its prowess with the bat?

“You can see from our stats that we’ve tried to move away from the power side. Whilst i’m not crazy about our team batting average dropping to .214 in the 30 games we’ve played so far, I think an OBP of .340 across the board is a step in the right direction. We’re not there yet. 14-16 isn’t the record we want at this point, but it’s better than 10-20. On the pitching side, Herve Guerin, who we signed from Kortrijk has really stepped up and he’s dragged our existing pitching staff with him. Look at Santiago Barron, his WHIP has dropped from 1.64 last year to 1.15 this. Now, he’s the only Cuban in the league, so maybe last year was a difficult period for him... but Herve is a great guy to have around when he’s throwing well. He’s infectious.”

We’ve talked for a while about the Diamonds and their travails, and slowly the conversation shifts into more of a state-of-the-nation chat about the BBC, what it’s done well, what it hasn’t done well and where Noordervielt thinks it need to go in the future.

“The format we’ve got serves our purpose beautifully, it’s a huge plus to trying to grow the sport professionally. In a country where baseball isn’t the culture, for fans to be able to see that every team plays every other team home and away is easily understandable. Revenue sharing (which is currently at 20%) is important also, although I think more could be done to ensure that the biggest spender doesn’t win every year. On the negative side, I think we need to look at the way the amateur draft and lower leagues work... The 6 round draft may serve the teams purpose, but there are 16 college teams and however many amateurs all producing talent. At the moment the opportunity to progress into the pros is almost random. A longer draft list and maybe even an expanded minor league setup would help on that front”

With that, it’s time for me to take my leave. Fabio has to go and sit with his AAA managers to review the progress of his prospects and see if any of them are ready to aid Antwerp’s push for a winning record. At least that what he tells me, as I walk out, I think I hear a baseball bouncing off a desk.