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Friday, September 23, 2011
“The Moneyball revolution from someone who helped it happen”
Sheehan notes this important point:
The idea that people who haven’t played professional baseball can make a contribution within front offices may be the most lasting legacy of the Moneyball revolution. Paul DePodesta, thinly disguised as the fictional Peter Brand in the movie, wasn’t the first non-playing GM, but he represented a class that has now replicated itself, its DNA, across the industry.
Sheehan nails it right there.
If you look at the NHL, you see the ranks there are still very heavy on former NHL players, or former minor league players. It’s very much old school, old boys network. Lifers, basically. It’s hard to get a law degree or other advanced professional degree, and then work as a GM in the NHL. There was a guy like that, but he also happens to be a Hall of Fame goalie (Ken Dryden). Things are changing though in the NHL, slowly.
In MLB however, those guys going to college and earning their bachelor’s and masters now have hope that they can earn 50 cents on the dollar to work in a front office. Where once the supply overwhelmed the demand, now the supply completely subsumes it. People simply love the idea of working for a sports team, and they are willing to earn arbitration-level salaries in order to do it. Former pro players lament their inability to land a job in a front office, because they don’t understand the number-crunching aspect of it. (The byproduct of that is that Mitch Williams and Kevin Millar find happy homes on TV.)
It’s like crossing the color and nationality line. Where once you had just white Americans and Canadians in the NHL and MLB, now you have a huge influx of talent from blacks and players worldwide. This is what we have in MLB front offices: teams have access to a huge supply of talent, and that I think is the impact of Moneyball.
Moneyball made people dream and believe that there’s a different path to MLB.
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