Hoornstra: On Paul DePodesta, Craig Wright, and rounding out the Dodgers’ narrative
From SABR member J.P. Hoornstra at Inside SoCal on October 17, 2014, with mention of SABR member Craig Wright:
In case you missed my piece on Andrew Friedman’s front office in Tampa, and how the Dodgers’ front office might evolve under their new President, Baseball Operations, here it is.
In choosing the narrative I chose — comparing the Dodgers’ front office under Fred Claire to their front office under Ned Colletti to the Rays’ front office under Friedman — I ignored what you might call some “inconvenient truths.” It’s not so much that I ignored them; there just wasn’t space to properly acknowledge them and still write a story that you would want to read.
Truth number one: The brief Paul DePodesta era (2004-05). Here’s an extended summary of what happened and how it was perceived.
Truth number two: Craig Wright.
Who, you ask?
Wright was a Bill James disciple, one of baseball’s early prominent “sabermetricians.” He’s written a book about baseball history and another about baseball theory. Wright also keeps one of Mike Piazza’s catcher’s masks at his home in Montana, but not in a creepy way.
Anyway, Claire hired Wright has a consultant and kept him on until Tommy Lasorda took over as GM. In a 2010 interview, Wright talked about how the Dodgers under Claire — you might want to sit down for this — were one of the first teams to accept sabermetric thinking into its front office.
Read the full article here: http://www.insidesocal.com/dodgers/2014/10/17/on-paul-depodesta-craig-wright-and-rounding-out-the-dodgers-narrative/
Originally published: October 20, 2014. Last Updated: October 20, 2014.