THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Cartwright is good, no doubt, but why call it now like he’s so far above everyone else?  I’d say his was about fourth best this week, and to me that is important - he writes brilliant, but high-minded stuff.  It’s going to be right in your (Tango) wheelhouse, because it’s the type of stuff you like and understand and write yourself.  Personally, I like to focus more on writing ability, and articles with a lot less charts and graphs.  Cartwright can improve in these areas.  Don’t get me wrong - he seems to be the absolute best on the analysis side.  But we’re not all going to agree what part of the job is most important.

Alternatively, I’d like to put Will, Christina, Goldstein, Sheehan, Clay, et al through a BPro Idol.  Brian is at their level, if not above already.

I know you wrote that to be nice, be really, this week in the comments Will Carroll admitted that he “had heard of FIP” but didn’t “follow it.” I understand that Will is not there for statistical analysis, but come on…

I guess for Brian’s sake, I hope he wins and/or gets a writing job at BP, but on the other hand I’d really rather not have a reason to subscribe to BP again.  I’d rather see all of Brian’s stuff at Fan Graphs or THT or BA or other much much better (and free to boot) baseball sites.

Andy:

You are presuming that BPro can ONLY hire one person.  That is a false presumption.

As I have stated in the past, BPro pays per article, not per employee.

So, there is no reason for BPro to reject an article by Brian, and yet accept one from Eric, as if they have some maximum quote of saberist articles they can run.  Indeed, with the canyon caused by the non-Fox and non-Silver and non-Clay articles, any saberist article would be a welcome addition.

I stand by my position that if Brian had simply went in cold to Sheehan, and said “Joe, what you think?”, Joe would say “Great stuff.  Here’s our agreement.  We pay 75$ or 100$ an article.  Keep putting stuff like this, and we’d be glad to pay you.”

He would NOT say “Listen.  I have no idea if you are good.  Let me put you through a 10-week training, and you have a 10% chance of making it.  How’s that sound?”

Sheehan should do the right thing here, and simply pull Brian from the contest, and hire him, and give him his 1000$.  Indeed, anyone who gets a semi-regular gig should get the prize money.

Brian won’t be exclusive at BPro anymore than Eric is.

Cartwright is good, no doubt, but why call it now like he’s so far above everyone else?

I don’t know if he’s so far above the others, but I do know that he’s more qualified than at least half the people currently writing for BPro.  Then again, Colin is better than nearly all of them and they didn’t even include him in the finals.  If the idea of this Idol thing was to find talent, they failed the moment that he wasn’t among the finalists.  It doesn’t really matter though.  Brian should be writing for BPro since he wants the job and it’s laughable that they make him go through the same process as others.  It’s even worse that they didn’t even include one of the best sabermetricians around in the finals.

I’d rather they continue to publish their work elsewhere anyway.

Right, the idea of American Idol is to find undiscovered talent, those people without a recording contract or major label giving them a distribution channel.

So, this should have disqualified anyone from Fangraphs or Hardball Times or Statspeak, since those sites ALREADY serve as the feeder system for BPro.  The one from MLB.com should also have been disqualified.  These people have enough of a resume that a yay/nay could have been made on the spot.  And like I said, they pay per article!  Nothing is stopping them from accepting their freelance contributions, and rejecting them on a whim.

The real Idol is to find a Clay Aiken or Kelly Clarkson or someone like that. 

As I said at the start:

I think the idea behind the contest is extremely lame.

At the same time, this lame idea brought a ton of talent out of the woodwork (one of the few times that the end justifies the means).

What’s wrong with hiring all 10 of them, right now?  BPro pays by the article, not by year.  They are free to pay for as many articles as they want. 

I think I’d argue that FanGraphs and THT are way beyond being “feeder” for BP.  That’s like saying the Tampa Bay Rays are feeder for the New York Mets.  A lot of us would much rather work for the moderate revenue, forward thinking organization than the legacy organization living off their brand name and payroll advantages.

Alright Tango, I’ll buy that.  My main point is just to say that people pay for BP and writers like Will, Joe, Kevin, and Christina, even though they have analytical skills far below those of Brian and Eric Seidman.  It’s the accessibility, the writing - the fun.  I got into sabermetrics through FJM, after all.

