What a fantastic approach and insights into a challenging topic...or as the professors used to say when I was in engineering school, "an elegant solution." I've long been a student of front offices and their strategies. I also (sadly) read all the "We Rank All MLB Front Offices" type pieces - which skew hard to pure opinion poorly supported by a handful of high-profile aberrant transactions.
This, on the other hand, strikes me as a very creative and effective proxy to put more rigor behind the opinions. The chart alone is pure gold. Could you do a similar analysis on the NFL front offices?
It also goes to something I heard Bill James say years ago, that great insights come from first asking great questions and then finding the data...not the other way around. This piece embodies first a great question - one that is becoming more of a focus in the media and the public - before it gets to the powerful data to answer the case.
As front offices increasingly cloak themselves in secrecy, mystique and arbitrary complexity, this pulls the curtain back to reveal the wizards - both the ones from Oz as well as the real ones. Great work.
NFL would be interesting! (Probably would use AV for that...) Particularly interested in what the effect of a salary cap is on how much developed talent is retained vs acquired from the outside. Like the NFL with rookie scale contracts, MLB has its own rules that incentivize holding onto a player's first few years (thru arbitration) and then cutting them loose, but the aging curve in football at non-QB positions seems much harsher than baseball, which probably plays into these dynamics as well.
Great points all - I particularly like your comment on the NFL aging curve severity complicating things. FYI - I have not read it in depth, but Bill Barnwell did some front office analysis on ESPN+ recently using Approximate Value as you suggest. It didn't seem to take this sort of analytical approach, however, if I recall.
Perhaps something for the future on your "to do" list....thanks again.
What a fantastic approach and insights into a challenging topic...or as the professors used to say when I was in engineering school, "an elegant solution." I've long been a student of front offices and their strategies. I also (sadly) read all the "We Rank All MLB Front Offices" type pieces - which skew hard to pure opinion poorly supported by a handful of high-profile aberrant transactions.
This, on the other hand, strikes me as a very creative and effective proxy to put more rigor behind the opinions. The chart alone is pure gold. Could you do a similar analysis on the NFL front offices?
It also goes to something I heard Bill James say years ago, that great insights come from first asking great questions and then finding the data...not the other way around. This piece embodies first a great question - one that is becoming more of a focus in the media and the public - before it gets to the powerful data to answer the case.
As front offices increasingly cloak themselves in secrecy, mystique and arbitrary complexity, this pulls the curtain back to reveal the wizards - both the ones from Oz as well as the real ones. Great work.
NFL would be interesting! (Probably would use AV for that...) Particularly interested in what the effect of a salary cap is on how much developed talent is retained vs acquired from the outside. Like the NFL with rookie scale contracts, MLB has its own rules that incentivize holding onto a player's first few years (thru arbitration) and then cutting them loose, but the aging curve in football at non-QB positions seems much harsher than baseball, which probably plays into these dynamics as well.
Great points all - I particularly like your comment on the NFL aging curve severity complicating things. FYI - I have not read it in depth, but Bill Barnwell did some front office analysis on ESPN+ recently using Approximate Value as you suggest. It didn't seem to take this sort of analytical approach, however, if I recall.
Perhaps something for the future on your "to do" list....thanks again.