Experience Spotlight - Melissa Kelly, Major League Baseball

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Melissa Kelly '15.  Melissa is a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. She has been a dedicated member of the club since her first year at Cornell, serving as Social Impact chairperson in 2013.

Melissa worked this summer at Major League Baseball's Office of the Commissioner, serving as an Economics Intern in the Labor Relations Department. She originally interned in the same position during an ILR Credit Internship in Fall 2013.  Melissa was kind enough to answer some questions about her experiences.

What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

Over the duration of my internship I was asked to complete a myriad of tasks in all different formats and for a number of different people. Although I was technically on the economics side of the Labor Relations department, I was also asked to do work for the legal side. The legal side included research projects to find information regarding past Collective Bargaining Agreements and the legal statutes that were used in them. The economics side of Labor Relations is where I spent most of my time, and where I really learned a lot about the field. 

As a fall intern, I was fortunate enough to experience the Salary Arbitration process and how players are statistically valued. Through the utilization of MLB’s databases and Excel formulas, we are able to come up with a value that a player is worth based on their Platform Season performance as well as their career.

During the summer, the tasks were a little bit different. Two of the main projects I worked on were to create an Offensive Splits tool and to research information on the Tommy John epidemic. The offensive splits tool was something I created in excel that would generate all of the platform season and career splits statistics for any position players in the last 15 years. This tool will help the Labor Relations Department during the offseason to be able to look at up to three comparable players splits side by side.  

Any baseball fan knows the biggest current issue with Major League pitchers is the amount of UCL tears that are occurring. As the player loses between 12 and 18 months rehabbing this injury, it is great concern to the teams and the league. I assisted my bosses in researching information about Tommy John surgery including the theories on what makes a player more vulnerable to the tear, the best ways to rehabilitate an injured elbow, the top doctors in the field and what they have to say about the problem, and how past players have rebounded from this injury. I hope that my contributions to this effort and help the league develop programs to reduce the amount of UCL tears for the future.

How were you able to get the internship?

Originally, in Fall 2013, I received the internship through the ILR Credit Internship Program. I was fortunate enough to be asked back for the summer.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

The baseball industry is very tough to get involved in. The ILR’s credit internship program is a great way to get your foot in the door for an amazing opportunity at the Commissioner’s office. Any students that are interested in this internship are more than welcome to contact me with any questions about the application process or the internship itself! 

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

What was fulfilling about this experience was the degree of freedom that my supervisors gave me not only in the tasks they assigned me, but also in how the assignments were completed. I was fortunate enough to be given the responsibility to meet high profile clients, which helped me mature as a worker and learn how to handle myself in those types of situations. The experience that I have gained from this internship is invaluable, and the skills I can take away will help me in my future. I am so grateful that I was fortunate enough to be able to be a part of the Credit Internship program and is the best decision I have made at Cornell.

When I returned for the summer, I had a great time taking place in MLB’s Summer Internship Program. They do a great job hosting events for the interns to go to every few weeks and hear from leaders in the industry. The room that I spent my summer in was filled with Labor Relations Interns (both legal and economic) as well as interns from the HR department. My experience working with the other interns and collaborating on certain projects made the work even more enjoyable.

Thank you to Melissa and Major League Baseball for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Sarah Gilman, Major League Baseball

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Sarah Gilman '16.  Sarah is a junior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. She has been a dedicated member of the club since her freshman year at Cornell, serving as Director of Alumni Relations this past spring.

Sarah worked this summer at Major League Baseball's Office of the Commissioner. She served as a Human Resources Intern and was kind enough to answer some questions about her experience.

What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

Get in and check email-respond to emails if necessary. 

Go into the anti-harassment training software and check to see if anyone has completed the training and if so print their certificates and file away, I had a master spreadsheet that contained all of the employees so I kept a tally on all of them-All employees including full time, part time, interns and contractors all need to take the anti-harassment training. 

Projects- examples include tallying survey answers in an excel spreadsheet, quantifying how much money MLB has given out to those who have continued their education or just finishing their education, completing a list of those who had gone to law school and where with what year. 

Filing. 

Shredding. 

Check in with boss at least three times a day to see if anything specific needs to get done. 

Preparation for the human resources conference with all the clubs which included getting over 50 binders ready with the specific content order.

How were you able to get the internship?

I got the internship through a connection. Networking is extremely important in this industry. It’s not about just sending that first email but maintaining the friendship with the person and asking questions so that person knows you are thinking about them and how there experience can help you.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

This experience has only reaffirmed my love for human resources and that I definitely want to be in the sports industry whether it is for a club, a league, or something related to sports.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

If I could say one thing to anyone who is interested in getting into the industry it is that you need to work for it. For some it might come easy with connections, but for others you are really going to need to work hard and network your butt off because this industry is tough to crack into, but once you will see the fruit of your hard work.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

My favorite part of the experience was the professional growth I had this summer in both learning about human resources in real time versus in a classroom and networking. If you attended the “An Inside Look at Sports and Law” event this summer, that took a lot of networking and finding people who would mesh well together. I am so glad the event went well and hopefully those who went got a lot out of it (including a few contacts).

Thank you to Sarah and Major League Baseball for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Sammy Gitlin, Major League Baseball

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Samantha Gitlin '16.  Sammy is a junior in Cornell's College of Human Ecology, where she majors in Nutrition and plans to complete the Dietetics Program.

Sammy worked this summer at Major League Baseball's Office of the Commissioner. She interned in the Labor Relations Department under the Senior Director of Drug Policy, and was kind enough to answer some questions about her experience.

What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

I had a few large projects over this summer. First, I worked on creating a comprehensive list of foods to be provided to teams when they’re on the road. Second, a large issue in baseball is players taking normal supplements (like protein, vitamins, sleep aids etc.) and then taking drug tests that come back positive. A company has been developed that does extensive drug testing on these sorts of supplements to find out whether or not they are safe for players to take. I helped to research these supplements and I created a list of categories to sort these supplements. I also helped out with a few of the labor economics projects, such as researching sports gambling (particularly in New Jersey) and looking at the newly installed replay system.

How were you able to get the internship?

