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We don’t have agreement on whether the Cards have too much, too little or the wrong use of analytics
I think that is pretty much the heart of the issue. I try not to be obnoxious with my position. I like to drop by and chat with fellow Cardinal fans without putting off half of them. I’m not an expert at anylitics and metrics. I know enough to search and study before I mouth off about something. (Usually)
My position is that unless you have the deep pockets of the east coast west coast boys, you better get your organization deeply entrenched in metrics and anylitics with player development all the way up. And you have to be ready to have a couple down seasons from time to time. Without wasting resources trying to fix them.
That’s where the Cardinals have failed. They have this hybrid way of doing things. I understand it. They want to be a anylitics driven team, but they don’t want to suffer the downswing at the turnstiles. Who wants to watch bad baseball? So they have a choice: either be willing to suffer thru the rebuilds, or raise payroll significantly. I love watching young players develope, so I’m OK with the rebuild. Your average fan maybe not so much.
Either way, I’ve been supportive of Mo on most things until the last couple of years. It’s time to bring in fresh people who are completely indoctrinated into an anylitics driven system. Mo did great things for the Cardinals, and it’s sad to see him constantly having to defend the decisions that are clearly payroll driven, decisions that are made to increase attendance instead of improve the product.Yes, I understand, Bling. What I was hoping is that you had substance or logic to support or reinforce your theory that DeWitt was duped by Mo with the latter allegedly overselling himself as an analytics whiz.
Good post, KCB. Like it or not, analytics are an important part of today’s game. Some outside observers who study innovation across MLB feel the Cardinals are lagging in this and other areas.
Whether DeWitt is being duped today, whether he supports increased investment and focus, or is against it, seems impossible for us to know. Hopefully, the likely declining revenue will not be an inhibitor to them moving ahead. Change will cost money.
Bloom was brought in to study the operation. It is too early to see any evidence of that but I would love to know what he is thinking after being more than six months into it.
I have regularly conceded that analytics can be a useful tool, likening it to a hammer which can drive nails or mash thumbs, depending upon the skill of the user. I would guess that the Rangers make proper use of modern statistical tools, as well as the technologies involved in the game these days. Yet they also have a place for a Bruce Bochy. The Cardinals are so full of it they don’t even have a place for a Mike Shildt. The Rangers do not run off a Mike Maddux, and most importantly, they win.
The Cardinal had success with it initially, but I think pushing Jockety, a supremely successful GM, out the door was the first sign that it was going off the rails, transforming from a tool into a religion. Or maybe into a philosophy. IMO, once Luhnow and the others left, it was amateur hour in the Cardinals FO and they have been mashing thumbs ever since. That is my take on what has happened and where things stand. I think it is a theory which aligns with the diminishing quality of the system.
Time has really softened and changed the perception by some of the latter part of the Jocketty years. Parts of your recollection are inaccurate. What I am saying I know from personal experience. It is not speculation or theory.
In the mid-2000’s, the organization was in chaos as it had split into two camps. DeWitt enabled Luhnow, by first putting him in charge of analytics and international then increasing it to the farm system and the draft as well. It was a lot of responsibility, all under Walt on the org chart, but not in practice. The Jocketty camp, which included TLR and at least one prominent media member, fought the changes and tried to discredit the people making them.
Even though they won the Series in 2006, eventually it got so bad that something had to be done. DeWitt made the call that Walt had to go. That was the fall of 2007. It did NOT take the organization off the rails by any stretch. Prior to the debacle of 2023, Walt’s final season of 2007 was the last sub-.500 Cardinals team.
They won the World Series again FOUR years after Walt was fired. Luhnow also remained for FOUR more years after Walt was fired and the system continued just fine during that time.
Many observers of the organization feel the slide downward began after 2011, not after 2007. How the post-2011 blame could be assessed across factors like Albert leaving, TLR/Duncan leaving, Luhnow (and a bunch of staff) leaving or other factors is impossible to assess. But they likely all figured in.
The idea of yours that analytics became a religion at some undefined point (and an apparent problem) is vague and not supported by what I’ve seen. Again, many feel the Cardinals have not been not religious enough and are BEHIND in this area, so they should make changes. Part of what Bloom is doing is to review this, I think.
