Are there people on OH you feel could do a better job than AM or other members of the O's brass?

[bluedog]

I didn't say being a player makes you a good evaluator. I said it adds to your experience. Two people with the same inherent knack for evaluation, if one has no experience in the game and the other played pro ball, the ballplayer is going to be ahead of the outsider.

Maybe. Is the outsider someone that watches every game and spends all of his free time analyzing pro ball? Then I'm not sure the player has the edge just because he's spent more time in the dugout and on the field.

[CA-ORIOLE]

I am not putting aside the statistical tools -- it's just that we are discussing scouting specifically. Someone with no experience whatsoever in baseball takes over. How is he going to assess the organization? When he meets with the current persons in charge of amateur scouting, pro scouting, pro instruction, international scouting, etc. how is he going to evaluate 1) the job they've done, and 2) their plans for the future? When you get daily reports from your pro scouts, are you comfortable working with those reports and understanding what they are saying? Are you comfortable looking at a snap shot of your minor league system and getting a feelign for where your strengths and weaknesses are? How do you distinguish between two AA recommends as trade targets for a position of need?

I guess the answer to all of this is "rely on the experts you have around you." Great, so long as they are good at what they do. And if they aren't, would you really have any way of knowing? Is the person with no industry experience going to be able to differentiate between bad scouting and bad luck when appraising his staff? Let's say you don't like the job he does, how are you hiring his replacement? When you interview all of these candidates, are you going to be a good judge of which of their plans for your organization makes the most sense? Will you have a sense for the costs associated with implementing the various courses of actions they'd like to see your org partake in?

QUOTE]

I am not putting aside the statistical tools -- it's just that we are discussing scouting specifically.

You can't discuss scouting without statistics, especially in the context of being a GM. They are interrelated and they often provide conflcting information. As I said before, I think overreliance on scouting reports/tools is the number one reason for GM failures. That being said, I'm very much pro scouting. At which point the statistical tools begin to outweigh the scouting information is a complicated question, probably left to another thread.

You've covered many important aspects in your response and they are all fair ones. I'm comfortable many on here could read an understand a scouting report, even a complicated one. In the end, the answer to your questions(s) is judgement an analytical ability. That extends to the credibility of the scouts and the scouting reports themselves, as well as other information. Like I said before, I don't think being a player adds value, In most cases it probably detracts imo.

For the purpose of this discussion, we're really not talking about a person with no baseball experience. By definition we are talking about a "fanatic" who has a pretty good understanding of the game and probably a pretty good knowledge of statistical analysis. Other manaegerial/leadership aspects have been discussed. We're not talking about everybody on the board. In reality, I understand that actually getting the job requires some affiliation/apprenticeship. I disagree it's a critical element of the skills required to be a better GM than AM. I highly question AM's ability to assess scouting and statistical analysis and I don't think he's one of the worst GM's.

As far as evaluating the job scouts and player development does, almost any job can be assigned measures of effectiveness. Since scouting and player development are critical processes, those are one's you probably attack pretty quickly and compare them to other organizations. complicated? Yes, but not impractical. Many of your questions seam to be cost versus benefit type. Decisions made by managers make every day.

If I missed something you asked please let me know.

[SrMeowMeow]

Sure if you want to qualify it by saying - right now this minute, I'll agree. But that's not what the post said. The way it was worded suggested that no one that regularly posts on OH could ever get a job as a GM, which I believe is simply false.

Sorry if that was confusing. Hopefully I've clarified my meaning.

[Stotle]

I don't understand how playing baseball at a professional level as a 20 to 26 year old somehow qualifies a person to become a scout. A guy who's working on his hitting, fielding and conditioning each day isn't focused on evaluating other player's talent - he's focused on maximizing his own talent. There are literally thousands of professional players who have long playing careers who wouldn't know the first thing about being a professional talent scout.