Family friend connection.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

I’m planning on pursuing sports nutrition so this was exactly what I needed to get my foot in the door. I’ve learned so much about the industry and I was able to make connections that I wouldn’t have been able to make anywhere else. I’ve learned about how each team’s dietitian prepares meals/meal plans and caters to the team’s intense nutritional needs.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

Definitely use any connections that you have to find a cool internship! Think outside the box about places to intern at, you never know who will be hiring.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

Getting an inside look into a part of baseball that most people don’t think about. How the players fuel their bodies definitely correlates with their performance, and the dietitians are responsible for that.

Thank you to Sammy and Major League Baseball for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Hudson Belinsky, Tampa Bay Rays

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Hudson Belinsky '15.  Hudson is a senior in Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, majoring in Communications. He has twice represented Cornell and SBS (in addition to one trip as a student at Siena College) at the SABR Analytic Conference's Diamond Dollar Classic case competition. Hudson has also broadcast hockey and baseball as a member of the Big Red Sports Network.   He can be reached at hjb83@cornell.edu.

Hudson has worked for the Tampa Bay Rays since August, 2013, and will continue there through graduation.  Hudson serves as Amateur Scouting Assistant, and was kind enough to answer some questions about his experiences.


What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

Scouting players in showcases and collegiate summer leagues, updating video and scouting report databases as necessary, tracking down players in the northeast who are rumored to be professional prospects.

How were you able to get the internship?

I networked with scouts in the northeast during my internship in the summer of 2013 and eventually met someone who needed assistance.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

It’s reaffirmed my desire to work in Major League Baseball and given me a very firm grasp on how things operate inside the industry. 

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

Be willing to work nights and weekends. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if you think they might be stupid questions. Write down any scouting observation you have, and look back at your early notes often to reflect upon where you went wrong. 

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

I really enjoyed traveling around the northeast and getting to know different pockets of the country. There’s a lot of really cool culture in New England and the mid-Atlantic states that I hadn’t really had a chance to experience before. 

Thank you to Hudson and the Tampa Bay Rays for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Jesse Sherman, The Legacy Agency

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Jesse Sherman '15.  Jesse is a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. He has been a dedicated member of the club since his freshman year at Cornell, serving on the E-Board since Spring 2013.  Jesse has also cofounded Cornell at Bat, and eventually, the Big Red Sports Network.  He can be reached at jws328@cornell.edu.

Jesse worked with The Legacy Agency as an intern for Summer, 2014.  Jesse served as a Baseball Representation Intern at TLA, and was kind enough to answer some questions about his experience.


What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

The Legacy Agency as a whole is a dynamic representation and marketing agency that looks after the interests of the broadcasters, coaches, and professional athletes that it represents. Legacy handles anything from on the field contracts to off the field marketing opportunities, and also serves as a sports consulting firm for external organizations. 

I was the baseball representation intern for a list of clientele that includes MLB stars such as Johan Santana, Jose Reyes, Melky Cabrera, Martin Prado, Starling Marte, and Bobby Abreu, as well as over 100 minor league players. 

My responsibilities included researching clients' statistics on a daily basis, keeping track of their career progression (that is, seeing if they are currently with an organization, which level they are playing at, whether they were released and have free agent standing, so on and so forth). I was also asked to perform analyses on big league teams and their rosters to see if any Legacy clients that were free agents at the time could potentially fill a void on a big league roster. 

I was also responsible for logging and checking client endorsement contracts to ensure that the athletes had been appropriately compensated by the sponsors in accordance with the terms of their signed contracts. 

Additionally, a major project I worked on was creating a career projection analysis on a current client who will be eligible for salary arbitration following the 2015 season. My bosses asked me to do a preliminary determination of what he will be worth during his arbitration years, based on my evaluation of his current performance and potential performance in the future. Salary figures are then determined using comparable players and the statistics they compiled while being on a major league roster for a similar amount of days/years as the player in question.

How were you able to get the internship?

I got the job through a combination of family connections and experience with baseball statistical research with my peers at Cornell.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

The internship was amazingly insightful as to what it takes to be a successful and respected sports agent, as well as everything that goes on from an athlete marketing perspective. I also learned to understand the interests of the player and team sides, which I believe will serve me well if I decide to either pursue agency-side or team-side work.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

I would say that if you want to get your foot in the door, show potential employers that you can bring something out of the ordinary to the table. For instance, I believe my work with the Cornell SABR analytics team gave me an edge in showing that I could evaluate baseball player performance at perhaps an even deeper level than is done by some agents or teams. It also helps to read up on the CBA. Finally, being up to date on up and coming players, international free agency and the draft, in addition to knowing the players in the big leagues and the terms of some long term contracts is incredibly helpful in thriving as a baseball representation intern. Now go out, make the connections, and do the best work you can possibly do.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

My favorite aspect of the experience was being able to learn more about baseball, a sport that I thought I couldn't learn much more about. The agency side of the sport is so important, and working with some of the best and brightest minds in the industry today gave me a much better understanding of what agents do each and every day as well as what it takes to be ahead of the curve from a player development and client management perspective. I also loved not knowing what to expect from one day to the next. I could be doing a project one moment and then get up to talk to my boss and a major leaguer will be sitting in his office.

Thank you to Jesse and The Legacy Agency for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Alex Gimenez, Cleveland Indians

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Alex Gimenez '15.  Alex is a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School. He has been a dedicated member of the club since his freshman year at Cornell, serving as the Ivy Sports Representative in 2013.  Alex has also founded Cornell at Bat, and eventually, the Big Red Sports Network.  He can be reached at ajg322@cornell.edu.

Alex worked with the Cleveland Indians from January through August 2014 as part of the ILR credit internship program.  Alex served as a Strategy Intern with the Indians, and was kind enough to answer some questions about his experience.


What were some of your day-to-day responsibilities of the position?

The day-to-day responsibilities surrounding my job really vary depending on the projects I’m working on. I’ll typically have two major projects and one smaller project. It is basically up to me to manage my time in a way that allows me to complete the projects effectively and efficiently. I’ve worked on everything from realigning our pricing locations down the foul lines and creating a "point pricing system" for our season ticket holder loyalty program, to redeveloping our program for customer service initiatives and helping in the creation of our dynamic ticket pricing models. 

