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White Sox Hiring for Analytics Department


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https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/job-posting-white-sox-baseball-operations/

I wanted to post this for two reasons.  1) There are a lot of smart, data driven people on this site and maybe one of you guys meet the qualifications for one of the two roles.  If so, I wanted to make sure you’re aware of these job postings.  2) I think it’s a great sign we’re adding to our analytics team.  From the sound of it, we have one of the smallest analytics departments in all of baseball (but one of the largest scouting departments).  I feel like we’re a little bit behind the times in terms of modern baseball, but it does appear we’re making efforts to change that.  This is one of the reasons I’m willing to give Hahn a little bit more rope than his track record warrants.  I truly believe he’s more forward thinking than KW & Jerry and this another example of the progress he is making in that regard.

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27 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/job-posting-white-sox-baseball-operations/

I wanted to post this for two reasons.  1) There are a lot of smart, data driven people on this site and maybe one of you guys meet the qualifications for one of the two roles.  If so, I wanted to make sure you’re aware of these job postings.  2) I think it’s a great sign we’re adding to our analytics team.  From the sound of it, we have one of the smallest analytics departments in all of baseball (but one of the largest scouting departments).  I feel like we’re a little bit behind the times in terms of modern baseball, but it does appear we’re making efforts to change that.  This is one of the reasons I’m willing to give Hahn a little bit more rope than his track record warrants.  I truly believe he’s more forward thinking than KW & Jerry and this another example of the progress he is making in that regard.

Are you kidding me this is a total embarrassment, they are worth over 1 billion dollars, I would rather not know about this, what do we have as Sox fans to be proud of, nothing.

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48 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/instagraphs/job-posting-white-sox-baseball-operations/

I wanted to post this for two reasons.  1) There are a lot of smart, data driven people on this site and maybe one of you guys meet the qualifications for one of the two roles.  If so, I wanted to make sure you’re aware of these job postings.  2) I think it’s a great sign we’re adding to our analytics team.  From the sound of it, we have one of the smallest analytics departments in all of baseball (but one of the largest scouting departments).  I feel like we’re a little bit behind the times in terms of modern baseball, but it does appear we’re making efforts to change that.  This is one of the reasons I’m willing to give Hahn a little bit more rope than his track record warrants.  I truly believe he’s more forward thinking than KW & Jerry and this another example of the progress he is making in that regard.

Agree as long as they are paying enough to attract the right people.  I would assume they will. 

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5 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:

Until they start paying at LEAST $75K (and realistically, it should be at least $150-300K) to attract the best minds from jobs in the tech sector or best math/comp sci universities in the world, it's not going to succeed.

Where did you see dollar amounts?  I know one of the roles in an internship so obviously the money is probably little to none, but you have to remember this is the MLB and people will happily take less to work for a professional team.

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11 minutes ago, Chicago White Sox said:

Where did you see dollar amounts?  I know one of the roles in an internship so obviously the money is probably little to none, but you have to remember this is the MLB and people will happily take less to work for a professional team.

I'm just going to make the obvious argument that you don't get guys from Cal Tech, MIT and NASA (see Astros) without giving them an incentive to leave their much more profitable private sector jobs.

Would most of us be willing to work for 25-50% less than our current salary to work for a professional sports franchise?   Maybe?  Probably?  Depends on age and life circumstances (family/children), etc.

The bottom line is that it's not unlike the arguments we're making about having to overpay for Machado or Harper.  The Sox need to do the same here, not offer a couple of kids from Northwestern/Illinois/Michigan/Notre Dame/Purdue internships.

The White Sox don't have the reputation in the industry, you've got three strong leadership figures (JR/KW/Hahn), so you'd have to convince anyone coming on board that they would have a REAL say in changing the way the team operates, and wouldn't just be a figurehead to pay lip service to the "we do analytics TOO" to cover themselves if the rebuild doesn't work out as intended.

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Baby steps Caulfield...baby steps.  I can tell you that I worked for the retail arm of a Fortune 500 company that had no analytics group.  We eventually brought on a small team (nothing fancy) and the impact was significant.  This is obviously a different situation since the Sox already have an analytics department in place, but more muscle is only a good thing and hopefully this is a sign of things to come.

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I don't care what they pay, this would be my dream job. I don't know the computer languages they want, as my background is not in software engineering. It should have been though. I do have an engineering degree and I know how to write code in a language or two but not much more than that. I got called by the Sox marketing dept. last winter and I told them that autistic baseball fans with a strong math/tech background would make the best analytics people because we can do this stuff for hours and will never get bored with it. Sigh. I have zero doubt I could write code well enough to do this job with enough practice. I don't have this skill right now though, and I doubt they'd give me a shot. 

EDIT: I have everything in the required section for the internship except knowing SQL. I could learn it. Dammit. 

I don't know R and Python either but MATLAB is one of the two languages I know, along with C++. 

What do you guys think, will that be enough? 

