Ron Shandler
The Call
A year ago last fall, Bill James was hired as a consultant to the Boston Red Sox. It caused quite a stir in the baseball community. After all, major league clubs were not known to embrace sabermetrics, let alone bring onto staff such a high profile statistical analyst.
In Boston, the media had a field day. The Red Sox had been burned once before by a stat geek when Mike Gimbel announced that he was pulling the strings behind Dan Duquette. The fact that new GM Theo Epstein would be willing to cross that line again was a sign that progressive statistical analysis might have a place, and maybe we all better get used to it. Still, after the media backlash from the Great Bullpen Experiment, it was apparent that we still have a ways to go.
James was not the first to join the big leagues. Billy Beane's exploits over the past few years were well chronicled in Moneyball last spring. One of Beane's disciples, J.P. Ricciardi, moved on to Toronto where he made Keith Law his assistant. Who was Law? A co-author of the sabermetric tome Baseball Prospectus and -- get this -- former participant in the fantasy baseball industry's premier experts leagues, LABR and Tout Wars (and 1996 LABR winner). Of course, that last fact likely does not appear on Keith's major league resume.
It doesn't end there, but you won't find many signs of further sabermetric expansion on the AP newswire. Last year, the Brewers hired Tony Blengino as a scout in their minor league system. Blengino was a former writer for Rotisserie guru John Benson and had been authoring the book, Future Stars, for several years. His claim to fame was his quantitative methodology for talent evaluation. Other clubs, including Cleveland and the Mets have also recently hired stat guys.
I know that there are even more clubs at least looking at the statistics. I know this because a bunch of them buy the Baseball Forecaster and subscribe to this site every year. There are even a few that have been buying the Forecaster for over 10 years. Lots of looking, little action, apparently.
After the James hiring, I received a bunch of e-mails from avid readers asking when Ron Shandler would get "the call." I laughed them off and wrote that, if I got the call, I'd probably turn it down. That prompted a note from Alex Patton, asking me to explain myself.
It's simple, really. I like what I do now. I'm my own boss, this little company supports my family and organizational bureaucracy was exactly the reason why I left Corporate America a decade ago. I have little interest in going back to that.
But then, six weeks ago, I got "the call."
Yes, I did.
It came as an unobtrusive e-mail that read, "My name is Jeff Luhnow, and I'm Vice President in the front office of the Cardinals. First, congratulations on an outstanding product. Your Baseball Forecaster book is excellent, and I really enjoy the annual updates. I used it extensively as a fantasy baseball junkie, and now as a baseball executive I rely on it as an important source of insight. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to speak with you over the phone, to get your advice on some areas of interest to the Cardinals."
To be perfectly honest, my knee-jerk reaction was one of skepticism. I constantly get e-mails from people pretending to be things that they're not. "Hi, I run a web site that gets 50 million hits a day; would you be interested in swapping links?" or "Hi, I've been a sportswriter for 30 years; do you have an opening?"
So I Googled Mr. Luhnow. The October, 2003 press release read:
"The St. Louis Cardinals announce the hiring of Jeff Luhnow to the newly created position of vice president for baseball development... as part of a re-organization of the team's baseball operations department. 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." Cool.
This was particularly interesting for several reasons. First, Jeff's background was as the founder, president and C.O.O. of a California technology and software company. He wasn't specifically a baseball guy, which was a different approach for a Major League club to take. This was not a baseball stat geek; this was a high level tech geek. A very intriguing approach.
Second was the fact that this direction was apparently endorsed, even driven, by Cardinals' GM Walt Jocketty and club ownership. "Any edge that a team can gain in evaluating talent is a plus," Jocketty said in a statement. "Jeff's unique analysis of players and strategy complement the efforts of our scouts at both the professional and amateur levels, making sure that we have the most comprehensive means of evaluating player abilities and trends."
The third reason is where I come in.
I called Jeff; we had a very pleasant conversation. While other clubs had hired individuals to fill staff roles within their organizations, Jeff wanted me to help him create an advisory board. This board would be comprised of five or six people, each with a pocket of analytical expertise in a specific discipline. There would be one expert in run creation, another in pitching, another in minor league scouting, another in fielding/defense, and so on. It is exactly the approach that I have used in building Baseball HQ.
So it made perfect sense to recruit some of HQ's writers onto the board from the beginning. Deric McKamey, Doug Dennis and John Burnson could bring their respective skills; we'd probably have to go outside of HQ for some areas of expertise beyond the scope of a "fantasy baseball" site.
There would be one or two in-person meetings each year, scheduled around key dates for player acquisition. We'd sit in with the decision-makers. During the rest of the year, we would correspond via e-mail and possibly make use of a private online message board.
So the past six weeks have been an interesting experience in ferreting out the value of the relationship for both sides, while navigating the boundaries of comfort and law. We finally signed a contract early this week, but it was not without its share of negotiation.
All of us have a different agenda for this relationship. My major goal was to be able to bring something back to my readers, but those turned out to be immediately treacherous waters. Doug, whose assistance has been invaluable as our group's legal counsel, wrote:
"I think that it is important that the media does not turn this into a circus where we are painted as clowns, and that would be very easy to do.... I would not be surprised to see the St. Louis-Dispatch run some scathing article that the Cardinals have hired fantasy baseball writers for advice -- it is in the Cardinals interest to avoid that. The beat pundits have every reason to feel threatened by folks like us, because it will not be long until the newspapers are clamoring for more Rob Neyers and fewer Mike Lupicas."
Sigh.
It doesn't matter that we've been conducting serious analysis for the past 18 years. It doesn't matter that many major league clubs already subscribe to our services. It doesn't matter that we were good enough to get "the call" in the first place. You create an immediate oxymoronic reality when you add the word "fantasy" to any discussion of "serious analysis." Heck, you can still create a backlash with a word like "sabermetric." It is something that the verbiage just cannot overcome and has turned simple words into negative mindsets.
And so we are forced to tread these treacherous waters. By virtue of "the call," we know there is a benefit to the Cardinals. And we'll get something out of this as well. I'm not entirely comfortable with some of the concessions we will be making, but I think they are worth the trade-off. It's all pretty exciting, really.
What will happen here at Baseball HQ? Little that you will notice outright. Our regular coverage of the Cardinals will often be handled by other HQ writers, but that will take nothing away from our depth of analysis. Inside perspectives will have to go through an approval process. Still, you will get a peek into what goes on inside a major league organization, and that is something you will get nowhere else.
This column is a start. I was not sure whether a frank description of this series of events would pass the test. But by virtue of the fact that you are reading this now, there will be some more interesting reading in the coming months.
Related Birdhouse Story Links
Baseball Forecaster / Baseball HQ
Birdhouse Exclusive Interview with Ron Shandler by Brian Walton
Check out Ron Shandler's website at BaseballHQ.com and tell him we sent you. Thank you.
"The Call" reprinted from BaseballHQ.com
Editor's Note - we are big supporters of the Cardinals move to bring in Ron Shandler and his consultants and we endorse all his products and materials and we use them daily here "In the House"