How were you able to get the internship?

It’s actually a fairly long story. I was paired with an ILRSBS alum, Gabe Gershenfeld through an ILR alumni mentorship program my freshman year, and Gabe helped to facilitate a meeting with one of the Indians' Senior Vice Presidents during the MIT Conference. We really hit it off and remained in touch over the next year. Last May, he invited me out to Cleveland to meet others in the organization and I presented the possibility of using the ILR Credit Internship program as an opportunity to do an internship. Five months later, after many interviews,  a new internship position  was created through the Indians HR Department, and approved by the ILR  credit internship office, I accepted the offer in late November.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

My experience has helped me to really understand myself, my interests, and my skill set and how they best fit in the sports industry. I’ve had interest in working in professional baseball for a long time and this experience helped me to focus in on more specific areas. Being able to gain this experience as a junior where I still have a full year of college left was crucial. I feel like I am in a much better place to make an informed decision on my next steps that will allow me to be happy and successful while providing high value to my future employer. Ultimately, the experience helped show me that the broadcasting, media and PR side of the industry may be the best fit for me, and realizing that this early on was really beneficial.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

1. You are going to be challenged in ways that you might not have ever imagined. I’ve been lucky that the Indians have really trusted me with some challenging and important projects, but that definitely brings with its fair share of pressure. There are a lot of days where my 9-5 job becomes a 9-8 job so you have to be prepared to work hard and do what is necessary to get the job done and get it done the right way. 

2. Despite spending most of my life following sports and much of the last four years trying to better understand the business side of the industry, there is so much about the operation of a professional sports franchise that I never knew before stepping into the front office. Understand that, and try to gain as much knowledge as you can before you step in the door. It will really help you in getting a job if you can demonstrate that you understand the business. When you do get your foot in the door, be open to learning about every aspect of the operation, because you never know when you’ll be able to use that knowledge. 

3. Gain a mastery of Excel, Powerpoint, and Word and try to gain some coding experience in programs like SQL, R, or even C++. I know it sounds strange, but you will use Excel a ton and being able to manipulate data in the program will make your learning curve once on the job so much easier. Understanding code will give you an edge over a lot of people when applying for jobs in baseball (player) operations or business operations because coding is used to pull data from databases within these organizations. 

4. Network with people and find ways to get them interested in you by showing how you can provide value to them. I would not have been able to get this opportunity, but for my connections who were willing to make a sacrifice and take a risk on me in a professional setting. The only way to find jobs in the sports industry is to be proactive. 

5. In regards to networking, remember that the highest level people, the team presidents, the GMs, etc are in most cases not the people who are making hiring decisions for entry level positions. While networking with them can still lead to something great, don’t forget to network with middle level managers who make hiring decisions. They will be the people who end up giving you your first job, and in many cases, will end up moving up the ranks to become a high level executive down the road. 

6. In any entry level experience in sports or otherwise, make sure you are not just blindly accepting a position because the name of the company means something to you. Look for opportunities where you will be able to learn and grow your skill set while gaining valuable experience on meaningful projects. At the end of the day, people who are making hiring decisions care more about what you did at an organization , not the name of that organization.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience? 

It is difficult to pick just one. As far as one single event, it was having the opportunity to sit in the draft room for day 2 of the draft. I’m not in baseball operations, but I definitely have an interest in that side of the industry so getting to see what went on from within was a great opportunity. It was much less chaotic than I expected it to be. 

Aside from the draft, I’ve really just enjoyed being able to interact with a Major League Baseball team. Learning from meeting a lot of different people has been great, and I’ve been lucky to have some experiences outside of business and analytics such as watching the draft from the draft room or calling games in a spare radio booth for practice.

Thank you to Alex and the Cleveland Indians for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Experience Spotlight - Mike Parnell, Texas Rangers

In this semester's Experience Spotlight series, the blog will be featuring Cornell ILR SBS members who have excelled in positions in the sports industry. Many talented Cornell students are making impressions all across the sports world, and this is their chance to showcase their experiences.

This week's Spotlight focuses on Mike Parnell '14.  Mike was a senior in Cornell's Industrial and Labor Relations School, previously serving at the school's Institute for Compensation Studies. Mike had represented the club at the SABR Analytics Conference Diamond Dollar Classic in 2013, as well as several other events and conferences.  Baseball was always important to Mike, as he completed academic research on the sport for his thesis, as well worked in a collegiate summer baseball league.

During his senior spring semester, Mike worked as a Baseball Operations intern with the Texas Rangers. Cooridinated through the ILR Credit Internship Program, he will complete the internship in November. Mike was kind enough to answer some questions about his experience.


What are some Day-to-Day responsibilities of the position?

Airport runs, doctor runs, scouting Rangers' home games, daily organizational report, college stats updates, database tracking, independent projects. Everything baseball operations.

How were you able to get the Internship?

I interviewed for the position at Major League Baseball's Winter Meetings in December of last year. I then set up the internship through the ILR School's credit internship program.

How has this experience shaped your career plans?

It has reaffirmed my desire to pursue a career in Major League Baseball, working for a MLB team.

What advice would you give another student interested in a similar experience?

You’ll work longer and harder than you ever have whether that be as a student, or in another internship or job that you’ve done. But if you truly are passionate about pursuing a career in baseball or sports more generally it won’t feel like work and you will truly enjoy every minute of it. 

Be open to taking on any opportunity or experience regardless of how overqualified you may be for it. You won’t instantly be in charge, so you have to put in your time to earn the respect of those around you. 

These types of experiences aren’t usually posted in any place that you would normally find internship postings; you have to put yourself out there by reaching out to teams. I would recommend reaching out to several people in an organization a month or two prior to the Winter Meetings asking if they could meet for a few minutes. Provide a quick background on any relevant work that you’ve done. Keep the email succinct, they get a lot of these and are very busy so the more efficiently you write the email the better chance you have of getting a response. 

