Cardinals Uniforms to Fit Better in 2004?
Redbirds Hire VP from the Business World for Sabermetric Analysis
By Brian Walton
Included in a series of front office changes recently billed as "part of a re-organization of the team's baseball operations department", The St. Louis Cardinals hired Jeff Luhnow in the newly-created position of vice president for baseball development. In other moves, the Cards reshuffled their existing deck, expanding the duties of Assistant GM John Mozeliak to include director of scouting. He takes over for Marty Maier, who becomes a Special Assignment scout.
But, by far what is most interesting here is Mr. Luhnow and his new role. He is not a baseball man, at least in his previous vocation as president of Archetype Solutions, Inc. Archetype provides systems for high-tech clothing customization used by companies like Land's End. You may recognize this capability, where you can special order custom-made jeans to fit your "unique contours".
In 1999, Luhnow was VP of Customer Experience at petstore.com. That business in now closed. Prior to that, he worked for McKinsey Consulting and started his career as an engineer for Gore Fabrics. Luhnow is a Wharton grad with degrees in economics and engineering and a masters in management. So, he is a smart guy.
The Cardinals' press release said Luhnow "will oversee the design, development and implementation of systems and tools that will be used in strategy, scouting and player development as a means to aid the team in its evaluation of players at all levels including the Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, amateur and international levels." Quite a sentence. Exactly what does that mean?
Simply put, it is believed that Luhnow was hired to project manage the creation of a player evaluation system for the Cardinals similar to Cleveland's copyrighted DiamondView data base. DiamondView is used to bring together stats, salary and contract info and scouting reports in a single place. The story below describes how DiamondView was used in the last off-season to help decide how long and how much to offer free agent Jim Thome.
http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/sports/1064228145156730.xml
Here is a graphic of how the DiamondView system works.
http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/agate.ssf?/tribe/truth.html
It is rumored that about half the teams in MLB already have sabermetric projects underway. However, supposedly only Cleveland has their database fully operational. Likely, some teams will be successful at this and others will not. Only time will tell what transpires in St. Louis with Mr. Luhnow, sabermetrics and the team. Will the baseball traditionalists embrace the new-age number-crunchers?
Given his background, Luhnow should easily be able to tell the difference between a thoroughbred and a dog. But, even if he is a bust, you can bet the Cardinals will have perfectly-fitting uniforms in 2004. And if they don't, there will surely be a study quickly commissioned to get to the bottom of why not!