Later, Walt acknowledged he did not handle the situation as well as he could have and wished he had handled it differently.
Brian, saying the environment concerning analytics changed from it being a tool to a religion has nothing to do with how up to date the methods are or aren’t. It has more to do with believing the analytics can do the thinking for you and you just follow the rules, stay inside the lines. I think that is exactly why Maddux and Albert up and left. I think it is why Shildt is gone. I think it is why the Rangers can have a Bochy and the Cardinals can not.
Good discussion on how we got where we are today. IMO Mozeliak has been duped into spending too much money on the wrong players. The pitching staff now is the definition of below mediocre. Money hasn’t been spent to improve the terrible performances of last season. There are many holes in STL and really throughout the organization. Real talent is missing. The big team can’t even put together a five man rotation.
There has been failure of our AAA pitchers to perform up to their projections. And there has been the same failure attached to the position players. You all know the litany of names. IMO going forward and finding success looks fairly far in the future unless things change in the FO and DeWitt starts paying more attention to the product that has been run onto the field. Even the rosiest of glass wearers will find it hard to argue that the WS championship is just a dream right now. Thanks BDW.
This is a great discussion indeed and is really at the heart of the matter of why we are where we are. I am not necessarily opposed to analytics nor do I beleive they should be used at the exclusion of human observations. There should be a blend of both and analytics should be a tool in the toolbox but I believe humans still know more than computers. I think.
The bottom line for me is that if you really want to be a build from within organization then you had better be good at building from within. That means good at drafting, good at developing, and good at player evaluation. Are the Cardinals good at those things? Not lately.
If you aren’t good at those things then you are going to have to be prepared to spend big on talent in it’s prime. Obviosuly the Cardinals are not willing to do that. When we bring in players from the outside it is either bargain bin buying or big names past their prime (Andrew Miller, Dexter Fowler, Greg Holland, Brett Cecil, Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, and I would argue Goldy and Arenado also even if they both did have one big year). The Cardinals could have gone after players like Bryce Harper and Max Scherzer but didn’t.
The other thing is despite whether you are analytics driven or not there is no reason for an organization with the stature of the Cardinals to only use rookie managers, which we have done since the end of 2011. That is just gross misconduct and is the main reason to assume that the front office is arrogant. They do not under any circumstances want pushback from the field boss. A front office that insecure and defensive is doomed to fail in my opinion.
I think gscottar’s last paragraph is especially insightful. The only way the Cardinal organization should hire a rookie manager is if the guy is a seasoned baseball man, ready to step into the role ala Red Schoendienst in 1965.
One troublesome evolution is major sports industries is that the economy is moving more and more to the haves and have nots. It’s a bit like it is in society in general. The NFL’s economic system is pretty good, and the league is such that there are no “small market” teams. But the other sports, especially big collegiate athletics and MLB, are getting more polarized. It used to be that teams like the Colorado Rockies could sign a guy like Larry Walker. If Walker were a free agent today, someone would make him an over-the-top offer and the Rockies, Cardinals, Pirates etc would not have a chance.
Thus we are going to have to be more of a build-from-within organization, which will mean boom and bust cycles. The days of competing every year are probably over. We will be more like the Royals, Orioles, Rays and those types that have very good years, and very bad ones. Cardinal management wants to avoid the big down years, but to do so means a high risk of long term mediocrity.
Good posts all. We can’t join them (the big spenders) so we have to find a different way to beat them. Brave New World. We have to learn to live in it.
They do not under any circumstances want pushback from the field boss.
The sudden precipitous ejection of Shildt from the organization seems more like a response to heresy than to push back.
I think bringing in top FAs is harder than most fans expect. As someone not from Saint Louis, it isn’t a city I would be exited to move to. And I imagine this is even more true for young men who want to live somewhere exciting. Teams on the coast are always going to have an advantage in signing FAs. There are certain players who do want to sign with Stl for the legacy, but we are out of it for some players unless we really overpay compared to other teams. I for sure would be giving Soto an offer, but I just don’t see him signing it. Same thing with all the Japanese stars that come over.
