Hiring that lady from “Nanny 911” to deal with Jose Guillen

Give me a fake diploma from Upstairs Medical School of Hollywood, and I’ll teach these guys the mental skills they need to succeed in life! I’ll do it for a fraction of the price that Buddy will.

Clearly some GM’s know a lot about stats, nearly state of the art statistical analysis and things like Pitch f/x data. It saddens me that Dayton Moore almost certainly cannot be counted in that number.

I think that Jin Wong is a full-time team employee, and Mats Olkin is (or at least was) an outside consultant, from what little I’ve been able to find.

I wonder to what degree Wong is actually a stats guy. Or perhaps I should say I wonder what kind of “stats guy” Wong is. According to his bio on the Royals official team site, “[h]e joined the Royals as Scouting Operations Coordinator in 2000, was promoted to Manager-Scouting Operations in 2001, Manager-Baseball Operations in 2002 and Director-Baseball Operations in 2004.” Is a real stats guy actually going to get into an organization through the scouting door? Perhaps. Or perhaps he’s a more traditional, tools-based scouting guy who, at the GM’s behest, has turned his attention to stats. That’s not bad, but it doesn’t sound like a cream of the crop statistical analyst. But I’m just speculating.

“Wong works closely with GM Dayton Moore and Assistant GM Dean Taylor in providing statistical analysis and assisting with contract negotiations, arbitration preparation, player salary information and budgetary procedure.” I may just be cynical here, but that sounds a lot to me like he’s primarily focused on determining how much a player is worth in dollars in the marketplace. In short, it sounds more like market analysis than baseball analysis. I’m more than a little concerned that instead of asking his stats guy, “how good is a .285/.300/.500 first baseman with poor defense,” Moore is asking him, “how much is a ".300 hitter worth on the FA market?”

But, yeah, i think for half of Yabuta’s (just to pick out one guy who seems easilyl replaceable) the Royals could have a very useful stats department.

Oh my god, yes. I’m not sure how much teams spend on this, but I think that for 1/3 of Yabuta’s 2009 salary, the Royals could have one of the best stats departments in baseball. Moore may be the Royals GM for a long time. And he might even have some success. Hell, he could potentially have a lot of success. But the Royals won’t genuinely get with the times and make use of all potential resources until the next guy. And maybe not even then.