Sam Perlozzo is in as the Orioles manager. What’s more interesting, however, is the discussion of psychological testing, and how Beattie and Flanagan disagreed on its use:
Beattie denied that he and Flanagan had philosophical differences in running the team. But numerous team sources say that Beattie thought Dave Ritterpusch, the Orioles’ director of baseball information and Flanagan’s close friend, had been too heavy-handed in the decision-making. At issue is Ritterpusch’s strong belief in psychological testing and quantitative analysis, a philosophy Flanagan has embraced, perhaps too much, according to some in the organization.
“I think it’s a little unfair how much attention it’s gotten,” Flanagan said. “You’re not doing your due diligence if you’re not accumulating as much data as you can.”
Beattie said the information he received from Ritterpusch was useful but said the practice of using such techniques to determine player transactions was “not well-defined” and not the only way to judge talent.
But several internal Orioles memos obtained by The Post show that Beattie did not stop the use of psychological tests to determine player signings, because, many close to the team say, of Flanagan’s relationship with Ritterpusch and Angelos.
I’m very interested in seeing how this psychological testing pans out. It looks like with Flanagan in charge, they’ll go full bore with the model.
The problem with psych testing is that it’s sort of correlational and not necessarily causal. Look up the phrase “iceberg profile” for some info on this stuff. My question was always: Does a player become good because he is an “iceberg profile”, or is he an “iceberg profile” because he is good?
I did a master’s in sport psychology, and we did spend a fair amount of time on this stuff. There’s a short test that potential NFL players take, in which cornerbacks will consistently score best, quarterbacks doing pretty well, and linemen doing the worst. It’s supposed to be a test of how fast you can make decisions and solve problems when time.
One test we focused a lot on was the TAIS – the Test of Attentional and Interpersonal Style. I know for certain this is used by at least one profesisonal basketball team as a part of their draft scouting. It gives a pretty good insight into, of course, a player’s interpersonal style. So while it won’t give you some kind of magic palm reading to tell you if a player is going to be a “hard worker”, it will give you a quantitative insight into how he might fit in with other teammates in a “team chemistry” sort of way. I.E., when Curt Schilling says he doesn’t think ARod would fit in on the Red Sox, the TAIS would probably back this up numerically. As far as whether or not team chemistry improves chances of winning… that’s for someone else to determine.
My favorite part of these tests is the built-in lie scale. As a validity check, some questions are used in calculating the degree to which it appears a test-taker is lying. And while the purpose of this is to remove liars from the data set, I think it would be amusing to note which tested players appear to be lying – either because they’re not taking the test seriously, or they’re just trying to give a favorable impression of themselves to the test administrator and their potential employers.
Maybe Perlozzo can entice his best friend, Leo Mazzone, to try a new challenge and come to Baltimore.
I think all potential owners of baseball teams should be
given this test. The ones who test well get to have a
team. (That will get rid of all current owners, most of
whom should be in jail).