Voros McCracken -- Sabermetrician in Exile

[DJBeasties]

http://www.thepostgame.com/features/...etrician-exile


The creator of BABIP is not doing as well as one might think...

It's not baseball, though, not the sort of satisfying end McCracken desires. He masks the regret with humor, calling DIPS "the one-hit wonder." Granted, it's one with resonance far greater than most. Tango turned the DIPS principles into fielding independent pitching (FIP), the statistic most sabermetricians consider paramount to analyzing pitchers. It's not just the geeks, either. “That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,” Zack Greinke said on Nov. 17, 2009.

It was the day Greinke won the American League Cy Young Award, despite having fewer victories than any previous AL winner – the truest sign yet that traditional-media voters were not only paying attention to McCracken's work but heeding its ideology. It was also a day before the 10-year anniversary of the first Usenet post outlining DIPS.

"A few years ago, I said to him, ‘Someday you're going to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame for DIPS,’" says McCracken's mother, Elayne. "He just laughed at me. He just laughed."

[Kevin Seitzer]

I am fully convinced that working as the employee of a club is not any way to (1) make money or (2) have any reasonable sort of life outside of work. Baseball clubs basically run themselves as a group of small businesses and the hours and pay are commensurate with that, except that any return on the capital goes to the owners and the people who actually have the skill to play the game.

Working in the various companies that surround and support baseball seems to be a better way to make money, although there is still plenty of competition there and plenty of chances to give your work away for free.

[SeaDogStat]

Teams have an almost never ending supply of people willing to work long hours for little pay (Just check out the winter meetings' job fairs). Only speaking from my perspective of a 10yr (now former MiLB employee), there is a long list of people who want to work as interns (40-60hr work weeks when the team is on the road...60-80hr work weeks when the team is at home for 180-200 bucks a week). I was just game day personnel (officially), getting $30-35 bucks a game (and that was for 2 hrs before, 3 hr game, 1-2 hrs after[6-8hrs]...not counting the stuff I did at home for the team and when they were on the road)...

But I was always considered a luxury by MiLB team standards as my work didn't bring in any more revenue. The coaches and managers loved having me do the breakdowns but to the org, I was just a 2k red ink stain.

[DJBeasties]

Yeah I was really surprised that Voros McCracken couldn't muster up more than $30,000 from the Red Sox, but they will pay millions to some ****ty backup infielder. I undrstand how this stuff works and all with companies, but it's really too bad.


BABIP!