The Effect of Chemistry in MLB and the Yuniesky Betancourt Exception
by Sec 108 on Jan 27, 2010 7:22 PM PST
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PrintJeff's note: an excellent fanpost that I've bumped to the front page.
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As Mariner fans we have had to read and listen to a great many stories in recent years regarding the effect of team chemistry on performance. My decision to tackle this topic was spurred by this comment and the ensuing discussion in the recent Griffey Poll here on Lookout Landing. Much of what I wrote here is actually from something I put together a couple of years ago, but never finished. It has been updated to be more current. It is also not a short read, so consider yourself warned.
Now I am a person who prefers efficiency in all things, so I will point out right off the bat that my belief is that team chemistry has a negligible effect on team performance at the Major League level. If you care to find out why please continue reading. If you vehemently disagree but have no intention of digesting my argument before responding then I did not write this for you.
A little background on me is warranted here. A few years back I was a bit bored in my life and felt I needed some stimulus to sharpen my mind. I had studied math and science intensively in college while at the same time pursuing a second degree in Comparative Religion that required me to learn large amounts of philosophy and other social sciences. What I did not study during my college years was business. So in 2001 I enrolled in some economics, accounting and other business courses over a year long period at Seattle Central Community College. The experience was amazing and it led to me making a career change. Much of the concepts in this piece lean heavily on my classes with Professor James Hubert. The man is brash, thought provoking, frustrating, anger inducing and he left a huge mark on how I process the world around me and how I view the way people behave.
Now let us move on to the chemistry discussion. When it comes to people who feel chemistry has a large effect on team performance they almost always lean on anecdotal evidence to support their argument. In the recent Griffey Poll thread we were regaled with stories of high school and college successes by teams of lesser talent that won by sheer force of will and cohesiveness. I am 100% willing to accept that this may be true. I do not know it to be true, but it may very well be, so accepting that it may does not bother me. What does bother me is translating that to the Major Leagues.
Major League Baseball and amateur baseball are not comparable in many ways. I say this based on my own personal experience where I umpired somewhere around 500 amateur baseball games in my life while also attending well over 800 Major League Baseball games in person. Other than the fact that they play the same game with nearly identical rules you just cannot correlate between the two. The talent level for an average high school baseball game is bad. Really, really bad. There is almost always one starter, sometimes more, on any high school team who does not possess the ability to catch and throw the ball correctly. This is a starter folks, not a bench warmer. The mere existence of someone in uniform who lacks the basic skills needed to be successful points to the vast difference between the game of baseball in the Major Leagues and at the amateur level. The best in the world play in the Major Leagues. Repeat that slowly because it is of vital importance to the entirety of this discussion. There is no level of baseball higher than Major League Baseball. None, zero, nada, zilch.
So I have already said that I believe it possible that chemistry can have a large effect on performance at the amateur level. I also have said that Major League Baseball is not comparable to amateur baseball other than rules and structure. So it should be fairly simple to see that I do not believe chemistry will necessarily have the same effect on a Major League team. Now this is a discussion without statistical evidence but I do want to lean on some lessons learned in the classroom of Professor Hubert here to show the path of my reasoning. Let us start by looking at a common industry at lower levels and at the highest level and see if there is any correlation. For this study I choose to look at shipping.
For the sake of argument I am going to compare a dispatcher for a small and privately owned courier company to the CEO of UPS. Both technically oversee the movement of goods from one location to the other but very few people would say the dispatcher is in any way doing what the executive at UPS is doing. It just would not make sense to do so would it? Of course not, but why? Well for one the dispatcher only bears responsibility for a small fraction of the shipped goods that the executive is responsible for. He also oversees a much smaller group of people than the CEO, but it is so much more than that. The dispatcher must be hands on in maintaining the daily routine of his staff that deals directly with the end user. The UPS executive manages and maintains a system that enables the staff that deals with the end user to be effective. The executive does not deal directly with his delivery drivers. It is not important for him to do so. His job is to dictate process to next level managers that in turn pass that process on down the line. This should all seem simple enough on the surface, so let us take another step into distinguishing between the two.
Let's say the dispatcher for our fictitious courier company has a driver on his staff that is amazing at what he does. This driver never misses a delivery time. He is always available for the early runs and willing to stay past quitting time to take the late runs. He never complains and always is upbeat around his co-workers. He showers every day to be presentable to clients and has a winning smile that keeps customers thankful they do business with said courier. All in all this guy makes the dispatcher's job much easier. The driver is an incredibly valuable resource just as he is and the dispatcher hooks him up with well paying deliveries to keep him happy. In turn this driver gives the other drivers something to shoot for which increases the productivity of the company overall. His self-motivated way of working can and does reach all corners of this small organization and has a very good chance of making the company more profitable and successful.
Now let us also say that there is a particular UPS driver who has the same skills and attitude as the driver for the courier company. Does he have the same effect on the CEO? Not in the least. Why? Well because if a UPS driver is amazing at what they do they get a promotion to a more demanding task. The function of a UPS driver is to meet certain standards. Going beyond those standards is great but functionally unnecessary. Skills, talents and attitude that are above the norm get rewarded with more responsibility. The goal of the UPS executive is not to have the most amazing drivers in the world. His goal is to have a system that functions as needed. To keep that system functioning people of better abilities will always be pushed upstream until the limits of what they can do are found. The CEO is not concerned if everyone in every corner of his company is happy. What he cares about is if his system is healthy.
Now to bring this all back to baseball. In looking at the small time dispatcher versus the CEO we are also looking at a similar disparity seen between a high school coach and a Major League GM. How so? I will admit this is a loose correlation since baseball organizations are very unique, but disclaimer aside I believe this fits our needs. So, looking at the high school coach, he is dealing in a small pool of talent and must be very hands on in all levels of his team. When he has a player of exemplary attitude he rewards the player while also benefitting from the example that player is setting for a group of impressionable teenagers. By showing his team that rewards are given to players who work hard and go above and beyond he is taking an avenue where it is possible for him to get the very best performance day in and day out from his players. In an arena where talent is scarce this is very beneficial.
The Major League GM on the other hand is not hands on with the players in his system. He has a variety of personnel who handle that for him. What he does is manage a system that pushes players to constantly strive for the next step. Once a player shows proficiency at one level he is promoted again to create a new challenge. The GM is always happy when players succeed at lower levels but only because it provides an opportunity to push everyone further. His goal is to have a healthy system that promotes proficiency and rewards it by providing greater challenges. He does not want players to succeed so they can be the best A ball player in history, but rather so he can give them a new challenge. The entire function of a minor league system is to weed out the players who do not have the skills and makeup to succeed at the highest level while honing the abilities of those who do.
Now you will hear baseball people refer to makeup and character all the time and this is where many people get confused. They are not talking about being friendly or kind. They are talking about people who are properly self-motivated. So what is proper self-motivation? Self-motivation is very simple. It either comes from fear or desire. A person motivated by the fear of being overweight will make a list of things they should NOT do because they lead to obesity. On the flip side a person who is motivated by the desire to be trim and in shape will make a plan or list of positive events that will lead to their end goal. People motivated by desire rather than fear make up nearly all of the subset of humanity that we refer to as successful. So when a GM says his scouts look at the makeup of a player they are referring to whether or not that player has a burning desire to succeed and has a plan in place to reach their goal.
On any given day there are 750 people who populate the entirety of Major League active rosters. When you step back and look at that number you realize how small it really is. Only 750 people are Major Leaguers. To get to that point an American born player had to prove themselves in Little League, junior high, high school, maybe college and then the minor leagues. An international player takes a different route but similar in that there are many steps they must climb to get even to the minor league level. Then once they get one of those coveted 750 jobs they have to prove themselves all over again to keep that job. They in fact have to prove their worth every year. It is a grueling process to become a Major League ballplayer and just as grueling to stay one.
This process almost entirely removes players who were motivated by fear, players of lesser talents, players who lose interest in the game of baseball and the players who were doing it because it had always come easy to them. The vast majority of those 750 Major Leaguers have exactly what it takes in regard to makeup and talent to be where they are at.
I now want to return to the CEO of UPS. He has an array of executives just underneath him who just like the Major League ballplayer have had to prove themselves over and over again to get to where they are at. They have shown that they can and will do what it takes to succeed. They also are self-motivated and do not need an external push to get their job done every day. Do you think the CEO is concerned if his executive team gets along? Do you think he worries if his CFO cannot stand his VP of Facilities? Well, he doesn't and do you know why? The only thing that matters is whether his company is maintaining profits and the way to do that is to have a functioning system. He might prefer people are friendly with each other, but in reality all he cares about is performance. Top notch performance brings with it people who are willing to fight for what they want and desire and in so doing they will on occasion step on toes or hurt feelings. It just simply comes hand in hand with wanting to be the best at what you do.
This translates directly to a Major League roster. The players at the top level of baseball provide a variety of personalities, but nearly all of them have in common that they are driven for success. They have proven themselves over and over again at many levels and in so doing have steeled themselves against negativity from the press, teammates and opponents. To believe that a disagreeable personality would derail someone of such focus and desire is ludicrous. In fact, as it does with the UPS executives, it makes sense that when you put 25 such people in a room together that the collective will of so many top notch people will cause sparks to fly on a rather regular basis. These moments are exactly what a manager is hired to handle. A good manager will recognize that the rough spots are a product of proper motivation and will create lines of communication that allow for players to be honest while not killing their desire.
There is also a reason that Major League managers are not hired from the pool of high school or college coaches. The reason is that they need to be able to relate to the drive to be the best. They need to understand the dedication and sacrifice that it took for each player to get where they are at. If he does not have that ability and drive himself he will not be able to do his job effectively.
In conclusion, what I am hoping people will begin to grasp is that unless you are someone driven to be the best at something then you cannot relate your own personal experiences to what happens in a Major League clubhouse. They do not align. Sure good chemistry makes the small courier operation better, but that is not analogous to what happens at the highest level of competition. Good chemistry at the highest level is more a matter of proficiency rather than camaraderie.
Before I finish I feel I need to touch on the fact that there are exceptions to every rule and there are here also. I will use Yuniesky Betancourt as an example because I am very convinced that his presence on the Mariners in recent years has clouded this issue for the media and fans.
Yuniesky Betancourt played just over 100 games in the minor leagues. That is not very many. So why did he make it to the Major Leagues so fast? Talent and gobs of it. This guy is blessed with talents that we all wish we had and that scouts drool over. The problem is that he did not have the drive to succeed. He merely wanted to ride along on his natural ability and have some fun. On occasion people like this get a crack at running with the big dogs but they almost always flame out the way Betancourt did. This is because when everyone else on the team was working to hone their skills he would be sitting in the clubhouse resting on his laurels. Make no mistake about it, he is and always will be the poster child for wasted opportunity. In fact his refusal to push himself higher is a major reason this team failed in recent years.
This was labeled as a chemistry issue by far too many people. However, it was not an issue of the team having bad chemistry, but rather an issue of the team filling a rather important roster spot with someone who did not have the makeup to be successful. By removing him from the roster the team improves because he is replaced by someone with the proper motivations. The team does not improve because everyone is chummy and buddy buddy. It improves because you now have a team that will come to the park each day and actually work to be the best at what they do.
It is time for all of us to stop assuming that the feel good experiences of our youth baseball teams can be equated to what baseball players do at the highest level. It is also time for us to stop listening to the words of young men in their 20's that have spent their whole lives focused on the one goal of being on a Major League roster. Often times they are so focused that they do not even know why they are doing things correctly. By the same token they may not get why Yuniesky Betancourt will be out of baseball completely in short order. It is not their job to understand all of those layers. It is only their job to be the best they can be.
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So the overarching thought is [also] that because chemistry was not used to get to the major leagues
it is highly unlikely to play a role in success there, because that trait did not pass on in the evolution to the major leagues. Those that were promoted were promoted because they did well in the minor leagues and not because their teams were harmonious, so it stands to reason that if chemistry played ~no/little role in who deserved to get to the major leagues, it is unlikely it plays much of a role in them. Yeah?
...and now I'm here
Going along with this
if team chemistry was a major factor in getting to higher levels, why isn’t the whole A level ballclub moved up to AA when they have good chemistry? If good chemistry was a major factor, you would see more teams that had all moved up through the levels of the minor leagues at the same time. I would say that it definitely doesn’t hurt just like was mentioned in the post about the CEO would like to have his employees like each other, but it isn’t a requirement. I remember hearing a quote from a World Series title team that basically said that there were 26 different hats basically implying that there were 26 different players/personalities on the team.
by seattle_since_81 on Jan 27, 2010 1:33 PM PST up reply actions
Chemistry starts to become an issue only when the disputes among team members become dysfunctional.
