Brew Crew Ball Book Club Meeting #2: Discussing Chapters 4-6 Of The Extra 2%
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Join us in the comments to discuss this week's reading!
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I'll lead off with what I said last night, before we decided to postpone:
I was surprised by how quickly the tone changed regarding the Rays’ frugality. On page 87 there’s a discussion of how the team would’ve gone bankrupt if they’d spent another $20 million. In the Naimoli chapters it seems like they just would’ve been called cheap for being unwilling to spend said money.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Also
I thought it was very cool to see Josh Kalk mentioned for the first time on page 101. Most of you probably haven’t been around long enough to remember when he wrote here as dixieflatline.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
I had heard at some point on BCB that he was in there
So I was waiting for his name to pop up, and when it did, I thought, “Hey, I know that guy! But not really…oh geez, I’m such a nerd.”
by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:10 PM CST up reply actions
I remember it being mentioned.
I knew where Josh was working but couldn’t say anything, so this book was really the first time I’d been able to publicly acknowledge it.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
I've been using this site for probably almost 3 years, so I'm wondering if he was the guy who...
…put out a lot of pitch analysis/spray charts? I remember something with Manny Parra, specifically.
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
by Jess'HittheBall on Dec 7, 2011 7:16 PM CST up reply actions
Looks like I might just be talking to myself tonight, but here's the other thing in my head.
The book contains a pretty stern indictment of publicly-funded stadiums, but I wonder if the Mets situation won’t make people reconsider that. They’re a franchise in baseball’s biggest market that might be in debt more than the team is worth, and a big chunk of that is $600 million they still owe on Citi Field.
If a stadium construction debt is big enough to be the largest creditor on a financially troubled franchise in New York, how could anyone expect a team in a smaller market to build one for themselves?
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Agreed
And I don’t know enough about situations other than the one to build Miller Park, but I’d have to think that the hullaballoo here was enough for folks to wonder if its worth going publicly funded route.
Well, they almost had to go the public-funded route, either in Milwaukee or somewhere else.
If the Brewers (who were already in debt under the Seligs) had tried to privately finance Miller Park construction, they probably would’ve had to take on debt at double the value of the team.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Agreed
I’m not saying it was the wrong choice, just that the public official recalls and bad publicity that existed here have to be a cautionary tale
I feel like stadium financing is just a lose-lose situation overall
Public financing seems at the very least dysfunctional and at worst morally abhorrent, but private owners just don’t have the money to build the near-billion-dollar palaces that we now expect them to.
I don’t think there’s any real answer, other than to acknowledge that the reason we’re in this mess in the first place is because our priorities have gotten so far out of whack as a society.
Sorry for the ‘cynical grad student’ response.
by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:18 PM CST up reply actions
It's probably a good thing that nearly every team has a good park now and is probably years away from needing a new one.
Because given the recent backlash towards public funding and the likely lack of private funding available, it could be a while before a new major league facility is built.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
It's amazing how different the dynamic is in college athletics
Simply because they keep up the facade of amateur status. I swear, Nebraska football expands their stadium just about every third year now, and all they have to do is snap their fingers, and millions of dollars will come pouring in from boosters.
by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:24 PM CST up reply actions
The Packers are an outlier, I think
College or pro, there’s really no organization in sports like them.
by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:29 PM CST up reply actions
best explanation of Packers stock/ownership
Someone on MetaFilter called buying Packers stock the equivalent of being a member of public radio or TV.
Someone mentioned the Pujols
story last time – they’d clearly read ahead.
I mean, I know lots of teams passed on Pujols, but I feel like the first few chapters of the book are entirely based on the premise “What it?!”
Yeah, I'm sure every team has one scout that loves a player, but gets overruled by others on his team.
We just don’t always hear about it, because most of those guys probably don’t turn out to be Albert Pujols.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Like Hal Newhauser/Derek Jeter!
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
by Jess'HittheBall on Dec 7, 2011 7:17 PM CST up reply actions
Did anyone else really struggle to get through the Maddon chapter?
It felt really long and drawn out to me. Maddon seems like a great guy and a creative thinker, but I feel like that point could have been made without 20 pages of stories about it.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Maybe I was just impatient.
