Orioles Welcomed SABR 50 Convention to Baltimore

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This year’s SABR convention featured lots of Orioles content.

The annual SABR convention concluded Sunday after four days of panels and presentations, many of which were related to the Orioles. The Society for American Baseball Research has been at the forefront of all kinds of research over the past half-century. From 1800’s baseball to advanced analytics, they really study every aspect of the sport we love. The annual convention is their biggest event, and this year it was in Baltimore.

I had the pleasure of attending the whole conference, and I figured you would like to hear about the Orioles content of interest. There were plenty of research presentations on other aspects of baseball, but they are not as relevant on Birds Watcher. I will say the non-Orioles highlights were presentations on the Black Sox salaries and the changes in pitch tracking systems, and a panel on Curt Flood‘s Supreme Court case.

Thursday

On Thursday morning, Orioles Vice President and Assistant General Manager of Analytics Sig Mejdal gave the opening remarks on the growth of analytics in MLB front offices. He joined SABR when he was 12, so he was clearly happy to be there. In case you don’t know, Mejdal joined the Orioles with GM Mike Elias and has been instrumental in starting the team’s analytics department and getting the rebuild going. He touched on the organization’s progress at the end of his presentation, and most of the audience questions had to do with the Orioles.

Sig was very open and honest, a refreshing change from the evasive business language we are used to hearing from front office executives. He went over each of the daunting challenges he and Elias faced when they got the jobs. In regard to the rebuild’s progress, he said that there is now a full analytics department with “six really skilled interns”. Mejdal called the lack of international pipeline a “30% handicap,” since Latin American players make up around 30% of rosters. He also threw in that the team’s data system is called OMAR: Orioles Management and Resource, named after a notable character from The Wire.

Mejdal was willing to answer more questions after his slotted hour ended, so a few statistical pioneers and a swarm of college kids looking for jobs followed him out the door. This is where his direct honesty was especially appreciated. He was happy to answer all our questions and hung out outside for close to an hour. I was content to miss the Babe Ruth panel.

If you come from a humanities background, I have some bad news for you. I asked Sig if there is a place in front offices for humanities people, and his answer was basically no. That wasn’t surprising, and it is good to know that before writing endless applications. The standards are so high since everyone must know how to code at the bare minimum. Mejdal said that a team would not hire him today, and he was a NASA engineer!

Since the Orioles have had high picks in recent years, I also asked him whether the draft process changes depending on when the team is picking. He said there is no change in approach whatsoever, but of course it is nicer to pick earlier. Speaking from experience with the Astros and Cardinals, “picking 15th you might only get your 10th choice.” Those numbers might seem backward, but I assume he meant among realistic options.

Thursday afternoon was the SABR awards luncheon where they give out their annual honors, and Tim Kurkjian was the main speaker. Tim is famous for being on ESPN broadcasts, but he also covered the Orioles for the Baltimore Sun in the 80’s. Just a few weeks after getting into the Hall of Fame, he had much to talk about. Most of his speech was telling amusing stories about other Hall of Famers, but he also remarked on how much it means to him to be part of the club.

Johnny Bench took him to the porch in Cooperstown looking out over a lake, which he does with every inductee. He told Kurkjian to look at the lake for one minute and not talk and “think about where you are and who helped you along the way.” Needless to say, it was a very moving moment.

Friday

Friday morning opened with dueling presentations on the Orioles, so I can only tell you about Moe Drabowsky, famous for striking out 11 in Game 1 of the 1966 World Series as a reliever. Author David Krell wrote a poem on Drabowsky’s journey after his baby daughter died. Krell closed by saying that Drawbowsky had a Hall of Fame day because he had an “angel on his shoulder”.

An hour later baseball historian Lee Kluck argued that Harry Dalton should be credited with establishing the Oriole Way. Dalton was GM from 1966-1971, the height of the Orioles success. He put the finishing touches on the Frank Robinson trade and promoted Earl Weaver to MLB manager, among other achievements. Dalton was a mild-mannered and respectful man, so his successful partnership with Weaver is amusing.

At 9:30, lifelong fan Tom Hanrahan had a compelling presentation on the true strength of the 1971 Orioles. That team is famous for having four 20-game winners: Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, and Pat Dobson. It obviously takes a lot of good luck for something that extraordinary to happen, and a steady but not exceptional offense was part of it. Weaver basically used a 14-man roster that season, with the rotation, eight regulars, and a catching platoon. The bench was quite weak and bullpen close to unnecessary.

Using WAR and win shares, Hanrahan showed how the starting pitchers actually weren’t the most valuable players on the team, and the ones who were did not hold up to the rest of the league. Compared to the three other playoff teams, the Orioles had the “worst” big three, but the fourth to twelfth most valuable players were way better. This means, according to Hanrahan, that the ’71 Orioles should be remembered for being one of the most balanced teams in history.

