Consider this a parable of sorts:
From about mid-way through the 2014 baseball season through 2018 when he was saddled with arm injuries, one of the best pitchers in baseball was Jake Arrieta of the Chicago Cubs. He was the National League’s Cy Young award winner in 2015 after a historic season in which he put up numbers not seen since Bob Gibson in 1968.
It shouldn’t be all that surprising, Arrieta was a top draft pick out of TCU in 2007. He was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles and quickly rose through the minor leagues. He made the big club in June 2010 and won his first start against the Yankees.
He was known for great ‘stuff’, ‘filthy’ in baseball parlance, four pitches, and a very idiosyncratic windup. He had everything needed – including an almost fanatical work ethic – to be an ace. But he wasn’t, that start against the Yankees was the sole highlight of his first seasons in the majors.
Then Arrieta crashed and he crashed hard. How hard? He set the record for the worst ERA ever recorded by a starting pitcher for the Orioles. The Orioles’ history, by the way, goes back to 1901. This despite the fact that dozens of well-known players – including a few future Hall of Famers – said that Arietta had the best stuff they had seen in years.
So, what happened? It’s really relatively simple. Arrieta’s throwing motion and pitch selection didn’t fit the Orioles pitching ‘metrics’. He threw across his body, he threw from the first base side of the pitching rubber, he kept his hands low, he loved his cutter (almost unhittable). The Orioles organization wanted their pitchers – all their pitchers - to throw a certain way, the same way. Arrieta, according to their pitcher standards, did everything wrong. And they forbid all their pitchers to use the cutter.
They broke Arrieta’s pitching down and rebuilt him to fit their notions of what made an effective major league pitcher. Along the way, unsurprisingly, they lost the Arrieta they had drafted. The results were a disaster, he was demoted to the minors, he came within a whisker of quitting baseball forever.
Then, he was traded to the Cubs. In his first meeting with Cub management, he was told to do what came naturally to him – to be himself. They, in essence, would plan around him.
The results were virtually instantaneous – in his first full season with the Cubs he finished 9th in the National League Cy Young Award voting, his second year he won it, he stayed good until the injuries took over.
By now, you can probably see where this is headed – call it ‘pigeonholing’ or ‘cookie-cutter’ or generic or a dozen other things, but trying to wedge people (or businesses) into preconceived, pre-planned, slots is at best counter-productive, at worst disastrous.
Jake Arrieta was a business worth millions, it just happened to revolve around his ability to pitch a baseball. Baseball Reference lists his career earnings as $113 million.
Cookie-cutter planning almost destroyed his business.