I believe that Paul DePodesta is the first MLB front-office executive to operate a blog: It Might Be Dangerous. I’m curious as to what he has to say. It looks to be mostly about the Padres, but he welcomes questions. I suggest asking him your advice about how to get a job in baseball. People often ask me for this advice, but I really do not have much to offer.

Freakonomics has posted Bill James’s answers to reader questions. He even answered my question.

Q: Is sabermetrics the Freakonomic analysis of baseball?

A: There are parallels. What I do was heavily influenced by the University of Chicago economists of the 1960’s. I think Freakonomics comes from the same tradition.

Cool, so we can trace the origins of sabermetrics to the Chicago school of economics.

Bill James is taking questions at Freakonomics. Submit your question in the comments and he may answer it.

David Pinto is hosting his annual pledge drive to support Baseball Musings. Baseball Musings is one of my favorite baseball blogs out there. I check in on it several times a day, and I appreciate all the hard work that David puts in.

David is offering copies of The Baseball Economist to anyone making a premium donation, while supplies last. I encourage you to stop by and make a contribution.

The latest event in the A-Rod saga with the Yankees is almost too bizarre to believe. Alex Rodriguez opted out of his contract to become a free agent without giving the Yankees the opportunity to negotiate. Supposedly, the Yankees were willing to extend Rodriguez’s deal five years for $150 million in their initial offer. Adding this to the remaining three years and $81 million owed on his current contract, that would guarantee him $231 over the next eight seasons. That translates to $29 million per year, which is about five million less than than I predicted, so I was not surprised that he didn’t think this was enough to keep him. However, I thought it was a bad move to opt out so soon, because the Yankees could up their offer and had the advantage of having the Texas Rangers subsidizing any extension. I assumed that A-Rod was just ready to leave.

Last week, Jeff Gordon argued in the NY Times that A-Rod’s opt out was part of a strategy to make the Yankees respond to competing offers from other team, and that the Yankee’s refusal to negotiate further was not credible. When higher offers came in , the Yankees would cave and match the offer. I disagreed, because of the damage this would do to the Yankees bargaining power in the future. I also felt an actual free agent bidding war wasn’t necessary to determine Rodriguez’s value; the Yankees and Scott Boras could make close approximations and then move on if the numbers didn’t match. But, neither of us anticipated what seems to be transpiring.

Alex Rodriguez is now willing to return to the Yankees for a longer time but for less money per year (ten years and $270 million, according to published reports)—his penance for keeping the Yankees on the hook for $20-30 million dollars that the Texas Rangers would be contributing to his salary had he just extended his deal.

An already wealthy man who has a reputation for being greedy and childish goes through the ordeal of upsetting everyone by opting out to get more, but then returns to get less? Why didn’t he just extend the deal? It’s not like this was a rushed process; it seems like we’ve been discussing the opt-out for years. Going back on a well-planned strategy at this time seems…well, childish and something only A-Rod is capable of doing. It certainly isn’t a move that will endear him to Yankee fans, even if he does make the team better.

There is still the possibility that this is a marketing ploy to up the offers of other free agent suitors. I still think that there is a decent chance that he will sign somewhere else, but the media reports that are coming from all sides make the think that this deal is more likely to go down than not. The end result of this entire process is that a great baseball player who is hard to like is poorer and less-likable than he once was. Nice move, Alex.

Sabernomics readers ought to be familiar with Keith Law, a former member of the Toronto Blue Jays front office who is now the lead baseball analyst for ESPN’s Scouts Inc. Last year, I had the good fortune to meet Keith while scouting Josh Smoker in my neck of the woods. I had a few questions for Keith that I thought might be of interest to others, so I asked him if he would be willing to do and interview, and he obliged.

Here are Keith’s thoughts on working in baseball, ESPN, scouting, sabermetrics, the Braves, and the great tiramisu debacle of 2003.

—
Every few weeks I get a request from a young baseball fan who wants to work in baseball. What is your best advice for landing a job in baseball?

I’m asked that at least once a week in some form or another. There’s no easy answer; if you haven’t played the game and developed contacts within the industry, it’s hard to break in. It helps to have something baseball-related on your resume to set yourself apart from the thousands of other candidates, something like an internship with a minor league team or work with your college’s baseball team/athletics department. Then just start plugging away, contacting front office people, going to the winter meetings, sending out resumes and cover letters.

