Clubhouse Egosim

Chemistry is what we call it in baseball, but all of our saber analyses indicate it has little to no affect on baseball. The psych reports always say that compensation, workplace design (stadiums and clubhouses in our case), and even office lighting have no discernible affect on productivity (or even how people feel at work); rather, it all comes down to the work ethic and camaraderie of those in the office. If the office has a generally good and hardworking chemistry, anyone who joins the group will be good and hardworking.

HOWEVER, baseball is a highly unique job because each individual player doesn’t work for their team; they work for themselves. Dioner Navarro is the only one at bat when he waddles up to the plate, so he is batting for his contract, or his future used-car lot, or his hopes for a coaching job in the winter ball leagues. If Navarro has another bad season, he will be traded or dropped in a moment — the team can’t play sentimentality games; nor can Navarro sulk about being dropped once he finds a new team. So Navarro is his own best interest.

More than in any other sport I can think of, baseball players are highly interchangeable. Guys have been traded in between doubleheaders and the only thing that keeps them from playing twice is the time it takes to get fitted for a uniform. Baseball players don’t need to learn play books or terminology; they yell “I’ve got it,” or point one finger for fastball (okay, maybe the catcher’s signs might take time to learn). Because of this (and the large number of players it takes to run a successful team), baseball has a much higher frequency of trades and transactions. Players contracts are truly a type of Bearer Bonds, so players have to perform their best at any time because they are protecting their future prospects and their careers.

Sincerely,
Stalin and Mao

like posts like this from R.J. are his way of giving a big middle finger to the general Rays fan that stops by here from time to time. It baits them into coming in here guns-a-blazin’ which leads to the banhammer from kericr.

That the conclusion overstates the case.

Off the field issues are going to affect on the field performance. If a guy’s marriage is going south, his kid is sick, or he hates going to work every day – all of these things are going to be in the background.

For the quantitatively inclined, however, this is all irrelevant – the variables can’t be defined and the effect can’t be predicted. Even if you had all the pertinent information, people are going to react differently. If you have two guys who despise each other in the clubhouse, maybe they stop showing up except at the very last minute and aren’t working out…or maybe they’re both so competitive that they start busting their tail trying to outdo the other and wind up with record-setting seasons. Maybe the guy with marital issues can’t focus on his swing, or maybe he’s the type to put everything he has into the job so that he’s not thinking about home. We don’t know, but more than that – we can’t know.

With respect to the psych/philosophical analysis – it’s just not always true. People act against their own self-interest all the time. How many people smoke, knowing that it’s detrimental to their future health? How many people go on a diet, but decide to sneak the brownie sundae for dessert anyway? Desires conflict, willpower varies, commitment changes. The human brain is very bad at processing short term versus long term rewards.

Using “chemistry” to guide personnel decisions is often a bad idea, and using it as an explanation smacks as a copout. But that doesn’t really address whether it exists or the amount of impact it has.