About the Author
My name is Craig Wright and I am the researcher and author of all the stories in the series Pages from Baseball’s Past, so I suppose that makes it easy to know who to blame. What you might wish to know about me in regard to the story series is probably already covered in the page “About the Story Series.”
But at times, usually only in the research notes, readers get little glimpses of my ties to baseball outside of my interest in the story series and the history of baseball. Some folks naturally get curious about that. I offer here material about my career that appeared at one time on the now defunct website diamondappraised.com, back in my three-year run writing The Diamond Appraised — Baseball Column. I also add this link to an in-depth interview I did about my career in 2010 for the “Touring the Bases” series done by Seamheads.com.
Click here for “Touring the Bases with Craig Wright” – interview with Seamheads.com in 2010
I worked 21 years in major league baseball, primarily in the area of player evaluation. I was one of the early pioneers taking an approach that integrated science with baseball. I am commonly associated with the Texas Rangers where I got my start in 1981, but my longest association with a team was a 10-year run as a year-round consultant to the Los Angeles Dodgers. During that period the Dodgers had the second best record in the league, trailing only the Atlanta Braves during their amazing streak of divisional titles.
From 1989 to 1996, I also provided a supplemental Advance Scout service for post-season play that was used by six pennant winners and four World Champions. I ended that service to have the time to work two years as a year-round consultant to the Arizona Diamondbacks in their preparation for their expansion draft. Arizona’s expansion draft was the first to produce a 40-homer player and two All-Star players who were not their team’s token All-Star representative — i.e. not the team’s lone All-Star. I also did consulting work for the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s “major leagues.” And for a dozen years STATS Inc. was a client of mine under an arrangement where I designed their products for the major league teams. More than anything I took them on as a client because the arrangement improved my core business by allowing me to further my studies using their utterly unique — at the time — data.
The public got a glimpse of my work and approach when I did the book The Diamond Appraised.
Click here to learn more about the book The Diamond Appraised
Like a lot of folks who find themselves saddled with a public persona, there have been things put out in the public domain about my career and my work that are off the mark — sometimes to the point of being exactly the opposite of the truth, or literally involving a completely different person. You get used to having to live with such nonsense, but I’ll take this opportunity to correct some of the false notions. Most are such obvious mistakes that they quickly fall by the wayside and are not worth addressing. For example, a writer for the Associated Press once criticized the impact The Diamond Appraised had on pitching practices in baseball and specifically credited it with helping to kill the four-man pitching rotation — a rather remarkable charge given my chapter in the book titled “Bring Back the Four-Man Rotation.” When contacted, the writer admitted he had never even seen the book!
Some confusion stems from the limited awareness of my work after leaving the Texas Rangers. There was a period of several years that I would not discuss my consulting work publicly. Confidentiality was a big issue with some teams back in the early years of my service. They were leery to acknowledge their use of this perspective. One year-round client had me sign a contract each year that expressly forbid advertising in any form our relationship. When The Diamond Appraised was published, my consulting business was in full swing. I had my maximum number of year-round clients, one in each league, and was doing piece-work for multiple other teams. The book did give a vague impression that I was still doing some work for the Rangers, to enhance the back-and-forth with Rangers’ pitching coach Tom House, but it never gets specific or references in any way my work with other teams, and that included in the brief bio section. That’s how it was back then.
Later, with attitudes changing and GM Fred Claire’s willingness to talk about it, my decade as a year-round consultant to the Dodgers, and that I was working with other teams, began to be more commonly known. But I still kept things pretty close until I retired. In an article about my work in 1999, the writer knew some of the teams I worked with and got quotes from a couple of their GMs, but I still declined to confirm or identify any team I worked with. Some folks have incorrectly written that my clients included the Mets and Mariners. The confusion with the Mets came from a reporter who heard of my involvement in a trade between the Dodgers and Mets and mistakenly thought I was working with the Mets instead of the Dodgers. The mistake in regard to the Mariners stems from a poor reading of a newspaper article in a Seattle newspaper in which the Mariners mentioned they had tried to coax me out of retirement to work for them. Part of the very same article is its accurate report that I declined the offer.