You have to do some relevant work on your own. Write for a website or blog so that you have some work to show. Go watch amateur or minor league games and write up reports on the players. You don’t have to be right or have a perfect report but it shows that you are truly interested in working in baseball. You’ll probably meet some people that may help you out down the road. I had someone vouch for me at the Rangers that I met on the road last summer while scouting a minor league game.

What was your favorite aspect of the experience?

So far the best experience has been by far being in the draft room for the amateur draft. Definitely a more fluid process than I imagined and very cool to see everything that goes into it.

Thank you to Mike and the Texas Rangers for allowing us to share this awesome experience. We hope you have learned about some of the wonderful opportunities that Cornell, the ILR School, and the ILR Sports Business Society can provide in the sports world. We hope to feature many more stories from students and employers this fall!

Dominican Soccer Doesn’t Dominate

This post was written by SBS member Hannah Sawyer. Hannah is interning this summer in the Dominican Republic. She boxes there, as she did last summer in Russia.  Hannah was kind enough to share some first-hand research from her time abroad.

Given its position as a Latin American country, some people are surprised that the Dominican Republic does not have a strong soccer program. Of course, the adequately informed sports connoisseur will associate the DR with baseball, but you would still expect futbol to have a significant foothold in this Caribbean nation. Or, from the gringo perspective, if a country has the gall to call the sport “football”, it must like it a lot.

The fact is, soccer is just not prioritized in the Dominican. Kids might mess around with it for a little bit, but by the teenage years most move on to other sports. As trainer and sports journalist Jorge Allen Bauger says in Forbes Dominican Republic, after “13 or 14 years young people search for other alternatives.” It’s hard to pinpoint a reason. The sport requires the barest minimum in equipment, and is therefore quite inexpensive compared to baseball, gymnastics, tennis, and especially basketball (where you now not only need a hoop, a hard surface, and a ball, but also an iPhone with a Vine app to prove that those dunks actually did happen). This financial difference is particularly poignant in a place where some 35% live below the national poverty line. True, the country has a population of 10 million, generating a small talent pool that could explain its lack of international competitiveness, but that doesn’t explain the low domestic participation.

Participation, of course, is different than interest. Indeed, people do like soccer here. The World Cup was predictably popular, kids idolize the usual international superstars, and the adults are well informed of the happenings of their favorite premier league teams. Dominicans take soccer seriously but just don’t play it. I suppose the comparison could be made to women and (real) football… American women do not compete on football teams, but the NFL’s fanbase is 45% female, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Back to the population explanation… the same could be said regarding baseball, but this small country is renowned throughout the world for its talent. The Blue Jays just pulled six guys from Santo Domingo to the minor leagues (compare that figure to the ten Dominicans playing collegiate or professional soccer in the states). Eighty-nine Dominicans started last year’s Opening Day, composing over 10% of the day’s roster. Since 1995, the country has led the Major Leagues with providing the most foreign-born players every year.

Yet perhaps the Caribbean winds are changing. MLB COO and Cornell alum Rob Manfred pointed out that there is hesitation regarding the baseball draft. In a Skype session with the SBS on April 30th, Manfred elaborated that the number of players from neighboring Puerto Rico dramatically decreased after the commonwealth entered the draft. The DR’s “local resistance”, he believed, must also be attributed to various socioeconomic factors that lead to more sports being available. At the moment, rugby, tennis, and boxing are filling those spheres, but it is possible that the Dominican Republic will discover a renewed passion for futbol. Until then, we’ll just say gracias for the Cano’s, Ramirez’s, and Ortiz’s of America’s National Pastime.

Teams on the Rise Trilogy - Part 3: New York Mets (MLB)

I am officially granting my fellow Mets fans permission to take the paper bags off of their heads. Kind of brings you back to the Piazza days, right? Get used to it, because things are changing. Queens is ready for the return of the Amazin’s, and they won’t have to wait for long.

The Mets have ditched the “sign every big name you can get for way too much money” approach that almost worked for them in the past decade with guys like Louis Castillo, Mo Vaughn, Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran (if you have a problem with this mention, watch the end of game 7 of the 2006 NLCS and the Septembers of 2007 and 2008), Jason Bay--tell me when to stop. Now, they have developed very solid players that can serve as a foundation for this team for the next decade, and who are certainly something to be excited about.

The foundation lies in pitching.

Matt Harvey pitched like a Cy Young caliber guy for most of the 2013 season--his second year in the bigs. In fact, his 2.27 ERA earned him fourth in votes for the award despite an early exit in August with an elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery. The injury was devastating, but pitchers have proven to be able to rebound from the surgery (see Tommy John himself, who pitched another 14 successful seasons after receiving the surgery). At a young age, Matt Harvey is a perfect candidate for a successful return. Fortunately for the Mets, this success will now come at a lower price.

There were discussions of Harvey approaching $200 million territory if he could maintain his success for a tiny bit longer before he got hurt. If this were the case, owner Fred Wilpon--who has experienced serious debt since the recession--would probably not be willing to keep Harvey long-term. Harvey will have to settle for less money, of course, and it is very possible that he could be in Queens for the majority of a long career. As a 25 year old guy with remarkable talent, that is great news for the Mets.

The rest of the Mets’ rotation is equally promising. Zack Wheeler is a 23 year old stud who earned an impressive 3.42 ERA in his rookie campaign. He has a diversity of pitches which include a four-seam and two-seam fastball that averages out in the mid-90s. He has the making of a future ace, and is going to be very willing to sign an extension with the Mets if offered one during the 2014 season. If the Mets can lock him down, I see the Harvey-Wheeler combination as the best 1-2 punch in baseball for a good portion of the next decade.

To add on to that, 27 year old Jon Niese has established himself with ERA’s of 3.40 in 2012, 3.71 in 2013, and 1.82 this year. The Mets have him under a strong contract that pays him approximately $5 million a year and gives them the option of keeping him under that contract until 2018.

Dillon Gee is another 27 year old guy who is coming off his strongest season last year, where he earned a 3.62 ERA and a winning record with around 200 innings pitched. He has started this season off strong as well, and will not be such a costly guy to keep around. For a guy who can be fourth or even fifth in the rotation, he is actually pretty impressive.

