I came across an interesting post by Jerry Vrentas of the Star-Ledger who reveals that Omar Minaya has been consulting frequently with a sabermetric guru before making a trade or player acquisition.
Meet Ben Baumer, who serves as the Mets’ official Statistical Analyst, Baumer has been serving the Mets in this role for the last seven seasons going back to Jim Duquette who hired him. (You mean there was someone else to blame for that ill-fated Victor Zambrano for Scott Kazmir trade? Egads!)
In his day-to-day, Baumer gets a daily stat file from the Mets. He goes to most of the home games, spring training and the winter meetings.
Wow, if I knew that being a fantasy geek could lead to a gig like this, I might have completely drenched myself in hundreds of paperback copies of Moneyball at the $1.00 bin at Barnes and Noble. Man, what I would give to get a daily stat file from the Mets…
It seems like that big book Jerry Manuel keeps flipping through during a game, comes from Baumer himself, a self acknowledged sabermetric purist.
Laptops aren’t allowed in the dugout, but coaches are given a fat binder before every series statistically breaking down the matchup with the opponent.
So that’s why Frank Catalanotto batted cleanup against the St. Louis Cardinals last weekend… It’s really starting to make a lot of sense now… I think I’m finally starting to get this stuff…
Here is one of the most profoundest quotes I’ve come across in quite sometime. If you’re wondering why the Mets feel the need for an official statistical analyst on the team, heed the words of Ben Baumer, who says,
“If you have an independent observer saying the same thing, you feel much more comfortable about whether what they’re saying is true or not. Whereas if they’re saying different things, maybe you don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong — but you know maybe there’s more going on.”
Wow… If I knew there was a sweet job like this in the Mets front office, I would have lobby Jeff Wilpon years ago.
I don’t know about you guys, but I feel a whole lot better knowing that there was more to the last few depressing seasons than just bad luck, bad baseball and bad management. Who Knew? Do we still use scouts? I guess they’re a dying breed.
Personally, I think the Mets would have been better off hiring the Amazing Kreskin who once lobby the Mets for a job.
In a letter to Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ Vice President of Media Relations, Kreskin offered to meet with the team as a group, where he would train and condition them mentally using a technique that would relieve them of the negative impacts the losses have exacted, thereby improving their playing and leading to success on the field.
Wow, that was in 2007… Nothing has really changed much has it…
The Amazing Kreskin… Ha, ha, ha… I love being a Mets fan!
