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Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Sky’s Sabermetric Eulogy
I’ve gotten emails from at least one young fan asking for advice on getting into baseball. For what it’s worth, here’s mine:
A) Start blogging: the surest way to a career in baseball is by consistently putting good stuff out there. Don’t wait until you get that one earth-shattering finding. Consistency will prove you know what you’re talking about and over time you’ll build a solid reputation which will lead to other opportunities.
B) Get a degree: As sabermetrics becomes more advanced, there’s going to be more need for people with technical skills. I personally have an MS in Statistics, and I think it’s helped tremendously. Not only will the knowledge from your degree help in your analysis, but jobs in and around sabermetrics will likely start requiring one.
C) Don’t worry about the competition: There was a time when I wondered if most of the sabermetric gold had already been mined. However, as I discovered, that’s not even close to true. While many topics have already been looked at, it doesn’t mean that other studies have all the answers. If you have an idea for an investigation, go for it - chances are you’ll have a twist on it that makes your analysis a little different from what has come before. Sabermetric studies can always benefit from a second opinion.
D) Work hard: I challenged myself to write one in-depth study per week here at Baseball Analysts. It wasn’t always easy, but pushing yourself to perform your best work pays off. By the end I was not only writing here, but writing weekly for SI, as well as consulting, meaning I was spending more time on baseball than at my actual job. Like anything, serious payoff requires serious hard work.
Funny he should write that, as I get alot of these emails, and a new one just this morning. This is what I wrote:
Dude, they get tons of letters. I would discourage anyone from going in because the percentages just don’t make any sense.
There’s two ways to get in:
1. you work 12-16 hour days, at little to no pay, and hopefully you grow into the job2. you make a name for yourself online, get exposed by Fangraphs, THT or BPro, and they come calling to you
And, programming helps. Alot.
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