With four really promising guys who can go another 10 years at least, we look to the farm system and find another two very intriguing options in Noah Syndergaard and Rafael Montero (numbers 1 and 3 on the Mets’ Top 20 Prospects List of 2014). Get one of those two to be a franchise guy, and the Mets’ rotation could be one of the top rotations in baseball in the upcoming years.

You need to score runs too--something the Mets have been struggling to do in the last few seasons. They’ve ranked 23rd and 25th in runs in last two years, so why believe that anything is going to change?

We have to start with the captain. David Wright is everything, with a career average surpassing .300 and no signs of slowing down. The veteran will be in Queens through 2020, after signing the largest contract in Mets’ history (8 years/approx. $138 million). He’s not a concern, and neither--I argue--is one other member of New York’s infield.

Daniel Murphy hits the ball harder than anyone. He has an incredible knack of hitting line drives, and with a solid glove as well, he’s a guy that joins Wright as the core position players in New York’s present and future. He’s getting better every year, and is currently hitting .320 this season. A career .292 hitter, that number is going to continue to climb for years to come. The Mets have to ensure that those numbers climb while he’s in Queens. He is underpaid at $5.7 million this season after signing a one-year deal in January, and will be eligible for arbitration in the offseason. The Mets have to sign him long-term, and with back-to-back seasons of new contracts for Murph, I am confident that both sides want that to happen.

Curtis Granderson, Eric Young Jr., and Chris Young are not long-term options for the Mets. 28-year-old Lucas Duda, 27-year-old Eric Campbell, 25-year-old Juan Lagares, 25-year-old Travis d’Arnaud, and 24-year-old Ruben Tejada are. Duda is a hard hitter, but with a career-high of 15 HR’s in a season, his mid-.200 batting average isn’t going to cut it. If he can find his power, he can be a solid hitter 5th in the line-up. Eric Campbell and Lagares are new to the big leagues, but with averages thus far of .455 and .304, expectations are rightfully high. Travis d’Arnaud is inexperienced, and is batting like it, but with outstanding minor league numbers, this player who was named number 6 on MLB’s Top 100 Prospects list last year may be a solid option for New York. Finally, Ruben Tejada is a tough case. He has sparks of brilliance, but also has a long record of weak play. He’s young, and only time will tell how he develops. I can’t offer much more than that.

I can spew out names that are coming up in the farm system for New York--Dominic Smith, Wilmer Flores, Amed Rosario--but there is no way to predict future success. I will say that the Mets’ farm system is ranked to be one of the top of all organizations. With incredible pitching, the Mets are going to need a couple of guys to come out in the next few years that can help out Murphy and Wright. They need to stop wasting money on old, high-profile guys like Curtis Granderson. They have the pitching, they need to get a couple of solid, young outfielders to make their line-up respectable. And if they can improve their line-up like I expect, I think the Mets are going to be a force in the NL for years to come.

Part 2: How to Predict Postseason Success in Baseball

Wouldn't it be nice to predict the next time your team will hoist the Commissioner's Trophy?

While Part 1 looked at driving in runs without hitting home runs, the second hypothesis has more to do with hitting the league's most elite pitchers in the postseason. Will this hypothesis lead to some statistically significant results?


Performance Against Top Pitchers

Hypothesis

Against top-line starters and relievers, it is very difficult to hit home runs, so my theory is that teams that have a more simplistic batting approach will have a better opportunity against these very good pitchers. Also, because a team is very likely to face great pitching in the postseason, I also hypothesize that teams that face good pitchers (I have categorized “top pitchers” as those who finish in the top 20 of ERA minus, or ERA-, as calculated by Fangraphs) more often and/or have more success against them (in terms of runs scored per nine innings) are more likely to have playoff success.

Results

By hand, I compiled the top 20 starting pitchers in terms of ERA- every year from 2003-2012, and then used Baseball Almanac to record every game these pitchers played against teams who made the playoffs that year. I compiled total innings, total runs scored, total games and runs scored (not just earned runs) per 9 innings for each team each year. The reasoning behind looking at all runs, and not just earned runs, was because runs of any kind are so hard to come by in the postseason, or when facing a top pitcher, and even if a run is unearned, most of the time the opposing team would still need to string together a couple of hits to allow that unearned run to score.

When I finished compiling data on team performances against top 20 pitchers, I ran individual regression analyses with PV being the outcome variable, and these new statistics being the predictors. However, no single statistic correlated to having a high PV. Even when using multiple predictors with the top 20 pitching stats, there was still no significant correlation.

Conclusion

Based on the results of my tests of these two hypotheses, I unfortunately did not find any significant regression models that could predict PV from any of these statistics, I was not hugely surprised by this outcome for a few reasons. Because I only looked at playoff teams in the past ten years (many of the statistics I used in these models were not compiled before then), my sample size was smaller than ideal to start with. Also, there is high multicollinearity among so many of these statistics. This means that it was it was difficult to interpret the individual coefficients.

Also, having too many predictors, or controlling for too many variables, makes it extremely difficult to find a model that is both significant, and that makes sense from a baseball perspective. There were a few interesting findings, such as how LDp is marginally correlated with playoff wins (but not correlated with playoff series wins), but for the most part, no major discoveries were made.

Possible Improvements

One of the changes I could have made included how I calculated the top 20 pitchers statistics. I chose the number 20 randomly, but I also compiled the top 20 pitchers regardless of league. In hindsight, I probably should have compiled the top 20 pitchers from both the American and National Leagues in each year. Also, maybe there is a better statistic than “runs per 9 innings” to gauge how well teams do against these top pitchers. Also, when my second hypothesis failed, I started to compile 28 new statistics from Fangraphs’s “high leverage situations” split. I originally tried this because essentially all playoff batting situations can be considered “high leverage.”

However, these statistics were compiled from late and close game situations, rather than ability to drive in runs without hitting home runs, which is what my two hypotheses were related to. My time might have been better spent looking at statistics with runners in scoring position. Those kinds of statistics would have been more relevant to my hypotheses, as driving in runners in scoring position is not only the most effective way to score off top pitchers, but it is also a skill that requires the batter to shorten his swing, and have a more simplistic batting approach. As I continue this research in the future, I will take into account all of these factors in my quest to find a formula for postseason success in Major League Baseball. 