I had experience working with a client one time where the various execs were divided into different camps and they actually spent time plotting how to sabotage other executives projects. That is the type of situation in which the “chemistry” needs to be fixed.
Correction
but they almost always flame out the way Betancourt did
but they almost always end up playing for the Royals the way Betancourt did.
Oh wait, forget that correction, those are equal.
Will Ebners Hit Parade, Pain TV; Channel 32; All the time! (PDT)
by MarioVanPeebles Republic of China on Jan 27, 2010 2:17 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
see: Angel Berroa
In a perfect world... spammers would get caught, go to jail, and share a cell with many men who have enlarged their penisses, taken Viagra and are looking for a new relationship.
Dude, wow
That was fascinating stuff, and well presented.
by pdb on Jan 27, 2010 2:22 PM PST reply actions 1 recs
I appreciate the work you put into this, but I think you are making some rash assumptions of a CEO's motivation and business in general.
I am not going to pick apart your entire analogy, but I want to highlight one area I have two major concerns:
[The CEO’s] goal is to have a system that functions as needed. To keep that system functioning people of better abilities will always be pushed upstream until the limits of what they can do are found. The CEO is not concerned if everyone in every corner of his company is happy. What he cares about is if his system is healthy.
1. In an ideal business world, people would be pushed upstream to maximize their talents. In the real world, politics is a major factor in deciding who gets promoted. Often, the people at the top promote inferior talent so their jobs are less threatened. In other words, the best talents are not always pushed upstream and is a reason why many people leave their job to pursue something else. You might be able to attest to this considering you felt a need for extra stimulation in your life and it led to a career change.
2. CEO’s care for their system to be healthy and run efficiently. A huge reason why companies are successful is because their employees are happy. Sure, not everyone in a company is going to be happy, but I can guarantee you most CEO’s think about it everyday. Sam Walton built a business based on low prices, but his model has been efficient and successful because he wanted each of his employees to be happy. Organizational behavior plays a vital role in business and large companies have departments devoted to keeping employees happy.
We could get into some good lengthy discussions regarding just these two concerns. I honestly do not like the analogy between the CEO/dispatcher and then paralleling it to major league baseball. However, I think you nailed the Yuniesky Betancourt situation. But does it conclude chemistry doesn’t play a vital role in the clubhouse? No, I don’t think it does.
Again, I appreciate the effort in trying to show why chemistry doesn’t effect major league teams. I just don’t think there will ever be a definitive answer. We’ve seen bad chemistry teams succeed and we’ve seen good chemistry teams fail (and really, who are we to decide which teams have good/bad chemistry?). I might go as far as to say team chemistry does not have much of an effect on a team’s success, but it does have a major effect on individual performance. If too many individuals are being negatively effected by team chemistry, then the team is more likely to fail. Therefore, team chemistry does have an effect on the success of a team. Quantifying the amount a team’s success based on team chemistry simply won’t ever be possible. But to deny that team chemistry doesn’t have any influence on the game at the major league level is overreaching.
And I in turn will take exception to one of your arguments
2. CEO’s care for their system to be healthy and run efficiently. A huge reason why companies are successful is because their employees are happy. Sure, not everyone in a company is going to be happy, but I can guarantee you most CEO’s think about it everyday. Sam Walton built a business based on low prices, but his model has been efficient and successful because he wanted each of his employees to be happy.
Without derailing this into unacceptable territory entirely, ask the Wal-Mart workers who are locked in to their stores at night to force them to stock/clean if they’re happy. Ask the Wal-Mart checker whose monthly insurance costs are 75% of their weekly paycheck if they’re happy.
CEO’s care about profitability and success. If happiness is a byproduct of that profitability and success, great, but don’t for one minute think that the CEO of a major corporation gives a good goddamn about the happiness of the average front-line worker, because they don’t. Never have, never will.
I know a few people who have worked for Wal-Mart
who definitely defend the company whenever someone rolls their eyes about the store.
To a degree, if you’re really not happy working at Wal-Mart, I imagine that you either pretty much have to shut up about it or you’re not going to be working there very long.
Batted .393/.614/.464 for 2009 Diablos, #5 in OBP for PSSBL Rocky Division.
by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jan 27, 2010 3:15 PM PST up reply actions
You might be right about transplant CEO's of major corporations, but the many CEO's who built their company from the ground, like Sam Walton, do care about the happiness of their employees.
Even Jack Zduriencik has hammered on the point he wants his players to be happy.
I think you're right in the case of smaller companies
but once a company gets to be a good sized place, the CEO is almost obligated to care more about profitability and performance than about individual contributor happiness, at least as a formal operating tenet.
His job is to make profits to please the Board of Directors and the investors.
Employees are not all that important.
Exactly
Competition ever-increasingly necessitates worrying about the bottom line if you want to survive, not keeping your employees happy.
Caring is an inefficiency
The market selects against it.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2010 3:29 PM PST up reply actions
Mmmm, I don't know. What do you think about players fighting for free agency, or strike shortened seasons?
I’m hesitant to point this out, I’m not sure if it works entirely. Also it might wander too far afield from the original post.
Actually I don't like this at all. This has little to do with team performance, and therefore doesn't apply to the post.
This would be players as a group, collective bargaining, etc., vs. MLB. Not team performance at all.
MLB is not a good model of this
There is no free market. I can’t compete with MLB, because it’s a monopoly.
If you have two corporations competing with one another, and nothing else separates them, the more soulless one will win.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2010 3:41 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
I was kind of running along the lines of players as a group being unsatisfied with their treatment.
The advent of arbitration, free agency, strikes as leverage. But the scope here is wrong for the team level, it’s too big and too far removed from potentially affecting player performance. I get what you’re saying though, but I was trying to tie this to section 108’s post and believe I ranged too far afield.
Ding ding ding
This is exactly right. The happiness of the shareholder is paramount, and is balanced on the backs of the employees.
There has got to be a barrier though, where employee dissatisfaction can be a problem.
Generally speaking, you want to make sure that your high-performing employees feel cared about and feel good about working where they do and doing the job that they do.
It really doesn’t matter a ton if employees that perform poorly don’t feel great about their job, unless helping them feel better about their job allows them to perform better. Some of those employees are lost causes, though.
Batted .393/.614/.464 for 2009 Diablos, #5 in OBP for PSSBL Rocky Division.
by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jan 27, 2010 3:29 PM PST up reply actions
There are always more employees than jobs
CEO’s realize attrition is part of the business world, so it’s not important that they’re all happy – as you say the high-performance ones are generally taken care of, but even average employees are basically fungible resources at most companies.
It's hard to imagine this.
Assuming you’re moving your good employees up in pace with their abilities, I’m having trouble imagining an unhappy group of employees. Can you think of an example?
Ultimately, I don't think a group of unhappy employees sticks around very long.
I worked in a bowling alley previously that was corporately owned. Not a single person there had much nice to say about the corporation. I left there at the end of summer 2008. Only two people out of twelve still remain with the company.
Batted .393/.614/.464 for 2009 Diablos, #5 in OBP for PSSBL Rocky Division.
by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jan 27, 2010 3:37 PM PST up reply actions
Yes, but my question is if they haven't been there long enough to be promoted, or see how that works for others,
then what are they so unhappy about?
I would say that because the place was corporately owned, we did not have a feeling of independence.
Which, combined with service-economy pay (which is often pretty low) and a lack of benefits when compared to other entities in the same industry (employees of this bowling alley still have to pay to practice, whereas independently owned alleys take better care of employees).
Part of that may be related to company failure. The company had gone through bankruptcy previously, so they needed to have more control to watch over employees stealing money and otherwise acting fraudulently.
But like, I was a janitor for them. I am a pretty capable guy and I frequently didn’t get many hours, and then I got a second job and they scheduled me in conflict with that job when they had the knowledge of what hours the second job would be.
Batted .393/.614/.464 for 2009 Diablos, #5 in OBP for PSSBL Rocky Division.
by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jan 27, 2010 3:45 PM PST up reply actions
It sounds like the bowling alley was being run appriopriately.
No offense intended, but my guess is 10 or so of the 12 employees were easily replaced (un- or low-skilled labor). Jobs like that always have high turnover, because the corporation is basically doing the bare minimum to ensure that the jobs are filled. It’s no different than any other service industry jobs.
Perhaps I don’t know the level of training required for these jobs, so let me know if I’m off on that assumption.
There is an advantage to having steady people, though.
If the manager has to spend a lot of time checking out applications/resumes and doing interviews, then s/he can’t spend time doing other work.
I currently work a job very much like the one I described, except that I’m a night manager in an independent firm. I was hired on after they had spent 4-6 weeks trying to fill the position and people just kept not working out. I helped the company be more effective early on by (re)organizing inventories that had been neglected.
The other guy who shares my job description has been there for almost six years, and has built up significant personal relationships with customers. I’ve been doing the same over my one year there. Those relationships help build the company and are hard to create when you have extreme staff turnover.
Now the problem is that it’s pretty clear that both my co-worker and I can handle the job and could probably handle greater responsibility, but because the business is so small there is no room for advancement (the two salaried workers have both been there for ten years and have shown no signs of leaving).
At some point I’m going to leave my job because I need to make more money and move out of my parents’ place, but it is because I like my job that I am not being more aggressive in finding a new opportunity.
Hopefully that all made sense. It’s getting late and I’m getting sleepy and having difficulty articulating all I want to.
Batted .393/.614/.464 for 2009 Diablos, #5 in OBP for PSSBL Rocky Division.
by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jan 28, 2010 3:01 AM PST up reply actions
I completely understand what you're saying.
I think we’re getting off the point, though, which Steve N. brings us back to in a comment below. A properly run company will almost inevitably have good morale, while a poorly run company will usually not. In baseball terms, this is the same as winning creates good chemistry.
There’s an advantage to having steady people, but that’s not how the company operates – as evidenced by the fact that they had a lot of turnover before you showed up. It keeps hiring people until someone competent (like you and your coworker) sticks.
Also, as someone mentioned previously, a small company is not quite the same. In large part this is probably due to the fact that there are no shareholders, so the owner can choose to defer more towards his employees.
Employees are shareholders of companies.
That doesn’t mean they own shares of the company, but they have invested interest in the success of the business.
I should say stakeholders, not shareholders.
But according to the ethics of business (a new topic!), companies have responsibility to care for the shareholders and stakeholders of the company.
You are entirely correct about this
but then we get into the whole “real world v. ideal world” thing. In practice, shareholder concerns ALWAYS come before stakeholder concerns; the principle here is roughly ’something’s gotta give", because you can almost never make both parties happy.
Yeah, it would have been much easier to have stated this in the first place.
Instead I opened up a whole can of worms. But this discussion should be evident why team chemistry will always be debatable.
Or to give an entirely anecdotal example from my own recent experience
My current company is hurting financially. Seriously hurting. They are also, by the nature of their business, unable to raise the price of their product whenever they want. So, their recourse to make more money is to do one of two things: stop maintaining existing stuff and stop developing new stuff, or laying off contractors and requiring FTE’s to take two weeks of unpaid furlough time this year.
Obviously, the first one is not going to happen, so they went the second route. I’m not happy because I’m out of a job, and FTE’s aren’t happy because they have to take unpaid time off. Something had to give, and creating shareholder value won. As it always will.
And that's because
legally, the company’s fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders trumps all else.
This space for rent.
The success of the business implicitly involves the shafting of those employees (as much as possible) though
The two cannot really be reconciled with each other when you get into the territory of huge corporations.
A lot of it depends on the corporate culture in place
For example, I used to work for A Very Large Internet-Like Company Whose Coasters You May Still Have. When I started there, it was still relatively small in terms of employee numbers, and upper management actually hob-nobbed with the hoi polloi and they bent over backwards to provide perks for everyone and allow flexibility. Occasionally layoffs did become necessary, but they always went after the low-hanging fruit… in other words, the guys who were “bad chemistry” either because they were pains in the ass, or their poor performance put too much pressure on other folks.
Then came The Merger.
By the time I got laid off in 2007, along with a whole slew of other extremely talented people who had the misfortune of either making too much money or having too many vested benefits like four weeks of vacation (while complete assclowns who had barely managed to survive previous “merit” layoffs stuck around and even survived the big 2010 layoff), the old corporate culture was non-existent. I don’t know whether this was solely the result of the management change, or an inevitable conclusion to the growth of a company… but I tend to feel that it was the latter, and I’ll tell you why:
When I started, there were exactly four people in the chain of command between me and the CEO.
