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Moneyball teams

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Re: Moneyball teams

#61

Post by GavinMcG »

dvt wrote: post #45
GavinMcG wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That supports exactly what I was saying: "In the competition between intuition vs. evidence, evidence wins." So it's not clear why you are saying "In the case of the A's, intuition seemed to trump evidence , but the author keeps telling us to collect more evidence (in the form of matrices, skill trees, or whatever else). Not only is that the categorically wrong approach, it's also not how you build good teams." (Emph…

Evidence may or may not win (that wasn't my point), my point was that Moneyball favored intuition over evidence. Even Podesta concedes that. So using it as the example in the original article makes no sense.

> Moneyball favored intuition over evidence. Even Podesta concedes that.

Both the articles you've linked contradict you. Traditional scouting favored intuition over evidence. DePodesta and the Moneyball approach turned that on its head, favoring evidence.

> DePodesta: “We said ‘unless we can prove it, we’re not going to believe it.’"

Re: Moneyball teams

#62

Post by cookiecaper »

georgeecollins wrote: post #11

I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…

Yes, people really need a well-organized environment to thrive, and the environment needs to be tolerant of humanity.

You can build a supercluster of massive computers, but if the coordinators are not able to map good tasks onto the appropriate resource or reduce the output into something coherent and comprehensible, your cluster is going to be sitting at 99.9999% idle time.

And just as you can't stick supercomputers exposed to the elements in the Mojave with a 3G connection and expect them to last more than a few more minutes without crashing, you can't stick good coders in an environment that's not conducive to their group and individual welfare and expect them to do anything except crash.

Humans have much less consistent performance output than machines, no matter how "10x" people think you are. They are even more sensitive to their environments than delicate computing devices. They require a lot of coordination and organization to output something useful.

Everyone ebbs and flows. Focusing on productivity multipliers usually ends in disaster. In most cases, today's raw skill is much less important than a realistic, productive worldview.

This extends beyond hiring. For example, selecting a spouse based on present qualities is much less intelligent than selecting a spouse based on their attitude and worldview and the changes that worldview is likely to precipitate, regardless of the current state.

Re: Moneyball teams

#63

Post by ssharp »

patejam wrote: post #46
geoka9 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goalies are the highest paid players in hockey? Interesting.

They're out on the ice the entire game, and usually the only person on the team that can play that position at any acceptable level. That on top of goalies being your last line of defense, having to take 25-35 shots per game. The same reason your team fights a lot when the other team messes with your goalie; can't afford an injured goalie.

I'm not a fan of hockey, so I'm asking this question out of pure curiosity and ignorance. I'm assuming advanced analytics have made their way to hockey. Have the analytics supported this?

Re: Moneyball teams

#64

Post by waterside81 »

avip wrote: post #39

My model for ideal hiring are the Spurs. They consistently hire for talent and potential, provide the proper mentoring and conditions for the potential to fully materialise. "As you sow, so shall you reap". But few have the patience to sow nowadays. We rather buy ready-made in the grocery store.

I like the Spurs (San Antonio) as a better goal to work towards than the oft-cited A's because ultimately, Oakland didn't win the World Series, and lost in that year to the big spending Yankees. Even though the idea of "Moneyball" has merit in many applications, it always bugged me as a sports fan because Oakland never won any titles with that approach.

Re: Moneyball teams

#65

Post by sharemywin »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #20
georgeecollins wrote: post #11

I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…

At a former (large, organizationally deficient) company, there was this small team of 5 people with very different specialties (and personalities). They were a "strike team" of sorts, tasked with helping out at a technical level different projects that were in trouble. They were excellent. They saved my team's integration of a camera co-processor in an SoC. But finally a re-org came around and some high-level manager…

But, that's leveraging A talent across an entire organization. Why pay for 2-3x for all A players(that are going to piss all over each other anyway) across the entire org when you could with 1/2 hr of help a day use a bunch of B and C players. and save a lot of money.

Re: Moneyball teams

#66

Post by asdfasdf32r3 »

conjecTech wrote: post #56
caseysoftware wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which implies something major that everyone is glossing over: If the "right people" aren't the same as the "best people" are the criteria we're using for "best" correct?