Surely the people here like Joe Posnanski and Craig Calcaterra, no?  They aren’t exactly “in Brian’s league,” if that’s how you’re measuring it, but I don’t think there’s any doubt as to who most people would rather read.  I don’t think too many people would make a fuss if BP hired Posnanski (except for the fact that they’d have to pay for his articles).

Again, not trying to fight.  Just trying to open up the discussion.

I agree with Cameron in #7.  I don’t see Fangraphs or THT being a feeder to BP.  Maybe it is, but I’d like to think it isn’t just because those two sites are publishing far superior quality than BP is.  If anything, BP should be the minor leagues for those sites.

David, yes, I agree wholeheartedly in the analogy of the Rays/Mets “feeder” system, or Marlins/Redsox.  One is not necessarily inferior to the other. 

Andy: And the “league” I mean is that Will is prime time, and Brian is already at the level of prime time.  Joe and Craig are also at the same level of Brian.  Brian’s got a huge body of work already.  It’s like graduating Princeton, and then Brian is applying to Harvard for the same degree.  And the staff there is going to make him go through hoops, and likely have their students reject him because his articles are too niche.

As I said, if the discussion is that “one man will win”, and the other 9 will never make a regular appearance at BPro, then we can have that discussion.  The reality is that at the very least, three if not five, of those people will be producing regular or semi-regular freelance work for BPro.  If we accept this as the eventual reality, exactly why are we making Brian and the others do what they are about to do?

"It is my wish that no one votes for Brian Cartwright for BPro Idol.”

Tango:  I appreciate the sentiment, but I can’t see how this strategy helps Brian.  I think it likely hurts Brian’s standing for his advocates to signal “he’s too good for this competition.” For better or worse, he entered the contest.  So he should stick it out, do the best he can, and be gracious if he doesn’t win (which, frankly, seems likely).  Asking people not to vote for him just muddies the waters. 

Now, your scenario in #3 is fine—if BPro wants to pull Brian from the competition and hire him, great.  But otherwise, his best move is to play this out and be a good sport (and his supporters should do the same).

Guy, the contest will end around Aug 1.  Brian is willing, able and ready to provide inspired analysis for the next 9 weeks.  Instead, they will give him 9 made-up themes that he has to focus on, which may or may not be relevant for what he wants to do.

If he gets knocked out early, he can do those inspired analysis, he can submit them to BPro as a freelance.  What is Joe Sheehan going to do when he sees those articles?  Reject them because… uh, because… I don’t even know why he’d reject them.

I think it would be impossible for Brian to win this thing, because he’s too niche.

I agree with your statement that “For better or worse, he entered the contest. “.  Brian should have simply submitted his articles directly to Sheehan.  As should have Colin.  They did not need this contest to show off their work.

I suppose from Guy’s statement that really I should shut up about this, since Brian made his bed, so who am I to try to change the course of anything.  I don’t disagree with the position that I should be quiet.

Offtopic, but - Tom, did you get the e-mail I sent you Sunday?

I agree with everything here, wholeheartedly.  Brian and I talk a lot and I always told him I would do whatever I could to help him out.  When Pizza Cutter and I reached out to Brian and Colin to join us at StatSpeak, we weren’t just asking two random analysts - we wanted the best. 

I don’t know if entering this contest was the right route, but regardless, both deserve to write for BP just as much as I do.

In fact, I hope he and Colin and others reach out, because frankly, I’m lonely as one of the only stats guys over there.

I agree that Brian probably sold himself very short in going this route.  I also think that BPro themselves should have smacked Brian silly and offered him the freelance gig immediately. 

It’s just a foregone conclusion as to what’s going to happen here.  If Brian is not writing for BPro semi-regularly starting in August (contest or not), then BPro has made a bold decision as to what it think of sabermetrics.

I think if Brian got voted off right away, then it would send a message to BPro that their readers are not interested in hardcore sabermetrics.  He’s more likely to get hired if he lasts longer in the contest (and BPro ultimately is probably more likely to hire other sabermetricians if he lasts longer in the contest). 

That said, Brian has amazing ideas that he himself admits he has trouble communicating , and I suspect he probably doesn’t mind the anonymous disrespectful comments as much because he can refine his ability to communicate his ideas?