Edited by Jack Parkman
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16 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

I don't care what they pay, this would be my dream job. I don't know the computer languages they want, as my background is not in software engineering. It should have been though. I do have an engineering degree and I know how to write code in a language or two but not much more than that. I got called by the Sox marketing dept. last winter and I told them that autistic baseball fans with a strong math/tech background would make the best analytics people because we can do this stuff for hours and will never get bored with it. Sigh. I have zero doubt I could write code well enough to do this job with enough practice. I don't have this skill right now though, and I doubt they'd give me a shot. 

EDIT: I have everything in the required section for the internship except knowing SQL. I could learn it. Dammit. 

I don't know R and Python either but MATLAB is one of the two languages I know, along with C++. 

What do you guys think, will that be enough? 

What do you have to lose Jack?  Just go for it!

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1 minute ago, Chicago White Sox said:

What do you have to lose Jack?  Just go for it!

I have to get in front of a decision maker. I also haven't written a program in a decade, lol. I'm signing up for Code Academy and I'm going to teach myself python because I got recruited today for the EY Autism at work program. I would rather work for the Sox for less money, because it would be something I truly love and it would probably pay enough for me to be happy, especially as I've been living with my parents with a monthly income in the hundreds, not thousands since I graduated from college. 

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20 minutes ago, SoxAce said:

He might be one of the last people here I'd be happy running the analytics side of our team (nobody beats Greg though).

I find that surprising because I am pretty math oriented and I don't really do stuff on gut. Prior to the ASB this year, I used to always research everything on fangraphs before making a post, though I do admit I got a little lax on that this year after the point mentioned. 

I got more comfortable in my own skin over the last 18 months or so, and I gradually haven't been as calculated as I used to be prior to August of this year. I posted a lot on pure emotion/frustration over the last 2-3 months, and I have reminded myself why I shouldn't do that. I'm disappointed that my reputation here has declined so dramatically after posting here for a decade and 3 months of frustration put it all in the tank. I got frustrated, I don't know a lot of Sox fans and I wanted to vent about a couple of my favorite sports teams. None of it was rational, none of it was well thought out, and I really regret doing that. I'm planning to be a lot more calculated and do my research again, rather than trusting my own recollection of information I'm not 100% sure about. Post less, think and analyze more. 

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1 minute ago, Jack Parkman said:

I have to get in front of a decision maker. I also haven't written a program in a decade, lol. I'm signing up for Code Academy and I'm going to teach myself python because I got recruited today for the EY Autism at work program. I would rather work for the Sox for less money, because it would be something I truly love and it would probably pay enough for me to be happy, especially as I've been living with my parents with a monthly income in the hundreds, not thousands since I graduated from college. 

If I had more coding experience I'd probably go for this but I'm too far away. If there's 1 or 2 languages from that list you don't know, fire in an application, worst that happens is they say no. 

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Never turn down a big league internship for a minor league job that pays more.

I could have worked for the Red Sox for $500 per month but turned it down (this was 1994) and you always wonder what would have happened had you taken the other fork in the road.

Probably, in the end...I would have reached the same conclusion, working every day in sports might have ruined my love for it, but I only stuck with it for 2-3 before turning to a more conventional field.

It's also not so easy to change from the minor league franchises to a major league team once you're pigeonholed.

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46 minutes ago, Jack Parkman said:

I don't care what they pay, this would be my dream job. I don't know the computer languages they want, as my background is not in software engineering. It should have been though. I do have an engineering degree and I know how to write code in a language or two but not much more than that. I got called by the Sox marketing dept. last winter and I told them that autistic baseball fans with a strong math/tech background would make the best analytics people because we can do this stuff for hours and will never get bored with it. Sigh. I have zero doubt I could write code well enough to do this job with enough practice. I don't have this skill right now though, and I doubt they'd give me a shot. 

EDIT: I have everything in the required section for the internship except knowing SQL. I could learn it. Dammit. 

I don't know R and Python either but MATLAB is one of the two languages I know, along with C++. 

What do you guys think, will that be enough? 

If you know C++ I think you'd be able to learn SQL, R, and Python pretty easily. 

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When I was graduating from college I wrote to the White Sox to see if they had openings to help out Dan Evans, remember him. Sox were almost a leading edge team at the time with Evans, doing all sorts of computer input/output to aid the team in any way they could. Eddie Einhorn sent me back a letter, said thanks for the resume but they had no openings in their department. So I took a job offer with IBM and retired 30 years later (7 years ago). As a huge Sox fan I would have likely taken less than IBM paid me. In hindsight I am glad it was not offered, but I would think a top notch analyst would need well over 200K to do this work. 

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19 minutes ago, MnSoxFan said:

When I was graduating from college I wrote to the White Sox to see if they had openings to help out Dan Evans, remember him. Sox were almost a leading edge team at the time with Evans, doing all sorts of computer input/output to aid the team in any way they could. Eddie Einhorn sent me back a letter, said thanks for the resume but they had no openings in their department. So I took a job offer with IBM and retired 30 years later (7 years ago). As a huge Sox fan I would have likely taken less than IBM paid me. In hindsight I am glad it was not offered, but I would think a top notch analyst would need well over 200K to do this work. 

I am sure this job pays well. Keeping good people costs money. I am sure the White Sox are well aware they can get people cheap initially to get their foot in the door, but eventually reality hits and money is required to live life. So they wouldn’t keep people long if they didn’t pay. 

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