When I left — after having received two substantial promotions (that is, actual changes in pay grade rather than just having a “senior” added to my title) — there were seven. Meaning that for someone who came in at the same position I did, there were now nine levels of management buffering that person from the CEO.
And I think that the explanation for the phenomenon thus becomes pretty simple; the more distance there is between the top and the bottom of the ladder, the easier it is to not give a damn about your rank-and-file employees. When you still work in the same building and bump into them in the cafeteria every day, it’s a little harder.
This space for rent.
You need to get to know a few CEO's is my guess.
Fascinating people from my experience. They live on a plane of existence far beyond me and, no offense, you. The politics you speak of do exist, but you are again making the mistake of inserting your own experience which I am assuming is not at the executive level of a multinational corporation.
I doubt there is anyone here who has ever been at the head of multinational corporation.
But you based your assumptions on your educational experience. Having obtained a Business Management degree, I also based my assumptions on my educational experience. I think we can conclude we are both out of place to decide what a CEO thinks.
However, you would be surprised who I know. Am I personal friends with all of them? Some yes, many no. Do I know how they operate their company’s? Emphatically no. Although, like any good business school, CEO’s and other executives came and spoke about these things (these speakers are not in the group of people I know). They relayed these messages when speaking upon the topic of Organizational Behavior.
But I appreciate the rebuttal. Like I said, we could go into lengthy discussions about my concerns. I would rather not go there because we would toe the line with some site rules (and honestly, it makes my brain ache thinking about the numerous topics we would go down). You made a good effort in your analogy, but I just don’t agree with the conclusion.
Fair enough.
I actually used my education more to speak to the behavior of successful people rather than to build my assumptions. By no means do I feel this is thesis level work and I expect an intelligent group like this to be able to find flaws in the piece.
It is very difficult to find something truly analogous to the structure of professional baseball, but the goal was to show that an amateur level player is not comparable to an MLB player. Is that the conclusion you are disagreeing with?
I agree with the amateur level is not comparable to the major league level.
But the title of the fanpost is about the effect of chemistry in MLB. You also said “my belief is that team chemistry has a negligible effect on team performance at the Major League level” and go onto explain your reasons why. The conclusion of why you think team chemistry has a negligible effect on team performance is what I disagree with. You relate it to the business world, and in the business world organizational behavior (team chemistry) is a major factor in a company’s success. Or so I believe it does.
Yeah, I am comfortable that we will disagree then.
I think it is a difficult concept for many, but I know for a fact that many high level executives believe that disgruntled employees will be that way no matter how much you try to help them. Therefore they focus their energy only on those who show a willingness to strive for top level success.
I agree with the amateur level is not comparable to the major league level.
The analogy of the CEO is a little off though. To say they don’t care if their employee’s are happy or not is just not true, I wonder what a company with a poor turnover rate would have to pay for insurance to a company with a great turnorver rate? That would effect their success (profits), so keeping their employee’s happy, I would think would actually be one of their concerns.
Not just insurance though.
All the additional cost of a employee leaving a job can be advertising, headhunting fees, human resource costs, loss of productivity, new hire training, and customer retention. Wal-Mart has over a million employees and I don’t know for sure but that dude stocking shelfs in the middle of the night will probably say he is happy, he does have a job right? All in all I think CEO’s (like GM’s) hire someone to look after their employee’s well being, like a HR manager or store manager (coaches, ect.). So a CEO may not directly give a shit about whether Timmy the stocker is happy or not, they will find someone who does or at least gets paid to care.
Let me point out that I work for a small business and your comps sound more like the issues we care about.
Corporations use metrics to determine what the turnover will be at each position and they budget for it. People have thrown Wal-Mart around so I’ll do it too. My understanding is that everyone who works at Wal-Mart starts at the bottom, which means working the floor. Say a new store opens and it hires 100 new employees. Wal-Mart knows how many of those people on average will be gone in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years and how many will get promoted.
They budget around this and in fact plan for it. They look at the world through a macroeconomic lense because it has proven to work.
I think that you kind of proved his point.
In fact, as it does with the UPS executives, it makes sense that when you put 25 such people in a room together that the collective will of so many top notch people will cause sparks to fly on a rather regular basis. These moments are exactly what a manager is hired to handle. A good manager will recognize that the rough spots are a product of proper motivation and will create lines of communication that allow for players to be honest while not killing their desire.
The GM is not the one making sure that every fire is put out. The manager makes sure that the players needs are taken care of and that players frustrations are heard.
by seattle_since_81 on Jan 27, 2010 8:09 PM PST up reply actions
This comment is not constructive.
If you agree with something, just rec it. Posting a one word comment adds nothing but clutter.
Boy someone's going to have fun in the real world
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2010 2:45 PM PST up reply actions
HR doesn't stand for Happiness Resources?
Uh-oh
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2010 3:05 PM PST up reply actions
I know right
I have all these great ideas like Funny Hat Day and Hawaiian Shirt Day and Shorts Day that will be AWESOME for keeping everyone happy!
Ok then
I assert that your position is ridiculous and your education in business management has left you woefully unprepared for the business world.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 27, 2010 3:28 PM PST up reply actions 5 recs
Oh you.
It’s too bad this thread is taking a quick trip towards hiddenville.
...and now I'm here
You and me both, brother.
...and now I'm here
by CapSea on Jan 27, 2010 3:44 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
Had it right the first time
Subjunctive, homie.
De Gutibus non disputandum est
by Bearskin Rugburn on Jan 28, 2010 12:31 PM PST up reply actions 2 recs
Huh. My understanding of grammar is poor, but I didn't realize it was this bad:
I didn’t even recognize the word “subjunctive”, and after reading the wikipedia aritcle about it I still don’t fully understand its application.
But thank you. It’s always good to discover an area of ignorance.
What's missing in the chemistry argument in baseball is the end-goal
We have to agree on what our goal is before we can decide what factors will get us there.
The goal for fans of a baseball team is to win.
The goal for owners of a baseball team is to profit.
I should be clear. Winning is absolutely the best way to profit. It’s arguable that it is so much the best way that other methods don’t matter as much.
But when discussing chemistry and especially players like Griffey, we should at least acknowledge the possibility that they play a role in profit. I watched more baseball games last year than I would have if Griffey were not on the team and they won the same number of games. Not many more, but probably a couple.
This comes back around when we realize that profit is a path to winning. We have been discussing payroll a lot this offseason. Presumably with more income there can be a higher payroll and Z can get better players for longer.
I’m not really prepared to try to dive into the numbers (I think it would be interesting, trying to use things like jersey sales, but those numbers don’t seem to be public). But just think about that final celebration on the field by the Mariners players last year. Now imagine a team with the exact same record but no chemistry and no celebration. How many more fans will be in the seats in 2010 because the 2009 Mariners had that amazing chemistry?
I’m not sure what the answer is. It’s certainly more than zero, but the question is whether or not it is enough to matter to us (enough to increase profits enough to buy us another player in 2011). But I think when we talk about chemistry ‘mattering in MLB’ we make a mistake by talking about on field performance and not off field profit.
This is an interesting topic, but you are talking about marketing which is the very reason chemistry does get discussed.
It is easier for the marketing department to sell good guys than it is to sell bad guys.
And as for the Griffey effect, minus the final game of the year there was no one in the stands at Safeco in September. I did not feel a buzz about Jr. at all until the final game. He may have added a few fans here and there over the season, but I saw Safeco as empty in 2009 as I ever have and only winning will reverse that.
I tend to agree with you
And I should have started my comment by thanking you for your thoughtful and extensive post. It was a good read.
I just mean to point out that if chemistry has any effect at all, it will be in profit, and not in on field performance. My intuition suggests that the profit gained will just be a side benefit, and so minimal as to not warrant any real attention, but I think we should just be aware of the distinction.
We would never analyze baseball performance conclusively without numbers. It would be nice if we didn’t have to make the same mistake here. People have tried to compare on field performance under various ‘chemistry’ perceptions. All I’m saying is that it is actually profit that should be compared to various ‘chemistry scenarios.’
How many Griffey jerseys were sold last year? did these sales appear to come out of a usual number of ‘Mariners’ jersey sales, or were they added on top? How did attendance flow throughout the season as compared to seasons with similar records at various times? TV viewership? Unfortunately, I suspect there are far too many variables in these kind of numbers to reach solid conclusions (and I think merchandise sales would give the best chance of comparable numbers, and I believe those numbers are private).
by Snuffleupagus on Jan 27, 2010 6:10 PM PST up reply actions
Here's an example
A friend of mine from Buffalo, NY has recently decided he would like to follow baseball, and because he has limited time, this means following a team or two. I am converting him to a Mariners fan, and a large part of that is the fact that the team is fun. The players are fun to watch because they seem to enjoy the game and get along. So we do know that ‘chemistry’ has gotten the Mariners one more fan. That probably means one more ticket sale when he visits Seattle this summer.
Do things like this happen enough to make a difference? We may never know, but at least it’s a better argument than ‘players hit the ball more when they’re happy.’
by Snuffleupagus on Jan 27, 2010 6:13 PM PST up reply actions
On the other hand, compare that to how many people pick a team by who they see in the playoffs.
I used to follow Oakland, after they appeared in the ’89 WS. I followed the Bills after their first SB appearance. I followed the Avalanche starting in 1996.
Think of the Red Sox fans who sprang up out of the ground after their WS. How many new fans did the M’s get last year, in comparison? I have to believe that winning outstrips chemistry to such a degree that the latter just isn’t worth trying bothering with.
Chemistry is a part of most if not all team sports.
It may not really be significant enough to care. Will players hit the ball more when they’re happy? Who know’s, but I think it’s safe to say that some probably won’t hit as well when they’re unhappy. All player’s are going to have different reactions in certain situations. Put Milton in Chicago, with Lou and that fanbase and he’s not gonna do so good. Bring him to Seattle and well only time can tell but I think it will be a different story and you can credit almost all of it, if it works out to chemistry. So chemistry may not have a huge impact on a team but one player on a team I think it can.
While I generally think that the effects of chemistry are overplayed by the popular media, I disagree with this fanpost almost entirely.
How can you concede that chemistry can affect the performances of individual players at high school and college levels while simultaneously denying that it can affect those at higher levels? You assert that it’s because MLB players have higher makeup and character, which is likely true, but it doesn’t make them emotionless robots. In the subthread with Wilder above you caution not to make assumptions about people that one is unfamiliar with, but I’m going to ask that same line of thought be extended from CEO’s to professional athletes. At the risk of sounding cliche, they’re everyday people like you and me. It’s tempting to paint them as superhuman machines who have the internal drive to constantly perform at 100% even in the face of great adversity, but it just doesn’t work that way. Professional athletes have all the same emotional problems as the rest of us, they just happen to be really f*cking good athletes.
I think I speak from a relatively unique point of view in that I know and am decent-to-pretty-good friends with a number of professional athletes (mostly track and field but a few others as well), including a few Olympians, a world champion, and many guys that are the talent equivalent of MLB starting players. Yes, they do have a great internal drive that propels them near the top in the grand scheme of things, but other than that they’re susceptible to the same problems as the rest of us. Depression, insomnia, substance abuse, existential angst, relationship problems, family problems, etc. And being in a positive environment rather than a negative environment can go a long way towards helping deal with things like that. Under normal circumstances on a day-to-day basis team chemistry is likely not going to make an enormous difference. Ichiro will likely go 1-3 with a single whether he’s happy, sad, or tired. Rob Johnson has probably got an equal chance to drop a ball whether someone keeps stealing shit from his locker or not. If something severe happens though, like the death of a family member/friend/teammate (Lopez/Adenhart/etc), or a player suffers from depression/anxiety (Greinke, Duchsherer, Votto as well as many others I’m sure who have not gone public), drug issues (Hamilton) then being in a positive environment is going to go a LONG way towards helping that player perform better. Who knows if we’ve lost a few Greinkes, Hamiltons, and Ankiels that might have been salvaged had they been in better environments?
This is not to say that I think that chemistry should be a dominating factor in decisions, or that it has a large impact upon daily performance, or anything like that.
