Zack Scott

that he's then justifying to ownership, but the tools that they're using or the objective information that they're using doesn't necessarily completely align.

And I think that's okay because a lot of these decisions are contextual.

The context of your roster, the context of your payroll, the context of where you are competitively in your cycle.

Spending a certain amount of money is different for a team that's expected to win 70 games than a team that's expected to win 81.

So going higher from 81 is much more impactful than

you know, gaining two or three wins from 70.

So, you know, I think that that's sometimes where people get hung up is treating these models as kind of absolutes.

And even the people that build these models, the analysts understand that there's a variation of possible outcomes.

You just, what it should do is anchor you in some sort of objective reality so you don't go crazy, right?

So you don't do things that make absolutely no sense.

But, you know, you have to realize that

Um, there are times the trade deadline is a perfect example.

I was talking to a former GM the other day and he said, you know, when, when I went into a trade deadline, the first thing I'd say to our group is, Hey, we're going to do trades.

You know, we're in, we're competitive.

We need to have add some players in the time it was his bullpen, right?

Well, we're going to make trades that are going to look on paper like negative value trades because they're rentals and that's how they look.

But.

it makes sense for us given where we're at and we need to do this to improve our club to give ourselves a chance to have real legitimate players walking into that clubhouse after the deadline the day after the deadline there's a real factor there and so in this person is a very objective mind objectively minded person but they realize like this is an appropriate time to do that does it mean go wild and trade away all your best prospects no but most of those deals are going to look like negative deals long term

So you've got to be able to balance.

Yeah.