Moneyball' doesn't have anything to do with on-base percentage or statistics. It's a constant investigation of stagnant systems, to see if you can find value where it isn't readily apparent.
In a given year, there may be two or three NFL-ready quarterbacks at the college level. In another year, there literally may be zero.
There aren't 32 of them in the world that I think can be quarterbacks of Super Bowl champion teams. Supply is short.
If you have to remind people you're the boss, I don't think you're going to be a very effective leader.
In disciplines as disparate as baseball, financial services, trucking and retail, people are realizing the power of data to help make better decisions.
If I play my home games in Coors Field, I'm probably not going to be doing a whole lot of bunting. If I play my home games in Petco Park or Dodger Stadium, it's probably going to be a more valuable tool.
Analytics is not about sitting behind a computer and pushing enter and having it produce an answer.
The A's were a team with very few resources. We didn't have access to players who were obviously great, who could do it all and were always in the headlines. We couldn't afford those types of players. So we had to figure out a way of cobbling together players into a team that might be competitive.
I played football in college and what I really wanted to do was be a football coach.
The nice thing about baseball is that all of the possible outcomes are known - it's not quite as messy as the real world. That makes the game an excellent playground for probability.
Baseball ultimately is a drama without a script. It's the original reality TV.
Whether baseball or football, we're tasked in front offices with making decisions under uncertainty. How do you corral that uncertainty in a way to make more consistently better decisions? That's very similar.
I really focus on process as much as anything else: process for how we evaluate players, process for how we make decisions, process even for how we hire people internally, process for how we go about integrating our scouting reports with guys watching tape in the office.
I got into baseball, and everyone just started calling me a geek, like, 'There's the nerd from Harvard.' Then it took 20 years of working in baseball and me actually leaving and going to football for people to say, 'He's the baseball guy.' So maybe at some point I'll be known as a football guy too.
Admittedly, there will be an awful lot for me to learn, but I want nothing more than to help bring consistent, championship caliber football back to Cleveland.
Cleveland and football have always held a special place in my heart.
Medicine is so big and so important.
It's up to a manager to understand his players.
There are certain times when you see a guy, and you say, 'He's a big-leaguer.'
There probably isn't another position in all of team sports that I can think of that has the same level of import as the quarterback.
