Perry Minasian’s Front Office Hirings Thread

[SlappyUtilityMIF]

6 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

@SlappyUtilityMIF

if it lasts for more than 4hrs, see a doctor.  

Or, get more talented people in the Front Office....

[Docwaukee]

1 minute ago, SlappyUtilityMIF said:

Or, get more talented people in the Front Office....

?

[SlappyUtilityMIF]

9 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

?

Minasian is surrounding himself with a pretty solid group of talent evaluators! At the Major, Minor, International and draft eligible areas.

Your joke of the little Blue Pill lasting 4 hours, I replied or get more talented FO people!... "keep adding" I like what he is starting to put together. 

[Docwaukee]

Just now, SlappyUtilityMIF said:

Minasian is surrounding himself with a pretty solid group of talent evaluators! At the Major, Minor, International and draft eligible areas.

Your joke of the little Blue Pill lasting 4 hours, I replied or get more talented FO people!... 

yep.  still doesn't make sense.  

[SlappyUtilityMIF]

Just now, Dochalo said:

yep.  still doesn't make sense.  

The joke about the little Blue pill is.... See a Doctor if it last longer than 4 hours! Or, get more women....

[Docwaukee]

1 minute ago, SlappyUtilityMIF said:

The joke about the little Blue pill is.... See a Doctor if it last longer than 4 hours! Or, get more women....

you've officially destroyed my joke.  

[SlappyUtilityMIF]

1 minute ago, Dochalo said:

you've officially destroyed my joke.  

A question mark? I just had an AHAH! moment... You were making fun of my reply! Got it.

[Docwaukee]

other than the two AGM's under Eppler, it doesn't seem like Minasian has gotten rid of anyone else at this point.  It also seems like the guys he's added are mostly on the pro scouting and eval side.   Which, to me, was where the gap existed with Eppler.  So good to see they are shoring that up.   

[Warfarin]

52 minutes ago, Dochalo said:

other than the two AGM's under Eppler, it doesn't seem like Minasian has gotten rid of anyone else at this point.  It also seems like the guys he's added are mostly on the pro scouting and eval side.   Which, to me, was where the gap existed with Eppler.  So good to see they are shoring that up.   

He did hire Tamin, who is an analytics guru.  So it does seem to me he is trying to build up both sides - analytics and scouting, which really, we should have done all along.  Both should play a role with an MLB franchise.

[Inside Pitch]

2 hours ago, Dochalo said:

other than the two AGM's under Eppler, it doesn't seem like Minasian has gotten rid of anyone else at this point.  It also seems like the guys he's added are mostly on the pro scouting and eval side.   Which, to me, was where the gap existed with Eppler.  So good to see they are shoring that up.   

Andrew Mack and the top two analytics guys have left the organization including the guy that headed the department.   Red Sox, Reds...

[Stradling]

29 minutes ago, Inside Pitch said:

Andrew Mack and the top two analytics guys have left the organization including the guy that headed the department.   Red Sox, Reds...

How the hell do you know that?

[T.G.]

8 minutes ago, Stradling said:

How the hell do you know that?

How the hell do you not know that IP would know that?

[Tank]

5 hours ago, Dochalo said:

@SlappyUtilityMIF

if it lasts for more than 4hrs, see a doctor.  

 

5 hours ago, Lou said:

or a hooker 

[Docwaukee]

5 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

Andrew Mack and the top two analytics guys have left the organization including the guy that headed the department.   Red Sox, Reds...

of course you would know that.  it also makes some sense considering Artes' comments at Minasian's presser about spin rate.  My guess is that Billy's analytics team was fairly instrumental in gearing him toward guys like Teheran, Harvey and Cahill.  

[Billy_Ball]

Speaking of the Royals front office, Kevin Uhlich retires.  New role will be special assistant to the owner.

https://www.mlb.com/news/royals-vp-kevin-uhlich-retires-special-advisor

[Warfarin]

5 hours ago, Dochalo said:

of course you would know that.  it also makes some sense considering Artes' comments at Minasian's presser about spin rate.  My guess is that Billy's analytics team was fairly instrumental in gearing him toward guys like Teheran, Harvey and Cahill.  

9 hours ago, Stradling said:

How the hell do you know that?

 

Not sure if IP follows this guy or IS this guy, lol.  But this guy posted this on Twitter yesterday.

[Stradling]

7 minutes ago, Warfarin said:

 

Not sure if IP follows this guy or IS this guy, lol.  But this guy posted this on Twitter yesterday.

That’s not IP but yea I follow him as well and must have missed it. 

[Warfarin]

2 minutes ago, Stradling said:

That’s not IP but yea I follow him as well and must have missed it. 

Ahh okay, I gotcha.  But yeah - that's where those 2 have ended up, so good to see they're still in the game.

[T.G.]

42 minutes ago, Warfarin said:

Ahh okay, I gotcha.  But yeah - that's where those 2 have ended up, so good to see they're still in the game.

