The Anti-Tribble

An interesting article on the great Leo Mazzone. The key to his approach can be summed up, I think, in one word–rationality. For example:

Maddux
There are no parachutes on your back, no cones to run around, no 10 different meetings talking about something that doesn’t concern you. All the other stuff, you don’t partake in. So you spend less time doing nothing, and you spend all your time doing what it is you have to do to get better on the mound.

Mazzone
You don’t think pitchers appreciate that? Running all these drills and doing all this stuff before you get on the mound is not very bright. Your first priority is to get on the mound and practice your craft, without being fatigued from drills that are not going to mean near as much as you trying to make pitches.

This is the sign of quality management, and why Cox and Mazzone have such a great record. If you want to hire a good academic, you should focus on their academic work and teaching, not on what television programs they watch (even if it’s easier to do a quick google search than to look carefully at someone’s dissertation.) And if you want to win the division title every year, you have players do things because they actually work and are connected to developing their skills, not because they allow you to assert your author-i-tah or because your high school coach did it that way. You would think that this would be widely understood, but people like Cox and Mazzone are always a minority.

This can also be seen with respect to Billy Beane. The A’s probably won’t make the playoffs this year, but their record given their payroll and stage of development is remarkable; but, of course, he’s widely hated throughout baseball. The Seattle media for many years discussed the question of Beane vs. the Mariners management as if the question was actually open; uh, I think when the other team beats your brains out every year with a third of the payroll I don’t think there’s really a debate here. And the chief argument against Beane illustrates a misunderstanding of his method, which is sometimes boiled down to being about “statistics.” Beane was overrated, people argue, because the A’s were built on Hudson/Zito/Mulder, and hence their scouts. But that’s completely wrong. Mulder, admittedly, was widely recognized as a great prospect. But Hudson was considered by scouts to be too short, and Zito was considered a flake who didn’t have a good enough fastball. Beane drafted the latter two over the objections of his scouts. The key quote of Moneyball is “we’re not selling jeans here.” The core philosophy of Beane is that talent is about performance, not images. Statistics are part of it because they allow more accurate evaluation of performance, but they’re just a tool; it’s the general philosophy that matters. And the wisdom inherent in the rationality of a Mazzone or Beane goes well beyond baseball.