Baseball - A Fun Game to Play

ESPN.com - MLB/PREVIEW06 - Crasnick: Best-case, worst-case scenarios

So, in business school, I learned a decision making technique that wasn't taught in any of the classrooms. It proved to be a useful tool for analysis of the types of trivial decisions an MBA student simulates making. I say trivial because, at the end of the day, if we pull the wrong lever, nothing really happens except we get more red ink on the writeup.

The technique is to envision the worst that could happen. If you could live with that, you're probably making the right decision. If the upside looks a lot better than the downside, you're in the right neighborhood. If we were to turn it to math (instead of anecdotal discussion) it would be a net present value calculation.

Jerry Crasnic, one of ESPN's many fine baseball writers, has produced an analysis of this type for baseball teams. I think it's pretty good. There are a few great things about sports that make this kind of analysis pretty useful:

You never really know what's gonna happen. Let's unpack that a little. For batters, you can hit the ball hard all the time (ala Gary Sheffield), but you can hit it where they are or you can hit it where they ain't. And, if you think about it, what is the difference between a guy who hits .300 and a guy who hits .280? Over 100 at bats, it's two hits. At 4 AB's a game, you're talking 2 hits over a month. Small change, right? For pitchers, it's the same thing. ERA is a measure of how well your guys were placed, how well they fielded, how much foul territory you have in your park, which way the wind blows and all kinds of stuff you, as a pitcher, can't control. There is a lot of randomness inherent in baseball, though the LARGE sample sizes (particularly for hitters) kind of makes up for it. Any rate, you can project, but you don't know what a guy is gonna do. And who knows who will be bitten by the injury bug.

There is another dimension of uncertainty here. You don't know what you're guys are going to produce. You also don't know what anyone else's guys are going to produce. You have vague ideas, but you don't really know. You know less about their guys than you know about yours, so that's even more uncertain.

So, this seems like a good tool to make player decisions with. You can make an attempt to figure out what you're getting, or you can play Worst Case Scenario.

Let's look at the Yankees:

Worst case: When Gary Sheffield isn't moping about his contract situation, he's dispensing "no comments'' about BALCO. The rotation looks older by the day, and the bullpen shows too many cracks behind Mariano Rivera. Boston and Toronto mount spirited challenges, and the Yankees finish a shocking third to miss the playoffs for the first time since 1993.

I can live with the Sheffield piece, so keeping him is a good move. The rotation scares me, especially since the young guys can't seem to stay healthy. I am excited about Wang, though with Jeter at short, maybe a sinker pitcher isn't the best idea. Ditto Mussina and Kevin Brown. The bullpen I'm not that nervous about. Tom "Vomit" Gordon is gone, so that's one thing off my mind. The prospect of finishing third behind Boston and Toronto is icky. So, faced with this, I might've looked to bring in a pitcher who's been decent and is under that age of 35.

Any rate, I think it's an interesting read and a neat tool for you to use in griping about your general manager.