Buck Showalter Said He Would Have Loved To Have More Funding For Analytics In Baltimore....Wonder Where All That Funding Went....
During Buck Showalter's introductory press conference on Tuesday the topic of analytics were brought up. You can't have a conversation about baseball or sports right now without analytics getting talked about so it makes sense. The question referenced his time in Baltimore and how well known it was that the Orioles did not put much effort or money into analytics. They just didn't use them much before Mike Elias came over to run the team. Would Buck want to use analytics? He's obviously a more old school guy, but when he was asked about it he gave a pretty point blank answer. He said he would have loved to use analytics in Baltimore but the funding wasn't quite there to provide an analytics department. Hmm. I wonder where the funding for those analytics went....
Maybe some of that money could have gone to an analytics department instead of arguably the worst player we've seen in some time? Obviously hindsight is 20/20 but the deal sucked and there is no doubt it handcuffed the team. Not just from being able to sign other young players to extensions like Manny Machado, but who knows if that money would have gone to the analytics department but I'd like to think they would have put some of it there. Now Buck wasn't directly talking about the Davis deal, but it has to be brought up at least. It was pretty well known Buck was NOT in favor of signing Davis to a long term, big money deal and that this signing came directly from Peter Angelos the owner.
But again I'd like to think Buck would have loved if some of the money that ended up in Davis' pockets would have gone into an analytics department that could help bring new information to the team to help them win instead of to a guy trying not to strike out 200 times a year. I'm not blaming the fact that the Orioles didn't care about analytics until 2019 on Chris Davis.....but that contract didn't make it any easier. It sounds like this is a direct shot right at the Orioles front office. And to be honest, he’s right. They ignored analytics for a long, long time. And I'm not blaming Davis because who in their right mind is going to turn that down if it's offered. Buck is a damn good baseball mind (DON'T TALK ABOUT TORONTO AND THE WILD CARD GAME) and has forgotten more baseball than anyone reading this has ever known, now you inject a ton of new age information into the game and I think that benefits him a ton. Clem and Kevin are going to absolutely love Buck, they're lucky to have him.
PS.
I also think it's funny when teams and organizations say they can't afford stuff. That is a load of BS because these teams print money, even the bad ones. Let alone teams that had the most wins in the AL from 2012 to 2016. They could have afforded it most likely but the front office probably wasn't very interested in analytics, whoops!