Part 1: How to Predict Postseason Success in Baseball



Just how did the Red Sox get past the Rays and Tigers in 2013?

Introduction

“They got hot at the right moment.” “They’re just lucky they peaked in October.” “It was just meant to be.”

These are all things that have been said about recent World Series winners. Ever since Major League Baseball switched to its current three-division system (and after adding a second wild card in 2012), it has made it more difficult for teams with the best records to win it all. This is because probably more than any other sport, baseball’s playoffs are so much different than its regular season.

Baseball’s 162-game regular season is a marathon of endurance and mental toughness. On the other hand, the playoffs are a sprint, with the winner often times being a team that by all traditional metrics (such as wins and winning percentage) is inferior. However, it is extremely difficult to predict when such a team will go on a World Series run. Even though there are several metrics to measure a player’s overall value to his team (such as WAR, or Wins Above Replacement), there is not a lot when it comes to statistics or groups of statistics that can best predict postseason success.

Michael Lewis’s Moneyball introduced the importance of on-base percentage (OBP) to many baseball fans, but I have determined through a simple regression analysis that statistic alone does not correlate to team postseason success. The general consensus among fans, commentators, and analysts is that having dominant pitching, particularly starting pitching, is the key to advancing far in the playoffs.

I agree that the most important variable on a playoff team is their starting pitching, but pitching alone doesn’t win you the World Series either. The 2013 postseason saw the Boston Red Sox in the ALCS beat the Detroit Tigers, a team that had what was considered to be the most dominant starting rotation in baseball. This was after they beat another team with excellent pitching, the Tampa Bay Rays, in the previous series. In a sport that has metrics to measure everything from speed on the base paths to the strength of an outfielder’s arm, there is no accepted metric that can accurately and consistently predict postseason success based on regular season performance. My goal was to see if I could find such a measure.

This is not a simple task. In an October 2013 article for ESPN’s Grantland, Rany Jazayerli wrote, “Trying to find the magic formula for postseason success has been the sabermetric community's version of trying to turn lead into gold: Many have tried, but none have entirely succeeded.” I first came up with the idea for this project after angrily watching the New York Yankees over the past decade consistently be one of the best teams in the league, but then lose in the postseason (often in in the division series).

Most fans and analysts pointed to the Yankees’ lack of quality starting pitchers post-2003 to why they couldn’t win in the playoffs after winning four of five World Series from 1996 to 2001. However, the Atlanta Braves, led by their dominating pitching trio of Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, had even more trouble in the postseason, winning only one World Series title from 1992 to 2005, despite winning the NL East title in all fourteen years. It amazed me how these teams could consistently dominate their respective divisions and leagues for 162 games, only to come out flat in a five or seven game series. It made me wonder if there were hints in a playoff team’s regular season statistics that could predict a successful postseason run.

For this research, I have defined postseason success as “playoff value” or PV. A PV of 1 means losing in the division series, 2 means losing in the Championship Series, 3 is losing in the World Series, and 4 is winning the World Series. Therefore, in order to find statistics that can predict postseason success, I ran hundreds of linear regression models, with the outcome variable PV, and with many different predictors.

Ability to Drive in Runs Without Hitting Home Runs
 

Hypothesis

For my research, I decided to focus mainly on regular season batting statistics of playoff teams from the past ten years (2003-2012). I did this for a few reasons. First off, as previously mentioned, it is widely accepted that good pitching beats good hitting in the playoffs. However, I think this only holds true when looking at conventional measures of “good” hitting, such as batting average and runs scored. Instead, it could be more important to look at team batting patterns and tendencies. It is my hypothesis that teams that have more simplistic batting approaches, or those that emphasize contact and putting the ball in play and deemphasize over-swinging to try to hit home runs, will be more successful in the postseason. The reasoning behind this is that the pitchers in the postseason are so dominating (the number of off days in the postseason means that teams usually only use three or four of their best starters), a team might only get one or two chances a game to get a rally going or drive in runs. And because the top pitchers in the playoffs, are usually less likely to give up home runs, it is important that when given the proper opportunity, teams are able to drive in runs without hitting home runs.

Results

I started by using the stepwise regression function in R in which, I predicted PV from the original 38 statistics I gathered. These statistics ranged from simplistic, such as hits and home runs, to advanced, such weighted on base average (wOBA) and weighted runs create plus per 600 plate appearances, to contact-based, such as groundball percentage and home run to fly ball ratio. The stepwise function took all possible predictors and entered and removed them from the regression model until all predictors in the model had a p value of less than .1.

The stepwise function gave me the following: PV ~ H + HR + BABIP + GBFB + LDp + HRFB + BUH + Swingp + Contactp. What this meant was that playoff value could be predicted by the combination of hits, home runs, batting average on balls in play, ground ball to fly ball ratio, line drive percentage, home run to fly ball ratio, bunt hits, swing percentage and contact percentage. After finding the summary of this model, I discovered it was statistically significant, as it had a p value of .038.

I was not surprised by a few aspects of the formula, as teams with higher LDp (line drive percentage) and GBFB (ground ball to fly ball ratio) stats usually mean they have more simplistic hitting approaches, as higher rates of hitting line drives and ground balls means that they aren’t over-swinging or trying to only hit home runs as much. However, it is very difficult to interpret these individual coefficients, due to the multicollinearity of the model.

This multicollinearity is caused by the high correlation between the variables in this model. For example, teams that usually have more hits are going to have more home runs, and a higher Batting Average on Balls in Play. After trying several other models that included variables that I thought would be significant (such as contact percentage, line drive percentage and zone contact percentage) I was still unable to find another model that was statistically significant, so I came up with another idea.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for Part 2 of Andrew's analysis.

Batting Leadoff: Paying for an Opponent

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Yesterday, the Cubs and the Yankees squared off for what seemed to be (and what actually was) a normal, regular season doubleheader. It was an exciting couple of pitching duels, but something more interesting went on. The Cubs were facing their former left fielder Alfonso Soriano, the star player that they traded at the All-Star break last year for Corey Black and massive cash considerations. Soriano was owed $24.5 million, and the Cubs agreed to pay $17.7 million of that tab. The Yankees paid $1.8 million in 2013 and will pay $5 million in 2014 for a not-too-bad veteran. Why I find this whole deal and deals like this so interesting is that the Cubs were willing to have Soriano represent nearly 15% of their 2014 payroll to play for another team.

