Jon Meoli interviews Sig Mejdal

[Just Regular]

I feel Analytics and Latin America are kind of birds of a feather, and we're heading towards the tail end of the honeymoon period where doing it at all earns grace points, and beginning of discovering if this regime is good enough at it to start filling up the Wins column.

I am cautiously optimistic about Leandro Arias, though I have no guess how he changed from a Top 25-ish ranking in MLB.com's 2022 list some months ago, to a Top 5-ish ranking on Fangraphs BOARD of international 2022 ETA's, but if other independent evaluators see him improving directionally even if not on that scale, I imagine MASN is going to sell us like he's A-Rod.   American kid timeline wise, he's just had the non-baseball season part of his 10th grade year between now and then.

[Can_of_corn]

8 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

I feel Analytics and Latin America are kind of birds of a feather, and we're heading towards the tail end of the honeymoon period where doing it at all earns grace points, and beginning of discovering if this regime is good enough at it to start filling up the Wins column.

I am cautiously optimistic about Leandro Arias, though I have no guess how he changed from a Top 25-ish ranking in MLB.com's 2022 list some months ago, to a Top 5-ish ranking on Fangraphs BOARD of international 2022 ETA's, but if other independent evaluators see him improving directionally even if not on that scale, I imagine MASN is going to sell us like he's A-Rod.   American kid timeline wise, he's just had the non-baseball season part of his 10th grade year between now and then.

I don't know, the OH is actually more questioning of the process than other groups I've seen.  You have tons of White Knights out there defending Elias right now. 

I think you've got at least two more full seasons of mediocrity that folks would accept before leadership starts getting any substantial blowback.

[spiritof66]

18 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Needless to say, size of staff matters but quality and capabilities also matter a great deal.   So, just knowing the size doesn’t tell you that much.   

That said, the various team websites have front office personnel listings, some of which are more up to date and complete than others.   The Yankees don’t identify anyone below the Director level.   The Orioles specify 8 members of their analytics group.   
https://www.mlb.com/orioles/team/front-office

I'd like to know all those things about teams' analytic staffs. But in a circumstance like this, where I doubt it will be possible to get meaningful assessments of the quality, capabilities, and communications skills of teams' personnel, except where those things are reflected in general assessments of teams' reputations, I'd be interested in apples-to-apples comparisons of the size of analytics staffs. Apart from it possibly being the only data that will be available, I think the size and payroll of a team's analytics staff correlates, in general, to the team's commitment to this part of its operation, the amount of information it generates and its willingness to make use of that information.

For example, if I learned only that the NYYs, RS, Jays, Dodgers, Cubs and a few more teams each have staffs of 30 to 40, and the Orioles have just moved up to 12, that would affect my opinion as to whether the Orioles have closed most of the gap between them and those teams. Sure, I'd like to know more, but I'm not expecting that I will.

[Pickles]

2 hours ago, justD said:

Rereading it, I see there was no direct jab. 

It's all good.  I was disappointed though.  I was hoping for one!

[LookinUp]

I used to run a major healthcare data analytics outfit. It's much more complex than baseball data, but the processes are incredibly similar.

The bottom line is anyone can find a computer programmer to pull data and run calculations. Understanding what the data actually means and how it's useful is where the art comes in.

Sports analytics departments will be a money sink for any organization that doesn't integrate players, coaches and scouts into the process. I don't care if you have 50 staff. If they're not part of a larger effort, a lot of what they do is just money wasted. A lot of the best ideas need to come from the non tech folks. Eventually they're so integrated that they essentially become tech folks themselves, just not programmers. The fact that Sig seems to appreciate the importance of that part of the process is incredibly important.

[Just Regular]

3 hours ago, LookinUp said:

I used to run a major healthcare data analytics outfit. It's much more complex than baseball data, but the processes are incredibly similar.

The bottom line is anyone can find a computer programmer to pull data and run calculations. Understanding what the data actually means and how it's useful is where the art comes in.

Sports analytics departments will be a money sink for any organization that doesn't integrate players, coaches and scouts into the process. I don't care if you have 50 staff. If they're not part of a larger effort, a lot of what they do is just money wasted. A lot of the best ideas need to come from the non tech folks. Eventually they're so integrated that they essentially become tech folks themselves, just not programmers. The fact that Sig seems to appreciate the importance of that part of the process is incredibly important.

Great post.

I feel like some of early analytics were like Dave Cameron writing posts from his basement about how Felix Hernandez shouldn't throw first pitch fastballs, or whatever it was.   Now from any outsider's basement its Ben Clemens on John Means not throwing fastballs to right-handed hitters, but my guess is some of the biggest gains will come when players gain some fluency with what is possible, and then tell the quantitative analysts the stuff they want instead of the other way around.   

In the transition when Gelles left and we were down to Di Zou alone, how much of his work product got through Buck, etc?

Here DI this summer describing other Front Office members as his customers, so I doubt four years ago he was working closely with Manny Machado.

 

[Frobby]

12 minutes ago, Just Regular said:

Great post.

I feel like some of early analytics were like Dave Cameron writing posts from his basement about how Felix Hernandez shouldn't throw first pitch fastballs, or whatever it was.   Now from any outsider's basement its Ben Clemens on John Means not throwing fastballs to right-handed hitters, but my guess is some of the biggest gains will come when players gain some fluency with what is possible, and then tell the quantitative analysts the stuff they want instead of the other way around.   

In the transition when Gelles left and we were down to Di Zou alone, how much of his work product got through Buck, etc?

Here DI this summer describing other Front Office members as his customers, so I doubt four years ago he was working closely with Manny Machado.

 

Gelles left same time as Buck and Duquette did, along with a couple of others.   That’s why the department was down to one when Sig arrived.