From what I've learned this semester in the way of social media tools and how they enable people to exist in cyberspace, I've come to realize just how advanced we've become as a culture. I believe the culture that we belong to is the one that has regular access to the Internet and who uses it regularly for both personal and business purposes. For this class, we've had to use a few different web tools that I have never used before. I've come to realize their uses and limits, and think of better ways to use them. Going one step below the practical nature of the tools, we've learned a lot about the theory behind sharing information in the public domain and I've come to realize the difference between writing for an audience and publicly sharing my work. I feel like when your share your work with everybody and everybody can form their own opinions on your opinions, then there is a dilution in the quality of critique of the work. Therefore, there is a certain responsibility that is waived once your work hits the public forums. Why should the author who pens the information be subjected to a harsher scrutiny than the people who read and comment on it? That is the nature of information once it hits the Internet: if the work is not specialized and appeals to the masses, then it should be shared in a public domain, but since it is going to be analyzed every-which-way, there ceases to be a reason for why it should be stripped of any non-confirmed reporting/non-fact-based opinion. The future of internet media is clearly publish-then-edit due to the immense potential of thought evolution that this process creates.
Now, for the specific things that I now know how to negotiate better due to this course:
**I have had much experience writing on Blogspot in the past as well as using MySpace, Facebook, etc, but now I'm beginning to see the significance of using Netvibes as a way to congregate my material on one page. I feel like we could have used Netvibes a bit more, perhaps by setting up our own pages like we did for the first Wiki assignment. I think that would also give a nice glimpse into the personalities of our peers.
**Aside from Wikipedia, I had never used a Wiki before. I did not realize how much went into the creation and development of such an immense (yet seemingly simple) project. I think where Wikipedia succeeds, our Shirky project failed a little bit. Wikipedia is dependent on people caring about the subject matter and wanting to put a stamp on the online publishing world. I think if the Shirky project was a semester-long project where we were graded on the presentation of the pages (i.e. if we paid much more attention to content instead of mainly just the process), then it would have benefited us more in the long run. As part of the generation who will be spending much of their lives revolutionizing cyberspace content, I feel that a three-month-long project working together solely through an Internet-based venture will help us tremendously in practicing the organization and planning skills that will be required of us in the future and in our professions.
**I think an Advanced level of this course would be most intriguing. I would take it this summer even though I would already have graduated, and I do not think that I'm alone in this.
I'm glad that we were able to experiment writing blogs based on whatever issue we were interested in. I hope I adequately described the conflict between MLB (the owners) and the MLBPA (the players) in regards to the methods of attributing value to salary arbitration-eligible players. Players end up becoming prisoners of the teams because of the sharp decline their value takes when they are incorrectly awarded Type A status. I feel like there is an amalgamation of interests that should be discussed during the next CBA talks after the current agreement expires on Dec 11, 2011. I was able to develop the ideas that I set forth in this blog into a paper for my graduate Sociology course on Wealth Stratification, and I have since sent that paper to a number of people on several MLB teams, in hopes that I can land a baseball operations internship for the spring. This blog was the perfect medium to begin crafting my ideas because of the promise of visibility in the public domain. While I felt no reason to be accountable for my opinions, I did want to exhibit a certain level of accuracy in order to appear as knowledgeable as I believe I am. Writing for an audience but not limiting viewership surpassed any expectations for my writing and analytical skills - and isn't personal development a key component of a revolution?
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
In Summation, but not in closing
As the first decade of the 21st century comes to a close, Major League Baseball has many choices to make to direct the new era of baseball. With an ever-increasing intellectual fan base brought on by the technology innovations in the past ten years, MLB has the ability to shape the game that will maximize its attractiveness in every market by giving teams the freedom to run themselves as they see fit. This starts with the ability to evaluate and compensate talent in new ways with more sophistication than in previous collective negotiated agreements. The need for this kind of evolution coincides with advanced baseball analysis philosophy permeating into mainstream media. Employing the recommended changes to the new collective bargaining agreement will allow both owners and players to maximize on their performance. It is vital to the relationship between both that respect is given to each side during the negotiations so that progress is made to solidify these changes in MLB policy. This blog has shown how much sense it makes for both sides to reconfigure the MLB Draft and Free Agency system in order to increase the level of competitiveness and revenue for all of the organizations in the league.
WAR, What is it Good For?
The statistics chosen leave a lot to be desired. The current system assumes that a hitter can only be valuable if he has a high OBP and hits many home runs, and that a pitcher must accumulate a lot of wins and strikeouts, and have a good ERA. The study of analyzing baseball statistics – sabermetrics and the associated sabermetricians who analyze the data – has been developing more progressive metrics every year as an on-going process to develop correct notions in the art of properly critiquing baseball. (Halverson & Halverson, 2008) Tango et al. have developed a metric called Fielding-Independent ERA (FIP) that takes team defense, the stadium’s park design and a constant for the league into account along with the pitcher’s ERA to determine how many earned runs are purely the pitcher’s faults. When discussing pitchers in different leagues and on different teams, it is no longer acceptable to use their ERA – as that measurement has been deemed obsolete by the improved FIP. As an anecdote, the 2009 American League Cy Young winner, Zack Greinke, was quoted after winning the award: “That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible.” (New York Times, 11/18/2009) By correcting for the number of innings pitched, it will be possible to show a more complete picture of value for pitchers. Hitters have a similar stat called Weighted Runs Created (wRC) that involves using a player’s OBP to show many runs that player produced with his bat. By breaking down traditional measurements and developing them into more sophisticated metrics, it is possible to bridge the gap between conservative and progressive thought in Major League Baseball and bring change to the currently antiquated free agency system.