Is this ever a smart thing to do?



In the Cubs’ case, it’s not that clear. The Cubs in this trade will be $17.7 million poorer and will have a prospect in Corey Black, a prospect that has had some success in the low minors, but has only thrown 32 innings in the past year and a half. He’s a hard thrower, but many only project his ceiling as a competent reliever. So for the organization, the present value of ~3.3 projected wins for Soriano is outweighed by the salary “dump” and the possible future value of Black. Black could provide >3.3 wins, but I wouldn’t put my money on that.

The other consideration is that the wins Soriano will be worth would have been nearly a full, marginal gain for the Cubs, as their current left fielder Junior Lake is projected to be slightly better than replacement level. It’s a curious case, but it does signal a culture change. When you signal to your fan base that as an organization you are not going to cling to the past and move in a younger direction, that does speak volumes. And considering where the Cubs stand on the win curve, the loss of a win or win and a half won’t mean much this season. There have been other cases, though, that have been more successful.

There is of course the case of the Red Sox/Dodgers trade, which will probably go down in history as one of the most successful salary dumps in the history of the sport. Granted, the Dodgers have been pretty successful and are able to eat the salaries of Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford in the latter years, but the Red Sox look much better: with the contracts mostly off the books, one can secure financial independence and the freedom to use the slightly increased payroll room to compensate for the lost value.

What makes this a successful move is that the Red Sox have replacements like Mike Napoli, Grady Sizemore, and Jackie Bradley Jr. that are cost-controlled, and may even be worse than what they gave away, but the short-term sacrifice in current wins will give you future wins. There also has to be a reasonable confidence that what you get in return will net you those future returns, and Allen Webster (and possibly Rubby De La Rosa) projects to do that. Webster’s success would just be the icing on the cake.

Paying for another team to own your players is a curious phenomenon in baseball roster construction and payroll planning. It seems completely counter intuitive for a team to pay millions of dollars for someone to play against you, and sometimes it can be. TV commentators and pundits may say that it seems silly for Soriano to be getting paid $17 million from the Cubs this year and will play against them; but, as I said, it signals a culture change. The Cubs have had a troublesome past, and the age of paying for expensive veterans is over, even if they need to bleed a little bit to end that era.

Matthew Provenzano is a sophomore at Cornell University. Matthew is a featured blogger at Batting Leadoff, a contributor for PinstripeAlley.com, and covers Cornell Baseball for Cornell At Bat. Contact Matt at mjp294@cornell.edu or follow him on twitter at @mpro6294. 


This post originally appeared on Batting Leadoff. Batting Leadoff is a website dedicated to providing readers with premium baseball content. Posts from the site will appear regularly on the Sports Business Society Blog (view the information in the sidebar for updated information).

MLB Players' Salaries as a Share of Revenues: Laying Out the Issues

http://www.hardballtimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/TWO.jpg

The chart above clearly explains what the issue is.  Major League Baseball players' salaries have decreased relative to the league's revenues. The players' shares of the revenues used to hover above 50%, but have since fell to around 40%. As a point of reference, all of the other North American major professional sports leagues have collective bargaining agreements that guarantee players approximately 50% of revenue.

In terms of real dollars, the difference is more striking. MLB revenues were over $8 BB last year.  That means every  percentage point in 2013 represents about $80 MM in salaries. That's close to $100,000 per player.  And that's just for one percentage point of revenues.  If players were receiving the industry standard of 50% (a gain of ten percentage points), that would mean closer to a billion more dollars going towards salaries.

Some people may not think that this is a problem. Players salaries have still been increasing rapidly, even relative to inflation, when most peoples' wages have remained stagnant. Most of the world's workers are not losing much sleep over how athletes may be missing out on a few hundred thousand dollars.

Team shareholders and MLB officials also probably don't see what the problem is.  After all, this is extra cash going into their pockets.  It's a transfer of wealth from millionaires to billionaires, and most fans probably don't care.

But for players and their agents, this is a real problem.  In fact, this might be the biggest challenge the MLB Players Association has faced in a generation.  And while a significant number of players do earn generational wealth playing the game, many fringe major leaguer's never make that kind of money. For them, even a small change in salaries could make a real difference.

But the big question is "Why has the players' share of revenue decreased?" This is too big a question to answer in one post, but I think it is important to lay out the major issues that need to be addressed.  I have organized my thoughts into four major points, that will each be the subject of its own post.  Two are listed as "Player-side issues" meaning that they are most affected by the actions of players (or perhaps agents and the MLBPA as well).  The other two are listed as "Management-side Issues", since they revolve more around the behavior of teams and the league.

Remember, we are trying to explain hundreds of millions of dollars in lower salaries, so it's probably not just one thing. And if it is just one thing, it would have to be a pretty big thing. Before I get into the issues that I will be addressing, I'll mention a few other alternatives.

Some could claim that revenues and salaries are not being measured accurately, or consistently over time. If that were true, this may not be as big of an issue, but there's just no way that the we are off by such a wide margin to explain the relative decrease in salaries.

One other interesting possibility that I didn't list below is if the supply of baseball labor had changed in some significant way. More precisely, if there was less variation in talent, in say, the top 5000 baseball players in the world, then MLB players would have less leverage in negotiating salaries.  Since the quantity of players demanded has been static since the late 1990's, this could be answerable by looking at the data.  Until I see empirical evidence, I'm not giving this scenario serious consideration.

Matt Swartz's latest works on The Hardball Times were not the first pieces to call attention to the players' share of revenue, but they were the most helpful in getting started.  Cot's Baseball Contracts and Biz of Baseball are valuable resources for anyone looking to do research on the topics. Also, Tom Tango's (and his esteemed readers') comments were really what got me thinking about the issue.

So I've already used a bunch of words, and I haven't gotten to the main issues, so here they are. They'll be a post on each one, but for now I've just written enough to clarify what I mean.

