THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

If it’s not clear, it’s TWO separate jobs.

Wow, nice jobs, especially the Baseball Analyst one. 

Do most teams have this kind of position these days?

Very nice jobs, indeed. Makes me regret being a liberal arts major.

Colin, you should apply anyway.

Yeah Colin, that sounds perfect for you.

I’m even older than Tango, make a lot of money and have some job security after 22 years, but I’m still considering applying. There are some qualifications I do not meet, but many that I do.

It does sound good for a relative youngster like Colin. But seriously, how many people are there out there who are subject matter experts but also have a Master’s in CS? Tango? Dan Fox? It’s quite likely they will find no applicants who meet the criterion. Then they either hire no one (as Toronto apparently did a year ago) or they hire the best person who did apply, even if he/she doesn’t have an advanced degree.

Not to get cynical, but...Are they paying as much as you’d have to pay a computer programmer to build mundane databases?

Asking someone to have 1) an advanced science, math or engineering degree; 2) stats background; 3) neural nets background; 4) experience with a stats package; 5) SQL experience; 6) leadership abilities; and 7) excellent communication skills - that runs about $200k a year at Google.  At least!

#7/ I think you have to realize that there is the “baseball discount” which means people who could easily make $200K (or higher, trust me) would be willing to work for half of that just to be in baseball.

#6/ I would likely agree with you Brian in that the “ideal” (i.e., meets all criteria) candidate is probably limited to about 20 - 50 people on the planet, and half of those have to secure of a position in their lives to bother applying (I’ll raise my hand in that group).  I think someone that is a “close” candiate, i.e., meets 4 or 5 of the criteria will likely have a very strong shot at this.

It’s one of those things where I would have loved to apply for this job about 5 or 6 years ago, but just not now.

I’m probably the opposite of Colin - I have the degree, but not the practical sabermetric experience.  (And R has been on my “to learn” list for ages now).  I’m also kicking myself for missing the chance to meet Keith Woolner at last week’s Cleveland-area SABR meeting.  Darn snow.

Still, as a local candidate, I can’t pass up an opportunity like this.

I don’t know what the salary considerations are.  My experience is that there is generally a baseball discount, though it’s possible that the baseball discount is applying less and less.

Ah yes, the dreaded “baseball discount” or what I’ve referred to as the “captive audience” problem.  While I’ve never talked to MLB proper, I have had conversations with related organizations.  I actually worked at STATS while in college, and have had more recent employment conversations with BIS and MLBAM.  Basically when I graduated, I left STATS behind to make some real money.  Since then I’ve been employed in IT for big insurance and pharmaceuticals (apparently in Tango’s neck of the woods). Not to mention the fact that I now have a family to support.  Any attempt to get back into a sports-related job has abruptly ended with the discussion of salary. 

Nonetheless, I’ll probably be sending my resume in for this one too.  You never know.

wes: if you can also add financial companies, then it’s exactly my neck of the woods, actually.  So far, we overlap on 2 of 3.

Tim @8 - I understand the baseball (and basketball and hockey) discount very well.  I just hope that it ceases to exist.  If you’re purely an IT guy, maintaining the networks in the team offices, you don’t take a discount.  So if you have *more* skills than that guy, it’s bad business to pay him a lot less!

Tango: By “neck of the woods” I was referring to northern NJ.  I’ve avoided the commute to the NYC, which has kept financials off of my resume so far.

My last comment wasn’t quite coherent.  At any rate, I’m saying that teams should not ask people to take a discount.  It distorts your costs and keeps you from hiring the best people.  Professional sports are not non-profits, and it’s pretty obvious that the benefits of having an analytical team - even at real market wages - far outweighs the costs of having it.

Hawerchuk/13: right, there’s a disconnect there.

The problem really is if you are part of the “front office” or “back office”.  The back office folks are guys in charge of the IT, infrastructure, programming, payroll, H/R, lawyers, etc.  Those guys are paid according to corporate america norms.  If they aren’t, they’re not going to last there a long time.

The front office folks take a discount (except for the GM).  Basically, it’s just like players, where the arb- and slave- players are paid less than they should, but the money is going to the top players.  Now, it may be that GMs are getting the lion’s share of the money because they get the lion’s share of the credit/debit, and are only going to be in the job for 1-6 years, or what have you.  It may be fair.  But for the non-GMs, they can also easily go to corporate america for a 20% to 100% pay increase.

Then you have guys like Hawerchuk is talking about that can work in the back office, and can be part of the front office.  So, what do you do with those, under the two pricing structures in MLB?

A few years ago, when I quoted my price to a team, it wasn’t even close to what he was thinking.  His price was my salary when I came out of college (I graduated in 1990).  He saw me as front office pay, and I saw myself as back office pay.

In the end, I find being a consultant gives me what I need, not only in pay, but in diversity.  I’m part of the consulting budget, and I don’t have to move, while I keep my corporate america job.

If I was in my 20s, not married and no mortgage, it’d be different.

a neural net processor?  a learning computer?

It’s really amazing when you think about it.  If you were purely a database programmer, you could build a high-paying career by:

1) Having no subject matter expertise outside of SQL
2) Being unwilling to manage people - just a pure individual contributor
3) Having none of the soft skills in the job description (dealing with people, presentations, soft skills)

Add a whole bunch of skills on top of that...And your salary gets cut in half by the organization!

Tango,

Out of curiosity, what is your day job??

Data design, development, programmer, system analyst.  Pretty much anything to do with the software lifecycle.

#18/Hawerchuk

Yes, but here’s the thing.  In your example of the non-soft skills guy, he never has a chance of being a “front-office” guy as Tango laid out. 

