Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane and Boston Red Sox senior adviser Bill James know each other's work and contributions to baseball better than they know each other personally.
But the Wall Street Journal was able to get two of baseball's most-influential figures together in one place for a discussion about the future of sabermetrics. Who better than them? After all, Beane used some of James's sabermetric teachings to make data-driven decisions in the revered Moneyball management system.
As they sat together on Sept. 18 in New York City, where they were headed to attend a conference about the disruption of business models, the two spoke about the distinct possibility of sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball, being concocted by the public in the future in an open-source system, where educated fans are as savvy as front office officials like them.
"I suspect that the best work will always be done in the public arena. What's done in the public arena has a million eyes on it," James said. "Somebody sees what you've done wrong and they figure another way to do it, and somebody else figures another way to do it. I do see sometimes work being done by the Red Sox and think, 'I wish the public could know about that.' But I think the best work will mostly be done in public view."
"Sort of an open-source?" Beane questioned.
"Yeah," James responded.
And Beane agrees.
"I agree with Bill. It is self-correcting. As soon as you come up with something, you write it and you post it, you've got a million people in there correcting it or telling you where you're wrong or taking it in another direction," Beane said. "Anytime you have an open-source situation, you're probably going to have something better than three or four guys in a private situation."
Beane added that transparency is good for baseball and that people with different expertise—including those from Silicon Valley—being hired by teams' front offices will strengthen the game.
"The great thing about what's gone on is there is a transparency to the game," Beane said. "It's now a meritocracy. The best and the brightest now are part of baseball teams. It's no longer an insider's game where, 'I played, therefore I inherit the position.' To me, that's what this last decade has busted open.
"The people that we're hiring and other baseball teams are hiring, we're competing with the Apples and the Googles of the world," he added. "I just had an intern presentation a few weeks ago from the interns we have and what they were working on. It'll make your mind spin."
While few would argue that the explosion of sabermetrics and their prevalent use amongst ball clubs have improved the management of baseball teams, James isn't quite sure if the data has made for a better viewing experience for fans.
"I don't know that it has, but we produce information, and information ties the fans to the game," James said. "People in a culture with no information about baseball have no interest in baseball. If you give people a little bit of information about baseball, they have a little bit of interest, and if you give them a lot of information about baseball, there's the potential that they have a lot of interest. I've lived most of my life in the fans' world and I see what I do as a fan's activity. Granted, I work for the Red Sox. But I do know also that there are fans who go to sleep cursing my name."
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