I think the real lesson - and the premise behind Moneyball - is that when you have a complex objective, you can't evaluate people in a vacuum. You have to optimize at the team level. You can try your damnedest to come up with heuristics and metrics to evaluate individuals, but if you don't allow yourself to consider the context that they'll be working in, you'll miss a lot of potential.

I don't think this is the central thesis of Moneyball. I'm a huge baseball nerd, including on-field and statistical side. The idea behind the WAR (Wins Above Replacement) stat is that you should adjust for context, then evaluate players in that vacuum.

Moneyball was about identifying and exploiting market inefficiencies. It actually rejects the team level optimization ("he's a team player" is explicitly rejected as a valuation of a player).

Instead, Billy Beane identified what components led to team success, then found which of those the market doesn't pay for. Then he got those guys.

Used to be thought that a good baseball team had a speedy leadoff hitter. Teams would play objectively worse players because they thought their style better "fit" their role.

Moneyball was the start of the revolution that you just want to get the best players. Then accept that playoffs don't really mean anything other than randomness with small sample sizes.

Re: Moneyball teams

#67

Post by clairity »

Spooky23 wrote: post #30
georgeecollins wrote: post #11

I wish I could triple like this! Hire the best is lazy thinking. * I have been on teams that were not considered the best until they had success, then everyone on the team was a "star". * I have worked places where they only hire "superstars"-- and were pretty serious about paying for good talent and being picky-- and still failed for all kinds of organizational reasons. Teams with more role players, or more cohesion…

I got a good perspective on this from little league coaching. Sometimes that "superstar" kid is individually talented, but a net-negative on the team if the kid is a ball hog or doesn't share.

yes! coaching helps you become a better team member, and you better understand the need for meshing personalities and having the right blend of specialties, not just stars. in basketball, i like to emphasize passing, moving without the ball, and help-and-recover defense, which are crucial skills to winning, but are often neglected at the expense of individual offensive skills. there are parallel sorts of skills in product development--you don't just need features, but also testing, documentation, visual design, analytics, etc.

i recommend coaching heartily. just don't get overly invested in winning (it's an important goal, but it's not everything).

Re: Moneyball teams

#68

Post by schwap »

geoka9 wrote: post #41
BurningFrog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you picked a sports team by the most paid players in their league. The football team would be half quarterbacks, the hockey team mostly goalies and so on.

Goalies are the highest paid players in hockey? Interesting.

No, this is not true. The top paid players in professional hockey are almost all high-scoring forwards.

4 of the top 50 highest paid players in the NHL are goalies.

Re: Moneyball teams

#69

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

Will_Parker wrote: post #49
BurningFrog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if you picked a sports team by the most paid players in their league. The football team would be half quarterbacks, the hockey team mostly goalies and so on.

On the other hand, a star quarterback or goalie has a disproportionate positive effect on the team's winning chances, and chances to win championships.

Sure.

But even great quarterbacks struggle if the O-line is dysfunctional.

And you definitely wouldn't be better off with 6 star quarterbacks than 1 average quarterback and 5 O-line players.

Re: Moneyball teams

#70

Post by marme »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #54
caseysoftware wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which implies something major that everyone is glossing over: If the "right people" aren't the same as the "best people" are the criteria we're using for "best" correct?

If you have a team of 6, sometimes the best individual 6 people are not the same group of 6 that you put out there to solve a problem. Let's continue to use hockey as an example, because I love ill-fitting sports analogies and I also love hockey. For sure, we already know we need 3 forwards, 2 defensemen and a goalie, so for the sake of argument, even if your 6th best skater is Wayne Gretzky, he's going to sit becaus…

Gretzky is great example because he was not the best player because he scored the most. He was the best because just him being on the ice lead to others scoring as well. Just being out there he was able to help the rest of the team score as well. Contrast this with a player like Kobe Bryant who was a great individual player but horrible team player. Kobe did not get along with his team mates and other than the points he put up on the board Kobe did not really contribute much to the Lakers. Kobe was such a ball hog that they refer to a missed shot that is rebounded and scored by the offense as a kobe assist because it was only way he was going to give up the ball
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