Posts Tagged ‘Sports’
Learning From Baseball Stats
I don’t profess to be a sports nut but I like a good game. Call me fair-weather fan. I usually get caught up in the excitement when there is something big happening; playoffs, a record-breaking milestone, the home team doing well. I caught CBS’s 60 Minutes a while back on a story that aired originally in 2008. It was about Bill James, a man who was a fan and statistician that changed the management methods of the Boston Red Sox for the better.
Bill James was an unlikely source of information for baseball leaders to make decisions; not athletic but 
an outsider and pure observer. The Boston Red Sox utilized his analysis to better manage the game and create a wining season.
I just heard about the story, but since it aired last year others have blogged about it. The opinions I found are interesting. All of the blogs I researched were opinions about the individual statistics that James relies on and the blogger’s opinion to their usefulness. The talk centered on the game of baseball and was objectified from a fan’s perspective.
I got a different impression. What was fascinating is the numbers themselves, and how they serve to provide a different perspective driving the business of baseball. Being a hard-core fan requires some discipline to know those little nuggets about a player and his behavior. I won’t get into the details here but the act of following a situation such as a baseball game, series, rivalry, or season has its merits. The important take away that I got was again the idea that what statistics get measured tend to improve. Fans can look at the metrics to help them enjoy the game more. The teams themselves are learning that measuring activity in different ways, leads to a concentration on the right activity, and that leads to success.
Watching the episode, there are some great parallels to common mistakes made in business and manufacturing. Dashboards are set up with the ‘proven’ key performance indicators and strategy based on metrics can set a company off course. There needs to be a continuing re-evaluation of the key things you follow, and a quest for more sources of data.
Sport is recreational and entertaining yet it has the ability to galvanize much of modern culture’s happenings in an observable way. Sport is a good metaphor for competition and passion and human trials that sometimes parallel everyday life. There can be a lot to learn if you focus on the objective aspects.
Nevertheless, if you feel like painting your face and screaming in support, have a good time.
