With the elimination of the Dodgers with the #1 payroll in MLB, $235,295,219, & their West Coast neighbors, the Angels with the 6th highest payroll [$155,692,000], the expertise of our baseball experts merits validation. Im speaking, of course, of the traditional experts - baseballs brass, the guys who make their buy/ sell/ trade decisions based on gut feelings, hunches, and statistics that have been statistically disproved as valid indicators of a players worth. Im speaking of the guys with that were experts and you know nothing attitude and worldview. They need to subject their rather unfocused methods to inquiry and validation. The correlation between $$ spent - what they spend on franchise players like Ryan Howard, Jayson Werth & the like & how those expenditures actually contribute to team success needs validation. The #2 payroll Yankees [$203,812,506] just missed the post-season by 12 games. The #3-payroll Phillies [$180,052,723] fell a scant 23 games of the pace-setters in their pathetic division. The #4 Red Sox [$162,817,411], ended up in the cellar, 25 games out. The #8 Texas Rangers [$134,704,437] also finished in the basement a measly 31 games off the mark. Then of course, theres the other end of the payroll spectrum: the Pirates with the 4th lowest payroll [$78,111,667] and the Oakland As with the 6th lowest payroll [$83,401,400]. Both were in the playoffs - the As by using SABR analyses to assess performance & to inform their decision-making, by buying low and selling high, and by making decisions based on statistical long-term/ short-term payback. In other words, by using the kinds of decision-making models that every other industry uses. But baseball? Well, the experts will tell you, patronizingly, they dont make decisions like that! Theyll insist that the continued high performance of the As is some sort of weird outlier. Theyll maintain that amateurs and wannabes make decisions with that voodoo science because, cmon, they dont really get it. They dont really understand the intricacies & nuances of baseball. Those kinds of techniques & analyses might work in simplistic industries for projects like moonshots and putting satellites into orbit, but they certainly have no place in complicated, intricate applications like baseball.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 01:38:52 +0000
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