Next up was a panel on Camden Yards with team historian Bill Stetka serving as moderator. The panel included Orioles Senior Vice President, Administration & Experience Greg Bader, and Joe Spear, founder of Populous, which has built 13 of the past 15 MLB stadiums. We are celebrating 30 years of OPACY this season, so it was an appropriate time to look back at the ballpark’s construction. Memorial Stadium had aged poorly by the 1980’s, so much so that the Colts left town. The infamous overnight departure is what prompted the Orioles to open talks for a baseball-specific park.

Spear, who led the design, said he was “fortunate to have two great clients” in the team and the Maryland Stadium Authority, but “they didn’t always agree with each other. Governor wanted to be on time, team wanted a perfect, nostalgic, traditional park.” It seems the team won out. Bader mentioned a cool nugget that Camden was the fastest stadium to reach 50 million fans (17 seasons).

The very best part of the SABR convention was the women in baseball panel, featuring four women who work for the Orioles. Jen Grondahl is Senior Vice President, Community Development & Communications and made a fitting moderator. Nicole Sherry is Director of Field Operations and only the second woman in MLB to be head groundskeeper. Lisa Tolson is Senior Vice President, Human Resources and has worked for the team for 37 years. You might already know Eve Rosenbaum, who was recently promoted to Assistant General Manager.

Most of the hour was about their work and not what it is like to be a woman in baseball, though Tolson said that in the ’80’s women could only have “administrative assistant” or “general staff” as a title even if they had bigger roles. In case you want to be a head groundskeeper one day, then apparently you will need a degree in turf grass science, which was Sherry’s focus. She started as an intern back in 2001 and has been the head for 17 seasons.

Rosenbaum is a rising star in the industry, and that has been clear for a while. After playing softball at Harvard, she actually worked in the NFL commissioner’s office focusing on the CBA and mobile apps before moving to baseball. With the Astros she brought analytics to international scouting, so it is easy to see why Elias brought her along. She grew up in Bethesda, so it was a “dream come true for me to come home”. Part of her role is reviewing every game with Brandon Hyde, which I imagine has been much more pleasant this season. A normal day for her is going to sleep at 1:30 and waking up at 6. “You have to drink a lot of coffee to get through it.”

After the session I asked her about balancing draft preparation with day-to-day front office planning, and she gave me a very full answer. Amateur scouts devote their whole time to college and high schoolers, which means they spend the whole spring on the draft. Rosenbaum and other front office personal start all-day meetings one month before the draft, and sometimes people have to leave to deal with other transactions. With MLB games going on there is more trust placed on what scouts say (take that, Billy Beane).

Friday afternoon brought the media panel featuring MASN’s Kevin Brown, and legendary Red Sox radio broadcaster Joe Castiglione. They are at opposite points in their careers, which made for an interesting dynamic. Brown is in his first year as the main play-by-play man for the Orioles after years calling Syracuse Chiefs games, and he also does college basketball during the winter. Castiglione is now in his 40th season with the Sox, and the team named the radio booth after him a few months ago.

Kevin said it is “much easier” to do MLB games compared to minor league games because his job only requires calling the game. In AAA “you’re the PR department” and have lots of other responsibilities throughout the day. He said there were days he’d sit down at 6:30 with no notes in his scorebook. “I’m pretty anal about my scorebook…it probably looks to the uninitiated likes the ramblings of the Zodiac Killer.”

Saturday

The highlight of Saturday was a one-on-one with Boog Powell, and the room was fuller than for any other speaker. The Athletic’s Dan Connolly had interviewed him before, and mainly let Powell do his thing. As expected, Boog was the funniest speaker. Given all the deserved praise Brooks Robinson received for his defense over the years, the great first baseman pointed out that “someone has to catch those balls”. When someone asked if he could talk about his one inside-the-park home run, Boog gleefully responded, “absolutely!” Because the ball bounced so far away from the fielders, “I didn’t even slide…I’m quite proud of that.”

Speaking about his teammates, Powell says that “it’s like almost no time has passed” since the ones still living get along so well. During the Orioles heyday, the players had something called Kangaroo Court where they would “accuse” and fine each other for poor play after wins. “You couldn’t have thin skin in this bunch.” Boog thinks he should have won the MVP award in 1969, so the following year “I only hit 35 home runs and drove in 100, it was an OK year.” He did in fact win it in 1970.

Powell was a talented athlete long before donning the orange and black, as he led Lakeland, Florida to the Little League World Series. He was the pitcher on the team and nearly threw his arm out since there were no limits back then. He also played football in high school and nearly went to Florida, but the Orioles signed him for $25,000.

When he started Boog’s Barbeque, it was meant to be a one-off thing. He and his business partners bought 300 pounds of meat and sold out before first pitch. The next day they bought 800 and sold out in the third inning. The restaurant has been a mainstay at Camden ever since. Powell still frequents on gamedays, talking to fans and signing autographs. “I thought it was important to be there every night”.

There is much more to say, but I am already at 2000 words and missing my self-imposed deadlines. I will have a companion piece in the coming days on some of the best quotes from the SABR conference. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to know more about any of the presentations or SABR in general. In the meantime, I will let Kevin Brown have the last word:

“We get paid to talk about baseball, that’s insane. How?”

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This year’s SABR convention featured lots of Orioles content.

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Schedule