In my years of reading baseball writing in general and this forum in particular it has occured to me that fans put a huge amount of mental and emotional energy into managing the anxiety that comes with not knowing for sure what will happen in the future -- how players and teams will perform, who will get injured and the like. Of course, this problem is not unique to fans -- front offices also struggle with questions of uncertainty and put tremendous effort into developing techniques to help them predict future outcomes and thus manage their resources more efficiently. Different kinds of fans (and teams) attempt to accomplish this task in different ways. Front offices use a blend of observation and statistical analysis to guide decisionmaking, but the ratio and specific methods vary from organization to organization. Similarly, some fans hew to anecdotes, conventional wisdom and conceptual argumentation while others favor data driven analysis of varying depth and rigor. Emotionally, however, these thought processes are ultimately at least to some degree attempts to predict future outcomes and therefore settle the inevitable anxiety that comes with not knowing what will happen tomorrow, let alone in several years time.
The Ellsbury signing is an excellent example of this. It's currently in the first day since the deal was reported and hordes of internet fans and baseball writers alike have analyzed the trade and come to some judgment about its quality and impact. It's not difficult to find advocates for any number of conclusions about the deal. Plenty are willing to boldly predict that the signing was a coup that will dramatically improve the Yankees over the life of the contract. Others will take the opposite tack, arguing that Ellsbury is going to decline and quickly become an albatross. Some will advocate for a middle ground, suggesting that the signing makes the Yankees better over the short run but will likely cost them toward the end of the contract. Each of these positions can be supported by some forms of data, be they tabloid pablum or sophisticated statistical analysis.
Prospect analysis provides an equally fertile example. I can't even imagine how many words have been dedicated on this forum to attempts to determine how this or that prospect will perform. Will Xander flame out, achieve superstardom or somewhere in between? What about JBJ, Swihart, or Vazquez? Is Garin Cecchini going to start for the big club in 2015, and if so will he boom or bust?
In each of these cases we can cite all the scouting reports, crunch the numbers, and spout trite wisdom until the end of the day and still have very little real idea of what will happen. We may have a slightly better prediction, but our predictive power simply pales in comparison to the degree of uncertainty.
Consider again the Ellsbury signing. A lot of effort has gone into analyzing Ellsbury's likely performance over the life of the contract, but ultimately we have very little idea of what actually will come of the next seven or eight years. There is an entirely secondary layer of uncertainty that is quite relevant as well. Will the Ellsbury signing prevent the Yankees from retaining Cano or acquiring Tanaka? Further down the road the question of whether or not the Yankees will be relieved of their obligations to A-Rod becomes relevant as it changes the degree to which the Ellsbury signing will prevent the Yankees from landing talent in the future. Such questions are inherent in any discussion of the contract's value. Nevertheless, we have very little idea of how much the contract will limit the Yankees this year let alone in future years.
If we want to follow that road a bit further, we also are burdened with the uncertainty surrounding how these theoretical alternatives will perform in the future. If the Yankees sign Ellsbury but not Cano, then both players' future performance is fundamentally relevant to the evaluation of Ellsbury's contract. If they sign both players but then fail to sign, trade for, or otherwise acquire an unknown player in the future then that mystery player's performance is also relevant.
So all in all, we can make a bit of a guess at how Ellsbury will perform over the length of the contract but there is still a great deal of uncertainty there. We can make an even vaguer guess at how the Ellsbury signing will change the Yankees' ability to make other acquisitions in the near term, but have little to no information about the long term. As such, the opportunity cost of the signing is an even bigger question mark than the direct value of the signing itself. The same argument can be made for any prospect evaluation, trade suggestion, etc.
Teams, as active agents in the process, have a lot more information than we fans do. They are also at the mercy of necessity and have to make decisions based on whatever insight that they can get -- when playing a game of chance you take whatever edges you can find. So I understand, of course, why teams do this.
