Arte Moreno and the Ben Franklin Chart

[UBstrange]

My first thread was a bit silly and tongue-in-cheek fun, so I'll try to contribute something a bit useful or different to the community for my second thread.  It's a bit long but hopefully, it's worth your time to consider.

Before I mention Arte, I need to give some context:

One of the engineers at a previous job taught me about a "Ben Franklin chart," or so he called it.  He explained that Ben Franklin would use this weighted scale chart to determine which option was the best out of several possible options.
He would create a column for each option (ex: determining whether to live in city A or city B). 
Then on a new row under that, he would list all of the factors that would determine which decision he would make.

First, he would rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how important each factor was to him. 
Next, he would rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how well that factor applied to each option. 
So first, you're giving the factor some weight (or not), and next, you're seeing how well it applies to what you're thinking about doing. 
So in my example, if commute time was important to you and city A is 10 minutes from work while city B is an hour from work, you might rate city A as a 9 and city B as a 3 when it comes to commuting.  If you rated the importance of a short commute time as an 8, you multiply 8 x 9 for city A, and 8 x 3 for city B.  Then store "72" in a new column next to A, and "24" in a new column for city B's results.

Then go to the next factor and do the same thing.  Then when you're done, after you've multiplied and gotten the number for each factor like in the example above, you add the totals up and see which option has the higher score.  The option with the highest score almost always ends up being the correct decision because you quite literally weighed your options, as they say.

So:  Should Arte sell, or should he stay?  If you already think you have the answer, you can't quantify it yet without first doing the math.  The reason is that although you could be completely correct in one regard about how Arte is a bad owner in this way or that way, there's more to it than that.  Until you have given the factor a value, it's harder to compare its overall importance to, say, beer prices, salary size, or a minor-league systemic improvement.

How important is salary size to you?  If having a large amount of money to put towards players is important to you, you might rate that an 8.  Then looking at Arte, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does Arte fit this bill?  Probably an 8, having the 6th richest MLB team in the league (in terms of monetary value).  So for this example, Arte would score a 64.
What would a new owner score here?  What if the new owner was cheap, like the A's owner?  What if he wasn't?  How about the risk of a new bad owner being a factor?  Add it to the list.

How important are beer or food prices?  Give it a value.

How about parking? 

You're likely going to add minor-league development as a factor that is very important to you.......or is it?  Maybe you feel that signing draft picks like Schanuel is good enough with all of the other young talent that the Angels acquired but didn't develop themselves (see O'Hoppe and Moniak).

The elephant in the room is that we can't give a score to a new owner who doesn't yet exist.  Even so, you could give a blanket score to a new owner as a sort of threshold, and if Arte doesn't meet that threshold, well at least you now have a mathematical way to show your work.  

We don't have future owners or a crystal ball, but we do have past owners to go by.  

Looking at when Disney owned the club, was salary up there?  So if team salary is important to you, and you were to score between 1-10 on how Disney applied to salary, they'd get a lower score and Arte would get a higher score.  But that's just one factor.

Looking at food prices, if you looked at Disney vs Arte, Arte once again might come out on top since he lowered costs at the ballpark as soon as he acquired the team.  I haven't lived in CA for many years now and maybe food costs are high again, so I'm going off of the data that I have.

This post is getting too long so I'll stop now.  Just take each factor into account, give it a value, figure out how much Arte applies to that factor vs a new owner, and see where things stand.  Then if you want Arte to sell the team, you can say that you have a little more certainty in your decision, rather than going off pure impulse.  Also, this Ben Franklin chart is great for all areas of your life when you're trying to figure out what to do and can't decide.

Thanks for your time, and go Angels!

 

[Torridd]

Arte should sell. Based on the Ben Franklin chart, a new owner is bound to have more electricity and spectacle.

[T.G.]

I actually read the title as Arte Moreno and Ben Franklin chat.

Imagine my surprise....

[jsnpritchett]

[SlappyUtilityMIF]

Interesting read....

True regarding salaries. However, salaries escalated after Arte purchased the team considering the high priced homegrown talent that we had on the WS team. Homegrown, rookies, and some vets added via Free Agency and trades sprinkled with the Waiver Wire... at the time I think our payroll was pretty high? 

We traded Mo for Appier...

What would Mo Vaughn command in this market with those stats if he was walking into Free Agency today? It works for what ifs... But, it's a different market and time!

So, overall I think the salaries are a wash.

Same could be said of concessions. CoG's are different. 

Parking has changed due to inflation and the surrounding private parking has kept it down I believe. When I was a kid we rode our bikes.... and locked them up by the stadium!

It's all different, but relevant.

[Spirit]

Anyone know where I can score a copy?

 

[Blarg]

Holy crap guys, that was barely a 5 minute casual read. Try and expand your attention span past the character limit of a tweet. 

[AngelsLakersFan]

I think Arte should probably consider killing himself, but I don't have the Ben Franklin chart ready and my ven diagrams arent handy at the moment.

[ScottT]

[Dtwncbad]

6 hours ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

I think Arte should probably consider killing himself, but I don't have the Ben Franklin chart ready and my ven diagrams arent handy at the moment.

Does anyone have a good way to analyze the pros and cons of Ben Franklin charts versus Ven diagrams?

[Lhalo]

19 hours ago, Torridd said:

Arte should sell. Based on the Ben Franklin chart, a new owner is bound to have more electricity and spectacle.

Oh you. 

[AngelsLakersFan]

6 hours ago, Dtwncbad said:

Does anyone have a good way to analyze the pros and cons of Ben Franklin charts versus Ven diagrams?

You should use a pros and cons list.

[Angel Oracle]

6 hours ago, Dtwncbad said:

Does anyone have a good way to analyze the pros and cons of Ben Franklin charts versus Ven diagrams?

You can ask this person.

[ettin]

It's better known in the Engineering world as a Pugh chart. Some call it a Weighted Decision Matrix (WDM) or even other names, but the bottom line, as @UBstrange said is to help make more logical decisions based on weighted factors and inputs to produce a more data-driven decision versus an off-the-cuff, emotional response. The key is the weighting factors, because if those are off the decision could be skewed.

[ettin]

On 4/5/2024 at 12:21 PM, Torridd said:

Arte should sell. Based on the Ben Franklin chart, a new owner is bound to have more electricity and spectacle.

Go fly a kite!

[Lazorko Saves]

Arte does keep an homage to Ben Franklin at home, but it's not the kind you mentioned.