Q&A with Sloan Sports Analytics Blog

You probably know that MIT’s Sloan School of Management puts on a sports analytics conference in Boston every spring, but you may not know that they also maintain a blog, which does Q&As with interesting people from the sports world, and when they can’t find anyone who matches that description, me.

All-around good guy Zachary Levine and I spent some time talking yesterday, and the transcript of that discussion is now up on the SSAC blog. Here’s the first question and answer, to whet your appetite.

Q: You wrote about the Nationals’ bad bullpen decisions and it’s definitely been a theme that we’ve seen in the playoffs over and over again. Twitter has played a big part in this, but it seems like we’re questioning what the managers are doing every night. To put it (over)-simply is there a chance that we’re right? Is there a chance that the combination of probably somewhat better analytical skills and wisdom of crowds outweigh what is to be gained by being on the inside?

A: I certainly don’t want to say that the fans know more than the managers do. They have information that we don’t have that is useful in what decision to make. Certainly they know the quality of the guy’s arm if before the game he was saying his elbow was injured. If there’s some factor that the public isn’t aware of, that could be a major determining factor in whether a guy should be used or not.

At the same time, there is clearly a bias that comes with being with these guys and seeing how you used them in the regular season that carries over to the postseason. That could be detrimental. If we look at the determination of many major league managers in managing in October the same way they did in the regular season, it seems that there is a disconnect between what we as outsiders or the front office would see as being important in certain situations and what they see. I wondered if being that close to the players and seeing the success of rigid roles, which in the regular season, there’s probably a good reason for them in terms of limiting usage, but in the postseason when there’s no such thing as a low-leverage situation anymore, I wonder if the familiarity and the success that the managers had with their rigid roles during the regular season actually becomes a problem.

You can read the whole thing over at their blog.