I don’t know how much it does, nor does anybody else. If it does affect daily performance to a significant degree, we still wouldn’t know what exactly good chemistry looked like (25 guys who were all best friends and got along great and horsed around more than they worked out would likely be considered to have good chemistry but would be vastly underachieving, while 25 guys who don’t get along perfectly and have some clubhouse rivalries and divides may overperform out of a desire to outperform each other), nor would we be able to measure it’s impact in any quantifiable way. In those regards it should be treated as a non-factor when making personnel decisions and largely ignored. But a positive clubhouse environment can provide other advantages in the form of being more attractive to players (both potential FA signings and when negotiating extensions to current players), and (granted, in rarer circumstances), providing the support that would potentially help a player deal with personal issues in a more effective manner. In those regards chemistry is definitely important.
by Terminator X on Jan 27, 2010 7:44 PM PST up reply actions
Hollywood movies tend to portray reality well.
by Terminator X on Jan 27, 2010 7:46 PM PST up reply actions
Well, it was a play, first
/pedantic
A glib addition to this conversation, I’ll admit, but it’s something that came to my mind while reading this post, especially the “good guy? I don’t give a fuck” bit.
Nice post; well written; deserves a response
Congratulations on your bump to the front page. And kudos for the considerable effort that you have put into your post. A bump to the front page was well-deserved.
I feel your logic is flawed in several respects. Let me try to paraphrase your argument so that you can correct me if I have it wrong. Your argument is:
- Chemistry affects amateur baseball teams
- MLB players are not amateurs
- MLB managers are not amateurs, they are more like CEOs of large corporations
- Chemistry does not affect large corporations
Therefore:
-Chemistry does not affect MLB baseball players
I disagree for several reasons. First, I disagree with your premise that chemistry does not affect large corporations. You do not attempt to support your premise much, so I am not going to spend much time tracking down sources on corporate culture. I guess I’ll just respond here with some facts that I doubt you will dispute: (1) people get promoted to higher levels of management for many reasons, some of them relate to technical proficiency, some relate to interpersonal skills; (2) board meetings involving people who are fighting or who are poor communicators are less successful than board meetings without those things; (3) corporations spend a lot of time thinking about keeping employees happy not in spite of the bottom line but because of it.
Second, just because there is a lot of sorting that occurs in the filtering of the population of people who want to be big leaguers down to 750, does not mean that there are not tremendous interpersonal differences between major leaguers. There are tremendous disparities between them. Disparities in natural talent, work ethic, personality, approach, age, life experience, culture, family. These differences cannot be ignored simply because these players are the best at what they do. Uber-successful people come in many flavors.
I guess my biggest disagreement with your piece is that in baseball and in business you seem to make the assumption that "performance" and "chemistry" are completely independent. That assumes away the whole debate. The question is the relationship between the two. The question is how much chemistry between executives affects the bottom line; how much clubhouse chemistry affects wins and losses. Of course managers and CEOs don’t care about chemistry ASSUMING chemistry does not affect performance; but now you’ve assumed away the issue you are trying to address.
I am not saying chemistry has a large affect on performance. The biggest reason to ignore chemistry in analyzing players and teams is that we have no way of quantifying chemistry and it is extremely complicated. Much like evaluating defense in the 1980s, an analysis built on anecdotes is likely misleading.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 27, 2010 8:50 PM PST reply actions 4 recs
You nailed it.
I couldn’t figure out was bothering me about Sec 108’s post until reading your response. This whole post and comment thread is fantastic because sites like LL are mainly by and for the kind of diehard baseball fans that dwell on the numbers of the game. CHONE projections can’t account for intangibles like chemistry, which both frustrates us and keeps us tuned in.
Nobody can convince me they should have brought Jr. back for 2010 though.
It's turtles all the way down!
A few points:
(P)eople get promoted to higher levels of management for many reasons, some of them relate to technical proficiency, some relate to interpersonal skills
Sure, but that’s part of that individual’s skill set. Interpersonal skills can be hugely important in the business world, not so much in baseball.
©orporations spend a lot of time thinking about keeping employees happy not in spite of the bottom line but because of it.
Isn’t that one of Sec 108’s points? That most seemingly altruistic gestures made by corporations are made for business reasons?
There are tremendous disparities between them. Disparities in natural talent, work ethic, personality, approach, age, life experience, culture, family. These differences cannot be ignored simply because these players are the best at what they do. Uber-successful people come in many flavors.
Again, I don’t see this is being one of the points of the post. Yes, uber-successful people come in many flavors, but generally by the time they make it to the very top of their profession those without the necessary skills and/or personality traits to succeed have been weeded out and if not, they will be soon.
Much like evaluating defense in the 1980s, an analysis built on anecdotes is likely misleading.
This seems like a false analogy to me; I don’t think many smart people ever thought defense didn’t matter, I just think that it was largely ignored by the analytical community because it wasn’t readily quantifiable and by front offices that employed advanced analysis because there were other market inefficiencies to exploit. I think it’s also one thing to say that team chemistry isn’t likely to have much of an affect because attempts have been made to quantify it with little success and there are very well reasoned and logically defended anecdotal arguments to one could make to back up such a claim. Not so much the case with defense.
In general I think you’ve oversimplified the argument and have perhaps made some incorrect judgments as to the point of this post. You have some fair points, but I’d say that the major thrust of your argument is on fairly shaky footing; largely because I don’t think you’re arguing against Sec 108’s points and I’m not even entirely convinced you disagree with him other than on a surface level.
by Aaron Campeau on Jan 28, 2010 12:19 AM PST up reply actions 5 recs
Sure, but that’s part of that individual’s skill set. Interpersonal skills can be hugely important in the business world, not so much in baseball.
I was attacking the premise on which I thought his conclusion depended. If his conclusion did not depend on that premise, then all he’s done is merely assert that interpersonal skills are not important in baseball. Now hey, like I said, I’m not saying those skills matter, I’m just saying we can’t quantify chemistry, and I don’t think the comparison to corporations is helpful.
Isn’t that one of Sec 108’s points? That most seemingly altruistic gestures made by corporations are made for business reasons?
I do not believe that was one of his points. If it was, I would have responded that this adds nothing to the discussion. It actually hurts his argument. We’re not talking about altruism, we’re talking about the affect of chemistry on wins. If corporations try to improve happiness to increase profits, Sec 108’s line of thinking might suggest that managers/GMs try to improve happiness to increase wins. In both cases, happiness is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.
Again, I don’t see this is being one of the points of the post. Yes, uber-successful people come in many flavors, but generally by the time they make it to the very top of their profession those without the necessary skills and/or personality traits to succeed have been weeded out and if not, they will be soon.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this unsupported assertion you’ve just made. And I am not talking necessary skills or personality traits to succeed, I am talking about traits that affect chemistry. Many uber-successful people have chemistry issues that can reduce success on a team. Not saying these traits always do, but just that the filter of success does in no way screen out the mean, selfish, crazy, or just pure evil. See, for example, Barry Bonds, Milton Bradley, Mel Gibson, Amy Winehouse, Eminem, Stalin, Dr. Evil, Skeletor, Gilbert Arenas, Graham.
You have some fair points, but I’d say that the major thrust of your argument is on fairly shaky footing; largely because I don’t think you’re arguing against Sec 108’s points and I’m not even entirely convinced you disagree with him other than on a surface level
Well let me make my position clear. I have much respect for Sec108’s effort in making this post. However, if Sec108 is an atheist, I am agnostic. And I don’t think his analogy proves that there is no God in the slightest.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 8:37 AM PST up reply actions 1 recs
While I appreciate the endorsement
Please use the subject line while posting, even if it’s only a full stop.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 28, 2010 8:50 AM PST up reply actions
"Many uber-successful people have chemistry issues that can reduce success on a team."
I wholeheartedly disagree with this unsupported assertion you’ve just made.
In what way was their success directly reduced by their chemistry issues? I think one of Sec 108’s key points is that the “filter of success” doesn’t weed out people with chemistry issues because they are still able to succeed at baseball without those qualities.
My assertion was not unsupported, I listed numerous examples.
Would you like to quibble with my examples?
Barry Bonds has been out of baseball for a couple of years because no teams want to sign him. At least when his excommunication began, he was still skilled enough to be one of the 750.
Milton Bradley had serious issues on the Cubs that hurt his team. He has had other issues elsewhere that have hurt some of his other teams. Do you disagree?
Mel Gibson had some pretty big issues and they had a pretty big impact on his success.
Amy Winehouse and Eminem were more for fun, but we can argue about them if you want.
Stalin’s regime killed somewhere between 3 and 60 million people, and ya know, his son Yakov shot himself. Yakov could’ve been a real asset in the win column.
Dr. Evil was always defeated by Austin Powers in the end (though I could be corrected here because I didn’t see the third one).
Skeletor only succeeded when he put his interpersonal issues aside and teamed up with He-man against Hordak.
but you’re right about Graham.
My conclusion is pretty straightforward. Lots of people get to the top in spite of their “chemistry” issues, and their “chemistry” issues can affect their success later on, especially if they are on a team. I think my examples are helpful. Do you still disagree?
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 9:11 AM PST up reply actions
Yup, still disagree. I agree these people have chemistry issues, but not that they have significantly hurt their success.
I would contend that Bonds is out of work because of the stink of steroids, not merely his attitude.
Milton Bradley continues to be picked up. It was well established that Bradley had issues before the Cubs gave him $10+ million per year. Can you be more specific about how his teams were hurt?
Mel Gibson is headlining a big Hollywood movie right now. He seems to be doing just fine. How about Robert Downey, Jr. and Colin Farrell? Substance abuse doesn’t seem to be killing their careers.
Winehouse and Eminem are both quite successful. I wonder if they aren’t more successful because of their controversial nature.
Stalin was incredibly successful as a leader, especially when you consider how despicable his behavior was.
I believe Dr. Evil’s problem was a lack of talent, not chemistry.
Skeletor was going up against the Master of the Universe. That’s not a battle anyone should expect to win.
Can you point to something that these people have lost, specifically, due to their chemistry issues?
No I can't
You’re right.
If Bonds were a super nice guy, still no teams would have signed him last year because no teams employ anyone who have been alleged to have taken steroids.
The Cubs got what they expected out of the Bradley signing.
Mel Gibson has been doing some great work in the last 7 years.
Stalin never liked his dead sons anyway, so their losses mean nothing.
Dr. Evil and Skeletor are fictional characters, and so they actually were tremendously successful at their goal of providing plot conflict and ultimate resolution.
And Graham is perfect.
Note: I omitted Eminem and Winehouse because they do not support my point. But it’s okay because all you are asking me to do is defend the ridiculously obvious statement that some people, somewhere, are both uber-successful and could be more so if not for chemistry or personality short-comings.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 10:03 AM PST up reply actions
I don't see why you would say that,
I think this conversation is really going somewhere.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 10:16 AM PST up reply actions
Because sarcasm is inherently belittling.
It tells me you don’t want to continue a dialogue with me.
I'm sorry to have that effect
I was frustrated.
Wouldn’t you agree that I am right about all this and you are wrong?
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 10:39 AM PST up reply actions
So you do want to keep going? Okay...
Bonds hasn’t admitted to using steroids. Everyone else currently playing has. McGwire didn’t, and then did so he could get back in the game. I really do think it’s about the steroids and his lack of admission.
What the Cubs expected is irrelevant, in my opinion. The fact that the M’s traded for him tells me his opportunities are still hinged on his predicted performance, not his effect on team chemistry.
I wasn’t aware about Mel. Looking at imdb, I see now what you’re talking about. I would suggest that an actor is a far cry from an athlete, however. Popularity is key to an actor’s success, as there is no other way to measure an actor’s performance (unlike the athlete).
My (admittedly limited) understanding is that there is significant debate on the circumstances of Yakov’s death, and you can’t simply blame anyone for someone else’s suicide. And actually, your sarcastic point was valid: Stalin clearly did not measure his own success by his children, so I don’t believe their deaths did affect his performance.
The point we’re debating (at least in my mind) is not whether they would be more successful without character flaws. The question is, have their character flaws been so great as to negatively affect the performance of those around them (their ‘team’). It’s immaterial whether it affects their own performance – the fact that they have gotten this far demonstrates that they have enough “talent” to compensate for it and still succeed, because they are driven to do so. It seems to me this a key element of Sec 108’s post.
by Lanky on Jan 28, 2010 11:01 AM PST up reply actions 1 recs
I think it's pretty clear that personality has an influence on success, but that it's hard to say what kind of influence it has
Could be positive, could be negative. You won’t know until it actually happens, and even then you still won’t really know because there is no control, or even measurement of success in most cases.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 28, 2010 11:09 AM PST up reply actions
I agree with this 100%
With the one caveat that the impact of personality/chemistry is not constant. Sometimes it is positive and sometimes it is negative. And at the extremes, it is possible to identify some people who have a tendency to have a positive personality/chemistry impact and some people who have a tendency to have a negative impact.
