Diamond Dollars Case Competition

Today I woke up at 6 to attend this event called 'Diamond Dollars Case Competition' at NYU. I was not a participant, but Professor McDonnell generously invited me to the event. 11 schools from all over the place came to the event and competed; each team of five members got a question to ponder, had five days to work on it, and presented their work today. This year's question was "what kind of contract would be feasible for Pablo Sandoval this offseason?"

They first had to find the two most suitable teams for Sandoval, then assess his value. They had to consider projections on his production for the next x years as well as other constraints such as teams' needs, their financial flexibility, potential prospects of the position, park factors, other value he can contribute to the franchise, effect of qualifying offer and the draft pick they have to give up, and many more things. It was definitely interesting to see their sabermetric/statistical approach from different perspectives. As one of the judges mentioned, it was almost hard to believe that the presentations were significantly different from one another, although most teams picked the Giants and the Red Sox as the most suitable teams and estimated his contract to worth around 100M for 6 years.

I enjoyed today's event immensely. Not only the competition itself, but talking to people and listening to prestigious guest speakers and judges including analysts from the Yankees, the Orioles and the Mets was fun. Especially, Mr. Sweeny Murti, a journalist covering the Yankees gave a talk on his experience and it was just mindblowing. Now I've got one more reason why I want to apply to NYU. I got a chance to talk to one member of NYU team (I forgot his name.. Patrick?) and he told me good things about the program.

Two teams had different ideas on how quickly the offensive numbers go down, for a batter like Sandoval with high O-swing rate. One team took a look at few bad ball hitters such as Vladmir Guerrero and claimed that it won't go down as rapidly, as they tend to produce more long balls as they age, while other team took a look people with high O-swing% and O-contact% and claimed that it will actually drop more significantly.

My question I did not get a chance to ask was: how does it affect to Sandoval having alternative options like Chase Headley or Hanley Ramirez? Obviously if one thinks about supply and demand the price would go down, but if Headley gets a big contract, Sandoval probably want a bigger (and longer) one. It probably is too difficult to quantify, or that sort of competition at certain position has always been there so it could be insignificant. I don't really know.

[Edit: one of  the participants was a writer for Beyond the Box Score and he uploaded their work there: it can be found in http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/11/15/7224569/when-will-pablo-sandoval-move-off-third-base]

Professional Franchise Operations TCSB1-GC 2015

I was fortunate to get an opportunity to sit in a class today called 'Professional Franchise Operations' at NYU. It was taught by Professor Grantham, and was a lot of fun.

It's been a while since I sat in a class without theorems and proofs, but the professor was excellent in explaining concepts, providing with examples, and engaging students in discussion so I was able to learn a lot; was able to view sports from a totally different perspective.

They talked mainly about two things, how the NFL and the owners of the teams are going to deal with Peterson and Rice cases and why the NFL concussion settlement is 'pure evil,' although they didn't get to much of the latter. They talked about how the NFL and its commissioner handled disputes in the past, including a strike in the '80s, and how politics were deeply involved. I now understand more clearly why the franchise owners care about these issues and what they think when running these business. It reminded me of that teams didn't want to take Barry Bonds after his PED usage was revealed (I naively thought that it was because the owners hated Bonds but there were a lot more to it) and it made more sense why the players' union did not want to defend Alex Rodriguez, because they had to give up other things if they want to speak for A-Rod.

I may be interested in attending school. Tonight's class was definitely a big plus.