Player-side Issues

1. Players are not optimizing their compensation. 

Basically, players and agents are losing many more contract negotiations than they are winning.  The main theory is that early career extensions have been lopsided in favor of teams.  More players are willing to bypass arbitration and prime years of free agency in favor of relatively less rich extensions. Some would argue that this phenomenon can even affect players who haven't received extensions. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports thinks this issue is very important, and wonders if less players are looking out for the "next guy". These extensions are certainly a far cry from players' fights against the reserve clause and collusion.

2. Salary is a relatively less important piece of player's compensation packages.

Another possibility is that players as a whole are placing less of a value on salary when signing contracts.  In this scenario, a relative decrease in salary isn't necessarily a problem for the MLBPA.  Players, like workers as a whole, may be increasingly factoring in location, career development, or "fit", when considering offers. In baseball terms, this could involve working with particular coaches,  being a part of a certain team chemistry, or even "playing for a winner". While this likely wouldn't explain a huge change in salaries, it could be a part of the trend.  We may also be missing out on the value of small items such as health care and the players' pension plan.


Management-side Issues

3. Teams have become more efficient in the way they compensate players.

A generation ago, teams were only effectively able to limit pay via collusion.  Today, there is a common framework that executives can use to put a value on every player.  Every team is at least aware of the market $/WAR.  Additionally, newly available statistics and more modern thinking may have led to cheaper, younger players occupying more roster spots relative to older, more expensive players. Regardless, the increase of business-minded management teams have led to more sophisticated roster construction.

4. The revenues of teams are now less dependent on team performance (and how much they spend on players).

Of all the issues, this has the most potential to impact salaries.  It would also be the most difficult problem for the players to address.  As gate revenue, and other revenue related to team success (merchandise, concessions, parking, etc.) have decreased as a share of total revenue, teams have less incentives to spend big on winning teams.  With most teams locked in on long-term local TV deals, short-term winning is also somewhat less important. National TV money, and other centrally distributed revenue (revenue sharing funds, MLBAM earnings), is earned regardless of team performance. Finally, the competitive balance tax acts as a disincentive for teams with the highest marginal revenue products from spending freely on players.

Additionally, across all sports, the business operations of teams have become more professionalized. Every team business official I've talked to has described the importance of separating financial success from on-field success.  With revenue targets that must be met regardless of winning or losing, perhaps a larger share of MLB's revenues should be going to the front office folks who are finding better ways to capture every last dollar (at least in the short term).

So those are what I consider to be the main factors.  I think that my individual posts will be more content-filled and incisive, but I needed this post to lay out the issues.  Hopefully it helped line things up for you as well, and let me know if I missed anything.

The Weekly Rant: MLB, Outsourcing, and the Indy Leagues as Temp Agencies

Among the many trends in baseball's long history, perhaps none is lamented so much as the disappearance of independent minor leagues. By the middle of the last century, all of the nation's minor league's became either subservient to major league teams, or defunct.

By the mid-1990s, unaffiliated leagues began to reemerge. While many clubs and leagues have sprung up one season, only to fold the next, several leagues have found a bit of stability as the "Indy Ball" renaissance enters its third decade.  It would be a stretch to say that independent baseball is thriving, but it is certainly existing. Total attendance for independent baseball topped 7 MM last season and at one point, 32 former Indy Ball Players were on 40 man rosters.  It's undeniable that Indy Ball is having an impact on the baseball world.

The most successful leagues have been able to carve out a niche as a sort of caste system has developed outside of organized ball. Atlantic League teams often carry multiple former major league players and many other high-minor veterans. While the league has entered the mainstream baseball discussion for its publicity stunts (i.e. Roger Clemens), over 600 former Atlantic League players have been signed by MLB organizations.  It is widely-believed that the Atlantic League has the highest quality of play in Indy Ball, possibly falling somewhere between AA and AAA leagues in the affiliated ladder.

The American Association has a lower quality of play, but more talented young players.  The American Association has received national attention as an alternative for unsigned draft picks, such as Tanner Scheppers and Aaron Crow.  The Frontier League might be even a little lower in terms of quality play, with league rules placing age and experience restrictions on team rosters.   But this has made the Frontier League a haven for raw or under-scouted amateur players.

The development of unaffiliated baseball could be a response to the labor market for players.  There could be a larger raw amount of players capable of playing at level suitable for entertainment.  Or perhaps the growth in the consumer market for sports and entertainment is behind change.  Whatever the reason, MLB clubs now scout independent leagues coast to coast looking for talent.

On a whole, Major League clubs do a remarkable job at selecting and retaining the players with the highest probability of contributing in the major leagues.  But when a few players slip through the cracks, they are likely to end up on an independent team's roster.  This allows for a  MLB clubs to get a second chance on a great number of players.

Instead of adding an additional minor league affiliate, MLB teams can use the lower-level Indy Leagues to identify talent that might have been missed in the draft.  Essentially, teams find it more viable to have some of this player identification take place externally. This is an obvious example of how teams can use Indy Leagues for functions that alternatively could be performed internally.

Another area where this could be occurring is in the high-minors.  Teams would like to devote most of their AA and AAA plate appearances and innings to prospects.  But all teams must also find a way to store several waves of depth options in the upper levels. And over the course of the season, between injuries and call-ups, sometimes players are needed just to fill out rosters.

So instead of having to carry every player a team might need on opening day rosters, teams can pick and choose depth options and roster fillers from the Atlantic League.  Not only does this save roster spots, but it also offers great flexibility and decreases costs.  The Atlantic League basically serves as temp agency (with a low cost to purchase contracts, about $4,000).

This can be especially valuable when dealing with longshots or reclamation projects such as Dontrelle Willis or Tracy McGrady.  Instead of using up valuable minor league innings and roster spots on these types of players, the teams can wait and see how they perform before making a commitment. The worst case scenario, if the player performed well, would be small-scale bidding war with other interested MLB clubs.

The return of independent minor league baseball has been celebrated among baseball fans.  MLB teams are able to take advantage of their existence to outsource specific functions that would be less viable to perform internally.  In this sense, Major League Baseball is acting in line with labor market trends in many other industries.