(though I’m not convinced my definition of personality/chemistry is the same as your definition of personality)
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 11:15 AM PST up reply actions
I can throw you an example similar to Mel
but more relevant. In fact, probably several.
For example, Woody Hayes, who got replaced by someone not as skilled. Or, for that matter, we can throw Mike Leach onto that pile if he remains unemployed for any significant length of time. And in that vein, I think Bonds is still a valid example as well, since there are about 26 teams who’d have been better if they’d signed him.
They got blackballed because hiring them would be too much of a hassle. And if you have become too much of a hassle to get hired despite your ability to perform, then what else would you call it but getting in the way of your own success?
This space for rent.
Happy to respond and the criticism is welcome.
First I did not say chemistry affects amateurs, what I said is I am willing to believe that it does. Big difference and you know why. I am saying that I am okay with someone believeing they won their league in high school because everyone pulled together. I am not okay believing that chemistry magically adds wins to an MLB roster though because of the type of person it takes to reach and stay in the Majors.
Chemistry may have an effect within a team or an office in a corporation, but it does not destroy overall corporate success. Boeing workers in our area are fearful and angry but that has not stopped the company from making money. You might even argue that a main reason Boeing has moved so many jobs away is because local workers were too happy, satisfied and overpaid and so Boeing went in search of cheaper and hungrier workers elsewhere.
My point is not that they are independent but rather that the type of person who creates what people want to call chemistry at the Major Leage level does so by maximizing ability due to internal motivations. But almost all players at the top do this. When you remove a player who is not maximizing their talent it is a smart decision, but not because they made people less comfortable at work but rather because said player can be replaced by someone who is going to maximize their ability.
Thanks for the cordial dialogue
You are right about your first premise. Agreed.
My point is not that they are independent but rather that the type of person who creates what people want to call chemistry at the Major Leage level does so by maximizing ability due to internal motivations. But almost all players at the top do this. When you remove a player who is not maximizing their talent it is a smart decision, but not because they made people less comfortable at work but rather because said player can be replaced by someone who is going to maximize their ability.
A couple of things. First, I think it would help if you defined chemistry. I think it has many different meanings and it is hard to discuss a moving target. Does chemistry mean team happiness? Does it mean team communication? Does it mean the players like each other? Does it mean the players work better together? Is it the absence of fights? Is it the Y in the equation Talent * Y = wins?
What I am saying is that, sure, most players in the major leagues are trying hard. But that does not mean that a clubhouse cannot be a combustible gasoline-soaked house of cards. Baseball players are talented, to varying degrees, but they are also a heterogeneous group of young men put in a stressful situations with a lot on the line. So I don’t think it is far-fetched to say that they may sometimes not get along well with each other. I also do not think it is far-fetched to say that disagreements and contempt for each other could negatively impact their play.
Now I am not saying how much it could affect their play because I don’t know. I’m not even saying it is significant or that such an affect is not usually overcome by a high winning percentage or team ticklers. But I don’t think your point about baseball players having to move through the ranks refutes the idea that the way these guys work together, from an emotional point of view, affects their success.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 8:52 AM PST up reply actions
I do think it is a failure on my part to define chemistry.
I’m not going to go back and re-write the post, but I think that would have made what I wrote more coherent and thank you for pointing that out.
Now I am not saying how much it could affect their play because I don’t know. I’m not even saying it is significant or that such an affect is not usually overcome by a high winning percentage or team ticklers. But I don’t think your point about baseball players having to move through the ranks refutes the idea that the way these guys work together, from an emotional point of view, affects their success.
I may not be disproving it and I am okay with that. I will say though that I do firmly believe that baseball players do not walk to the plate wondering if Ichiro is mad at them. They are focused on the task at hand. If they are unable to do that they just plain and simple will not survive in the game. Baseball requires many efforts done solo, not in concert with others, and this distinction is what separates it from other sports.
This is divergent, but since it is my post who cares. I want to congratulate you on your being a more involved member of the LL community recently. I criticized you for not doing so in the past and I have both noticed and appreciate your attempts to do so.
Cool
Well kudos to you for sparking a lot of thought from a lot of different people.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 9:15 AM PST up reply actions
Excellent work. Would you say that your theory applies to all professional sports, or just baseball?
I am not knowlegeable enough about other sports to say, but the weeding out process is different so I'm not sure.
Football requires working in concert on every play which baseball does not.
I've been thinking about this for several hours ...
… trying to connect with my experiences working with companies of various sizes and types.
My experience is that what distinguishes companies is the quality of management. Companies that are well managed show that management in all facets of their operations, be that marketing, production, personnel, safety, regulatory compliance, …
People look at companies such as Southwest Airlines, and think that what makes the company successful is employee morale, or focus on customer service or some such.
But I think most of those analyses miss the mark. Those are the product of good management, not the tools of good management. When I’ve been able to get inside those companies, they don’t only have good employee morale, they also have good quality control procedures, they operate efficiently, they have good reporting systems, they have good regulatory compliance records, etc.
The point is that they are well-managed companies, and that evidence of good management is apparent everywhere you look. Employee relations is not a magic bullet for success; you don’t turn around a company because you suddenly put your focus on employee relations (or marketing or product development or sales or anything else). You turn around a company by managing it better, which addresses all facets of operations.
++++++
There’s a lot of discussion above about employee morale. I find it fascinating that two of the entities I was ever involved with that had the highest morale were run by people who didn’t give a shit about human relations. All those people cared about was productivity.
What set those operations apart, though, was the consistency in focus and implementation. If you met output targets and goals you were rewarded. If you missed the mark, you heard about it. If you missed the mark too often you were gone. There was no sentiment, and neither was there any ambiguity. The rules were clearly articulated and consistently implemented. The employees loved it; if someone was were a new hire and didn’t like it the person simply didn’t last.
Conversely, a couple of the most dysfunctional situations I’ve ever encountered involved companies who bent over backwards for their employees. Invariably that seems to lead to uncertainty and confusion, as the rules and standards seemed to always be changed and amended for the circumstances of every individual employee.
I think the unifying element is developing coherent and appropriate strategies and procedures, then consistently implementing and adhering to those procedures. Chaotic management leads to chaotic results, no matter what they guiding principles might be. The key to success for those couldn’t-give-a-shit managers was that they were consistent in their goals, implementations, and rewards. But a couldn’t-give-a-shit manager who plays favorites or is otherwise inconsistent makes a work situation that is totally toxic. Of course, those organizations don’t really last very long either, unless they are monopolies (utilities or government agencies).
++++
I urge you to shed the notion that some companies are successful because they pay more attention to their employees (or they are focused on customer service or quality control or productivity or anything else you can dream up). They are successful because they are well-managed, and those traits are the evidence of that management skill.
Bad managers look for magic bullets; they think that companies such as Southwest Airlines succeed because they hire the right employees, have better incentives, etc. They then try to fire those magic bullets and then they inevitably fail because they are shitty managers. And when its clear that things are still shit, those manager start looking for reasons – usually pointing at the employees – for why the magic bullets didn’t work.
But the reason those bullets didn’t work isn’t because the employees fucked up (despite what the shitty manager will ardently believe). It’s because the managers are shitty. But one of the marks of a shitty manager is that their noses are so desensitized they can’t even smell their own shit.
by Steve Nelson on Jan 27, 2010 9:33 PM PST reply actions 12 recs
You are the man steve
There’s a lot of discussion above about employee morale. I find it fascinating that two of the entities I was ever involved with that had the highest morale were run by people who didn’t give a shit about human relations. All those people cared about was productivity.
What set those operations apart, though, was the consistency in focus and implementation. If you met output targets and goals you were rewarded. If you missed the mark, you heard about it. If you missed the mark too often you were gone. There was no sentiment, and neither was there any ambiguity. The rules were clearly articulated and consistently implemented. The employees loved it; if someone was were a new hire and didn’t like it the person simply didn’t last.
If the employees did’nt love it, but hated it, those rules would quickly be changed so that morale would be up, because morale affects the oh so loved productivity.
I think productivity and the feeling of accomplishment create good morale.
Bill Gates once pointed out that teaching self-esteem in schools was the biggest waste of resources he has seen. The reason is that truly good feelings about one’s self only come from earning an accomplishment. If people expect good morale to create acoomplishments they are delusional. Give someone the tools to succeed and you give them the path to happiness. You do not give someone happiness and then expect success.
Ever met a rich kid who was given everything? Not very effective or accomplished people.
Ka-Ching
That is exactly correct. It’s far easier and more effective to build self-esteem by getting people to do well (and recognizing them for their accomplishments) than by telling people they should feel good about themselves just because they ought to.
by Steve Nelson on Jan 28, 2010 12:35 PM PST up reply actions
I don't think anyone is arguing that, but
Just because they are successful, does’nt mean that something can’t set them back. I think a positive eviroment, good chemistry would only further their chances of more success. Granted good chemistry did’nt get them where they are, but good chemistry may allow them to sustain it for longer. I guess success would have to be defined as well as chemistry. I know a filthy rich kid and he is the least accomplished person I know. Is he successful? No. Is he rich? Yes.
As an employee of a major wireless company, I can definitely relate.
Also, I fuckin love Southwest Airlines.
I worry a little that I'm going to be a shitty manager because I'm a bit too conceptual as a thinker.
I feel like the nail on the head here was that the manager needs to communicate the goals directly (and assign them correctly) and then reward those who meet/exceed them and not reward people for no apparent reason.
Batted .393/.614/.464 for 2009 Diablos, #5 in OBP for PSSBL Rocky Division.
by Two Rs and Two Ls on Jan 28, 2010 3:17 AM PST up reply actions
I don't agree completely
There’s different goals for a corporation and a MLB team. Assuming the idea of the MLB team is to win games not to make money.
A corporation might make say golf clubs. There employees make their golf clubs, but unless their hand crafting it, their talent is very replaceable. As you stated only 750 players are in the MLB at a time. The talent pool is very small and very competitive to say the least.
The difference between a regular worker and a MLB player is in what skills it takes. Again with the example of the golf clubs, the employee for the corporation isn’t doing a lot of the work, a machine is, he’s easily replaceable and isn’t as accountable. If the business he was in was building tables by hand, the quality of the product is mostly dependent on him. This is like in baseball, the player is the direct input for the product. It is paramount to make sure he is in the right situation. In the case of the golf club maker his input only affects a small part of the system, he still needs to do it, however he matter less, and if he doesn’t do it you can replace him easily.
As another example using Walmart, your in store employees don’t need to be happy, the baseline is whats important. When a customer comes into a store the thing they really only care about is the product their getting, not how courteous the door worker was. While it might make a few people leave, most will still shop there because the product is still good(price). In baseball the Win is what your trying to produce, the employees in this case are the most important thing because they are the direct creators of the product.
I agree that chemistry might not be as big of a deal because only the most motivated player make it to the big leagues, but i’m not sure the corporate explanation is the best
I.m not sure i completely got my point across, and i kinda rambled, but if you understand what i’m trying to get at, feel free to try and explain it
The goal of an MLB team is to make money.
Winning games is the best way to go about doing that.
by Aaron Campeau on Jan 27, 2010 10:00 PM PST up reply actions
Until given reason to believe otherwise
I remain totally unconvinced that Griffey had little if any appreciable impact on the team’s revenue last season.
by Aaron Campeau on Jan 27, 2010 10:04 PM PST up reply actions
I can't sorry
They don’t release those numbers, but you got to think they would’nt bring him back unless it was a wash or showed up green at the end of the year. Someone also said that under revenue sharing jersey sales and memrobilia ect. get divided up through out all the teams, but when something is purchased in the team store or within a certain mile distance to the stadium, it’s my understanding that it goes directly to the team. So I would imagine that he did generate revenue for the team with ticket sales and merchandise and added concesion.
Nice piece
I had a quick thought I’ve been ruminating over for a bit today (we’ve had some intangibles/chemistry talk at McC too).
Some people talk a lot about the adverse effects bad clubhouse chemistry and/or bad teammates can have on a player. Yet, as I understand it, minor league clubhouses aren’t always the most welcoming or happiest places around. Jealousy issues (over prospect status or signing bonus or what have you) and the issue of competition for that MLB job could potentially make relations rough within the clubhouse. Players probably have to deal with this at every minor league level and deal with it accordingly so. If this is all true, then what makes things suddenly different at the MLB level? It seems that while players do often make friends at the MLB level, if there’s someone who bothers them, they could just shake it off and go on with their business, just like at the lower levels.
I could be wrong in all of this, and I’m not sure if I’m getting my thoughts across correctly, but I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
Aaron King is still my homeboy... iffy mechanics and all
McFAQ for all you newcomers out there.
