The Futility of Projections & the New CEO

Projections make me crazy. Let's take a quiz to see if my feeling that projections can be a stunning exercise in futility has at least a little merit. See if you can fill in the name of the appropriate Pittsburgh Pirate for the following questions. (Some questions have multiple answers.)

1. ___________ has the potential to be a third starter in the majors.


2.___________ is the kind of guy who can turn a franchise around.


3.____________ has the potential to be very, very special.


4. ____________ will be a perennial All-Star. You can regularly expect .270-.290 average, 30 home runs, and at least a 100 RBI's.


Ready?

Answer 1: Bryan Bullington (said by David Littlefield when he drafted him with the first overall pick--given Littlefield's record, there are probably other Pirates of whom this has been said as well.

Answer 2: Not to bring up painful memories, but a New York Met said that after a rookie Zach Duke dominated the Mets. Yes, an opposing player said that about one of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Answer 3: Granted, it's Jim Tracy, and he loves the word "special" so much it's highly ingratiating. But I think Tracy has used this word this season to refer to Capps, Snell, Gorzellany, and Maholm, minimally. Sure, I think of "special" as a particularly special "Tracyism" where you wonder exactly what he means, but I think he's saying, these players could turn out to be really, really good. (And yes, he's biased. But we'll get to that point in just a second.)

Answer 4: Um, does Jason Bay's performance this season ring any bells? Sure, Bay's knee is apparently not in good shape, but what about the majority of knowledgeable people who surely didn't believe they were telling tall tales when offering such a projection?

So what's the bottom line about all of these projections? Well, in certain cases, at least at the present moment in time, these projections, all of which probably appeared to be legitimate at the time of the projection, are, at this particular juncture, wrong.

Zach Duke is not currently turning around the Bucco franchise. Jason Bay will fall short of projected and expected numbers. Before surgery and rehabilitation, Bryan Bullington might have been a number 3 starter, but based on first impressions, best-case would appear to be a back-end, rather than middle-of-rotation, starter. In the case of the projections for these three players, it's worth noting that independent (e.g. not PBC affiliated teams) people made a couple of those projections. It was a Met who said what he said about the rookie phenom Duke--a freaking New York Met! Many scouts of opposing teams and lots of fantasy owners made a judgment about expected production from Jason Bay. In cases like these, there wasn't a blind, provincial, pro-PBC bias clouding projections.

In Tracy's case, of course, obviously, there's an obvious bias in referring to some of his young players as potentially being very special. (Ugh, gag me, writing about the “special” Tracyism makes me want to gag.) You don't think Tracy would like to put it on his resume, even after leaving this organization, that he "helped to develop" a couple of young pitchers who later became 20 game winners or that he was the first manager who recognized that Matt Capps had what it took to be a great closer? As a manager, Tracy's got a keen interest in letting his players know he believes in their talent and in developing that talent. Tracy's projections, if they pan out, will reflect well on him, at least in his mind and probably in the minds of others in baseball. But there's no doubt Tracy's projections are biased.

Why, however, am I writing a post about the fact (well known to anyone who's read any of my writing) that projections make me absolutely crazy? When we're projecting what a young player is going to do and waiting for him to fulfill a good projection, good grief. I tend to go stir-crazy and insane waiting for projections to be fulfilled. It's frustrating when good projections don't pan out in the expected time frame, and it's incredibly disappointing when good projections never come to actual fruition. It's always more fun when a "low upside" projection is proven wrong. Yet the bottom line remains that as a fan, I hate playing the projection game due to how futile certain projections pan out to be. Projecting a career trajectory for professional athletes is not how I make a living, and as such, I prefer to play a bit of a waiting game when it comes to projections.

Which brings me to the new CEO the Pirates announced this Thursday. At this point, I could make lots of projections: Oh, it's good that these people quoted in that ESPN insider article speak well of him. Well, at least he's smart. But, on the other hand, he's worked in the MLB front office? He worked closely with Bud Selig, the commissioner I detest? Doesn't hiring a guy like this just mean the Nuttings will continue their usual ways of making quite a nice profit at the hands of gullible fans?

And in the midst of this internal monologue comes the thought that I must remember when a player who’s been projected to be good/great/ “special” isn’t living up to that particular projection, and the thought that comes is, "Wait." In the case of players, of course you can't and shouldn't wait forever--but there's something to be said for not jumping to irrational and erroneous conclusions based on a small sample size. After the thought of "Wait" comes the second and more important thought which should be applied to the new CEO: "Judge the performance.” Does his performance indicate that he’s getting the desired results?

I could make all kinds of projections about what kind of CEO this new guy will be, and I'm pretty sure different people have different opinions. Unfortunately for fans of the team who don't get to dictate (sorry, folks, not until the team loses enough fans to start losing money) what Mr. Nutting does, fans will have to wait. Projections can be fun, interesting, and insightful, to a degree. But projections, good, bad, indifferent, for both players and CEO's, must be judged in line with productivity in terms of actual performance. While we can see hints that point to desirable or undesirable traits, just as scouting young players remains an inexact science, so, too, is projecting the quality of this new CEO an inexact science. Until we actually see how he handles his job, well, you know, that projection about Zach Duke sure was nice, but given Duke's 2007 performance, how much is that projection really worth? (Depending on who you're talking to, the projection can still stand, or it was a mirage, or the truth is somewhere between those two extremes.)

Given the fact that being a PBC fan has made this idealist a bit jaded, cynical, and pessimistic, I'd prefer not to hear all the potentially great things about this new CEO. As Bucco fans can tell you, false hope just sucks, and it's sucked the life out of a franchise that was once a proud winner. That doesn't mean that I only want to hear about the new CEO's negative attributes. Rather, it just means that I want to follow a cautious mold: Sure, share your "gloom and doom" or "glowing and raving" projections but please, as with all projections, take them with one large grain of salt.

When it comes to projections, I'll read them, with interest, the same way I read conflicting scouting and projection reports with interest. But just as I wait (depending on the position, player's age, upside, etc) for awhile before trying to determine which projection was accurate, I can only allow actual performance, rather than projections about anticipated performance, to determine if this new CEO is a step forward or another way of maintaining the same old style that's resulted in a near-record-breaking level of consecutive seasons of losing baseball.