Description:
The Boston Red Sox are seeking an Analyst for the team’s Baseball Research & Development department. The role will support all areas of Baseball Operations while working closely with the VP, Baseball Research & Development, and the analysts on the R&D team.
This is an opportunity to work in a fast-paced, intellectually curious environment and to impact player personnel and strategic decision making.
Responsibilities:
Statistical modeling and quantitative analysis of a variety of data sources, for the purpose of player evaluation, strategic decision-making, decision analysis, etc.
Effectively present analyses through the use of written reports and data visualization to disseminate insights to members of the Baseball Operations leadership.
Maintain working expertise of leading-edge analytics, including publicly available research and novel statistical approaches, in order to recommend new or emerging techniques, technologies, models, and algorithms.
Other projects and related duties as directed by VP, Baseball Research & Development, and other members of Baseball Operations leadership.
Qualifications:
Bachelor’s degree in an analytical field such as statistics, engineering, applied math, physics, quantitative social sciences, computer science, or operations research.
Demonstrated experience with baseball data analysis.
Advanced understanding of statistical methods or machine learning techniques.
Proficiency with modern database technologies including SQL.
Demonstrated experience with programming languages (e.g., R or Python).
Demonstrated ability to communicate technical ideas to non-technical audiences using data visualization.
Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word).
Demonstrated work ethic, passion for baseball, and strong baseball knowledge, including familiarity with current baseball research and analysis.
Attention to detail while also having the ability to work quickly and balance multiple priorities.
Ability to work evening, weekend, and holiday hours is a must.
Other programming and database skills are a plus.
To Apply:
To apply, please send an email to analyticsresume@redsox.com with the subject “Analyst”. Please include the following items/answer:
Updated resume.
Example of analysis you’ve done, preferably related to baseball.
What is a project that you believe would add substantial value to a baseball team? Please describe the project and provide an overview of how you would complete it.
Here’s your daily reminder that a lot of free agents remain available. A lot!
There are probably a number of reasons behind the slowly developing market, and we’ve documented a number of them here at FanGraphs dot com.
Teams have devalued free agency more and more. Players are trending younger. The average age of a position player was 28.3 years last season, compared to 29.1 in 2007. As I noted in a piece for The Athletic over the weekend, pitchers and position players aged 30 and older accounted for 41.8% of WAR production from 2001 to -03 but just 30.6% over the most recent three seasons (2015 to -17). While Craig Edwards noted yesterday that hitters in their early 30s are generally still pretty good, hundreds of age-30 seasons — almost always free-agent seasons — have disappeared.
Teams have perhaps also learned to wait on free agents, driving prices down. The data supports that hypothesis: February free-agent signings have increased for three straight years and are likely to far exceed last year’s mark of 65 signings, the most in a decade.
Moreover, large-market teams are trying to stay under the tax threshold and reset their tax status, while more and more clubs are following Astros- and Cubs-like rebuilds and tearing rosters down NBA-style while collecting premium picks and clearing payroll space in the process.
Last week, I took a look at the unenviable position in which the Major League Baseball Players Association currently finds itself — and, in particular, the relative lack of leverage it is likely to have over ownership during the next round of collective bargaining in 2021.
In addition to noting that there are few substantive concessions the union could offer ownership, my post last week also briefly discounted the extent to which the threat of a work stoppage would benefit the players. The point probably merited further discussion, however, so this post is intended to more comprehensively explain my thinking in that regard.
How a Work Stoppage Would Most Likely Arise
To begin, it’s important to understand how a work stoppage would likely unfold during the next round of collective bargaining. As I previously explained back in 2016, any labor stoppage in Major League Baseball would — at least for the foreseeable future — most likely come in the form of a lockout by ownership rather than a strike by the players.
Episode 797
The White Sox recently invited media to attend a hitting camp at their complex in Glendale, at which camp lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen — himself a well-regarded member of the media — observed Jake Burger, Yoan Moncada, and (in particular) Luis Robert all exhibiting impressive power on contact. Longenhagen waxes poetic on Robert’s talents in this edition of the program while also addressing the interesting case of Angels catching prospect Taylor Ward and the ascent of new Pirates prospect Colin Moran.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
I always look forward to these posts, maybe a little too much. It’s one thing to begin a polling project, but it’s quite another to wrap up and take a look at all the community feedback. Sometimes, it isn’t surprising. I mean, we all have a sense of how the community feels about certain subjects. But every single project has something worth talking about. Let’s talk about owners, and ownership groups.
