MISMANAGEMENT IN MONEY BALL THEORYSETBACKS IN SABERMETRICS

Presentation by: Yaw Owusu-Akyaw, Seth Marshall, Anna

Hartsuff, Louis Matrisciano, Natasha Manor, and Taylor

Schenk

PRESENTATION OBJECTIVE

• Presentation Objectives • Display how the sabermetrics failed to support recruiting decisions.

• Reveal the ineffective aspects of the General Manager’s decision-making methods.

• Explain how managerial decision led to adverse psychological impacts.

• Unveil the lack of fairness used in the recruitment process.

• Critique the minimum qualifications the level reliability.

OVERRELIANCE ON STATISTICAL DATA TO CREATE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM

The Measurement process evaluates employees potential to perform task related to an

organization’s overall goal.

Situation:

The General Manager use the players’

statistical playing attributes to measure (OBP)

potential.

Problem with Measurement System:

- Managerial decisions are solely influenced by

the numbers generated from the measure.

- Fails to recognize external factors affecting performance

• (Experience, Cognitive Reasoning, Motiviation, Personality, etc.)

Attribute of Interest: Baseball Runs

Operational Definition of Attribute:

On-Base-Percentage

Measure:

Sabermetrics

Measure’s Administration Method:

Practice and Games

How Measure is Evaluated:

Number of Runs made by player

Unable to provide the full picture

of players/employees.

MEASUREMENT’S NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON MANAGEMENT

• Mismatching positions due to heavy

reliance on numbers rather than

experience.

• Creating recruiting decisions that

counter the goal of the measurement

process.

• Forecasting future performance solely

on the numbers displayed for short

duration of to time.

• Example one: General Manager attempts

to place a former pitcher as the team’s

first-baseman. Role ambiguity causes a

decrease in player’s performance and

confidence.

• Example two: Statics leads management

team to use three players to replace one

effective player. Data should have been

used to find one player that matched to

the former athlete's ability.

DECISION MAKING

DECISION MAKING

• Predictors were solely based on money and past performance.

• Low face validity, some players didn’t understand why they were recruited i.e. a

catcher being recruited to play first base.

• Very narrow focus which had a negative impact on the team

DECISION MAKING

• The predictive selection hypothesis was the sole focus of the recruiting efforts. If the

statistics and price lined up the players were recruited.

• Experience and mostly intuition were the focus of Billy Bean.

• Unreliable and not measureable.

DECISION MAKING PROCESS

• Beane disregards Clinical prediction

• Expertise of scouts

• Experience of the manager

• Predictors are overly related• Don’t take into account other predictors

• Predictors should be more independent • Would be a better predictor of success

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACTS

• Transactional Contracts

• Beane largely held psychological contracts that were transactional in nature.

• Narrow involvement – makes decisions without input

• Low commitment – manager doesn’t listen to Beane

• Relational Contracts• Beane should have developed psychological contracts that were relational in nature

• Mutual loyalty – manager would have considered Beane’s thoughts

• Higher commitment – manager and scouts would have went beyond minimum

• Open-ended collaboration

RECRUITMENT & FAIRNESS PERCEPTIONS

• Distributive Fairness-Perception of

fairness of hiring outcome

• Procedural Fairness-Perception of

fairness of organization’s policies and

procedures

• Interactional Fairness-Perception of

information and personal treatment

given during hiring process.

Billy Beane’s methods could have led to

Spillover Effects:

Recruitment tactics used to hire Scott

Hatteberg

The poaching of Peter Brand from the

Cleveland Indians

BILLY BEANE AS A RECRUITER AND GENERAL MANAGER

Ineffective Characteristics:

• Poor Interpersonal Skills

• Angry rages after losses including throwing things,

screaming and damaging property

• Pointing and snapping at Peter Brand during a

meeting to relate data and figures without

introducing him to the rest of the scouts as a new

employee

• Lacks Warmth

• Isolates himself from players and team in general

and refuses to attend games

• Terminates players with his “bullet to the head”

method and does not express any sympathy

BILLY BEANE: THE NO-SHOW!

Other Ineffective Characteristics:

• Too focused on the “goals game”

• Prematurely resolves tension

• Refuses to accept solutions from his scouts,

even when he had no solutions himself (at the time)

• A strong focus on individual games (instead of the season as a

whole)

• Can lead to emotional (bad) decision making!

DETERMINING MINIMUM QUALIFICATION• But only by changing the categories were the

A’s team able to afford players that would

show results

• Instead of increasing or decreasing the high

and low cut scores the team looked for

different skills

• This is how they then determined the level of

satisfaction and dissatisfaction in

performance

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false positive

false negative

true negative

true positive

RELIABILITY OF METHOD

• Sabermetrics was not meant

to be successful in a short 7

game series but in a 160+

game season

• When comparing the

traditional stats of each

player Beane’s team would be

ranked the lowest in baseball

history

QUESTIONS OR THOUGHTS?

REFERENCES