Does Smart Mean Good?
Since the Mets have done little in the way of providing storylines this winter, the media and blogosphere has had to grasp at straws in order to create content that involves the Major League Baseball team in Flushing.
One of the more recent angles has been the “intelligence” of the Mets’ new front office and their possibly not-so-coincidental targeting of similarly “smart” baseball players.
If you haven’t already read, new GM Sandy Alderson is a graduate of both Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School; his assistant Paul DePodesta is also an Ivy Leaguer, a grad of Harvard. Their combined smartness is expected to make the Mets a better organization. If you believe the Mets were a “dumb” organization before, then there is certainly some credence to that thought — even if DePodesta’s brains didn’t keep the Dodgers from recording the second-worst record in their LA history in 2005.
But when the intelligence angle is extended to the players, I’m not so sure it holds much water. The prospect of seeing brainiacs Chris Capuano, R.A. Dickey, and Chris Young in the clubhouse was interesting enough for an article in The New York Times, but that trio’s success will depend much more on their arms than their heads.
Maybe I’m just being my typically pessimistic self, but it wasn’t that long ago that the media made a big deal of John Maine’s intellect. More recently, there was Stanford grad Chris Carter, whose background in stem cell research apparently wasn’t valued enough by the Mets’ braintrust to offer him a contract.
One of my all-time favorite baseball stories about intelligence was rehashed by Mets By the Numbers a few days ago. It recounted the story of Jay Hook, an original Met whose sketches describing the Bernoulli Principle’s involvement in the flight of a curveball were published in an industrial magazine (pictured left, from the MBTN website). As it would happen, not long after the article’s publication, Hook was lit up (as he often was) by the opposition’s bats, prompting manager Casey Stengel to remark, “It’s wonderful that he knows how a curveball works. Now if he could only throw one.”
I know, I know — it’s a slow winter, and the writers have to come up with something. Intelligence is as good a topic as any; it’s hard to argue — at least, when there aren’t games being played — and getting smart ballplayers neatly follows the story of the intellectuals in the Mets’ fantasy front office.
What do you think? Would you feel more confident about the Mets’ chances if they acquired players with higher IQs?
But I’ll take a better, “dumber” player any day. Intelligence is merely one of several secondary attributes (secondary to talent) that I’d use to evaluate players and to choose between otherwise comparable alternatives.
I don’t really see any evidence that the new administration is passing up better talent to pursue intelligence, do you?
Lee
On the flip side, there have been many ballplayers with lower IQs or lesser education AND less god-given talent who had better careers.
As for the current regime passing up better talent to pursue intelligence, no, I don’t see evidence of that, and didn’t mean to infer such a suggestion. That would be like saying Omar Minaya passed up better talent to pursue Latino ballplayers.
Your imagination is running away with you. In baseball, the more you think, the less you do. It’s not unlike golf in that way; paralysis by analysis is more the rule than a theory. It’s not a coincidence that many men think of baseball when they’re trying to do something else; in contrast, many men playing baseball try to think of something else to keep them from thinking about what their body is supposed to be doing as a 95-MPH fastball hurtles toward them.
QED.
Would you trust an Ivy Leaguer to run your local gas station? restaurant? barber shop?
These eggheads have degrees. It doesn’t make them competent. Look at Tim Geithner. That clown probably can’t even dress himself.
Capuano built his strenghth up working in relief last season after recovering enough, then his last 5 appearances were starts, averaging over 6 IP with good numbers. Sometimes graduating Pi Betta Kappa is also a result of hard work and dedication, something all the Brewers folks talk about with him, he’ll be 18 months out at the start of spring training, and is was to be spending the off season conditioning, working on long tossing, and band exercises, should be stronger this year, if his strength doesn’t hold up, they can move him to the bullpen.
Young was targeted because of a strong finish, and the idea he would be even stronger by the start of the season.
I will say this though smart guys generally have an idea of what they need to do to succeed, but Joe is right, that’s irrelevant if their elbow/shoulders’ don’t hold up.
Maybe we should be learning more about the doctors reviewing their medical charts??
“I don’t really see any evidence that the new administration is passing up better talent to pursue intelligence, do you?”
It looks to me as if the accumulation of brainy players is a bit of a coincidence, given that they also happen to be players with pretty decent potential and a low price tag.
Hey, isn’t Moneyball all about maximizing undervalued assets? Maybe all of the OTHER GMs are avoiding these smart players because they are convinced that “smart = weak, uncoordinated nerd” and so Sandy is just taking advantage of that! 🙂
Or maybe there is a new stat measuring pitchers that won’t be revealed until Moneyball II: Exercising Small Market Management in a Big Market Town.
I’d say intelligence is a tool that COULD be used to a player’s advantage. Pitch-by-pitch defensive positioning, for example. Choosing optimal workout programs. Knowing when to beg out of a game rather than turning a minor injury into a major one. You don’t have to be Einstein to make these decisions correctly, but you do have to not be a moron.