Matt, I don’t think that would be the message at all.  Sabermetrics is a niche.  This means it’ll be almost impossible for a saberist to win.

You could put MGL and Posnanski in the finals, and Poz would win with a 90% vote, even though you will learn more from MGL.  (No offense to Poz.)

As for the process that Brian is going through to help himself: it can be done without the Idol process.  We call it on-the-job training.  It works fine.

If we are agreed that Brian will work at least semi-regularly with BPro in August, why the whole production right now?  Or, let me ask, under what scenario would Brian NOT be freelancing with BPro in August?

On-the-job training would help Brian too.  I just don’t know that he minds the comments in this format, based on conversations that I’ve had with him, but I could be wrong.

I think Brian might not be freelancing with BPro in August if he gets voted off in the first round or two.  I do think that BPro is going to take voting as somewhat of a signal of reader interest even if they shouldn’t.

Brian Cartwright has become the wampeater of the Sabermetric karass.  (Twenty bonus points to whoever gets that reference.)

No one will ever slip a Vonnegut reference passed me!  Cat’s Cradle

"I think if Brian got voted off right away, then it would send a message to BPro that their readers are not interested in hardcore sabermetrics.”

Actually, I disagree with this, and it’s yet another problem with this contest.  If we’re judging strictly by the rules (best article this week that sticks to the theme) then even Bill James might get kicked off for dumb reasons.

And I disagree with Tango’s assertion that Brian is already at the level of BPro’s big name authors.  His analysis is, sure.  But if the criteria include having the ability to write regular articles that are popular, I bet the BPro Three (Oceanic Six?) have the talent/knowledge of how to be popular.  Or maybe I’m missing the point.  Or maybe the statheads’ anti-BPro stance of the past few years is missing the point…

My only problem with Bryan’s writing so far is that he seems to plop tables into his articles without warning or explanation.  It can be a touch disorienting IMO.  If you read the Yankee stadium article, that first table is just sort of there, and it’s up to the reader to interpret it.  As a “Basics” article, I think it should be introduced and explained a little better as the average fan might not know what it means that the “SDT” in “2-year” has an “SD” of 0.23.

This is meant as a nit-pick and maybe a suggestion to Bryan.  Obviously his work is fantastic and I agree his analysis is in another, ahem, ballpark.

Haha, the captcha for this post is “writing.” I like it.

Ack, it’s “Brian” not “Bryan.” Sorry.

As someone who gets called “Bryan” all the time, I apologize.

I bet they don’t hire him. I’m guessing that Cartwright won’t accept an exclusive arrangement.

Why would anything have to be exclusive?  Eric Seidman writes for BP and also for Fangraphs.  There’s nothing preventing Brian from having the same arrangement if he and whoever makes the decisions at BP agree to it.

I have seen the agreements that BPro gives its prospects.  They are non-exclusive agreements, whereby the author transfers exclusive publishing rights to that particular article for a set period of time (anywhere from 6 months to 18 months).  Afterwards, you can republish the work.

This is how Dan Fox republishes his pieces on his site.  Personally, I think BPro should open up its archives after 6 months or 12 months.  A tremendous opportunity is being lost.  I suspect virtually no one subscribes for their exclusive archives, and yet, it’s a great way to bring in new readers (via Google searches), as well as being good to the research community.

I agree that people aren’t subscribing for the archives.  But if you make the archives free, then you’ll probably have some people who might otherwise have subscribed just wait 6 months to read things.

As for research, how much value is there?  When was the last time they did anything there that was cutting edge in baseball analysis?  Dan Fox’s baserunning stuff?  The people left, judging by the comments on Idol, wouldn’t know cutting edge analysis if it came up and hit them over the head.  Let alone be capable of producing such themselves.

Yes, you might have some people who don’t want topical information, and will wait 6 months or one year for the free archives.

You might also have some people who might subscribe when they do google searches and stumble on articles that they didn’t know existed.

Seeing that they allow the authors to republish the work on their own sites after the 6 or 12 month exclusive arrangement expires, they may as well as open the gates themselves. 

Is it really better for Dan Fox’s articles to be free on his site, and behind the paydoor on BPro’s site?