Comments on: You’ll probably have to lie on your resume to work for the Cubs

By: blackandbluedivision

blackandbluedivision — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:47:45 +0000

Lovable losers. The main draw is their they ultimate underdog. So if they win they lose a buttload of money.

By: stew48

stew48 — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 00:07:36 +0000

cur68—I am an ancient Cubs fan. Thanks for the laughs. All I could think of during the comments was that scouts and others no longer evaluate players. For instance, would you use Oracle to describe Bill Mazeroski’s pivot at second base on the DP? It is still, easlily, the very best I have ever seen. Would Williams’ ability to see the seams be reduced to some nerd term for evaluation? I bet 90% of today’s managers shudder when called into player evaluation meetings. No matter, thanks again for some chuckles.

By: 18thstreet

18thstreet — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:50:57 +0000

Good grief, the man won two world series with the Boston Red Sox. We’re willing to overlook a few flaws.

By: flosox

flosox — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 21:12:29 +0000

I’m not sure I understand any of that to EVEN lie about it…ha ha

By: mazblast

mazblast — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 16:52:38 +0000

Nothing that went wrong with the Red Sox during Theo’s tenure was his fault. Everything that went right with the Red Sox in 2004 and 2007, even if done by Duquette before The Boy Wonder arrived on the scene, was Theo’s doing. Theo said so, therefore it was true.

It must be great to control the narrative the way Theo used to be able to do.

Getting back to the subject–Looks like a wish list to me. Seven “must” qualifications; they’ll be lucky to get five.

By: 18thstreet

18thstreet — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:10:36 +0000

I think they should just sign the players with the most RBIs.They don’t need fancy computers.

By: unlost1

unlost1 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:53:01 +0000

no, i don’t have that experience, but i’m willing to learn. would that work?

By: psousa1

psousa1 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:37:55 +0000

There should be a disclaimer in the job description that states: “President (Epstein) reserves the right to scrap job description and lavish money on players who have demonstrated they are in a career decline and then claim he was a victim of .”

Good luck Cub fans. You have a guy at the helm who only points with his index finger and never his thumb and when all else fails leaks the dirty laundry to Peter Gammons.

(It is ironic how after Epstein triumphantly declared the emancipation of baseball ops, from the front office, the Red Sox went into decline and became a POS on wheels. Oh wait, I just read this last week, it wasn’t his fault.)

By: derklempner

derklempner — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 08:01:20 +0000

I didn’t say anything about only accessing databases, but the job description mentioned administrating them. Each of the player development guys have access to the same large database, but actually administrating it? No, that’s something they only let one or two IT people handle; people with extensive experience and who do all of the coding and administration for it, plus other internal sites and databases.

By: cur68

cur68 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 06:40:41 +0000

With the help of google anyone can fake SPSS.

By: jwbiii

jwbiii — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:50:01 +0000

If you can handle Matlab, you can fake SPSS.

By: koongoshad

koongoshad — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 04:49:10 +0000

As a diehard Cubby fan it really hurts to see them not win, but it gives us solace that we are not and the third class team of the city. All said, i think we are on the right track. hopefully before we need to start our bucket list we will see a championship.

Keep the prayers going

By: umrguy42

umrguy42 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 03:57:40 +0000

Advanced degree or equivalent experience in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or a related quantitative field. – MS in CompSci, with PhD work (incomplete)
Demonstrated project management, problem-solving, and teaching abilities. – Some management, and did teaching work as a Grad TA (including complete control over a couple classes).
Demonstrated ability to communicate difficult and complex concepts at an appropriate level to colleagues possessing a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. – Hopefully. See the teaching, also, presented a few papers at conferences. (Maybe call this “work in progress”?)
Demonstrated expert-level knowledge (of at least 5 years) with baseball-specific data, modern statistical techniques, and sabermetric analysis. – Ok, you’ve got me here.
Demonstrated expertise with R, STATA, SPSS, SAS, or similar software. – Okay, nope. I can claim some passing experience with Matlab, though
Demonstrated expertise with SQL Server, Microsoft Access, My SQL, Oracle, database administration/structuring, data warehousing and data modeling. – Yes, sorta, yes, a little, not really, no, and I don’t think so. Can fudge it, maybe. Took a data mining class in grad school.
Knowledge and demonstrated ability in the areas of programming, software-coding, ETL, and/or machine learning techniques. – See the data mining bit. Would have to fudge it.

Of course, my biggest problem? I’m a Cardinals fan

By: jimmerg31385

jimmerg31385 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:52:46 +0000

If you know how to use sas you most likely now SQL. Stata is extremely easy to use.