What allowed Beane to move into a job as an advanced scout was his intelligence and aptitude (he was offered a full ride at Stanford) not his 6 years experience as a ballplayer. Clearly having played the game as a pro didn't hurt, but we wouldn't hand Manny Ramirez a job as a professional scout and he's played the game for two decades professionally. So just playing pro sports doesn't give you the tools to be a scout.

And furthermore, I can make a fairly strong argument that 6 years of being a fan who watches every inning of every game a team player and analyses every aspect of every player's statistical performance is a far better form of "training" to become a scout than sitting on the bench eating sunflower seeds and getting an occasional spot start in the outfield is. The fan may not have the behind the scenes access the player does, but I really doubt that even Beane spent all his spare time analyzing players and trade scenarios when he was a player.

When you spend every day with professional ball players, and come up through the ranks of amateur ball, you have a sense for the types of players that make it and the types of players that don't. Of course it doesn't make you infallable, but it is a HUGE advantage. I'd say pro experience isn't necessary for an amateur scout (scouting for draft or international scout), but for a pro scout it's a pretty important.

I often rely on mentally comping to players I played with that did or did not have success in college/minors when assessing high school and college players. Also, I never said it "gives you the tools to be a scout". But two people equally equipped mentally to evaluate players, one with baseball experience has an advantage. You just are not right about this, I'm sorry.

A fan watching the game is absolutely not better training, and any argument you make will be a weak one. I mean, if you'd like to share some sort of experience that is driving these opinions of yours, I'm open to having my mind changed. But this is almost 100% counter to what, like every one in the industry thinks (in as much as I've spoken with them).

I wasn't asked for credentials when I got my job because I was vouched for by someone who was very familiar with my level of understanding of the game. To some extent you are right, in that there are organizations who have started to farm the ranks of intelligent non-baseball people for scouting positions because they are a clean slate that can have the organization's values imprinted on them. But we are talking entry level positions as an associate scout (some orgs go so far as to hire an Area Scout with no baseball credentials, but that is RARE).

This is an honest question -- are you involved in scouting, or do you know scouts? I'm just curious as to how you've arrived at these conclusions about the industry.

[bluedog]

Ok, so you think being a lawyer qualifies you to be a GM. What other qualifictions do you think he needs? A lot of people have a good idea of what good plan might be, but who here has the qualifications to impliment their plan?

Theo Epstein is a lawyer. That's his degree. He's not a statistician. His career path was Marketing > Operations > General Manager.

There is only one essential qualification to be a good GM and its Resource Management. Understand what resources are required to successfully perform any tasks required by the organization, find the best resource available and provide them necessary tools (money, personnel, clear goals and metrics for evaluating success in achieving those goals) and then get out of the way and let people do their jobs. At that point the GMs primary role is be the final arbitrator for any strategic decisions that are mission critical to the organization.

That's it. Anything else is not essential and is often counter productive. A good GM needs to be a generalist in practice and needs to always keep the big picture top of mind. The GM's job is not to get involved in evaluating a specific player's talent, its to make strategic decisions like "we will not give multi-million, multi-year contracts to free agent relievers". It's up to the people under the GM to make the specific player decisions and to make sure they conform to the organizational strategy the GM has put in place.

The GM shouldn't fall in love with a specific player, he should fall in love with a specific type of player and then let his baseball people find the individual guys that fit that type. This was Beane's genius and why he's transformed the sports world with Money Ball. Beane didn't decide what players to go out and get, the stats told him who to get. Beane just laid down the initial strategy of finding players who were undervalued in the marketplace and acquiring them and getting rid of player who were overvalued in the marketplace.

Beane and Epstein and many other successful GMs are businessmen first and foremost. They understand the principle of asset and resource management and that's why they are successful. It has much less to do with what title they have on their diploma or business card or how many years they've spent as a professional scout.

[Stotle]

QUOTE]

You can't discuss scouting without statistics, especially in the context of being a GM. They are interrelated and they often provide conflcting information. As I said before, I think overreliance on scouting reports/tools is the number one reason for GM failures. That being said, I'm very much pro scouting. At which point the statistical tools begin to outweigh the scouting information is a complicated question, probably left to another thread.