What was it like to work in a MLB front office? What did you do? What were your hours?

Toronto’s front office was odd, as was my role, since I worked from home and went to Toronto for a lot of home games until the travel got to be too much. I was primarily the statistical analyst, but was fortunate enough to work with Tony Lacava, who took me under his wing and taught me a lot of what I know now about traditional player evaluation, so I started going out to see amateur players on Cape Cod to try to improve my skills there. I ended up able to at least contribute to scouting discussions on players in our draft room and to submit follow lists to area scouts to let them know which players in their areas looked good/not good on the Cape. I ended up doing a little work in some other areas like arbitration cases, negotiating contracts for zero-to-three players, etc.

How stat-savvy are MLB teams? Is there a stats-versus-scouts war in baseball? I get the impression that this is overblown.

Totally overblown. Doesn’t exist. And I’m seeing more people trying to acquire skills in both areas.

What is wrong with sabermetrics?

I think that the arrogance in the field has gotten worse with time, not better. I thought that as sabermetrics moved into the mainstream, its practitioners would soften – and trust me, I’m not painting all sabermetricians and sabermetric writers with one broad brush – but we haven’t seen that. Statistical analysis is critical to the successful operation of any ballclub. It is far from a complete solution. And we all know that you can argue with statistics by cherry-picking which stats to use, which is part of why I try to use stats only as secondary evidence when I’m writing, using first-hand observation before I rely on data.

What is the biggest misconception that outsiders have of what goes on in MLB front offices?

Without a doubt it’s the assumption that a baseball operations department’s primary function is to assemble the roster. Sign some free agents, make some trades, do the draft, boom, you’re done. There’s a hell of a lot more to those jobs, including a lot of less glamorous work that requires organization and skill and diligence. Nothing makes me lose respect for a writer or reader who says that he could do a better job than GM so-and-so – it’s not an easy job, and as I said in an interview on the Lion in Oil blog, most outsiders would be crying for their mommas after a day or two of doing it.

How do you scout a player when you look at his stats? How do you scout a player beyond the stats?

I can’t even explain how I look at stats now, because I’m just looking for patterns in the data – almost a certain shape to a stat line that reminds me of other stat lines from past players. I don’t have time to do any sort of database work like I used to do with Toronto, which is probably for the best because writing about stats isn’t my job.

Beyond the stats, I’m looking at tools and at projection. What can the player do right now? What will he be able to do as his body develops? What are his fixable flaws? What are his unfixable flaws? And I always try to emphasize the tools that matter (hit & power) over those that matter less (run & throw).

What is your job like for ESPN?

It’s great, but it’s demanding. My mandate is to cover, from a scouting perspective, the top amateur players for the upcoming draft, the top prospects in the minors, and just about all the players in the majors. I go to see games and players so that I can write about them at a later date – in draft previews, in prospect rankings, in trade reactions, in playoff advance reports. So given the broad mandate, I get to set my own schedule as long as I’m seeing who I need to see. I really value that flexibility.

I try to write twice a week, but I’m somewhat at the mercy of the news cycle and the baseball editorial calendar, which is set over a week in advance. So I like having the weekly chats to keep in touch with readers and continue to develop that relationship.

I also do at least one TV hit a week, sometimes as many as five or six, and a lot of appearances on our national radio network or local affiliates. The TV stuff can be done from a little studio about 15 minutes from my house, and the radio stuff I do from the house or hotel room or wherever I am. I try to go to Bristol once or twice a month, at which point they’ll put me through the “car wash”

Which organizations have the best and worst farm systems in baseball?

I haven’t looked hard enough at that to answer it, but I’m pretty sure I’ll rank them all again in January. I can say that Tampa Bay and Texas are the clear 1-2 to me right now.

Now let’s talk about the Braves.

What is your overall impression of the Braves farm system? What do they do right/wrong?

The one task they do best, better than any other club, is mine their local area. It helps that Georgia high school baseball is some of the best in the country – maybe second only to California, but certainly in the top five states with Texas, Florida, and Arizona – but it’s also about the Braves having and using the connections to find the players and convince them to sign rather than going to college.

