Brewers finding a formula for winning

From Jon Gast at The Door County Advocate on February 15, 2012, with mention of SABR member Jim Szantor:

No person on the organizational chart of a professional sports franchise faces more significant of an off-season workload than does the general manager.

Milwaukee Brewers GM Doug Melvin has been a busy guy trying to remake his team without Prince Fielder and the possible absence of National League MVP Ryan Braun for the first 50 games.

I wonder if he’s watched “Moneyball,” the Oscar-nominated film starring Brad Pitt as the Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane. Beane, who remains the GM for the small market A’s, faced significant free-agent losses following a highly successful 2001 season in which the A’s won 102 games. He decided to follow an entirely new concept in rebuilding the squad as he attempted to replace high-priced free agents with low-cost players. Now termed Sabermetrics, this purely objective dissemination of statistics pioneered by Bill James caught fire after the refashioned — and some would say misfit — A’s of 2002 not only bettered the previous year’s success with 103 wins but won a record 20 straight games.

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The term Sabermetrics is derived from the acronym SABR or Society for American Baseball Research and this is where Jim Szantor comes into play. He filled me in about organization. Szantor is a self-professed baseball junky or “seamhead” who is a SABR member.

The Kenosha native has retired to Door County. His blog “Popcorn” at www.szsez.blogspot.com has generated followers all over the world, and while its short quips touch on a wide spectrum of topics, he prefers talking baseball.

Read the full article here: http://www.doorcountyadvocate.com/article/20120215/ADV02/202150495/Column-Finding-formula-winning



Originally published: February 15, 2012. Last Updated: February 15, 2012.