You've covered many importaant aspects in your response and they are all fair ones. I'm comfortable many on here could read an understand a scouting report, even a complicated one. In the end the answer to your questions(s) is judgement an analytical ability. That extends to the credibility of the scouts and the scouting reports themselves just as well as other information. Like I said before, I don't think being a player adds value, In most cases it probably detracts imo.

For the purpose of this discussion, we're really not talking about a person with no baseball experience. By definition we are talking about a "fanatic" who has a pretty good understanding of the game and probably a pretty good knowledge of statistical analysis. Other manaegerial/leadership aspects have been discussed. We're not talking about everybody on the board. In reality, I understand that actually getting the job requires some affiliation/apprenticeship. I disagree it's a critical element of the skills required to be a better GM than AM. I highly question AM's ability to assess scouting and statistical analysis and I don't think he's one of the worst GM's.

As far as evaluating the job scouts and player development does, almost any job can be assigned measures of effectiveness. Since scouting and player development are critical processes, those are one's you probably attack pretty quickly and compare them to other organizations. complicated? Yes, but not impractical. Many of your questions seam to be cost versus benefit type. Decisions made by managers make every day.

If I missed something you asked please let me know.

It's two separate skills that are both utilized together for a GM. Scouting/stat analysis. If you want to see how quickly people with the wrong idea about stat analysis can screw up evaluation, read some of the stuff written by highly motivated internet analysts. I'm sure a lot of these people are very bright, and I'm sure they have a better understanding of the game than the general fan, but it is blatantly clear when they don't have 1) experience playing baseball at a reasonably high level, or 2) experience evaluating players from a purely scouting perspective.

I mean, we see it on this site. People pointing to 10, 20, 50 games of low minors ball and making declarative statements about players they've never even seen on television. People complaining about stats of college freshmen and sophomores -- even high schoolers! Heck, how many times did people point to Dylan Bundy's high school stat line as evidence of how good he was?

The proliferation of sabermetrics has been great for the game. There have also been outstanding contributions from amateurs who have looked for ways to add value to this broad concept of player evaluation. But somewhere along the way fans started to get the notion that this stuff is easy, so long as you are smart and can understand the theory behind statistics. We have moved from "scouting is all that matters" to "as long as you're smart you don't need any specialized baseball training".

Stats are going to help you identify when a player may be a little unlucky. They aren't going to identify a player that could improve through adding a pitch, increasing endurance so he doesn't lose his arm slot around the 5th inning, take a hitch out of his load so he doesn't get as much loop in his swing. You don't have to personally be an expert at identifying all of these things, but you have to be aware they exist. When you are considering giving a $85 million contract to a free agent, is that decision really going to be based heavily on the opinions of others? No. You are going to use all of that helpful info and then apply it to your own personal appraisal of a player.

Sorry, there are limited Andrew Friedmans in the world, and even he had to learn the industry in a limited role for a few years before he was given the reins to a ML club.

[Satyr3206]

I've decided. A Baseball job is aiming way too low. I want to be King of the Universe!!!:rofl:

[Malike]

I honestly can't believe this thread is still going on. I just don't understand it. There are a whole hell of a lot of smart people on this board, real smart people I'm sure, but there is not a single poster on this site who could walk into the GM office of the O's on Monday and start fixing this team. Nobody, no one, not one single person. What are you going to say when you are asked for your credentials? Well, sir, I have amassed nearly 100,000 posts on a message board and 90% of them were trade ideas.

Seriously people, and I don't mean this in a bad way at all. Not a single one of you could walk in there Monday morning and fix this team. I'm sure plenty of people here are bright enough to do the job with years of apprenticeship and training, but to think you could just walk in Monday and do the job is flat out ridiculous. I don't care how much MLB The Show, or GM video games you played. You would be overwhelmed in minutes, you'd be asked questions you have no idea how to answer, and by the end of the day you'd realize that you made a real foolish wish to that magic genie when you asked him to be the O's GM.

