THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Here’s a new one:
http://www.brockforbroglio.com/2008/02/26/questions-and-answers-with-tom-tango-of-inside-the-book/

I thought that interview was too short and mediocre (the questions, not Tango’s answers). A missed opp, IMO.

At least he wasn’t asked about his real name…

I added one at Seattle Times in the main entry.

The interviewer is an “old guard”, but he was pretty open in terms of the question/answers, and his piece was pretty flattering to the sabermetric concept.

link, please.

Hit PageUp 2 or 3 times, and look for:
Tango at Seattle Times

Updated another one…

Great new interviews!  If you want honest, insightful answers to these types of questions, Tango is the man!

His idea for a real-time “Fan Fielding” project is fantastic.  I would be a boon - a breakthrough in fielding analysis. It really should not be too difficult for someone to set up.  It would be similar to what Tango did last year during a few of the post-season games.

One of the great things about it is that it could be used for the hitters and pitchers just as well, if not better, than the fielders.  Remember that even though we think we have hitter projections pretty much nailed, it is silly and presumptuous to think that is so, at least until we get large samples of data for each hitter.  Obviously not nearly all of a hitter’s hits and outs are even close to created equal (think of all the hard hit balls that become outs through sheer luck and all the softly hit balls that become hits also through sheer luck).  In fact, when I think about how much “noise” there is in hitter data (classifying batted balls as hits or outs), I am amazed that we can do as well as we can with hitter projections.  Anyway, the “Fan Fielding” report would take away much of that noise and create a much purer data set for hitters and pitchers to use for projecting performance.  Much purer.

So if anyone wants to take this one, go for it!  I’m sure that Tango or someone else would be happy to help you set it up.

Basically, it would be any serious fan with an internet connection watching games, hopefully in real time, and recording how often a batted ball “should” have been caught and whether it was or was not.  I assume that is what Tango has in mind.  Pretty simple.  Then there would eventually be ratings on each of the participants (the fans) such that the more accurate they are, as compared to the “crowd,” the more their input would be weighted (sort of like we do recursive park factors or strength of schedule adjustments).  At the same time, maybe other data could be recorded by everyone, such as fielder positioning and the like.

Another interview for those not sick of them yet…

Where?

In the main thread, I keep them chronologically, so just go to the end of the list in my section…

The chop-n-change is the new one…

Good interview on chop-n-change.  I wish there were more questions.

Tango, we (Another Cubs Blog) archived the blog that your interview was on as we moved over to Bloguin.  If you replace the .net with .org, you’ll get the interview we did with you.  I didn’t want to lose all those posts and comments so I moved it over anothercubsblog.org and kept the .net domain when we joined Bloguin.  The link you currently have goes to a 404 page, which redirects to Another Cubs Blog.

For those who have some impression I am an employee or I can only work with one MLB team at a time:

1. BIS and STATS and Bloomberg work with half the teams each at a time

2. Outside counsel ("contracted lawyers") can advise more than one team at a time

3. My company provides consulting / contracted services in the same capacity as all of the above

Tango - I like how the graphic in the Star has a player superimposed over a bunch of small sample sizes.

Tom -

As someone who lives in Toronto and wouldn’t mind seeing some playoff baseball without a plane trip to Boston or Philly, I think that this is great.

As far as the conflicts go, you can of course do whatever you and the teams agree to.  It strikes me though that your work presents a much more direct conflict than, for example, a law firm handling contract work for multiple MLB teams.

Once every team has a piece of Tango, MLB will have finally have achieved their goal of shutting down the critical analysis on this blog.

Tyler/16, I don’t see how what Tom does is any different than what BIS does for teams.  I know that for my company, the way we approach customers is that if they want the exclusive access to the results of a certain technique or approach, then they need to pay A LOT more than if they only want to be one customer of many.  Most customers are not interested in paying for exclusive access.

Whatever customer I work for, I certainly want to help them win, but it’s far cry from me being in a front office where my loyalties are tied to one team.  My goal is to provide them with quality information that helps them make good decisions.  What they do with that is up to them.

I would imagine that Tom is in a similar situation.

Tom, it would be nice if you were keeping a journal of your dealings with these teams.  I think it could be a good read someday.

Mike, Tango’s services are completely different than BIS (or STATS) data.  If I am a team, I would prefer that I am the only one getting the BIS data, but by no means am I insistent on that or too worried if the other teams have it as well.  The reason is obvious.

However, if I am a team, I am pretty insistent that if Tango works for me, he can’t work for anyone else. Apparently, Tango told SEA or TOR that given the details of their arrangement (money, time, etc.), he was not willing to work exclusively for one team or another.  I’m sure that if they paid him a lot more than whatever they are paying him now, and certainly if he worked for them full-time and gave up his regular job, he would be more than happy to be exclusive.

I don’t see how you can equate BIS data with Tango’s services.  Lots of companies get data from the same sources.  No company hires a full-time employee and let’s them also work with other rival companies.  Sure, some companies hire consultants who also consult for other companies, and that is apparently the arrangement that Tom has with both SEA and TOR. But even that is a little dicey.

When I consulted for the Cardinals, even though I was not an employee and I worked from my home and I didn’t put in very much time for them at all, there was no way that I could work for any other team.

I am also pretty sure that Tango cannot offer his services to any other teams in the AL East or West, but I could be wrong about that.  Given that this kind of stuff is pretty much a zero-sum game, if an analyst worked for all 30 ML teams, his value would be almost worthless…

Added a new link to BtB. 

The newbies may like perusing any of the linked interviews…