Empiricism

One founding principle that this blog will attempt to focus upon is empiricism: employment of methods derived from observation or experiment.  In other words, I'll make a concerted effort to stress what actually happens rather than what should or should not happen.  Without an approach that heavily weighs the empirical results, the practice of accountability loses meaning.  And with a general decrease in accountability comes a general decrease in the role that extrinsic incentives play as catalysts to the success of individuals (which, in the discussion(s) to follow, will largely be members of sports management).

As an example: In January, I had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with the Padres CEO and team president, Tom Garfinkel.  While discussing the Padres' decision to trade (and therefore not retain) Adrian Gonzalez, Mr. Garfinkel reiterated ownership's position regarding high paid players:

“The reality is there’s a tipping point on the economics that will make it impractical to hold onto any player.  Can we afford a $20 million player? No.  Can we afford a $15 million a year player.  Eh, probably not.  Maybe.” - Jeff Moorad on the Darren Smith Show, 12/19/2009.

However, using ownership's statement of a payroll resting in the sixty to seventy million dollar range, empirical evidence exists to contradict the absolute notion that the Padres cannot afford a twenty million (per year) player.  The Florida Marlins won the World Series in recent history with a payroll of forty-two million dollars, which is equivalent to a team winning the World Series on a sixty-two million payroll where a twenty million (per year) player contributes absolutely nothing.

But, more importantly, the assumption of a sixty to seventy million payroll has been assumed without empirical evidence that a higher payroll (either marginally or significantly) has proven to be less desirable than a sixty to seventy million dollar payroll.  The highest opening day payroll the Padres have ever had was seventy-three million, in 2008, and eight million dollars worth of Jim Edmonds was released before the end of May.

A more accurate statement by Jeff Moorad would read:

"The reality is we don't know what the economic tipping point is for holding onto players.  Can we afford a $20 million player?  We don't know; we haven't tested enough payroll structures in San Diego to gather empirical evidence to support a specific salary structure.  I guess we'll have to find out."

Of course, we'll never hear that (for more than just the fact that the Moorad group dropped their bid to acquire a majority of the Padres after approval of the Moorad ownership group was rejected by Major League Baseball).  But, as a founding principle, empiricism will be highlighted here in the various posts to come. Hopefully, future readers hold me to this; empiricism demands nothing less.