Really. No one here. No one. Nobody.

[Satyr3206]

I honestly can't believe this thread is still going on. I just don't understand it. There are a whole hell of a lot of smart people on this board, real smart people I'm sure, but there is not a single poster on this site who could walk into the GM office of the O's on Monday and start fixing this team. Nobody, no one, not one single person. What are you going to say when you are asked for your credentials? Well, sir, I have amassed nearly 100,000 posts on a message board and 90% of them were trade ideas.

Seriously people, and I don't mean this in a bad way at all. Not a single one of you could walk in there Monday morning and fix this team. I'm sure plenty of people here are bright enough to do the job with years of apprenticeship and training, but to think you could just walk in Monday and do the job is flat out ridiculous. I don't care how much MLB The Show, or GM video games you played. You would be overwhelmed in minutes, you'd be asked questions you have no idea how to answer, and by the end of the day you'd realize that you made a real foolish wish to that magic genie when you asked him to be the O's GM.

Really. No one here. No one. Nobody.

Yeah, but think of the really great parking spot you would have until you got fired!

[TakebackOPACY]

Ok. So I followed this thread. And for the most part I thought, "Are they really going on and on about this?". It really just depends on how you interpret the question in the poll. So until a moment ago, I thought my answer was 'Yes' and 'No'.

Then I answered 'Yes', and here's why... I'm even going further than most who said 'yes'. It is likely that someone with some history or future as at least an occasional poster on Orioles Hangout WILL be a GM. It just makes sense. Someone who will be all the things Stotle is saying he/she needs to be who loves baseball and is developing all the people skills and political savvy and relationship building skills and knowledge of all things baseball either was, is now, or will be at least an occasional poster on OH for some stretch of time. Why wouldn't that be the case?

If someone told you Roy Firestone can't get enough of Orioles Hangout before we knew Roy can't get enough of OH, what would your response have been? How many players' relatives have posted? We've had agents post. How does Hunter know the Blogosphere will blow up in response to Reimold starting against a RHP? Why wouldn't a future GM be on OH from time to time as a fan? GM's are people too. Hell, it's not out of the question that we could get a post in this thread that says, "I can't do a better job than Andy MacPhail because I am Andy MacPhail." (Okay, it is out of the question; just having some fun here. )

You can say this isn't what the OP/poll meant. I'll get it. But the answer to the poll for me is, "Of course. Why wouldn't that be the case?"

[TakebackOPACY]

I honestly can't believe this thread is still going on. I just don't understand it. There are a whole hell of a lot of smart people on this board, real smart people I'm sure, but there is not a single poster on this site who could walk into the GM office of the O's on Monday and start fixing this team. Nobody, no one, not one single person. What are you going to say when you are asked for your credentials? Well, sir, I have amassed nearly 100,000 posts on a message board and 90% of them were trade ideas.

Seriously people, and I don't mean this in a bad way at all. Not a single one of you could walk in there Monday morning and fix this team. I'm sure plenty of people here are bright enough to do the job with years of apprenticeship and training, but to think you could just walk in Monday and do the job is flat out ridiculous. I don't care how much MLB The Show, or GM video games you played. You would be overwhelmed in minutes, you'd be asked questions you have no idea how to answer, and by the end of the day you'd realize that you made a real foolish wish to that magic genie when you asked him to be the O's GM.

Really. No one here. No one. Nobody.

And yet I have to agree with this. So again, it depends how you interpret the original question.

[CA-ORIOLE]

It's two separate skills that are both utilized together for a GM

.

I think that's what I said. I also said they often provide conflicting information and resolving that conflcting information with sound analytical ability is critical to the GM's function. That means the GM has to look/analyze all the information objectively and without bias. That includes the scouts and the scouting information itself as well as the statistical information. He doesn't have to be an expert in scouting or statistics to do so.

