Houston Astros Hire Another Stat Geek
Jeff Luhnow, the new General Manager of the Houston Astros apparently watched Taken before he took the job and now has embarked on a journey of revenge against baseball traditionalists.
An example:
Luhnow: I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for a player’s batting average, I can tell you I don’t keep it. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long, very nerdy career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let your home runs and RBI’s go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not show you my charts, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will talk to you about pitch trajectory data until you die.
American League West: Good luck.
The Astros hired Baseball Prospectus writer Mike Fast today as an addition to baseball operations.
Let’s go to the Houston Chronicle’s Zachary Levine to see what exactly Fast provides.
“Fast, one of the foremost experts on pitch trajectory (PITCHf/x) data, has also written on HITf/x data for BP. Some of his latest writings have been on hit-and-run success, quantifying how much control pitchers have over batted balls and an analysis of hot and cold zones for hitters.”
I’m trying really hard not to make a pocket protector joke because here’s the deal: the front office at Minute Maid needed this type of statistical revolution. As gut wrenching as it is for some to read about baseball and have graphs interspersed throughout, they are a vital cog in finding the best possible players on a budget.
Simply put, ignoring them in this advanced statistical age is to put a franchise behind their competition.
Billy Beane and Moneyball brought deeper statistical analyses into the national spotlight. But owners, general managers and scouts had the same opportunities to use the same methods.
The reason they refused?
Stubbornness.
Tal Smith worked in an executive role with the Astros three separate times for a total of 35 seasons. His last tenure, 17 years as the president of baseball operations, oversaw the most successful era in franchise history.
But following the rousing playoff victories in 2004 and 2005, Smith’s office also watched as the product, both big league and minor league, suffered.
So it came as no surprise that he, along with former general manager Ed Wade received pink slips.
Jim Crane isn’t the easiest man to read yet, much less so than a politician-type like Drayton McLane. However, he’s obviously intent on changing the culture at Minute Maid Park by instituting a statistical influence.
Jeff Luhnow isn’t a career baseball man. He’s a one-time engineer who clashed with the traditional scouts in St. Louis because of his different ideals.
As GM, Luhnow furthered the trend by hiring Sig Mejdal as Director of Decision Sciences. That job description doesn’t exist anywhere else in Major League Baseball. Mejdal is an overseer and one that presumably will rely heavily on advanced statistics.
Jeff Luhnow won’t need to rescue his franchise from a kidnapping in Paris but his commitment to overhauling the Astros front office has certainly taken plenty of traditionalists by surprise.
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