GET THAT VORP AND WHIP SH!T OUTTA HERE!!!
Whomever Sabean signs this off-season will make a good platoon partner with Ryan Gark-ohh... nevermind...
I don't know for sure, of course, but I imagine you're right about minor league locker rooms to at least some degree.
At least when you’re in the majors, you’ve reached the highest level. You may not have reached the salary or fame you desire, but at least you know you’re in the right locker room. In the minors, it’s probably fairly contentious. It would be unnatural for there not to be jealousy, bitterness, etc. It’s nothing personal, but you think you’re better than these guys who have been on the big club, yet you haven’t gotten so much as a cup of coffee.
I watched a documentary a few years ago about the Diamondbacks’ AAA team (the Sidewinders), and that team had Justin Upton, Chris Young and Carlos Quentin, just to name a few — all vying to get called up to a team that didn’t have many open spots, from what I recall. They seemed to have a good rapport on camera, but who knows what goes on inside these guys’ heads when the competition is so fierce. Guys would get called up for two games then sent back down, heartbroken, knowing that they could have proved themselves if given a decent number of at-bats/innings. That’s gotta stick with you.
I was also thinking of that story about Deion Sanders that Buster Olney tells every year
I don’t remember the specifics, but apparently some of Deion’s minor league teammates (who I believe were career minor leaguers) misinformed Olney about something that ended up in the paper the next day, and Olney looked at it in hindsight and saw that jealousy and resentment played a role in what they said about Deion.
Aaron King is still my homeboy... iffy mechanics and all
McFAQ for all you newcomers out there.
GET THAT VORP AND WHIP SH!T OUTTA HERE!!!
Whomever Sabean signs this off-season will make a good platoon partner with Ryan Gark-ohh... nevermind...
I think there is a difference in the locker rooms.
In the minors you can show up with the attitude that it’s does’nt really matter what the team does, how do I get my numbers up. You can care just about yourself and what your doing, how the team finishes overall does’nt really matter much. In a MLB locker room, if that was your attitude, it really would’nt fly. The media would be all over you, the fans, teammates ect.
Apparently not always though
e.g. Travis Denker with the Giants… apparently his lack of hustle was one of the significant factors to their being down on him (which led to him being released, despite being somewhat young with some patience and power)
It would be nice to hear from some people who have been on minor or major league teams but yeah…
Aaron King is still my homeboy... iffy mechanics and all
McFAQ for all you newcomers out there.
GET THAT VORP AND WHIP SH!T OUTTA HERE!!!
Whomever Sabean signs this off-season will make a good platoon partner with Ryan Gark-ohh... nevermind...
Re: fear vs desire
I am intrigued by this issue of success with regards to the right kind of motivation. Do you know of a place where I can read more about it?
Thoughts
-MLB players have a much larger stake in their own performance than team performance (contract and reputation)
-Hitting is an individual skill
-Pitching is the interaction between the pitcher, catcher, and manager to some extent, but still largely an individual skill
-Defense consists of both individual skill and interactions (throwing and catching)
So, if you believe chemistry has a large effect on a TEAM’S performance (as opposed to one player’s internal motivation affecting only his own work ethic), it seems to me you have to assume one or more the following:
1. Chemistry has a psychological effect that changes how well a teams batters perform at the plate
2. Chemistry has a psychological effect that changes a team’s pitchers’ stuff
3. Chemistry has an effect on the pitcher/catcher relationship that affects how a game is called
4. Chemistry has a psychological effect that changes a team’s defenders’ individual sure-handedness, positioning, range, or throwing ability
5. Chemistry has an affect on how well fielders work together as a unit
1, 2, and 4 seem easily dismissed to me, as I believe these are completely individual baseball skills and that a player, whether motivated by team success, personal pride, or self-interest (legacy, the next contract, etc.), will show the same performance in these areas regardless of team chemistry.
3 is possible, and measuring this would likely tie in to Jeff’s recent CERA post, and as such right now there seems to be no major effect that is measurable at the moment.
4 is also possible as it is not an individual skill but would show up in poorer than expected defense for a team (though this would be difficult to measure as well with a defender’s true talent level being almost impossible to pinpoint. Or maybe it would be a lower-than expected DER when compared to the UZR of the team?
Assuming 3 and 4 are the areas that chemistry has the largest possibility of affecting, chemistry would affect a team’s runs allowed but not its runs scored, but so far there is no numerical evidence of this.
There are two other possibilities: it is chemistry, and not luck, or a more likely a mix of the two that causes a team to deviate from its expected Pythagorean record. Again, this is possible but how exactly one would measure that mathematically wis vexing. The other possibility is that chemistry DOES affect a player’s individual skill and perfomance (points 1, 2, or 4), but I have yet to see a good argument for that on the MLB level.
And of course I think the largest problem here isn’t so much that you can’t quantify chemistry’s effecs, if any, but that the deeper issue is: how can you measure chemistry itself in order to properly correlate it with certain effects?
Well I didn’t intend for this to be that long of a comment and I started rambling, but there it is.
I'm thinking that the argument is more that 'chemistry' improves the preparation and motivation that underlie all of the specific skills
That is, maybe you (a pitcher) think the OF guys are selfish, and only care about getting their averages over .300, they hate you, and aren’t particularly wedded to the idea of going all out to track down fly balls for you. Does this happen? Actually, I think that it might at some level. The question is, what’s the response? Do you change your approach at the margin to get GBs? Do you think the catcher doesn’t care, or is he an ally? All interesting little debates I can see a pitcher having with himself in a poisonous clubhouse. I still wonder what sorts of things were going on in certain M’s pitchers’ heads in 2008 that led them to believe that Ichiro was a problem.
Still, the issue is that at some level, it’s still all wrapped up with talent. You can hate Franklin Gutierrez, but I can’t imagine thinking he’s letting too many fly balls drop in. You can think Beltre’s a clubhouse cancer, but his talent overcomes any of the sorts of doubts that might lead you to change your approach. That is, chemistry seems to mean more on teams with less talent, which is why the variables get contaminated all the time. The 1970s Yankees were fine hating each other, and the 2009 Yankees (or 2007 Red Sox) would be fine too.
I totally agree with the 1970s Yankees.
Include in that the 1970s Athletics. What do they have in common? Reggie Jackson. He did not get along very well with players on both of these teams while he was playing there and yet, both teams won World Series while he was playing for them. I’m sure there are other star players that have stories about them getting along great with their teams and winning championships with their teams. But I think that this really proves the point that Sec 108 is trying to make. If chemistry really had a major effect on a team’s performance than every World Series team would have clubhouses that got along great. The fact that there are teams that have won the World Series, but the clubhouse atmosphere wasn’t great shows that chemistry does not have a measurable impact on a team’s performance, in my opinion.
by seattle_since_81 on Jan 28, 2010 5:38 PM PST up reply actions
Excellent work
If chemistry really had a major effect on a team’s performance than every World Series team would have clubhouses that got along great.
I can use this same line of thinking to “prove” that having a 50 homerun clean-up hitter has no major effect on a team’s performance.
Or to “prove” that scoring the most runs in the league has no major effect on a team’s performance.
And I like that. It’s a neat trick.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 6:10 PM PST up reply actions
The fact that there are teams that have won the World Series, but the clubhouse atmosphere wasn’t great shows that chemistry does not have a measurable impact on a team’s performance.
The fact that there are people who walk outside with no umbrellas and don’t get wet shows that umbrellas do not have a measurable impact on a person’s dryness.
by Attractive Nuisance on Jan 28, 2010 6:12 PM PST up reply actions
Yeah, I was wondering if I there were ways to punch holes in what I stated when I was typing it out.
Thank you for pointing them out. What I was trying to get at is that Sec 108’s position is that chemistry effects performance in a negligible way. If you think that chemistry does effect performance than you would say that bad clubhouses would not perform at or above where they should and that good clubhouses would perform at or above where they should. To prove the point that it is negligible you would want to show teams that had bad clubhouses performing as well or better than they should (i.e. winning the World Series) or teams that had good clubhouses not performing as well as they should, correct?
by seattle_since_81 on Jan 28, 2010 7:26 PM PST up reply actions
Talent > Chemistry
Coaching > Chemistry, 10 is more than 1 but, 10+1=11. Chemistry is real! It may not be important but, whether we can measure it or not does’nt mean it can’t be a factor.
I'm not sure why this is such a big argument
Chemistry and “having fun” do have an effect on a baseball team. But a large part of chemistry and “having fun” is due to winning. One helps create the other and vice versa.
There’s no doubt in my mind that having Griffey on the team will result in better team chemistry. His influence will be able to smooth over some minor arguments in the clubhouse and will help to keep things light-hearted. He brings the veterans and the youngsters together so that they feel like a team.
That being said, winning and losing decides a large portion of the team’s chemistry. If we’re losing there’s little Griffey can do to keep the team’s spirits up. But if we’re winning, his influence generally adds to the good feelings and the team becomes a closer knit group. There’s a reason why everyone was hugging at the end of last year.
The problem is that’s it’s hard to build a team around chemistry. You build a team around stats and generally have to hope for chemistry. Griffey may be an exception because of his unique personality and the fact that everyone respects him.
Interesting Stuff
I agree with much of what you wrote, however, I find it odd that you didn’t choose a different business for your analogy. It would seem that a consulting firm such as McKinsey would offer a much better comparison to baseball, given the similar “up or out” nature of their personnel progressions. Alternatively, a large law firm would also work.
Not all employees are low-level wage-earners like Wal-Mart greeters, and many of the most successful corporations pay quite handsomely to attract talent and then strive to keep that talent “happy” (read: productive), because doing so maximizes profit in the long run. This is precisely the argument made by executives in the major investment banks that have received TARP funding and are now facing congressional inquiries about their employee compensation – “if we don’t pay out bonuses, our employees will leave us for firms that do, making it hard for us to make profits and pay back our TARP loans.”
Bringing this back to the Mariners, the job of Howard Lincoln is to maximize the profits that the Mariners make. He (hopefully) realizes that in baseball, winning leads to profit, so he hires Jack Zduriencik to build a winning, and therefore profitable, team. Zduriencik, being intelligent, realizes that talented teams are winning teams, so he seeks to maximize the amount of talent in the organization and particularly the amount of talent on the Major League and 40-man rosters. “Chemistry” creeps into this process a bit though, as evidenced by the time that Zduriencik spent doing due diligence on Milton Bradley. Bringing Bradley aboard at the cost of Silva is clearly a smart move from a talent-maximization standpoint, but Bradley’s past history of personal volatility clearly forced Zduriencik to consider factors other than pure talent. Still, the tendency to value talent maximization over “chemistry” is evidenced by the fact that the organization acquired Bradley (and Everett and Guillen before him).
So far, chemistry/happiness/unicorns play only a small role in Lincoln’s goal of profit maximization, but I believe the next rung down is where it gets a little fuzzy: Zduriencik, wishing to maximize the performance of the talent that he has assembled, hires Don Wakamatsu as his manager. Presumably, Wakamatsu was hired for more than his philosophies regarding lineup construction and bunting the runner over – he was probably hired in large part to manage the egos of 25 highly-driven bundles of testosterone. Whether you want to call this “chemistry” or “happiness” or “talent maximization” is academic to me, but it’s clearly a large portion of Wakamatsu’s job. Zduriencik admitted as much when he acquired Bradley – having a manager like Wakamatsu who is capable (according to Zduriencik) of dealing with strong personalities not only maximizes the production of existing talent, but also allows Zduriencik the flexibility to acquire players such as Bradley whose talent comes with some baggage.
Ultimately, I find myself agreeing with Steve Nelson’s post above – management is key, and I think it’s the locus where things such as “chemistry” come into effect. Profit is the ultimate goal → winning brings profit → talent leads to winning → and maximizing the productivity of the talent through effective management is one way of winning, thereby maximizing profit. In other words, if profit is the end and talent is the means, effective management that fosters happy/productive talent is the way to use the means toward the end.
This is not a game of who the f*ck are you...
I like your summation and it makes sense.
I will always believe that happiness at work is more from the satisfaction from being productive rather than happy then productive. It has proven true far too often in my own experience to believe it runs the other way.
I couldn’t agree more. Most people want to be productive – good managers find a way to make that happen. People then become happy as a byproduct of that – which is similar to the notion that winning begets chemistry rather than the other way around.
Anyhow, epically interesting and well-written post!
This is not a game of who the f*ck are you...