The Braves could improve their player development in terms of how they get some of their tools players, especially hitters, to develop. Jeff Francoeur is a good example. I’d like to see stronger evidence that the Braves can take the tools players they’re so good at finding and drafting and convert them into star-caliber big leaguers. For the last few years, they seem to have fallen a little short in that regard.

Your opinion on Jordan Schafer seems to have changed. You once compared him to Grady Sizemore, but after seeing him in the Arizona Fall League you were a bit more pessimistic. Why did you change your mind and what do you think his development prospects are?

I saw him in the Arizona Fall League and was disappointed at how short he fell of the hype. The ball comes off his bat well, but the part of his swing leading from his set point to contact isn’t consistent, and it gets long because he loads so deep. I like that he uses the opposite field and I think there’s 25-homer power in the bat, but Sizemore is one of those guys who’s just an obvious star, who stands out immediately when you see him take BP or shag flies. Schafer isn’t like that. That doesn’t mean he’s not a good prospect – he is. But he’s not Sizemore and he’s not one of the ten or fifteen best prospects in baseball.

Who are the Braves prospects to watch?

They’re all in Texas! Okay, that’s an exaggeration. Jason Heyward is the best prospect in that system for my money, at least for the long term, and he could easily turn out to be the best or second-best player in the 2007 draft class. I liked Brandon Hicks as a little sleeper in this draft – good defensive shortstop with an outside chance to hit a little. Cole Rohrbaugh is interesting, fastball sits plus, has a wicked curveball but it’s a spike, which is very hard to command. Gorkys Hernandez may never have much plate discipline but he’s a plus defensive outfielder who should make a lot of contact. And I like Daniel Elorriaga-Matra as a good defensive catcher with plus makeup who should at least turn into a big league backup.

Do you expect the Braves to change any of their operations with Frank Wren taking over John Schuerholz’s GM duties?

Everything I’ve been told sounds like the answer is no. Status quo.

Jeff Francoeur, what is the deal with this guy? What is he going to become?

I know everyone’s all excited because he upped his walk rate, but seriously, 37 unintentional walks in almost 700 plate appearances is unacceptable for a corner bat. He does have legit 30-homer power, and like a lot of players of this type he’ll have a .300/.335/.550 year somewhere along the line, but the volatility in his average and the ceiling on his OBP will always keep him from becoming a star.

What do you think about when you are not thinking about baseball?

Food, cooking and eating, is my other great passion. I love to cook elaborate meals, and I’ve got an inner pastry chef who likes to come out when there’s company, although after the great tiramisu debacle of 2003 I might have to scale my ambitions down until I get a bigger kitchen. I love to read, especially literature and comic novels. I used to play the guitar pretty regularly, but don’t have as much time with the busier job and with parental responsibilities. I love learning and speaking foreign languages, and that’s probably the one thing I’d like to put time into but can’t right now; I’d say teaching myself Spanish, from Sesame Street level (¿Entrada? ¡Salida!) to the point where I passed a first-level fluency exam, is the achievement of which I’m most proud, because I had to come up with a method and then stick to the plan even when I felt like I wasn’t making progress. I was always the kind of person who gives up when he wasn’t good at something right away, and it was gratifying to know that I didn’t have to be like that after all.

—

Thanks to Keith for taking the time to share his thoughts. For more of Keith’s opinions, check out his ESPN blog, his website, and his non-ESPN blog: The Dish.

Like week I suggested that Scott Boras’s reputation is partly a function of his ability to attract clients, and that his success begets more success in attracting the best players. Today, Tyler Cowen offers his own reasons why Boras may be exceptional.

Here is a summary of his hypotheses.

1. The super-agent manages an otherwise incompetent or unruly player.
2. A super-agent, especially if he has repeat business with teams, may credibly certify the unobservable qualities of players, even star players.
3. Boras may be very good at marketing his players to management and getting owners to open up their pocketbooks.
4. If Boras represents multiple stars, clubs will be reluctant to cross him.
5. Robert suggests that some (non-super) agents may in fact be in league with the owners, not the players.

He also asks for other suggestions in the comments.

