The Hall of Fame Zone Revisited: Career Arcs

Part of the issue, to me at least, is what percentage of fans are just “baseball fans” that would follow players outside of the teams they like? I know a lot of guys/gals who only follow baseball if their team is in it, otherwise they do not…. Any by following, they start to watch in August/September and watch the playoffs. They’ll also watch opening day, because everyone and their grandma does.

I think the people here are a lot different. I know I am. I am a Twins fan at heart, and want to see them win another World Series, but I also want to be knowledgeable about the game in general, and just appreciate the sport. Bottom line is I hold the belief that wins are important, and you want to maximize your wins relative to your payroll. I really don’t believe every MLB team holds that same value, or if they do, many are failing.

I know since I started off as a hardcore fan for 1 team, as I gained more interest in Economics (I ended up getting a degree in it), the more interested I was in this stuff. Because Econ is all about decision making sacracity, I started looking at some of this kind of stuff, and then wanting to see what the team I liked could be doing to get better. I was also fortunate enough to have teachers that were all about giving facts then forming the opinion, instead of vice-versa. Helped me out a lot with politics, sports, and many other things.

Because this was 2004/2005, when the Twins had a modest budget, I knew dollars were limited. I poked around, read Moneyball, read Baseball Prospectus, stuff like that, and attempted to come up (in my mind) things I thought the team should do. I was also a college student, so I had larger blocks of free time, spread throughout the week than I do now. Knowing what I do now, there was a ton of stuff I didn’t know at the time, and ultimatley the plan would have sucked, but over the past couple of years, I’ve learned a lot more, and still have a ways to go… If only I could look at stuff and apply my own theories with this 40 hours a week, I’d really be cooking! lol.

The thing is, is if you attempt to do something like I did, you have a vested interest (wanting your team to get better, wanting to apply theories you’re reading about), and you are also forced to look at a much larger scope of players. At the root, you’re wanting to learn the finer points of the game, so you have to have a mind for it. I did get to parlay some of the work I did as a final project in an Econometrics Class, where I analyzed free agency, and dollar value predictors. To my teachers they thought it was interesting because everyone else was doing the standard projects in the class of real estate, crime rates, GDP growth, and I was the only one trying to do something with the sport. So I at least got something out of this externally other than internally. I know that helped a lot with me wanting to do more than as well.

So now, I go around and pretend to be a GM and constantly want to learn more about current players. The stuff with past players is fun and the HOF debates come mostly from love of sport.

Short answer is that this stuff is some next-level type of thinking. Most fans just aren’t down with it, regardless of the importance. They want sports to be entertainment, but thinking about this stuff can feel like work to some. People are lazy. I know someone who pays an accountant $50 to do their 1040EZ for them… The way to get more fans to look at this is to give them a vested interest (what should my team do to get better, what kind of a lineup should be put out there, who should start at xx position, etc?), there’s a better chance. The only problem is that a fan wants to be able to do the eye-test themselves. Stats are very unpopular in life, when they don’t support preconcieved notions, and vice-versa. To us on here, we have our beliefs/values with this stuff, but I think we’re more open minded about it, and there’s that desire to learn. A fan just wants to believe what they want to believe.