Astroball by Ben Reiter (November 2018)
Astroball is an examination of how the Houston Astros rebuilt their team and went from being baseball’s worst in 2014 to being champions in 2017. Although I didn’t find this book as informative as I’ve found other similar sports books, I did take down a series of notes and observations in the area of progress, growth, and leadership that I’ll focus on today.
Though much was made of how the Astros used a statistically driven approach to fuel their improvement, turnarounds in sports tend to follow a basic formula – success = develop young players – and in this way, the Astros story was no different from many others (1). They sought players with a growth mindset, a mentality they identified by seeking players whose dissatisfaction with their current situations manifested in the desire and ability to improve. Then, they worked with these players to help them learn the best way to evolve as players. Two of the specific techniques I thought were the most applicable beyond baseball were using setbacks as opportunities to evaluate process and comparing methods to those of more successful players to identify possible improvements.
The Astros worked just as hard to build at the team level as they did at the individual. The focus on team chemistry ran counter to the way statisticians viewed baseball as an individual sport contained within a team environment. However, the Astros took a different view, summarized best by Bill James, baseball's ‘founding father’ of statistical use. Although he once firmly believe in an individual-driven view of baseball, he was quoted in Astroball for saying that he was likely wrong because athletes should not be an exception to the general truth that colleagues always make each other more or less productive. The Astros applied this observation in no better way than when they signed Carlos Beltran to serve as a veteran mentor in his final seasons. Beltran's most significant contribution to the young team was his initiative in establishing communication between the older and younger players, a responsibility he felt always should fall to the most experienced members of a team.
Finally, the Astros tied what happened with the players and team up to the front office to ensure continuity in their approach at all levels of the organization. The front office recognized, for example, that the enemy to continued success was feeling ‘smart enough’. Therefore, they always tweaked their approach to ensure their process improved from one day to the next. They tweaked rather than overhauled because they recognized that the disruption caused by sudden or sweeping changes was never offset by the benefits of the change, especially in large organizations. Perhaps the most important of these considerations was how they maintained the manager's traditional autonomy. Despite the team's reliance on a statistical approach, the front office recognized it was the manager’s job to make decisions that ran counter to the suggestions of regressions and probability. In order to maintain a harmonious working relationship in such an environment, the front office armed the manager with the trends, tools, and analysis needed to make good decisions, but never considered those as the final say for any of the decisions made by the manager.
Footnotes / sounds so simple…
1. Exceptions
The other ways to turn a team around are to do a better job than direct competitors in identifying underpaid players or to create a scheme that opponents cannot counter. Both of these alternatives face the same challenge of maintaining long-term success because underpaid players can demand raises and opposing coaches can devise their own counter-tactics.