Please use the subject line on LL
Thank you! It makes things much easier for the moderators
by Graham MacAree on Jan 28, 2010 8:50 AM PST up reply actions
Apologies and WILCO
I take it that’s a general rule for all comments? I think I mistakenly believed it was just for initial replies to a post and that sub-replies within a given thread were exempt.
This is not a game of who the f*ck are you...
It's for all comments, yes
If you post a comment that gets flagged, for example, we get a quick link to it so we can figure out what the flag’s about and why it’s questionable. But the link doesn’t actually go anywhere unless there’s a subject line. Also, if you’re posting something that someone wishes to hide (normally a picture), they can only do it if there’s a subject line.
Also we’re just used to having it there after five years so it confuses us when people don’t put one in.
by Graham MacAree on Jan 28, 2010 9:00 AM PST up reply actions
Not to de-rail this topic,
but couldn’t SBN have an option for moderators to force subject lines? This HAS to have been brought up with SBN and the mods here before, but I haven’t seen it mentioned before.
That was the point.
He was even more of this than Yuni was:
This is because when everyone else on the team was working to hone their skills he would be sitting in the clubhouse resting on his laurels. Make no mistake about it, he is and always will be the poster child for wasted opportunity.
Adding to the complexity of team chemistry on MLB teams.
Most articles and discussions that I’ve seen on team chemistry typically use one real Major League team or a generic example of a Major League. My curiosity on the subject is the effect of team chemistry on other Major League Teams. This is something I’m sure we could easily do if it were quantifiable in a meaningful way. But that’s nothing we don’t already know, right?
Suppose, for example, we took the last three seasons (2007, 2008, 2009) of each MLB team and attempted to examine their chemistry factor. Do all teams have chemistry? If good teams have good chemistry and bad teams have bad chemistry, do mediocre .500 teams have no chemistry at all? Is it a mix of both? It raises questions regarding certain teams.
- Mariner players rave about the good chemistry they had in 2009? Was it better than the chemistry of the 2007 team?
- The Mariners were disastrous in 2008 with a level of disconnect and team morale that was reportedly significantly terrible en route to a 100-loss finish. But the Nationals had two straight 100-loss seasons (2008 and 2009). Was their clubhouse chemistry really worse than ours?
- Oakland has literally averaged about 75-wins a season in the last three years. They haven’t done particularly well nor have they been terrible. Do they have no chemistry? Do they have good chemistry for holding together despite their roster always being in flux? Is it bad since the team hasn’t been winning lately?
- The Yankees are a winning franchise. Do they have the best chemistry in baseball? Is there chemistry good every year? Was it not good when they missed the playoffs in 2008?
- Who can forget the Angels? Projections of high 80-ish wins for their team in the last two years have resulted in 100 and 97 wins respectively. Do THEY have the best chemistry in baseball since they’re generally exceeding expectations on talent level?
Maybe all of this leads to chemistry in the MLB being negligible overall (as explained by Sec 108) and maybe anecdotes explaining otherwise are more of an exception. How much would we really think about chemistry if it wasn’t hammered into us by our team for the last three years?
Very well written, and I largely agree with everything you've stated
I want to poop at your house - Thingray
Griffey's ass?
I want to poop at your house - Thingray
by tootthekazoo on Jan 29, 2010 5:09 PM PST up reply actions
CH3OH = bad chemistry ...
… and watching the 2008 Mariners was almost enough to make me say I’d rather go blind than see Vidro flail away.
by Steve Nelson on Jan 28, 2010 1:29 PM PST up reply actions
This has been a great conversation ...
… and thanks to Sec 108 for a great, thought-provoking post. A lot of what I wanted to say has already been said. Not that that’s going to stop me – yay redundancy! – but here are a few points I want to make:
- Sec 108, my summary of your final conclusion is that while feel-good stories about nice guys who get along sound great, they have at best a small impact on team and individual performance. Most of what gets attributed to good chemistry can be attributed to other factors, including makeup, which really should be considered a part of a player’s innate talent. Am I correct on the conclusion? I agree with this – especially the piece about makeup, which I think is a subtlety that a lot of people miss.
- While I agree with the overall point, I’m not entirely convinced by the comparison between the business and baseball environment. Can we agree that this is the argument for chemistry – that a team that gets along is happier, that that happiness results in motivation/dedication, and that motivation/dedication results in better performance? If that’s the argument for chemistry, I’m not sure what we get by making the argument that CEOs and GMs are more focused on productivity than happiness.
That’s kinda patently true, but it doesn’t really answer the chemistry argument I just outlined – a pro-chemistry argument would simply run that a happy player is more productive and thus GMs and CEOs worry about chemistry in the interest of driving bottom-line productivity (profit or wins). Heck, some GMs clearly believe this – I don’t think Bill Bavasi spent a lot of time up at night wondering about the magnitude of his players’ smiles, he really thought that player happiness indirectly helped drive wins. Making the argument simply about happiness without addressing the underlying point about improved productivity is to trivialize the pro-chemistry argument.
- I’m also not totally convinced by the argument that a highly selected group of over-achievers necessarily have great makeup and are as a result mostly immune from the productivity-damaging effects of bad chemistry. You say:
“This (winnowing) process almost entirely removes players who were motivated by fear, players of lesser talents, players who lose interest in the game of baseball and the players who were doing it because it had always come easy to them. The vast majority of those 750 Major Leaguers have exactly what it takes in regard to makeup and talent to be where they are at.”
I don’t think this is necessarily true. Assuming perfect efficiency – which we can’t assume in a league in which Dayton Moore is a GM – then the 750 Major Leaguers should have the best overall talent package available on the marketplace of available talent. That talent package includes makeup, but it doesn’t mean that all 750 Major Leaguers have perfect makeup. In fact, if makeup is given less weight than physical tools, then it’s likely that there are many Major Leaguers who have great physical tools but poor makeup. To use an example, Johnny Damon clearly doesn’t have one of the top 750 arms on the planet; but he’s a successful major leaguer because his whole talent package clearly places him in the top 750 players available. There are likely some players that have the makeup equivalent of the Johnny Damon arm.
This is certainly true in basketball; the farm system probably it that less true in MLB, but there are clearly players in MLB with imperfect makeup. Imperfect makeup leaves a theoretical variability for a player to be postively or negatively affected by their surroundings.
- The thing is, though, I still agree with the overall point – I just think the right way to debunk the chemistry argument is to question the link between happiness and productivity. Does increased happiness really drive increased productivity? If we could boil Ichiro’s hitting ability down to a number – say 88/100 – will a happy Ichiro either hit closer to that 88% ceiling or even overachieve that ability? I don’t see any reason to think that’s the case, and I haven’t seen any evidence that it would be the case. Your makeup argument really makes hay here – Ichiro has been selected by a number of factors to be a Major League player, and he has the professionalism, drive, and focus to prepare and work to play as close to his ceiling as he can whether he’s satisfied, happy, ecstatic, or laughing rapturously in the throes of a tickle attack.
- But, I’ll throw this out there—while I would agree based on this that better-than-average chemistry has limited utility at the Major League level, I would assert that really bad chemistry can have a negative impact. Thus team chemistry is a one-way street; you can’t really improve much, but you can certainly decline. Taking the Ichiro hitting ability example I gave above; Ichiro doesn’t have much upward potential if he’s happier or more dedicated, but if he became clinically depressed and stopped or dramatically curtailed his preparation and practice, he could certainly decline in a significant way.
Note that I’m not arguing that such bad chemistry can be predicted or that losing doesn’t help drive it. But in a clubhouse with a lot of distractions and in-fighting, personal rivalries, and that sort of thing, I believe – I don’t know, but I believe – that this puts a greater test on a player’s makeup and ability to maintain professionalism and preparation in the face of those distractions. It takes a lot of work and focus to play at such a high level; I can easily imagine that bad chemistry could be disruptive to that focus.
I would argue that the 2008 Mariners are a good example of this. Those paying attention knew that the team just wasn’t that great; but they collapsed to a degree that completely outstripped the weakness of the team’s true talent level. High-quality statistical projections didn’t project a good team, but they didn’t project the eventual train wreck. Ichiro played at a high level all season, but in general the team’s performance collapsed as the team atmosphere turned toxic. I don’t have a way to prove that it’s causation and not correlation, but it makes sense that distractions would prevent players with imperfect makeup from maintaining the focus needed to succeed at a high level.
I don’t have a single shred of evidence to back up this theory, but it makes sense to me. Feel free to eviscerate as necessary.
- I’d also like to address these points:
“Competition ever-increasingly necessitates worrying about the bottom line if you want to survive, not keeping your employees happy.” — OlSalty
“Caring is an inefficiency – The market selects against it.” — Graham
I think this is an over-simplification of both the business world and of the chemistry argument—it’s not just about “caring” and “happiness,” which are easy concepts to ridicule, it’s about maximizing value and utility.
There is a utility and a value to happy employees, happy customers, and a good corporate image. There is also a negative value (much stronger than the positive in my opinion) to unhappy employees, happy customers, and a bad corporate image.
Happy customers provide free and authoritative advertising; unhappy customers do an even more effective job of driving away prospective customers. Satisfied, happy, and inspired employees might bring more energy and dedication, and innovation to their work. On the other side of the coin, unhappy employees provide tremendous negative value. Dissatisfied employees can pass on their dissatsisfaction to the customers with whom they interface and can act in ways counter to the best interests of the company. Replacing employees that leave due to a noxious atmosphere costs companies quite a bit in terms of knowledge and experience loss and in project delays and derailment. That’s to say nothing of the enormous costs of recruiting, onboarding, and training new employees.
Employees leave for all sorts of reasons, but I know that employee satisfaction is a high priority for our company for this reason—not because the top executives care whether I’m happy or just satisfied, but because if I or my coworkers are dissatisfied it has the potential to cause real problems for the bottom line.
Is this limited to run-of-the-mill employees? Let’s assume for a moment that high-level executive positions are weeded as selectively as the MLB spots, and that the method of filling those positions is as efficient as what is used to select MLB players. I don’t think that’s a great assumption, but let’s assume it’s true.
If so, we can assume that high-level executives should be relatively more selected to bring their own energy, innovation, and drive and not rely on external factors to provide them. But just as in MLB, I don’t think you can assume that every top executive has perfect makeup and is immune to bad chemistry – and I’d argue the negative effects are potentially more damaging than with a regular employee. Yeah, a high-level executive is unlikely to go home and weep if another executive is mean. But executives who leave because of an unhappy atmosphere, or who dedicate their energies to playing politics or tormenting their employees because of an unhappy atmosphere create an enormous level of negative value. Not because people are pouting, but because they disrupt execution either through disaffection or through attrition.
To sum up, it’s true to say that some/most/many (but not all) successful companies are focused on the bottom line rather than making employees happy; but I’d argue that separating employee morale from the bottom line is a false dichotomy, that maintaining at least a base level of employee morale is key to the bottom line.
Tying it all together, there’s probably not a lot of utility (for either a company or baseball team) to lifting employees or players from generally satisfied to ecstatic. If they’re any good, they will be working hard at the satisfied level. But there is strong negative value to having employees or players drop from generally satisfied to completely disillusioned.
Thanks for prompting a great conversation, Sec 108, and please feel free to pull apart the various holes that I’m sure exist in this comment.
by Chris Hafner on Jan 28, 2010 1:31 PM PST reply actions 2 recs
I will respond to your first paragraph and say yes.
I obviously am not convinced that unhappiness at work ruins productivity. There are a variety of studies out there that support both sides of that argument. It is a complex one that I do ultimately think is decided by the type of person being affected. Which in turn goes back to my belief that the vast majority of Major League players exist on a level that cannot be compared to the average Joe.
It's definitely hard to prove.
Not to get into the anecdote game, but I’m not really sure how to make my point in any objective way. I know people whose productivity has been damaged due to unhappiness at work, and there are many stories about how disaffection among workers on production lines has led to really low product quality and product flaws. I’ve also experienced a Senior VP who made life hell on a group of VPs and led to turnover at a high level of a major company – turnover that derailed a lot of projects and progress during that time.
Which in turn goes back to my belief that the vast majority of Major League players exist on a level that cannot be compared to the average Joe.
Yep, though I’m not sure this necessarily means that MLB players are by definition impervious to this sort of thing. But I already bloviated enough about that in my mammoth comment and so I’ll spare everybody the pain of going through it again.
by Chris Hafner on Jan 28, 2010 2:59 PM PST up reply actions
On makeup
To use an example, Johnny Damon clearly doesn’t have one of the top 750 arms on the planet; but he’s a successful major leaguer because his whole talent package clearly places him in the top 750 players available. There are likely some players that have the makeup equivalent of the Johnny Damon arm.