The league may still argue that the statistics currently used are actually proper ways of analyzing players and may reject the proposed system of using more complicated sabermetrics such as FIP and wRC to determine the production of each player. However, there is another equation that is more widely discussed in mainstream sports coverage media than the lesser known FIP and wRC. That equation is known as Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. (Hakes & Turner 2009) WAR is a metric developed by Baseball Prospectus that essentially computes the number of runs a player creates with his bat and saves with his glove, and then determines how many wins that player is worth to his team above a replacement-level player (a replacement player is set to zero wins). Among the potential free agents, there are 26 Type A's, 52 Type B's, and 102 unranked. Table #2 shows the WAR values for the top twenty-six of the three types of free agents (A, B, unclassified) available this offseason.
Table 2.
Free Agent Class Average Wins Above Replacement (WAR)
Type A (top quintile) 4.6
Type B (top half of second quintile) 4.9
Type B (bottom half of 2nd quintile) 1.5
Unclassified (bottom 60%) 2.9
The ubiquitous nature of the WAR values depicts the ineffectiveness of the current MLB free agent system to determine the true value of players. To have such a system that ranks players based on obsolete, archaic and irrelevant stats shows how disorganized MLB leadership is. More than this, these facts show how the MLBPA is actively (though not intentionally) preventing its players from obtaining the contracts that they deserve.
The league may still argue that the statistics currently used are actually proper ways of analyzing players and may reject the proposed system of using more complicated sabermetrics such as FIP and wRC to determine the production of each player. However, there is another equation that is more widely discussed in mainstream sports coverage media than the lesser known FIP and wRC. That equation is known as Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. (Hakes & Turner 2009) WAR is a metric developed by Baseball Prospectus that essentially computes the number of runs a player creates with his bat and saves with his glove, and then determines how many wins that player is worth to his team above a replacement-level player (a replacement player is set to zero wins). Among the potential free agents, there are 26 Type A's, 52 Type B's, and 102 unranked. Table #2 shows the WAR values for the top twenty-six of the three types of free agents (A, B, unclassified) available this offseason.
Table 2.
Free Agent Class Average Wins Above Replacement (WAR)
Type A (top quintile) 4.6
Type B (top half of second quintile) 4.9
Type B (bottom half of 2nd quintile) 1.5
Unclassified (bottom 60%) 2.9
The ubiquitous nature of the WAR values depicts the ineffectiveness of the current MLB free agent system to determine the true value of players. To have such a system that ranks players based on obsolete, archaic and irrelevant stats shows how disorganized MLB leadership is. More than this, these facts show how the MLBPA is actively (though not intentionally) preventing its players from obtaining the contracts that they deserve.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Making sense of it all
Over the past four weeks, I have been analyzing the current state of affairs in MLB. I have empirical evidence that shows why the current system needs to be changed, developed a new metric for ranking the free agents and have shown the paradox existing in MLB today with its utilization of advanced media technology. With the current Collective Bargaining Agreement set to expire on Dec 11, 2011, it is imperative to discuss these topics now so they are out in the open.
Shirky says that just because something is published online, that does not mean that it is intended to be heard by everybody. But in this case, eavesdropping will put pressure on the traditional culture of MLB to embrace the benefits of accelerating some of their policies to adopt current technology and thought. That's why I intend to update this blog after the course finishes and publish it publicly.
Updates coming soon..
Shirky says that just because something is published online, that does not mean that it is intended to be heard by everybody. But in this case, eavesdropping will put pressure on the traditional culture of MLB to embrace the benefits of accelerating some of their policies to adopt current technology and thought. That's why I intend to update this blog after the course finishes and publish it publicly.
Updates coming soon..
Do Not EatThese Wings
The man on the right is not messing around. They are hot. They will make you sick for days and leave a burnt hole in your stomach for at least 72 hours. Do not eat the suicide wings from Buffalo Cantina.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Payroll and Performance
The arbitrary nature of the statistics and governing rules surrounding free agency need to be abolished. There has been a major push for progressive, intelligent research on players' values over the past forty years. It is unacceptable any longer to formulate business strategy on archaic rules especially when those rules are unpredictable, as we have seen in the aforementioned Yankees case.
