Tuesday, October 9, 2007

"THIS IS NO LONGER A CUTE THEORY ABOUT HOW THE OAKLAND A'S ARE WINNING WITH A SMALL PAYROLL. THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY OF BASEBALL MANAGEMENT": Interesting post by Dave Cameron over at USSM about the provenance of the GMs whose teams remain in the hunt for this year's World Series title. Over the course of the year and through an unusually two-sided dialogue with beat writers, USSM has advocated a stats-and-scouts combination, process-oriented analysis, a focus on talent to the exclusion of "intangibles," and rational understanding of defensive value. The team that USSM follows has, by contrast, adhered to a philosophy that values scouts and disdains most statistical analysis, engages in results-based analysis, overvalues experience and chemistry, and undervalues defense.

Today's post points out (in a little bit of results-oriented analysis, but we'll excuse that) that one of the four GMs left is a Moneyball profilee and the other three are disciples of John Hart in Cleveland -- four GMs who evaluate all available information (whether statistical or scout-based) and use process-oriented analysis (and, though the post doesn't say it, value talent and defense more than leadership and experience). It's not looking good for the Phillies or the Mariners for the next few years, that much I'll say.

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