THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Jack Z

Interview with Mariners’ GM.  Here’s a great back-to-back Q&A that pretty much symbolizes the two lenses of a GM’s glasses (performance analysis in one lens, and scouting in the other lens). 

DL: Talking about the advancement of defensive metrics, Bill James recently said, “The only difference between our ability to evaluate defense and offense, at this point, is confidence.” Do you agree with that?

JZ: Well, Bill James is a hell of a lot smarter than I am and he’s got an enormous amount more experience than I do, but I’d have to read the entire context of how he said that in order to be able to interpret it exactly. I know we have confidence in our own information. We have confidence in what we’re doing and it goes hand in hand with how we’ll try to solidify something through defensive metrics or whatever type of form we’re looking at. We also try to have a scout in the ballpark to see what he thinks. It’s checks and balances because I like to have a lot of information before we make a call. Using Ryan Langerhans as an example, we made calls to scouts. Can he play center field? Can he play left field? Can he play right field? But as far as (defensive metrics) go, yeah, it is a new frontier and I think that’s what (James) was probably referring to. People haven’t all jumped out there and said, “This is what we’re going to do because we believe in these numbers,” but we’ve taken steps. Any decision we’ve made in terms of addressing our club, in regards to defense, was made with a lot of information and we’re continuing to go that route.

DL: Scouting is generally accepted to be an inexact science. That being said, are there elite scouts?

JZ: Oh, yeah. I tell our guys this a lot. I’ve always been amazed, over the course of the years, when somebody makes an acquisition, and you’ll end up sitting with people and saying, “How did that guy become Comeback Player of the Year?” or “How did you know this guy was going to do that?” There is so much said about the understanding of the swing of a hitter or the understanding of a hitter’s confidence and there are also the instincts of a scout who really gets it. He sees the body type and he sees the things that the player does, like how he hits in certain counts. He sees pitchers’ deliveries and how they use the stuff they have. What is the difference between a really good pitcher and one that should be a really good pitcher but isn’t there yet? What is it? Is it adjustments? Is it the ability to use his stuff? I mean, I can sit here with Carmen Fusco, who I have a great deal of respect for, and he can tell me about the swing, he can tell me about the approach to hitting, he can tell me a lot of things. And this is why you go out and hire quality pitching coaches and quality hitting instructors. They understand it. They get it and really good scouts see it. And once they tell it to you—sometimes you’re going to make a decision based on a particular person’s gut feel and that says a lot about people who have had a lot of success. They have confidence, they believe in what they see and they have a track record of being right. They’ve done their homework, so it’s not a shot in the dark. There’s a definite reason why they’re making the assessment they make.