However, the guy who does have the other skills, has a chance at being something more, i.e., working his way up to be in the “inner circle” or possibly the next Shapiro or Epstein.  That potential is what allows for the discount, because you’ve dramatically limited the supply of jobs, but likely increased the demand for those jobs

I’d love to know what percentage of the people who have worked professionally as sabermetricians have the Masters or better quantitative requirement.

(I was a prep school math prize winner, state math Olympiad finalist, and was briefly assigned as a tutee to a future Nobel Laureate in physics (briefly as in = 10^-23 seconds) ... but my degree is in English.  And I definitely wish I knew more stats than I do.)

The Indians job description sounds like they’re looking for a guy to mostly answer questions that others have asked and framed.  If you’re looking for a guy to think of new questions or have new insights into old ones, then the baseball knowledge trumps the other qualifications combined.

I’ll second everything Tom says in 16. 

Teams essentially want statheads to pay them for the privilege of working for them, giving them work-product, and frequently being considered the red-headed stepchild of the front office.  I can’t imagine many scenarios in which I’d work full-time for a team.

For the second posting, it does seem weird to have job requirements that weed out practically every prominent person in the field.  You have Forman and Grabiner and the former seems mostly involved in database stuff and I don’t think the latter’s done anything about baseball for years.

I don’t think one should take the list of required qualifications too literally, except as an indication for the likely responsibilities of the position.

I probably qualify for the Data Architect position based on the listed qualifications, but I’m not the right guy for that job.  I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have doing that work for my team than Colin Wyers.

On the other hand, I’d like to think I would be quite capable at the Baseball Analyst position, but I don’t meet the first three qualifications.  I think I know enough about each of those to competently make my way and do a good job, but if I actually had the degrees and expert knowledge and experience to the extent they are asking for, there’s no way I’d consider a baseball front office position.  Not that I would anyway, given what they’re likely to pay, but even less so if I met the qualifications as listed.

Tim -

A non-soft skills guy never has the chance to run an organization - any organization.

If you do have these skills, you have the same upside in pretty much any industry out there.  If you can become Theo Epstein, you can be the CEO of a startup or a VP in a large company.  And you will not have to take a discount. 

Seriously - lots of people could care less about working in sports, but dream of running some kind of web company.  They literally have the same psychological attachment to it that many of us might to the analysis of any given sport.  And they get compensated properly at every step through the chain.  If you failed to compensate them properly, then would necessarily lose some of the best people in the process (see Investment Banking vs all other fields...)

To sort of echo what Mike said in #24 what little experience related qualifications (SQL, R, etc) I have I picked up doing sabermetrics not getting my degree (Operations Research).  Basically just getting at a degree in OR or something similar doesn’t particularly make one qualified (i.e. there’s LOTS of people in the Saber community more qualified than I despite my degree)

#25/Hawerchuck

Maybe we are saying the same thing.  I agree with you that IF money is your main goal in life, than working in sports (save for being a player) is not the way to do it.

What I AM saying is that there are lots of people who would be willing to work in sports for much below the market price of the rest of corporate america.  Do I know the number?  No, but I’m confidant that there are many more of them than could fill all the front office jobs at each of the major sports teams.

Maybe because I’d be willing to do it (and a number of friends I know would), I just assume that the pool of people willing to do it is actually bigger than I think it is.

As an example, Andrew Friedman gave up a quite lucrative job in Private Equity to be in the Rays organization.

#10/Tango

You said you’re not sure about compensation, but would your ballpark estimate (pun intended) be closer to 20k or 60k?

jojo: just a shot in the dark, but I’ll guess the first one at 70-90 and the 2nd one at 40-60.  Again, I have NO IDEA.  Just a pure guess.

And maybe cost of living in Ohio is so much lower than northern NJ that I’m out-of-touch as to how salaries translate.

#29

Thanks for the reply. It was #2 I was interested in. I’ve looked into similar jobs in non-baseball fields in the Midwest (Rochester, MN; Iowa City, IA) and the pay is generally around 55K. I understand your 40-60 estimate was just a guess, but if correct, it seems it would be a fairly competetive wage.

...and when I say similar jobs, I’m talking about entry level M.S. jobs. The posting for the Indians job doesn’t specify a certain amount of experience was necessary.

...and by entry level M.S. jobs, I’m talking specifically about acacemic research jobs that require a statistical background along with experience in SAS and R. A similar job in ‘industry’ (as opposed to academic) would most certainly net you a higher salary.

Guys, I would say that if you have even HALF the requirements listed here, please DO apply.  Just say “I read it from Tango”. 

Basically, coming here is like getting your Master’s!  I’m being facetious, but not totally.  Believe me, you guys being involved in sabermetrics have ALOT of value.

No one has sent me an email that they applied, and I’m disappointed by that.  There should be at least a dozen of you applying for this.

Haha, well some of us are more quiet types, but since you’re interested: i applied ASAP. Judging by jojo and Kniker’s comments, i doubt that i’m alone on that.

Also, you will be disappointed to learn that on a long, long list of potential responses to ‘where did you hear of this opportunity?’, the closest thing i could find to ‘I read it from Tango’, ‘FanGraphs’, or ‘THT’ was ‘SABR’. Weak!

Let me know when the Diamonbacks or Marlins post something like this.  I’ve had to deal with enough snow in Maryland, no way would I move to Cleveland.

I did apply, though I won’t be getting my M.S. until May.

That’s right Rally, weren’t you at the epicenter of both storms this week? 50+ inches in five days?

Sky got one of the jobs:

http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/team/front_office.jsp?c_id=cle

Sweet!  Good for him.  At the same time, I’ll miss his writing.

congrats to him

but another one bites the dust!