Book Review: Future Value
My review of Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel's dive into the world of baseball
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Reboot Motion wants to be the world’s best movement analysis platform. But as I have written before, currently we are a baseball company. Therefore, not only do I have to learn about growing a tech business, I have to learn specifically about doing it in baseball.
With this in mind, I recently read Future Value: The Battle for Baseball’s Soul and How Team’s Will Find the Next Superstar by Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel.
Longenhagen, Fangraph’s lead prospect analyst, and McDaniel, an ESPN Insider previously at Fangraphs, pack so much detail into one book that different readers will have different takeaways:
Scouts will love the detail on hitters and pitchers
Baseball lifers will be interested in how organizations work and how new lifers get started
Fans will love the anecdotal stories throughout
For me, the above parts were great- and I had to reread the scouting sections a couple times to truly get it.
But I approached the book with the explicit goal of gaining a better understanding of “how professional baseball works”. And it delivered. Below are my 10 lessons from Future Value:
Lesson 1: It is a people business
Major League Baseball has a tremendous amount of intricacies. The Rule 5 Draft, Service Time, Bonus Caps, and Posting Fees are all things only those around the game understand.
But baseball operates more like other organizations than I would have thought. And this is because effectively running an organization is, like everything else, about the people.
Longenhagen and McDaniel got this point across throughout. If organizations put the right people in the right spots to succeed, the organization will flourish. The moment an organization stops valuing its people, they are doomed.
Lesson 2: And it is a big business
I do not mean big in the sense the teams are worth over $50 billion combined. I mean big in that a lot goes into putting the right people in the right places to win games.
The MLB draft has 40 rounds (prior to 2020)! Compare that to a 7 round NFL draft or a 2 round NBA draft.
And organizations make these selections to place 30+ prospects from all over the world in up to 10 minor league affiliated teams. In baseball, simply knowing all your options is an undertaking.
Lesson 3: Communication is king
In any business centered around people, great communicators will always be valued.
Longenhagen and McDaniel argue the best way to break into baseball is to have two of the three between 1) programming knowledge 2) on-field experience and 3) the ability to speak Spanish. In others words, teams value people who can:
communicate with data
communicate with other programmers
communicate with scouts
communicate with players
communicate in multiple languages
Lesson 4: Pay attention to incentives
Scouting and drafting in baseball is a long term game. GMs, scouts, and analysts building their careers do not always think 5 years out. People naturally look for short term wins to build their resumes. It is up to the people at the top to think long-term and set the right culture.
Value process over results.
Lesson 5: There are good and bad ways to do analytics
Data is not good. Data is not bad. Data is data. If you find the best people to create great models, and feed those models the right information, your outputs will help you succeed.
If you don’t, they won’t.
Analytics and the use of new technology should not be a cost cutting tool, but rather a way to empower the people inside the organization and stay ahead of the competition.
Analytics and data will provide leverage to an organization, and it is up to the rest of the team to determine if that will be positive or negative leverage.
Lesson 6: Scouts are important
Tech is great. Data is great. I will never argue the opposite. But running an MLB organization is not a simple formula. Scouts play a vital role and do things tech cannot. A scout’s analysis combined with analytics and tech can lead to better outcomes than any of those things on their own.
Lesson 7: Scouting is important
Beyond individual scouts, a cohesive scouting department is vital. Scouts are looking at 1) high schoolers playing against great competition 2) high scoolers playing lessor competition 3) DI, DII, and DIII college athletes 4) international players 5) minor leaguers and 6) major leaguers.
Whether it is 1) the 20-80 scale 2) converting information to WAR or Future Value or 3) anything else, scouting departments need to effectively summarize their ideas to decision makers.
Lesson 8: Know your competition
A well run organization knows its options.
Each of the 30 organizations has not only its major league team, but up to 10 minor league affiliates. And teams never know when the right call will come from any team for any player. Having an opinion on that many people is an undertaking.
And being ready when the opportunity strikes is necessary.
Lesson 9: Everyone wants to work in baseball
From athletes, to scouts, to computer scientists, everyone wants to work in baseball.
Organizations taking a “pro tech” or “pro scouting” approach are creating a false divide. Great scouts and a great scouting department are tremendous assets. Amazing data scientists, statisticians, and machine learning specialists can offer a competitive advantage. And talented minor league and major league athletes are vital contributors who need to be developed.
The best teams realize there is an endless supply of tremendous, hard working, diverse talent. And the best teams listen to everyone to move the organization forward.
Lesson 10: Remember your Key Performance Indicator
While writing this, I came across the following tweet from Kiley McDaniel, discussing the Padres actions near the trade deadline.
He explains it better than I can. There are a lot of goals different individuals within an organization may have. But a team should have one, simple goal- to win games. It is the execution that is tricky.