If you want to see how quickly people with the wrong idea about stat analysis can screw up evaluation, read some of the stuff written by highly motivated internet analysts. I'm sure a lot of these people are very bright, and I'm sure they have a better understanding of the game than the general fan, but it is blatantly clear when they don't have 1) experience playing baseball at a reasonably high level, or 2) experience evaluating players from a purely scouting perspective.

Experience playing ML baseball or any baseball is not required to be a GM for many for the reasons already covered. Many of the top GM's never played High School Baseball. It's simply not a requirement. I disagree. To be a scout, sure.

All the statistical internet bloggers who have messed up evaluations simply isn't a fair analysis. Quite frankly the person who is too much into stats is probably not the right candidate to be GM. The ability to understand and use stats and scouting is critical. In the end it's about analytical ability.

I mean, we see it on this site. People pointing to 10, 20, 50 games of low minors ball and making declarative statements about players they've never even seen on television. People complaining about stats of college freshmen and sophomores -- even high schoolers! Heck, how many times did people point to Dylan Bundy's high school stat line as evidence of how good he was?

I think I covered that in my last post. I wasnt really going to go there. That's a long drawn out discusssion and we're going to stray way off topic there. I will say I agree with you. That gets back to analytical ability and judgement.

But somewhere along the way fans started to get the notion that this stuff is easy, so long as you are smart and can understand the theory behind statistics. We have moved from "scouting is all that matters" to "as long as you're smart you don't need any specialized baseball training".

I don't profess that, nor did I indicate that in any of my posts. There is definitely middle ground and variation. I think I was pretty clear about that. Again, it's a complicated and drawn out subject better saved for another debate/thread of it's own. For purpose of this discussion, the GM has to have the ability to weigh both factors, taking into account all the variables. Again, assigning MOE's to any process should be a primary consideration.

[Stotle]

.

I think that's what I said. I also said they often provide conflicting information and resolving that conflcting information with sound analytical ability is critical to the GM's function. That means the GM has to look/analyze all the information objectively and without bias. That includes the scouts and the scouting information itself as well as the statistical information. He doesn't have to be an expert in scouting or statistics to do so.

"If you want to see how quickly people with the wrong idea about stat analysis can screw up evaluation, read some of the stuff written by highly motivated internet analysts. I'm sure a lot of these people are very bright, and I'm sure they have a better understanding of the game than the general fan, but it is blatantly clear when they don't have 1) experience playing baseball at a reasonably high level, or 2) experience evaluating players from a purely scouting perspective."

Experience playing ML baseball or any baseball is not required to be a GM for many for the reasons already covered. Many of the top GM's never played High School Baseball. It's simply not a requirement. I disagree. To be a scout, sure.

All the statistical internet bloggers who have messed up evaluations simply isn't a fair analysis. Quite frankly the person who is too much into stats is probably not the right candidate to be GM. The ability to understand and use stats and scouting is critical. In the end it's about analytical ability.

I think I covered that in my last post. I wasnt really going to go there. That's a long drawn out discusssion and we're going to stray way off topic there. I will say I agree with you. That gets back to analytical ability and judgement.

I don't profess that, nor did I indicate that in any of my posts. There is definitely middle ground and variation. I think I was pretty clear about that. Again, it's a complicated and drawn out subject better saved for another debate/thread of it's own. For purpose of this discussion, the GM has to have the ability to weigh both factors, taking into account all the variables. Again, assigning MOE's to any process should be a primary consideration.

I don't disagree with any of this. I think my only quibble is that my claim has never been you need experience playing baseball to be a GM. I said you need experience in baseball. I also have said that an ability to evaluate a player from a scouting perspective is necessary. I stand by those two claims. You don't need to BE a scout, but you need to understand scouting. You don't HAVE to have played baseball to scout, but playing baseball can help a lot with that understanding.

[OFFNY]

.

Big comeback for the "NO's." 47 - 42.

[Highbeams]

I don't know this counts as brass, but player development is below par, so AM needs to fix this NOW.