The examples of favoritism in MLB are polarizing the teams and beginning to eliminate the lower-class from playoff contention. In the second-half of the 2000s, there was a 7% increase in the number of lower middle-class and upper middle-class teams to make the playoffs than during the previous five years. Also, there has been 10% less lower class teams to have made the playoffs in the most recent five years than in the first half of the decade. A more important ratio is that the upper and upper middle-class teams have accounted for over 83% of the total playoff teams in the 2000s. These numbers continue to build on the Weisman and Chatterjee (2002) paper that displayed the correlation of payroll and performance to the increase of likelihood of postseason entry.
From this blog’s data analysis, it has been shown that as teams spend more money, they will increase their chance for berths in the playoffs. The policies instituted by the new CBA do not need to give added benefit to upper payroll tiered teams.
The examples of favoritism in MLB are polarizing the teams and beginning to eliminate the lower-class from playoff contention. In the second-half of the 2000s, there was a 7% increase in the number of lower middle-class and upper middle-class teams to make the playoffs than during the previous five years. Also, there has been 10% less lower class teams to have made the playoffs in the most recent five years than in the first half of the decade. A more important ratio is that the upper and upper middle-class teams have accounted for over 83% of the total playoff teams in the 2000s. These numbers continue to build on the Weisman and Chatterjee (2002) paper that displayed the correlation of payroll and performance to the increase of likelihood of postseason entry.
From this blog’s data analysis, it has been shown that as teams spend more money, they will increase their chance for berths in the playoffs. The policies instituted by the new CBA do not need to give added benefit to upper payroll tiered teams.
Free Agency Part 2 - Crazy in play
By examining the following example of the free agency system in play, I will demonstrate why the system needs to be changed.
There are rules in place to guard against a team giving up too much in the draft for signing more than one free agent. Last winter, the Yankees signed Mark Teixeira (Type A), CC Sabathia (A) and AJ Burnett (A) to long-term contracts. Under the rules of Free Agency, these players were all ranked by Elias and it turned out that Teixeira was ranked higher than CC, who was ahead of Burnett. Therefore, when the Yankees signed Sabathia on Dec. 10, 2008, the Brewers were in line to receive the Yankees' first-round pick as compensation. But when the Yankees signed Teixeira a month later, due to his higher ranking, the Angels were actually awarded that first-round pick and the Brewers only a second-rounder. To compound this was that AJ Burnett was also signed, but since he was lower than the other two players signed by the Yankees, the Blue Jays were only awarded a third-round selection for letting him walk.
This is the kind of action that shows me how MLB is protecting the proliferation of its richer and more marketable teams. Only the richer teams are going to be able to afford to sign multiple Type A free agents. Not only are the Type A free agents generally the better players, but the teams that sign them usually have the most money and build a bulk of their roster through free agency rather than through their farm systems. Therefore, they are in a position to give up their first- and second-round picks. Even considering this, MLB allows for the exact teams who can afford to lose their draft picks to actually keep them, almost as a sort of bonus for improving their roster!
I would also think that if the Brewers thought that they could only get one draft pick for Sabathia instead of two, that they may not have given up their top prospect (Matt LaPorta) for CC. I have to believe that the Blue Jays would almost certainly have traded Burnett away the the in-season trade deadline if they knew that they were going to only receive a third-round draft pick for AJ's services. The best part about all of this is that MLB is essentially saying that based on all of these irrelevant statistics, some free agents are better than others, and so the teams losing the players (not the teams that sign the players) are forced into being penalized by the governing body.
There are rules in place to guard against a team giving up too much in the draft for signing more than one free agent. Last winter, the Yankees signed Mark Teixeira (Type A), CC Sabathia (A) and AJ Burnett (A) to long-term contracts. Under the rules of Free Agency, these players were all ranked by Elias and it turned out that Teixeira was ranked higher than CC, who was ahead of Burnett. Therefore, when the Yankees signed Sabathia on Dec. 10, 2008, the Brewers were in line to receive the Yankees' first-round pick as compensation. But when the Yankees signed Teixeira a month later, due to his higher ranking, the Angels were actually awarded that first-round pick and the Brewers only a second-rounder. To compound this was that AJ Burnett was also signed, but since he was lower than the other two players signed by the Yankees, the Blue Jays were only awarded a third-round selection for letting him walk.
This is the kind of action that shows me how MLB is protecting the proliferation of its richer and more marketable teams. Only the richer teams are going to be able to afford to sign multiple Type A free agents. Not only are the Type A free agents generally the better players, but the teams that sign them usually have the most money and build a bulk of their roster through free agency rather than through their farm systems. Therefore, they are in a position to give up their first- and second-round picks. Even considering this, MLB allows for the exact teams who can afford to lose their draft picks to actually keep them, almost as a sort of bonus for improving their roster!
I would also think that if the Brewers thought that they could only get one draft pick for Sabathia instead of two, that they may not have given up their top prospect (Matt LaPorta) for CC. I have to believe that the Blue Jays would almost certainly have traded Burnett away the the in-season trade deadline if they knew that they were going to only receive a third-round draft pick for AJ's services. The best part about all of this is that MLB is essentially saying that based on all of these irrelevant statistics, some free agents are better than others, and so the teams losing the players (not the teams that sign the players) are forced into being penalized by the governing body.
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