THE ONLY RULE IS IT HAS TO WORK. My first book of 2019 is THE ONLY RULE IS IT HAS TO WORK by Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller. Lindbergh and Miller are two sabermatricians (think Moneyball) who were given the opportunity to apply sabermetric theories to a real baseball team—-albeit a team in an independent league, which is the lowest ranking of professional leagues.
The first thing that surprised me was that Lindbergh and Miller undertook this experiment to see how applying “advanced statistics” would work in practice. Yet the first one third of the book is devoted to their concern with building a team with good “team chemistry”, more than with the predictions that can be made based on past statistics. Team chemistry is a traditional problems for baseball managers—and the approach to the issues by Lindbergh and Miller was traditional for the most part.
The discussion of the personalities of the players was fascinating, partly because Lindbergh and Miller are very good writers and partly because I have never seen team chemistry discussed in any detail. Of course, baseball writers would lose access to players if they wrote about it.
That last line stopped me in my tracks. But of course it makes complete sense: no one would be happy to read an article about themselves being part of a team that’s got poor chemistry. The individual players could very well take offense, especially if they’re singled out as a cause of the discord or somebody who can’t deal with it, and the managers and coaches would probably be even more offended. Then again, would it not be a good thing to report if the team chemistry has anything to do with racism or hazing tactics or something else toxic? I don’t know if hazing even happens outside of college and high school sports, but bullying happens everywhere.
There’s always been a chicken or the egg phenomenon with chemistry–do teams win because they have good chemistry? Or do winning teams have good chemistry because when you’re winning people are generally in better moods?
One of the recent developments with advanced analytics is getting buy-in from the player. It’s one thing to discover that if a player made a change he could improve, but it doesn’t do you any good if you cannot persuade that player to implement the change, or explain it to your coaches.