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Identifying and Quantifying Good CoachingHow much is good coaching worth?Can we even determine what makes a good coach?Is good coaching situational?Unfortunately for the credibility of the study, Mazzone’s staffs didn’t respond quite as well in Baltimore in 2006 and 2007, so we still don’t have a good way of figuring out the impact of coaching, either in general or in specific situations.Upton reached the heights predicted for him?Can effort outweigh talent?And there are plenty of players who have achieved more than was expected based on their talent. Is there anything to indicate which players won’t progress as planned, and which will surpass their ceilings?Is it related to effort and/or the willingness to take instruction and work hard?If so, is there a good way to measure that quality before investing millions of dollars in bonuses and instruction into a player?Assessing Developmental Strategies for Minor League PitchersAre the Rangers and Nolan Ryan on the right track in disdaining pitch counts?Why do so many young pitchers still get hurt?Developing pitchers for long, effective careers in the majors appears to be just as difficult as ever.Pitch counts and innings limits don’t seem to have substantially reduced injuries, and may have led to pitchers not being able to pitch as much as their counterparts of yesteryear.Is this true, and if so, can it be fixed?How should teams handle their prospects so as to realize as much value as possible from them?Should the 2011 Rays have called up Desmond Jennings sooner?Clearly Pujols is a once in a lifetime talent, but how much is that really worth?For the 2010–2011 offseason, that value was somewhere in the $4.5 to $5 million range.In this scenario, Pujols will generate over $300 million of value for the team that signs him, making a $200 million contract an easy win for the team.On average, though, this looks like a very good deal for the winning bidder.But is it a good deal for all teams?Can a team like the Astros, which only won 56 games in 2011 and doesn’t have much hope for rapid improvement, justify signing such a big deal?Nate Silver addressed this topic in the first Baseball Between the Numbers and found the marginal value of adding another win to be fairly low unless you’re on the cusp of a playoff berth.Between those points, however, the value of an extra win can be much higher.Once a team reaches 90 wins, the value of an extra win is still high, but starts to decline because in a lot of years, those extra wins are unnecessary to make the playoffs.For the bad teams, investing in scouting and player development will probably pay off more than buying wins on the free agent market.Creating a Framework for Evaluating TradesWhen the Braves acquired Mark Teixeira and Ron Mahay from the Texas Rangers for Elvis Andrus, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison, and Beau Jones, who won the trade?Did it make sense for the Red Sox to trade Jeff Bagwell for Larry Andersen?Based on an estimate of current and future value, and salary, it’s possible to determine a net present value for both sides of the deal and determine the likely winner. While effective in a general sense, this approach to grading trades overlooks the context of a specific trade, and also appears to ignore the risk premium.Is Alex Anthopolous a genius?Those forfeited picks will go into a lottery.The combined effects of these changes are unknown, but they almost certainly will change the value of a draft pick.While it will likely take some time for the true results to be understood, there’s an opportunity for a smart team to take advantage of the shakeout period.Flags fly forever, but were the Marlins’ fire sales counterproductive?As much as we might hope that the pride of winning would trump all other concerns, owners aren’t running a charity.They own teams to make money, whether on a yearly basis or through the eventual sale of the franchise.Optimizing the Competitive Ecology of the GameCan the Pirates or the Royals ever be successful again?Are consistent playoff appearances by the Yankees and Red Sox good for the game?Baseball is more than just a collection of individual teams.Is increased parity the desired result?What is the best way to grow the entire sport and both improve the quality of play and ensure the best experience for the largest number of people?Teasing out the answer to these questions is a difficult challenge, but one that’s ripe for investigation.Determining Optimal Pitcher Usage StrategiesWas Tony La Russa a genius or were his innovations destructive?Over the past few decades, more and more innings have been going to worse and worse pitchers.The trend to fewer starts and shorter relief appearances has reduced the average workload for pitchers.Has it had an impact on the injury rate or the average career length for a pitcher?Do we see better results from the pitchers who are pitching less?Determining Optimal Roster DesignDoes it make sense for teams to carry 13 pitchers?As pitchers’ workloads drop, teams are carrying more of them.Since roster size has remained constant, that means position players have been traded for pitchers.This reduces the amount of flexibility managers have to platoon, pinch hit, or make defensive replacements.Is there a better strategy that can be employed?Quantifying the Manager’s Impact on WinningWas Joe Torre a horrible manager before he got to the Yankees?How much of the game is won or lost on the field and how much in the dugout?Disentangling how a manager affects the outcome of a game is a very difficult task.Many have studied the problem of how to quantify a manager’s impact without satisfying results.Does it make sense to play the infield in?What about pitching out?Managers and players make numerous strategic decisions every game.While many appear to be made with the gut, clearly others are calculated decisions.How should these choices be approached?They found that despite the sacrifice bunt looking like a poor decision in nearly every situation according to a basic run expectancy analysis, it can be a smart percentage play with a poor hitter, an excellent bunter, or sometimes just to keep the defense honest.Since then, the sabermetric community has exploded.Where once Bill James, Baseball Prospectus, and Rob Neyer were the standard bearers for sabermetric thought, today just about every media outlet and innumerable blogs espouse at least some of the sabermetric view.The past decade has also seen tremendous technical advances.To date, researchers such as Mike Fast, Harry Pavlidis, Dave Allen, and many, many others have had fascinating findings with this new information, but as a community, we’re nowhere close to extracting all we can.This new style of detailed information has led to a bifurcated approach to studying baseball.There are currently two major schools of sabermetrics operating today.Each advancement has been significant, but they all rely on the same data that’s existed for more than a century, all relying upon an aggregation of outcomes.These studies better account for nuance, and in theory could properly allocate credit for the play.I think the problem here has been turning the data we’ve been collecting into a practicable method of determining value.He identifies the next stage of evolution as transitioning from classical sabermetrics to quantum sabermetrics by marrying the macro and micro analysis.What is the most effective way to sequence pitches?Before Josh Kalk joined the Tampa Bay Rays front office, he investigated how pitchers ordered their various pitches and identified certain patterns that exhibited success.Is it possible to derive a game theoretical approach that represents the best way to sequence the various pitches in a given hurler’s repertoire?Can pitchers induce weak contact?What percentage of fielding is good positioning?Today, we combine positioning, reaction time, and actual range into the range category of fielding.With better technology we might be able to break down the fielding components even further and get a better understanding of how big a role coaches play in fielding.Why are there still so many injuries, and can we do anything about it?Despite pitchers having been treated with kid gloves over the past few decades, they’re still getting injured as often as ever.What causes injuries to pitchers?Is there any way to prevent them?How will new medical advances like bionics and gene therapy affect the game?New technologies in medicine have raised many ethical concerns in everyday life.We’ve seen that athletes are willing to try illicit means to get ahead, and odds are these new treatments will be much more effective than those of the past.How should baseball handle these new options, and how will they affect our ability to compare players across eras?We know that batters often string together stretches of especially good or poor performance.Or is locked in just a way to explain a string of successes, without any predictive value either?Do teams have certain pitching/hitting philosophies?The past 11 years have seen the sabermetric community blossom.It’s far larger, far more respected, and far more capable of dealing with the questions baseball throws at it.The technological advances that we’re just now starting to see the fruits of have created tremendous opportunities for us to gain more insight into the game and to influence the outcomes to a far greater extent.The opportunity is there for analysts of all stripes to make their mark by answering these questions and many, many others.We look forward to recapping their successes in another decade.