Albert I recently saw an article, which now I can’t find, either saying or speculating that some players with a young family are now favoring the middle of the country and it takes a hefty premium to get them to sign on the coasts, and this is intensifying. I agree the single ones would want to be where the action is.
bling said:
It has more to do with believing the analytics can do the thinking for you and you just follow the rules, stay inside the lines. I think that is exactly why Maddux and Albert up and left. I think it is why Shildt is gone.
I do not agree with this.
Albert was arguably the most analytics-driven coach the Cardinals have ever had. One need only look at his twitter feed to see just how deep into both analytics and bio-mechanics he is. It would seem rather odd if the reason he left the Cardinals was because they were too heavily invested in “analytics.”
Agree, RBK. And here is a 2022 article that describes how heavily the Rangers are into analytics. (They are Maddux’ current employer.)
And here is another from last year.
From the last offseason, here is the link to a very interesting Reddit thread with questions answered by an anonymous MLB team analytics department employee. One of them asked is the best and worst MLB teams in the use of analytics. He put the Cards in the bottom three. This is his reply when asked why.
From what I’ve heard, they are well known to almost entirely avoid analytics and do things the old fashioned way. Their money helps as does their experience with success because to some extent, doing something sub optimally in a world class way might work better than doing the optimal thing poorly. Eventually they need to figure it out though one would think.
At the end of the day I don’t think the fan base cares at all what the method or “philisophical” approach to success is. I think your run of the mill fan has a viewpoint that’s not at all unlike that of the late, great, Al Davis…
The reddit thread was valuable, the Tableau (used in every industry) and Airflow case studies, not so much.
And, again, I find it funny that the Cardinals are so bad at analytics, but people who got their start in the Cardinals organization have now built the analytics departments for the Astros and Orioles.
, again, I find it funny that the Cardinals are so bad at analytics, but people who got their start in the Cardinals organization have now built the analytics departments for the Astros and Orioles.
Maybe those people recognized their talents would be wasted with the Cardinals organization. I’m curious why many people have the assumption that the Cardinals are in fact heavily driven by anylitics? Is the anonymous information accurate? Maybe Brian could share some light.
KCB, those who theorize that the Cards are (too) heavily driven by analytics will need to answer your question. I have already asked similar questions and got nothing substantive back. I have made it clear I do not agree with them and provided examples from outsiders that conflict with their position.
LACF, I only offered the two Rangers links to poke a hole in the unsubstantiated theory that Maddux left because of the Cardinals analytics, as he joined a Texas organization considered much more advanced in the area than St. Louis.
When you look at the Cardinals roster, it’s hard to believe anylitics played much of a role in it’s construction. Is leadership a metric?
he joined a Texas organization considered much more advanced in the area than St. Louis.
How advanced the anaytic is, and the philosophy as to how analytics is used, are two separate things. I am not sure why that point keeps being obscured. I think Albert moved to the Rangers, not because they have more advance analytics methods, but because they use analytics more intelligently. To use my previous analogy, Albert left for the Rangers not because their hammer is newer, but because they use it to drive nails not to mash thumbs.
Thanks for sharing some great references Brian. I recalled reading similar things in the past and couldn’t find the references.
I find it interesting fans are now talking about Jeff Albert in a favorable opinion. This forum and all of Stl media were blaming the Cards hitting woes on Jeff Albert. I believe I recall you could hear “Fire Jeff Albert” chants at multiple games. It would seem the reason he mutually parted ways would very much be influenced by being one of the most disliked men in the city.
And, again, I find it funny that the Cardinals are so bad at analytics, but people who got their start in the Cardinals organization have now built the analytics departments for the Astros and Orioles.
Other teams poached our quality analytics team members that were innovative, and we were left with the average ones. It isn’t that surprising to me with the poaching we are much further behind them now.
ATM: Yes, that’s exactly what “brain drain” in an organization looks like. And the Astros’/Luhnow’s raiding of the Cardinals FO after 2011 did a lot of damage up front–the quantity and quality of people leaving the organization in such a short period of time should have set off alarm bells in the owner’s suite.
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