But why do we? Is developing an opinion that will account for a very small amount of the variance within a system and then shouting that opinion into the void all that therapeutic? The more I think about it, the more I can't help but feel that even the most reasoned and nuanced statistical argument is more intellectually dishonest than simply stating, "well shit, man, I don't really know." Is it really that important to have a solid opinion on a transaction within a day of its announcement?
Addendum: In retrospect I'm not sure if this is even the correct forum for this post. Mods, if you think this is in the wrong place please feel free to move it.
The Ellsbury signing is an excellent example of this. It's currently in the first day since the deal was reported and hordes of internet fans and baseball writers alike have analyzed the trade and come to some judgment about its quality and impact. It's not difficult to find advocates for any number of conclusions about the deal. Plenty are willing to boldly predict that the signing was a coup that will dramatically improve the Yankees over the life of the contract. Others will take the opposite tack, arguing that Ellsbury is going to decline and quickly become an albatross. Some will advocate for a middle ground, suggesting that the signing makes the Yankees better over the short run but will likely cost them toward the end of the contract. Each of these positions can be supported by some forms of data, be they tabloid pablum or sophisticated statistical analysis.
Prospect analysis provides an equally fertile example. I can't even imagine how many words have been dedicated on this forum to attempts to determine how this or that prospect will perform. Will Xander flame out, achieve superstardom or somewhere in between? What about JBJ, Swihart, or Vazquez? Is Garin Cecchini going to start for the big club in 2015, and if so will he boom or bust?
In each of these cases we can cite all the scouting reports, crunch the numbers, and spout trite wisdom until the end of the day and still have very little real idea of what will happen. We may have a slightly better prediction, but our predictive power simply pales in comparison to the degree of uncertainty.
Consider again the Ellsbury signing. A lot of effort has gone into analyzing Ellsbury's likely performance over the life of the contract, but ultimately we have very little idea of what actually will come of the next seven or eight years. There is an entirely secondary layer of uncertainty that is quite relevant as well. Will the Ellsbury signing prevent the Yankees from retaining Cano or acquiring Tanaka? Further down the road the question of whether or not the Yankees will be relieved of their obligations to A-Rod becomes relevant as it changes the degree to which the Ellsbury signing will prevent the Yankees from landing talent in the future. Such questions are inherent in any discussion of the contract's value. Nevertheless, we have very little idea of how much the contract will limit the Yankees this year let alone in future years.
If we want to follow that road a bit further, we also are burdened with the uncertainty surrounding how these theoretical alternatives will perform in the future. If the Yankees sign Ellsbury but not Cano, then both players' future performance is fundamentally relevant to the evaluation of Ellsbury's contract. If they sign both players but then fail to sign, trade for, or otherwise acquire an unknown player in the future then that mystery player's performance is also relevant.
So all in all, we can make a bit of a guess at how Ellsbury will perform over the length of the contract but there is still a great deal of uncertainty there. We can make an even vaguer guess at how the Ellsbury signing will change the Yankees' ability to make other acquisitions in the near term, but have little to no information about the long term. As such, the opportunity cost of the signing is an even bigger question mark than the direct value of the signing itself. The same argument can be made for any prospect evaluation, trade suggestion, etc.
Teams, as active agents in the process, have a lot more information than we fans do. They are also at the mercy of necessity and have to make decisions based on whatever insight that they can get -- when playing a game of chance you take whatever edges you can find. So I understand, of course, why teams do this.
But why do we? Is developing an opinion that will account for a very small amount of the variance within a system and then shouting that opinion into the void all that therapeutic? The more I think about it, the more I can't help but feel that even the most reasoned and nuanced statistical argument is more intellectually dishonest than simply stating, "well shit, man, I don't really know." Is it really that important to have a solid opinion on a transaction within a day of its announcement?
Addendum: In retrospect I'm not sure if this is even the correct forum for this post. Mods, if you think this is in the wrong place please feel free to move it.
