Some bits from a splendid article about the Chicago Cubs.
“All combined knowledge of baseball probably represents three per cent of the game—ninety-seven per cent is unknown,” Epstein told me this spring. “So we’re constantly asking each other questions, testing hypotheses, challenging other people’s opinions—asking if there’s a better way to do things, a better way to capture data, gather data, work with data, testing out old scouting axioms to see if they can be proven by the numbers or disproven by the numbers.”
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“I asked two quantitative people, working separately, to study the entire league and to figure out if there was a statistical way to characterize the success of other ball clubs,”
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“Everybody wants to win, but, if all you think about is winning and losing, you get tight,” he told me. “But process is fearless. Just focus on what you have to do. Play the game properly, and the rest will take care of itself.” To underscore that point with his players, Maddon, in spring training, handed out T-shirts bearing such aphorisms as “Do Simple Better” and “Try Not to Suck.”