So good! So good! So good!

Sweet Caroline...

[Inside Pitch]

15 hours ago, Stradling said:

How the hell do you know that?

Because Reds and Red Sox..  Mack when to the Sox, Anderson took over as director of analytics for the Reds.  No clue where Bailey went but he was the Sr Systems Developer...

[ettin]

22 hours ago, Inside Pitch said:

Andrew Mack and the top two analytics guys have left the organization including the guy that headed the department.   Red Sox, Reds...

 

17 hours ago, Dochalo said:

of course you would know that.  it also makes some sense considering Artes' comments at Minasian's presser about spin rate.  My guess is that Billy's analytics team was fairly instrumental in gearing him toward guys like Teheran, Harvey and Cahill.  

This is the danger in engineering (heck any field for that matter).... You see evidence that leads you to a theory and you then develop methodologies and acquire and analyze data and you can only go where that theory and data take you. If any of the theories, methodologies or data prove to be incorrect or flawed in some manner, it could present the user with an inaccurate picture of what is in front of them.

Doc may be right, they may have seen indicators that spin rate is instrumental in higher strikeout rates, less walks, greater hit and miss, and/or inability to square the ball up and they may have gone all in without fully understanding the statistical significance and/or they made some critical error or assumption. Alternatively, it could just be that they didn't have enough time to fully validate what the data was pointing too or they simply had bad luck with the players they selected (poor player selection BABIP?).

To be fair here, it may be a mix of the above and some bad luck. Certainly relievers they selected in the past did have bouts of success (and fits of failure) but when it came to starters it didn't work out nearly as well.

[T.G.]

 @ettin is definitely back.

 

[Docwaukee]

5 hours ago, ettin said:

 

This is the danger in engineering (heck any field for that matter).... You see evidence that leads you to a theory and you then develop methodologies and acquire and analyze data and you can only go where that theory and data take you. If any of the theories, methodologies or data prove to be incorrect or flawed in some manner, it could present the user with an inaccurate picture of what is in front of them.

Doc may be right, they may have seen indicators that spin rate is instrumental in higher strikeout rates, less walks, greater hit and miss, and/or inability to square the ball up and they may have gone all in without fully understanding the statistical significance and/or they made some critical error or assumption. Alternatively, it could just be that they didn't have enough time to fully validate what the data was pointing too or they simply had bad luck with the players they selected (poor player selection BABIP?).

To be fair here, it may be a mix of the above and some bad luck. Certainly relievers they selected in the past did have bouts of success (and fits of failure) but when it came to starters it didn't work out nearly as well.

we all bias our data collection to fuel our hypothesis.  It's very hard, if not impossible to control or account for enough of the variables.  It appears that Eppler and his team didn't do a very good job of that.  Your data and whatever it is that supports you theory and allows you to draw some conclusions doesn't have to be right 100% of the time or at least it shouldn't.  Not in baseball anyway.  

But there are gradations of right and wrong.  It's not binary by any stretch.  It's that confidence interval that let's you survive when you're on the wrong side of the bell curve.  

As I've said before, that's really where I think Eppler and his team didn't do well.  When his theories didn't work for certain guys, it absolutely failed miserably.  The game is filled with plenty of failure.  We're dealing with human performance so all these FO guys have to live in the gray.  It's expected.  We just have to hope that Minasian lives in those lighter shades than Eppler did.  

[Docwaukee]

and to address the spin rate thing in particular.  I have no idea what they saw or what they were looking at.  Their analytics might be spot on in terms of the significance of spin rate.  I'm sure it was.  But then you're asking human beings to execute something based on theories.  And what we've seen or at least what I think I've seen is that if they weren't able to execute the plan they failed miserably.  There was no margin for error.  

They targeted guys with high spin rates who hadn't had a great deal of success and tried to figure out why.  Then give them the tools that other guys with high spin rates had used to achieve success.  And it worked for a few guy.  If not intermittently.  But wouldn't there be a subset of those guys who you could determine in advance that it was unlikely to work for?  Partially based on the fact that they hadn't been able to get it to work for themselves in the past or at least no one else had been able to?  It's kind of an understated version of the 'smartest guy in the room' philosophy.  

One thing I'm hopeful for from Minasian and the crew he's assembling is that they're better at assessing each individual and might they might be able to execute based on the data vs. trying to force the data and execution of such on guys who just can't.  

 

[totdprods]

Those posts were fantastic @Dochalo, seriously some of the best I have ever read on this site and a great summarization.

I’m also interested in seeing if we someday see baseball cycle back away a little bit from analytics and eye test...analytics will never go away of course, but eventually, one would think every team will be ‘caught up’ and using data that closely resembles what everyone else is doing, and the competitive advantage it offers diminishes, and a team that perhaps isn’t as all-in on stats starts finding success using more old-school tactics. Identifying players who do little things or skills that go against what everyone is doing.