I’ve never before spelled it out clearly, I guess out of habit, so let me do it here. The teams for whom I worked as a year-round consultant at various times were the Angels, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Rangers, and Rockies. I did piece-work projects for the Athletics, Blue Jays, Braves, Indians, Padres, Reds, and again the Rangers during a period when I did not work with them year-round. For a brief time in the lean period when I was switching from working full-time for the Rangers to establishing my consulting business, I helped pay my bills by doing player evaluation work for Eddie Robinson, who was working with multiple teams in his own consulting business.
Another off-the-mark claim that was recently brought to my attention was a baseball executive who did an interview where he mentioned knowing me back in the early 1980s and that I “went on to be the founder of STATS Inc.” Not even remotely close. STATS Inc. was a client of my consulting business. I certainly was not the founder of the company or involved in its startup in any way.
There is further confusion over my role with STATS where it is assumed there was a time I was their employee and no longer working with the major league teams. That never happened. Even in the most lucrative year of my relationship with STATS, they provided less than 30% of my income, and in actual time and attention it was even less. The confusion on this point resulted from an intentional illusion. Part of our arrangement was that I would represent STATS to the clubs in the sales of the products I designed. For that work, STATS gave me a paper title of “Director of Major League Operations” and a business card of theirs to use. It simply went unsaid that I was an independent contractor and they were a minor client of mine.
The other major confusion that comes up over and over in regard to my major league career is an assumption that it began much later than it did. The most common reason appears to be a decided preference to believe my career came in the wake of the popular writings of Bill James. That is not remotely the case, and James himself has noted how completely off the mark that is. In the case of Moneyball, the reason it gives the impression I started my career roughly a decade after the fact is simply that the truth works against a central theme in the book.
Alan Schwarz wrote a book on the early history of statistical analysis in the game, called The Numbers Game, and asked to interview me about my early career. I told him that statistical analysis was not what my career was about and tried to help him see the distinction. He didn’t see it, which is not unusual, and still wanted to do the interview. I gave him my standard condition for such interviews:
“I want to read before publication the sections that relate to our interview and point out to you any sections I think are inaccurate or misunderstood. I’m not seeking editorial approval. Whether you make any changes is up to you. It’s your name on it, not mine.”
Alan agreed and perfectly honored the agreement, which I really came to appreciate when Michael Lewis of Moneyball agreed to the same condition, then completely ignored it, and admitted having done so with the weakest of apologies. Alan did let me read and comment on the sections based on our interview. I was pleased he used some of my corrections and suggestions. Some he did not, which is perfectly fine for what is his book. I have no problem with Alan. I would not hesitate to cooperate with him again. But a few years ago I did do a page on a few things I wish he’d been clearer about in his book.
Click here for my corrections and additions to “The Numbers Game,”
As you can imagine, I often get asked what I think of Moneyball. I think it is more a good story than an honest history. What bothers me most is that its treatment of Art Howe, particularly in the movie, is an unconscionable disgrace. It’s ironic that Howe, himself, was the kind of player who could have benefited from adding a more objective and scientific perspective to the scouting process. He went undrafted over and over, and when he finally got signed it was out of an amateur weekend league when he was 24 years old. He went on to have one of the better careers you will ever find for an eligible player who was never drafted. After 14 years as a professional player, he gave the game another 21 years on the field — fourteen as a manager and seven as a coach. He gave a lot to the game and deserved much fairer treatment. You could fill a ballpark with people who know Art and are outraged at the way he was treated in Moneyball. There was friction between Beane and Howe, but It is ludicrous think Art was more hindrance than help in the five years that he managed for Billy “Moneyball” Beane. Every year the team’s record improved under Howe, and when they parted ways, the team’s record went down each of the first three years.
I am, of course, not happy with how Michael Lewis violated my trust and his promise. And I don’t like the way he manipulates the perception of reality to fit the themes of his book. Here is link to what I wrote years ago about the disrespect and false perceptions he promoted about myself and other early pioneers doing somewhat similar work.