Last week, I ran a post with 30 polls, one for every team. The question: How do you feel about the people ultimately in charge? More than a month ago, I ran a very similar project, only, that time, I asked for your evaluations of the various front offices, independent of ownership. This was supposed to direct the spotlight to the other people, a follow-up project like the one I ran in January two years ago. It should be very obvious that we don’t actually know that much about the owners, or about the influences they have, but if nothing else, we have anecdotes, and we have success cycles and payrolls. Follow a team for long enough, and you’ll develop some form of an ownership opinion. I wanted to collect the community opinions.
That is what follows, down below. I’ve put all the numbers into a spreadsheet and performed some basic analysis. As it happens, for you fans of specific teams, you probably know more about your owners than I do. So, I’m not going to include very much discussion in this post — that can be carried forward in the comments. My job is just to reveal what you said! I should do that.
A few days ago, the Blue Jays picked up a new, young, cost-controlled starting outfielder. They got him in exchange for a reliever, and for a pitching prospect with lousy peripherals. It’s not hard to see how you could spin this as a big positive for Toronto. The other side, of course, is that the Blue Jays are taking a chance on a guy who the Cardinals couldn’t make better over a number of years. It’s fine for any team to express faith in its own player-development system, but if the Cardinals can’t get a guy polished, what hope might another club have?
As is generally the case, all three players in the trade are interesting. High-level baseball players are always interesting. Randal Grichuk is interesting, because of his track record and skillset. Dominic Leone is interesting, for the way he reemerged in 2017. And Conner Greene is interesting, because of the raw quality of his stuff. The Cardinals hope they just made their bullpen better. I don’t mean to ignore their side of this. But I’d like to focus on Grichuk, and, specifically, I’d like to focus on how he hasn’t progressed. The era in which Grichuk plays today isn’t the same as the era in which he debuted.
Last week, in Part 2, we learned about one of Lars’s colorful teammates with the Henley and Grange Rams. Today, we get reintroduced to Birdman Bats cofounder Gary Malec — previously featured in the Lars Anderson Discovers Japan series — and hear about a visit to a tattoo parlor that prompted an ink artist to say, “So, you lost a bet, did ya?” We also get a story about the cosmic jest and excruciating mental math that comes with the International Date Line.
———
Lars Anderson: “The 2017 Birdman World Tour/Strategic Universal Takeover continued down under, rolling through Adelaide with a visit from the boss himself, Gary Malec. Since Gary was the catalyst for both myself and our bats being in Australia, it was only fitting that he’d check on the seeds he’d sown.
Could Scott Boras do for Eric Hosmer what he’s done for Prince Fielder and Matt Wieters in the past? (Photo: Cathy T)
Because of the nature of inactivity this offseason, we’ve explored, among other things, whether MLB teams have learned how to wait on free agents and how agents and players may need to adapt. These are trying times for a baseball scribe. We could use some transactions!
One agent who has tried to adapt, who is arguably the game’s greatest at his chosen profession, is Scott Boras.
In recent offseasons, when only a tepid market has developed for his clients, Boras has on occasion attempted to circumvent front offices — which are increasingly operating with less emotion and more reason — and appeal directly to owners. It worked with Prince Fielder in early 2012 in Detroit, for example.
Wrote FanGraphs alumnus Jonah Keri of that deal when it happened:
In short, Dave Dombrowski knows his stuff.
Which is exactly why Scott Boras wanted no part of him.
Mike Ilitch’s role in the nine-year, $214 million contract the Tigers gave to Prince Fielder has been well documented. … If you’re an agent representing a big-ticket client, do you negotiate with a GM who has 10 baseball ops guys at his disposal breaking down player projections to the smallest decimal point? Or do you approach the octogenarian owner who’s far more likely to make decisions from the heart, far more likely to say, “Eff it, I don’t care what happens in 2018, I want to win now”?
Boras perhaps didn’t pioneer this end-around approach in this age of data-drenched, free-agency-averse front offices. Rather, it might have been Dan Lozano, who appealed directly to Angels owner Arte Moreno while attempting to find a home for Albert Pujols.
After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for half a decade. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Cleveland Indians. Szymborski can be found at ESPN and on Twitter at @DSzymborski.
