Outstanding. Keith is one of the smartest of the smart and nicest of the nice. I hope everything gets better and better for him. Thanks, Keith, for inspiration, input and VORP.

Hope he has better luck than the other BPro Keith who left for a MLB team

This is terrible news for Baseball Prospectus, its readers, the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Tigers, the Minnesota Twins, and the Kansas City Royals.

Is Woolner the one who created VORP? Or am I confusing him without someone else.

Dag, yes. Woolner created VORP, and he also moderates a Red Sox listserve.

Navin's correct. He's smart and nice.

Congrats Keith! ALTHOUGH I ain't too happy with your new employers at the moment.

Hope he has better luck than the other BPro Keith who left for a MLB team

Well, it was the Blue Jays--that was a job along the lines of designing a line of Paris Hilton chastity belts--you're screwed even before you really get going.

Best Regards

John

Congratulations to Keith. Well deserved!

Well done. I met Keith a few months ago and he is a good guy from what I can tell, and the Indians are a team that I enjoy.

Keith is one of the good guys. Congrats, Keith!

Absolutely - a loss to the rest of us, including the AL Central. Congratualtions and best of luck to Keith if he reads this.

My initial reaction: as if one needed another reason to stop reading Baseball Prospectus.

But this is long overdue, IMHO. When Keith Law went to work for the Blue Jays, my initial reaction was "they took the wrong Keith from BP." Nothing against Law personally, but Woolner has been BP's greatest asset since the beginning. Without him, the organization is far less likely to produce anything all that interesting beyond their occasionally humorous snark, but utterly predictable commentary.

Keith is one of the good guys. Congrats, Keith!

Baseball Prospectus. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

[quoteThis is terrible news for Baseball Prospectus, its readers, the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Tigers, the Minnesota Twins, and the Kansas City Royals.]

Woolner has been BP's greatest asset since the beginning

Hear, hear. With all due respect to Clay Davenport and Nate Silver, I have a feeling that we could be heading down the road of the post-Ozzie Black Sabbath. Not that there's anything wrong with Ronnie James Dio, but there's a vibe you expect from Sabbath, and it's not Rainbow in the Dark.

[quoteThis is terrible news for Baseball Prospectus, its readers, the Chicago White Sox, the Detroit Tigers, the Minnesota Twins, and the Kansas City Royals.]

Woolner has been BP's greatest asset since the beginning

Hear, hear. With all due respect to Clay Davenport and Nate Silver, I have a feeling that we could be heading down the road of the post-Ozzy Black Sabbath. Not that there's anything wrong with Ronnie James Dio, but there's a vibe you expect from Sabbath, and it's not Rainbow in the Dark.

Woolner had been working mainly behind the scenes at BP for the last few years and hadn't been doing much analysis in print. Real (paying) job and family issues dominated his attention. I'm very happy to see him applying his tools to baseball in a more practical way. It's a boon to sabermetricians generally if he succeeds in this move. And these kinds of moves are also good for BP.

BTW/ another former BP writer who's in a front office now is James Click (with TB), and his assistant Chaim Bloom also wrote for BP for a time: http://tampabay.devilrays.mlb.com/team/front_office.jsp?c_id=tb.

I didn't know that James Click was with TB; did Joe Maddon see his piece on baserunning?

Someone tell the Angels to hire Clay Davenport.

Keith Woolner and the Cleveland Indians have a new relationship.

Oh, sure, they're moving in together now. But just wait until after they have to start picking out curtains and table service together.

We decided to get rid of all the curtains. Strangely our neighbors have put up a lot more.

CLE is a "true" sabermetric organization. This hiring confirms and augments that assesment. CLE is a very good team now. This will only make them MUCH better. As far as I can tell, there are really only 2.5 or 3.5 truly sabermetric organizations in baseball right now.

As far as I can tell, there are really only 2.5 or 3.5 truly sabermetric organizations in baseball right now.

An industry person gave me the same assessment when I was at the Sloan Sports Management Conference. I was surprised, but I've now heard that from a few people.

What's the difference between a true sabermetric organization and a fake one? That's not snark, I'm genuinely curious.

As far as I can tell, there are really only 2.5 or 3.5 truly sabermetric organizations in baseball right now.

Who qualifies in your view?

I'll take a chance on being wrong:

Cleveland
Boston
1/2 - Oakland? St. Louis?

San Diego?

Maybe Boston's the half, because of Lucchino's influence. San Diego is pretty sabermetric, and Cleveland is, and I assume Oakland is. Kevin Towers isn't sabermetric, though, and he is SD's GM, so they must be the team that's not sabermetric.

As I figure it, based on mgl's assessment, there would be no more than two truly sabermetric organizations, Cleveland's and perhaps one other. Then, since mgl is clearly giving out half-sabermetric grades, there would be anywhere from one to three teams that could be characterized as half-sabermetric (since it's doubtful that difference between 2.5 and 3.5 is a team that's either all sabermetric or not at all).


Of course, it's quite possible that the breakdown looks like:

Cleveland - 1.0 sabermetric organization.
Oakland - 1.0
Boston - .7
San Diego - .65-.87
St. Louis - .64-.83
Detroit - .26-.47
Florida - .13-.37
Arizona - .12-.28
22 other teams - .0 sabermetric
Pittsburgh - -1.0

We probably need mgl to give us the actual numbers.

Honestly, it is just an educated guess on my part, based on personnel moves, on-field managing, and quotes here and there, for teams that I am not personally familiar with at all, and some contact that I have had with FO people in a few organizations. I know nothing about Pittsburgh and was actually surprised to see their name on SoS' list. I love his breakdown though. It really cracked me up.

I should add that there are NO teams that are even close to 100% sabermetric, IMO. Not even close. By 100% sabermetric, what I mean is how I would run a team from top to bottom, based on what I believe to be true. Now before everyone gets in a huff over that statement, let me qualify that by saying that truly 90% (or 80%, or 92%, or perhaps 68%) of what it takes to run a team, I have no idea, and I would presumably hire the best individuals I could find in those areas, although I would have plenty of input in those areas as well. For example, I know little about teaching pitchers how to pitch, however, if my pitching coach wanted to tell my pitchers to "pitch quickly" because their fielders will be sharper and make fewer errors than if they pitched slowly (and that was their only reason), I would be compelled to tell them that that isn't true (read the recent BP article by Dan Fox on that). As well, I don't want my hitting coach telling my batters to protect the plate with a 3-2 count (especially in certain runner/out/scor situations). Or to take the first strike after the pitcher has just walked the previous batter on 4 pitches. Or for the batter to take a pitch or two to let the baserunner steal. All of my baserunners would be automatically red-lighted versus left-handed pitchers (more or less). Many other things like that in areas that are not my expertise.

St. Louis - .64-.83

The Cardinals have Aaron Miles, Preston Wilson, Skip Schumaker and So Taguchi on their roster and they have some weird fascination with Mark Mulder. TLR will start/rest position players based on pitcher-batter matchups. OK, they also made Ryan Franklin a reliever and Braden Looper a starter, which looks sensible at this point. They aren't anywhere close to what I'd consider a true sabermetric team.

I'm sure their presence is a nod to their hiring Ron Shandler as a consultant.

Shandler left over two years ago, in part because the Cardinals ignored him on Mulder. MGL's contract apparently ended about a year ago. OK, the dude from Fantasyland still works there, but every team has stats guys on staff.