– Congrats to Sean Forman, creator of Baseball-Reference. For his work on the greatest baseball site on the web, Sean was named one the top 65 most influential people in baseball by USA Today. To be more exact, he was listed as one of 15 others who didn’t make the top 50, so I guess that puts him in the top 65.

On a related note, B-R.com is now updating current season stats daily.

– Alan Schwarz has a new book out, Once Upon a Game: Baseball’s Greatest Memories. It’s described as “a delightful collection of personal memories about baseball from some of the game’s all-time legends and its most famous fans.” Alan is a fantastic writer who has both a strong love and understanding of the game. Purchase it with The Baseball Economist to get a break on shipping.

Addendum: Congratulations to Alan on his move to The New York Times to be a sports feature writer.

– Dave Studeman points me to a new website, Ballhype.

Ballhype tracks more than 1,600 sports blogs, analyzes each post for relevance and influence (it’s from the creators of lowpost.net, striketwo.net, and faircatch.net). Users can then hype up stories and videos pulled in by Ballhype or submit their own, find fans with similar interests, create or join groups, and make game picks. Bloggers, especially newer ones, have a chance to get their stories in front of new readers, and can also interact with users to build up their fan base.

For you baseball history buffs out there, the spring issue of 108 Magazine is about to be released. Jeff Merron offers a sample from the upcoming issue at The Southpaw, discussing the day Leo Mazzone was foiled by swarm of grasshoppers.

The attack would have been a surprise in any situation, but baseball has rules, and none of them say anything about grasshoppers. Faced with an unprecedented situation, the players, coaches, and umpires tried to keep on keepin’ on. Current Orioles pitching coach Leo Mazzone was one of the Texas League’s top hurlers that year, making his way up through the Giants organization. He took the mound for the visitors from Amarillo in the bottom of the first.

“I started that game. It got so bad the ball was hitting grasshoppers 60 feet, 6 inches to home plate. You couldn’t see. We had to change balls every pitch.” Mazzone, clearly distracted, surrendered two free passes. “I didn’t walk anybody that year, [but] you just couldn’t concentrate on your target. You couldn’t see it, and you had all these damn things flying in your face and up your ass.”

Yuck! There is no pitch like the old grasshopper guts ball.

I just received a copy of The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball by USS Mariner blogger Derek Zumsteg. Derek also runs a blog just for the book here. I’ve only had time to flip through it, but I like what I see so far.

As a Braves fan, I first checked to make sure he devoted some time to the evil 1991 Minnesota Twins. This team won the World Series by cranking up the AC to give Kirby Puckett a tainted home run off of Charlie Leibrandt. Zumsteg covers this, but misses the most egregious incident of that series: Kent Hrbek pushing Ron Gant off the bag to get an out. The play was so obvious that Hrbek couldn’t even keep a straight face when later describing the play. I remember one of my good friends was a Twins fan who had a Wheaties box with the Twins celebrating their “victory.” Wheaties?…more like Cheaties. Ok, maybe I’m not that mad about it.

As for Braves cheating, Zumsteg reminds us of the team’s manipulation of the catcher’s box to make the strike zone seem larger than it was. The fact was actually pointed out by the TBS television crew. There is no doubt that those guys root for the Braves, but they are not partisan when it comes to commenting on the game. The organization then classlessly booted the broadcast team off of the team charter. One unnamed source was also quoted as saying “Mazzone sucks” three times.

I look forward to sitting down with the book for a full read very soon. It looks to be an enjoyable read.

This book also makes me want to play one of those weird connection games. Every time I see the name Derek I think of my high school job recording high school sports scores for The Charlotte Observer. One thing I learned from fielding calls from all over the Carolinas is that there are more ways to spell Derek than any other name. My time at The Observer brings me to another connection to an author with a baseball book out right now. Joe Posnanski, Kansas City Star writer and current author of The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America also worked for The Observer at the same time I was there, though I did not learn this until recently. I bet few in that newsroom would have pegged us as future authors…well, maybe Joe, but certainly not me. Although, I was very good at spelling Derek, Derick, Darek, Daryc….

Buy either, or both, of these books with The Baseball Economist and get free shipping from Amazon.