But I found myself spending half the chapter saying “ok, I get it” as we went through a person-by-person description of his family, friends, acquaintances, etc.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
I don't remember the chapter too well specifically
But I thought it seemed like Keri’s one chance in the book to really get inside an interesting character, and he was going to make the most of it. So maybe a bit excessive, but given that Maddon was the only person given that treatment, I was OK with it.
by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:22 PM CST up reply actions
I guess the chapter was only 21 pages long, so maybe it's just a matter of perspective.
It felt too long to me. Like I was spending an eternity listening to stories about Maddon’s distant relatives and grade school football teams.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
I think I wanted to turn a page here, or there, given some of the things I'd already known about him.
Especially in 2008, and during the playoffs. He’s always been very accessible. It basically proves what I thought about Joe, anyhow: that he’s a very special person.
And the perfect person to work with the scouting team and front-office personnel that we’re learning about in the book :)
But if you don’t know all that much about Joe, the chapter doesn’t stick out as much. I think the Rays’ insistence on extending at radio feed to Joe’s hometown in Pennsylvania with a population of just a little over 20,000 people is kind of neat.
*If I hadn’t had access to mlb network since it came out, I probably would have known very little about Maddon. But they started having all of those “follow this person around” programs, and he was on a couple.
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
Reply Fail!
Sorry, Kyle. I was answering your question on whether or not chapter 6 was too long!
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
by Jess'HittheBall on Dec 7, 2011 7:31 PM CST up reply actions
That's cool that the Rays have a radio feed in Maddon's hometown.
Did I miss that in the book?
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Now I can't find the page!
I just thought it was a good example of how that organization found additional revenue – - – - by capitalizing on Maddon’s popularity in his home town!
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
by Jess'HittheBall on Dec 7, 2011 7:46 PM CST up reply actions
It's been a while since I've read the book, so I'm curious:
What have you guys taken away so far as the main reason for the Rays’ turnaround? What did they do right that the rest of the teams in the league haven’t done?
I ask because I remember the whole concept of ‘the extra 2%’ coming up early in the book, but then never really being expanded upon too much. It seemed like the lesson was more ‘market inefficiencies plus counterintuitive thinking plus treating people like they actually matter,’ which didn’t seem to add up to ‘the extra 2%.’
Like Nicole said below, we're not really seeing the turnaround yet.
We’re still in the transition, and meeting Maddon, Sternberg, etc.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
We're really not to that part of the book yet
These chapters talked about missing out on drafts and gave a bit of info on drafts that worked and then goes into Joe Maddon, but we’re still waiting to transition, in “book time.”
Whoops
I thought since you had gotten to Maddon and Kalk that they were really getting into the meat of the turnaround. Never mind.

by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:38 PM CST up reply actions
I guess there's not a lot of new info
in these chapters. We already knew they failed at drafting prior to these chapters, so even the detail of missed picks wasn’t really super-interesting.
I guess we’re in set-up mode for the new management
Oh
Maybe my question is a bit premature then. Sorry – I’ve forgotten what’s in what chapter.
by Cheeseandcorn on Dec 7, 2011 7:36 PM CST up reply actions
Are you talking about Mystery Men?
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
by Jess'HittheBall on Dec 7, 2011 7:49 PM CST up reply actions
Yeah, and probably more people to chat with less distraction in play.
Now that's great tasting chicken!
Nothing's really happening on the other front...
Maybe ch. 4-6 were an odd segment to talk about as a whole. Next week, there might be a lot more to say about 4, 5 and 6 that we never would have thought about this week, once we get to 7-9.
But, I’ve had my other tabs open, and there is nothing going on really re; winter meetings.
FanGraphs should consider a venue for a Gallery Night... they could even serve a cake with a Win Expectancy Chart of the 7/7/11 Brewers' game etched in the frosting, and 7-up. Oh, yeah - and t-shirts that say "SABR-Friday." I'm totally there.
by Jess'HittheBall on Dec 7, 2011 7:55 PM CST up reply actions



