My read on makeup was that it was a mental thing, not physical. Breaking down the physical ability of players is easily done. It’s not too common to have a MLB player that isn’t mentally capable.
No, you're right, makeup is mental.
My point wasn’t that makeup is a physical talent, but that it’s part of the overall talent package. Sec 108 was saying (correctly, I think) that makeup is a significant part of what makes a player good. A player’s overall talent package is made up of many attributes, many of them physical, but makeup is one of those attributes. You hear the current front office talk about makeup as an important attribute of a player to scout, just like arm strength, speed, power, etc.
My point is that yes, the massive pool of people who want to be MLB players is winnowed to a breathtakingly small few, and in a system that’s perfectly efficient, those few are the absolute apex of the available pool. The selection process ensures that they’re excellent overall. My point is that this selection process doesn’t ensure that every player is fantastic at every attribute. I don’t think it’s any more fair to say that every MLB player must have fantastic makeup than it is to say that every MLB player must have a fantastic arm – sometimes a lot of strengths elsewhere can make up for a weakness. Johnny Damon’s weakness is his arm. Yuni’s weakness is his makeup.
by Chris Hafner on Jan 28, 2010 3:05 PM PST up reply actions
Well of course you have to keep your customers happy
You rely on them to keep you in business. That doesn’t really have much to do with keeping your employees happy, though. Typically there is such an enormous amount of replacement labor available that it doesn’t particularly matter whether they get pissed off and leave, there is always someone willing to step in and do the job without complaining.
I agree that there is a base level for employee happiness, but that is mainly determined by the market itself, and that happiness is primarily centered around wages, hours, benefits, mostly things that cost money. As your company is driven to compete to survive, it’s not a matter of choice anymore, you have to cut corners and that’s going to have to come at the expense of your employees.
While I think we agree on the value of great clubhouse chemistry, I disagree on some of these details.
First of all, my point isn’t really around cutting corners, but rather maintaining a base level of satisfaction. They’re not always related. I’ve seen shoe-string operations where people are happy despite not having much pay, and I’ve seen rich companies that compensate very well but people are miserable. I’m not sure looking at it from a strictly financial standpoint is the way to look at it, because while a company’s financial situation can be a partial driver of happy or unhappy workplaces, but it doesn’t address whether those workplaces are more or less productive or whether there’s a value to having happy or unhappy workplaces. And, by extension, it doesn’t say a lot about whether good or bad chemistry has positive or negative value for a baseball team.
But, if we’re going to talk about the impact of cutting corners, I included customers because keeping customers happy is an example of how cutting corners for a better bottom line does not always equal sound business strategy. Cutting the quality of the product or of customer service can be justified as a way to compete to survive, but if done in a way that it poisons your customer base, it’s a poor long-term bet. It’s the same with employees.
Typically there is such an enormous amount of replacement labor available that it doesn’t particularly matter whether they get pissed off and leave, there is always someone willing to step in and do the job without complaining.
I think you’re dramatically understating the costs of employee turnover at anything higher than an entry-level position. At a fast food place or a call center, you just deal with turnover because it goes with the level of the job. But in a work environment where the employees have any level of responsibility, turnover is expensive in ways that go beyond the (not inconsiderable) financial. I can only speak to my company, but recruiting good talent even in a down market is a really hard problem to solve. I have seen VP-level employees held personally accountable for lack of progress on important initiatives that resulted from losing good talent and not being able to fill the spot.
I don’t think employees have to be over-the-moon ecstatic, but employee turnover can be tremendously damaging and big companies (ours at least) spend a lot of money and effort assessing their employees’ happiness and replacing them if and when they leave.
by Chris Hafner on Jan 28, 2010 3:22 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
One other aspect to this:
Satisfied, happy, and inspired employees might bring more energy and dedication, and innovation to their work. On the other side of the coin, unhappy employees provide tremendous negative value.
There’s also the employee recruitment aspect. Happy employees are far more likely to recommend their talented acquaintances for job openings or point out those openings to talented acquaintances; unhappy employees don’t. Happy employees will help sell the job to prospective employees during the interview phase; unhappy employees will not.
To what extent this dynamic may or may not impact things like free-agent signings… who knows? But I’m sure it at least exists.
This space for rent.
It does impact it.
Player’s listen to other player’s. If a superstar calls a guy up and tells him how great it is where he is at and tells that player to come join him then it could factor in the decision to go play there. Is a player gonna recommended a place to play if it is a bad enviroment probably not. I thought Griffey came here, because of a phone call, maybe not entirely because of it, but I thought it affected his decision.
I'm not sure how major an effect this is in MLB
I’ll buy it in the corporate world, since employee referrals and recruiting is a major focus at many large companies. But how often have we heard that Player X came to Team Y because Player Z says it’s a good place to play? If all things were equal I guess I could see it, but all things are rarely equal.
by Chris Hafner on Jan 29, 2010 8:15 AM PST up reply actions
Yup.
One reason the comparison is shaky is that in the corporate world, a friend can tell you “come work with me, I love the place and it’ll be fun” and you have a very reasonable expectation — sudden layoffs notwithstanding — that your friend will actually still be around in three years. Rockwell can’t trade your friend to Raytheon for a package of prospects.
Further, I would surmise that the psychological difference between a “good” corporate workplace and a “bad” one is quite a bit wider than that between a good clubhouse and a bad one (wins and losses notwithstanding, although I suppose “winning games” might equate to “look how much my stock options are worth!”).
This space for rent.
After reading Chris H.'s comment, I'm trying to put the chemistry debate into as few questions as possible. First attempt:
Are MLB players susceptible to ‘catching’ the bad mood of their teammates? (Does chemistry exist?)
Does mood affect the performance of MLB players? (Does chemistry matter?)
Is this what it boils down to, or am I missing something?
My take on it is
When things are going well no one cares if there is chemistry or not. The “feel good factor” of the team doing well carries the players. THe players are happy because they are winning and they don’t even have to like the guy next to them, but when someone hits the winning run they will high five him and spred the love. The only time that chemistry matters is when the team are not doing well and the cracks start to appear… that is when a disjointed team is likely to fall apart and a closs knit group have more chance to pull together, and try and pull through as a team.
by ChelseaMariner on Jan 28, 2010 3:37 PM PST up reply actions
A Sidebar observation
This is an extremely interesting and generally pertinent commentary and discussion.
No matter what your feelings might be about this particular topic, to be able to sustain the level of thoughtful discussion in the comments on this post in an open community such as LL is exemplary. Kudos to all and to the work of the mods to develop and sustain an internet community of this caliber.
by Steve Nelson on Jan 28, 2010 7:48 PM PST reply actions 2 recs
So in conclusion
Hugging means nothing.
I have no more reason to live.
~I once gave Jose Canseco $15. ~
My take on this.
First of all if you can say someone does not have an effect on a team for the good and better chemistry then you cannot say a player has a negative effect. Because if there can be a negative there can be a positive.
So based on this assumption that you say it has no effect that means a player like a Bradley will have 0 effect if he decides he is not happy. Obviously most posts on Bradley have said if he can keep his head in it and be happy then he and the team will be productive. This defeats the whole purpose of team chemistry saying is is present and counts for something.
I have played semi pro sports it was tennis but I played doubles and had teammates and playing on a high level you have to have good chemistry to compete. I have had teammates who were great players but did not know how to play with other peopel we suffered didn’t play as well. Then I could have teammates not as good but knew how to work together better and we won a ton more.
So I do believe chemistry plays into an equation a team that gets along better and works together better will win more. Now not saying this means they win 20 more games or 2 more games but when people are in a better state of mind they compete harder and want to play harder. There has to be an element of psychology in sports. This is a huge part of sports and this is why chemistry does factor into any game although
I do not believe this post disavows the importance of psychology or team chemistry in relationship to sports.
One of the primary points (but not only) of this post is to highlight and promote recognition of the differences in the scale between levels of competition such as college, semi-pro, and professional. Within that is the level of effect individual players have on team chemistry as the scope becomes more focused and the disparity between good and bad players tightens.
Levels of advancement by their very nature are designed to sort out players lacking the ability to maintain consistent performance. Whether they lack mental or physical tools, as players drop out the level of competition increases. There are several specific points within this post that highlight this, and address or attempt to address the differences in the scale between college, semi-pro, and major league level competition.
This post fostered a healthy and necessary dialogue on team chemistry and player contribution to that effect, and one aspect of LL that I personally enjoy is the level of scientific examination and logical thinking. Recently there has been a run of comments (in various other posts) where instead of observation, hypothesis, and anecdotal evidence leading to experimentation and analysis, they have instead served as proxy for fact and factual statements.
This comment might not serve to specifically address the points you raised or your concerns, it felt necessary to respond to some issues I believe you may have overlooked and the context that frames those issues.
I understand the level of effect may be less than in lower levels.
I have enjoyed this site very much since finding it about a month ago. I love the logical thinking and the scientific data. But when dealing with humans science cannot always predict how someone will or will not react.
This is the point I am trying to make. We all have our buttons that make us upset, mad, sad, happy, energetic. This is the point I am trying to make because we are dealing with humans and how they react to different people and situations which does effect team chemistry in my opinion.
I believe this is why one coach is paid more than another because they get their players to buy into a program and a belief system.
Maybe my idea of chemistry is different than others but this all is related to something that makes a team unique. Even though those players go out and work their position there are levels of how hard a team works together.
I am thinking this is why Ken Griffey Jr. is back this year personally. I think he is there to help mentor younger players and to help everyone get along. I guess I just don’t want people to overlook a human element of all of this. These players are not machines and so therefore can be affected by circumstances outside of science.
Hopefully this makes sense where I am coming from.
I don't think anyone here is saying that chemistry doesn't exist.
People, for the most part, seem to agree that it exists. The question is to what degree and what overall effect does it actually have? We all know that to have a net negative or positive affect there has to be something that determines how that is measured.
For example, how many runs can you attribute directly to chemistry? How many injuries can you say are avoided due to chemistry? Defensively how does chemistry affect how Ichiro catches or misses a ball in play?
Until these can be answered definitively, we can’t put a value to how much chemistry is worth to a team. And in this world, if you can’t put a value to it, it tends to be blown off.
It doesn't really get blown off by most people on LL though. Their have been instances where it has been discussed in serious player comparisons.
There is one prime example I’m thinking of regarding one of GMZ’s early player decisions, in a front page post. The players numbers were very similar, and then player make up and team chemistry was discussed as a possible deciding factor. And that’s where it was left, it was acknowledged that at this point in time player make up, team chemistry defy mathematical definition but they are not discounted or ignored. They just don’t play a prominent role in sabremetric player evaluation or projection because there is no specific, provable value.
Here’s my personal point of view, and I’m not speaking for anyone else on LL ( I want to be very clear about that). There’s nothing wrong with believing in team chemistry, or talking about team chemistry, but when people insist on accusing individuals or the LL community at large of not understanding team chemistry, or not believing it exists, I find this rude and frustrating. I personally believe it exists, but at the present moment there is no way to put a value to team chemistry. Providing an anecdote will support a hypothesis, but that does not make it a fact and does not provide a specific value that is in any way useful.
Think about it this way, when you want to define something, often times you have to eliminate the variables. By defining the value of all the bits of baseball, missed bats, out of zone/in zone contact rates, league average players, defense, by putting definitions to all that stuff you are eliminating variables. Eventually everything will be accounted for, except team chemistry and player make up, then you’ll be able to crack that nut and peg a value on it. So in a sense if team chemistry is a persons big thing, then they should thank the people that drive the sabremetric community, because at some point they will be able to prove whether or not it actually exists. With facts, formulas, scientific method and it’s actually fun to watch this stuff happen.
by Kermit. on Feb 1, 2010 12:10 PM PST up reply actions 1 recs
The placement of my comment is a bit unfortunate.
After rereading this several times I’m repeating what you said, with a just a touch more bloviation. It was more of a rant that had been building in my head for some time.
What happens to it is it gets included in the variance ...
… as with anything that affects an outcome and that hasn’t been measured and recorded. If we had a way to measure it, it could be factored into projection systems, and the uncertainty in the results would decrease correspondingly.
The problem that usually happens with such “imponderables”, however, is that they are used and interpreted selectively to support pet theories or ideas. Sticking to baseball, the previous GM believed strongly in the importance of veteran experience and character; and that those traits, while not directly measurable, could be deployed on a roster to enable a team to perform greater than the sum of its parts.
by Steve Nelson on Feb 1, 2010 12:13 PM PST up reply actions
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