Caesars Palace, Las Vegas
The
growth of sports analytics is fueled in substantial measure by gambling. The
dawn of legalized sports betting nationwide will only magnify the competitive
edge bettors seek from endless streams of data.
Caesars Palace is ground zero for sports gambling. The
sheer number of monitors displaying games and analytics at the sports book here
would make a NASA Mission Control engineer blush.
I’m a big believer in the power of data analytics, including for constructing teams and ensuring their effectiveness. I’m an
even bigger believer, however, in the role that human character, motivation,
collaboration, and communication must play in team success.
Yes, of course, team owners and managements should know how to balance
human nature with the technical measurement of performance. That’s just the
problem, however. Some of them have little or no dexterity with this balancing act. The leaders of some franchises are just not comfortable with one side of this seesaw or the other because, well, it’s
not how they came up through the system.
The Boston Red Sox rode Dave Dombrowski’s
old-school, the-hell-with-analytics approach to the 2018 championship, for example. Yet he’s
gone now, a victim of his own “spending from the gut” on questionable,
long-term contracts for aging stars that might have been avoided with a heartier embrace of analytics.
Dombrowski has been replaced in a lurch far in the opposite
direction by a young analytics guru who cuddles up at night to performance and
salary-cap analytics. Don’t get me wrong, GM Chaim Bloom is a genius who knows how
to develop cost-effective farm systems. Just witness his success building the Tampa Bay Rays.
What’s needed, however, are more leaders who are comfortable in
both domains. Our corporations, universities, militaries, and sports franchises must
be far more intentional about developing leaders who arm themselves with
analytic insights, but not simply as means to and end. This new breed of leaders embraces data science, for sure, but
is equally unafraid to make decisions intuitively, on a hunch, and as close
observers of human character. After all, aren't hunches better played when
informed by performance data?
For those of you who continue to avoid data analytics, take
heart in the Washington Nationals' recent World Series victory. This wonderful,
old-school bunch - what one scribe said includes a bunch of craggy,
cigar-smoking scouts - have not yet jumped on the data analytics bandwagon. They beat a Houston Astros organization that seems at times completely beholden to the data gods. Instead, the Astros’ reputation is that of a
cold, calculating organization often oblivious to the foibles of human nature.
Just witness their tone-deaf, ham-handed initial reactions to the misogyny
displayed by former Assistant GM Brandon Taubman as well as the recent allegations that they have been stealing pitching signals using video cameras.
By far the best team on paper, the Houston Astros should
have won three consecutive World Series trophies by now instead of just one in 2017.
Interestingly, they were beaten by the then-old-school Red Sox in the AL playoffs in 2018 and the Nationals this year. It's just too bad that organizations lurch from firm allegiance to one approach or the other instead of balancing data analytics and human nature with wisdom and consistency.