By: thebadguyswon

thebadguyswon — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:49:12 +0000

Most of them are junk.

By: thebadguyswon

thebadguyswon — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:39:18 +0000

Listen man….I’d love to see it. And they are building a nice team. But I am still in shock that managed to lose that 03 NLCS. It has me believing they never will.

By: thebadguyswon

thebadguyswon — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:37:34 +0000

True too.

By: 84cubs

84cubs — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:17:23 +0000

SO clever.

By: churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged

churchoftheperpetuallyoutraged — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:50:54 +0000

You are going to be working with Tom Tango, one of the brightest minds in the SABR world (and the guy who created wOBA and FIP). You don’t think it’s a good idea to know how to query DB’s using SQL/Access when you are running some model(s)?

By: Minoring In Baseball

Minoring In Baseball — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:42:53 +0000

Looks like they’re looking for a ‘seven tool’ emplyee. They may have to draft a four tool one, and hope he/she develops the other requirements necessary.
http://minoringinbaseball.com/

By: indaburg

indaburg — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:09:45 +0000

Great, now you’ve got me wasting time looking at all of MLB’s available job openings.

By: Roger Moore

Roger Moore — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:55:28 +0000

I’ll agree with Jeremy Fox that it’s not written for a specific candidate. If it were, they would give very specific skills rather than more general categories. For example, in the software category they list 4 packages and mention “or similar”. If they were targeting a specific person, they’d list only the software that person already knows and leave out the other software; they’d certainly never include “or similar”, which opens the door for other candidates.

By: thebadguyswon

thebadguyswon — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:54:52 +0000

Never gonna happen. Or put it this way, we’ll all be dead before it does.

By: mianfr

mianfr — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:45:51 +0000

Do they accept new grads?

By: Dug

Dug — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:28:47 +0000

Nate Silver qualifies. Unquestionably. Founder: Baseball Prospectus so he knows baseball stats. If he can explain the nuances of elections, polls and demographics to us mere mortals, he can teach anyone anything. As for the rest of the programming ability, who cares? He knows his stuff!

By: cur68

cur68 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:17:51 +0000

You invented TOOTBLAN. Put that on the CV. Its gonna count BIG.

By: APBA Guy

APBA Guy — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:13:49 +0000

A buddy of mine actually has a job like half of this for the Nationals. He structures the stat database(s) and runs a lot of custom queries in response to various team searches and problems, so that’s why the knowledge of Oracle and SQL Server comes in handy. The MS Access stuff comes into play when they need a smallish database done quickly for some rush job with data not in the big database, or extracts from the big database that need some weird manipulations that are easier to do outside the big data structure. In addition to the stat package work there is a lot of custom work that goes on, hence the programming (mainly Oracle scripting, not a lot of C/C++) and so forth. My buddy’s job is obviously on the data side. The higher level interpretation of the results is left to others.

Which is what surprises me about what the Cubs want. They want the heavy nerd component AND the interpretive qualitative baseball side as well. They may find that, it’s only 1 job, but a lot of teams split the position because the nerd side really is a full-time gig if you expect it to be done with serious expertise. Just the Oracle component alone requires serious investment in time, study , and experience.

By: jwbiii

jwbiii — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:13:13 +0000

Advanced degree or equivalent experience in statistics, mathematics, computer science, or a related quantitative field. 21 years as a programmer/analyst Demonstrated project management, problem-solving, and teaching abilities. Not so much. Demonstrated ability to communicate difficult and complex concepts at an appropriate level to colleagues possessing a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. Yeah. Demonstrated expert-level knowledge (of at least 5 years) with baseball-specific data, modern statistical techniques, and sabermetric analysis. What's an expert? Demonstrated expertise with R, STATA, SPSS, SAS, or similar software. 20 years with SAS. Demonstrated expertise with SQL Server, Microsoft Access, My SQL, Oracle, database administration/structuring, data warehousing and data modeling. No, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, yes. Knowledge and demonstrated ability in the areas of programming, software-coding, ETL, and/or machine learning techniques. You can't have database and stat pack experience without programming/coding experience. You can't have data warehousing experience without ETL experience. That's a clown question, Theo.

By: Jeremy Fox

Jeremy Fox — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:12:46 +0000

I doubt it. That combination of mathematical and programming skills is expected in various fields. And I’m sure every major league team already employs at least one, and probably more, people with those sorts of skills. So I doubt the Cubs tailored the ad to the one person who could fill the position, because probably there are numerous people in the world who could fill it.

By: cur68

cur68 — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:09:38 +0000

So I’m good for this gig then? Cool.