Batters
Among those clubs one might reasonably designate as a “super team” — which, for sake of ease, we might simply define as any team projected for 90 or more wins at the moment — Cleveland possesses the lowest current payroll.
Regard:
Projected Wins and Payroll for “Super Teams”
Team
Payroll
Pay Rank
Wins
Wins Rank
Astros
$130.5
13
98
1
Dodgers
$181.1
3
94
2
Indians
$122.8
15
93
3
Cubs
$142.1
8
92
4
Red Sox
$191.1
1
91
t5
Nationals
$170.4
5
91
t5
Yankees
$157.9
7
91
t5
Payroll data care of spotrac.
The constraints both of the market and ownership’s willingness to spend might ultimately render it difficult for Cleveland to sustain their current run of excellence. For 2018, however, the Indians are well positioned not only to compete but contend.
Francisco Lindor (696 PA, 5.8 zWAR), of course, remains the centerpiece of the club’s field-playing corps. He’s forecast not only for a batting line nearly 20% better than league average but also +10 fielding runs at shortstop. Jose Ramirez (643, 4.7) is nearly Lindor’s equal, supplying the same type of value, if not necessarily the same degree of it.
After that pair, the roster is composed largely of players in the average range. ZiPS calls for Edwin Encarnacion (577, 2.9) to continue hitting sufficiently well to compensate for his defensive shortcomings. The greatest weakness, meanwhile, appears to be right field, where even a platoon of Lonnie Chisenhall (421, 0.3) and Brandon Guyer (294, 1.0) fails to eclipse the one-win mark by much.
I noticed an underlying theme in both pieces I’ve written since coming back, along with many others written this offseason at FanGraphs. If you are a fan of a small- or medium-market team that will never spend to the luxury-tax line and thus always be at a disadvantage, do you want your team to try to always be .500 or better, or do you want them push all the chips in the middle for a smaller competitive window? In my stats vs. scouting article I referenced a progressive vs. traditional divide, which was broadly defined by design, but there are often noticeable differences in team-building strategies from the two overarching philosophies, which I will again illustrate broadly to show the two contrasting viewpoints.
The traditional clubs tend favor prospects with pedigree (bonus or draft position, mostly), with big tools/upside and the process of team-building is often to not push the chips into the middle (spending in free agency, trading prospects) until the core talents (best prospects and young MLB assets) have arrived in the big leagues and have established themselves. When that window opens, you do whatever you can afford to do within reason to make those 3-5 years the best you can and, in practice, it’s usually 2-3 years of a peak, often followed directly by a tear-down rebuild. The Royals appear to have just passed the peak stage of this plan, the Braves hope their core is established in 2019 and the Padres may be just behind the Braves (you could also argue the old-school Marlins have done this multiple times and are about to try again now).
On the progressive side, you have a more conservative, corporate approach where the club’s goal is to almost always have a 78-92 win team entering Spring Training, with a chance to make the playoffs every year, never with a bottom-ten ranked farm system, so they are flexible and can go where the breaks lead them. The valuation techniques emphasize the analytic more often, which can sometimes seem superior and sometimes seem foolish, depending on the execution. When a rare group of talent and a potential World Series contender emerges, the progressive team will push some chips in depending on how big the payroll is. The Rays have a bottom-five payroll and can only cash in some chips without mortgaging multiple future years, whereas the Indians and Astros are higher up the food chain and can do a little more when the time comes, and have done just that.
What we just saw in Pittsburgh (and may see soon in Tampa Bay) is what happens when a very low-payroll team sees a dip coming (controllable talent becoming uncontrolled soon) and doesn’t think there’s a World Series contender core, so they slide down toward the bottom end of that win range so that in a couple years they can have a sustainable core with a chance to slide near the top of it, rather than just tread water. Ideally, you can slash payroll in the down years, then reinvest it in the competing years (the Rays has done this in the past) to match the competitive cycle and not waste free-agent money on veterans in years when they are less needed. You could argue many teams are in this bucket, with varying payroll/margin for error: the D’Backs, Brewers, Phillies, A’s and Twins, along with the aforementioned Rays, Pirates, Indians and Astros.
Eleven clubs were over $175 million in payroll for the 2017 season (Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers, Giants, Nationals, Rangers, Orioles, Cubs, Angels), so let’s toss those teams out and ask fans of the other 19 clubs: if forced to pick one or the other, which of these overarching philosophies would you prefer to root for?
