Is Your Strategy Entry Level Talent or Superstar?

Baseball season's here, and it reminds me of the talent/economics lesson that occurs each season in Major League Baseball.  This year's compensation lesson?  A-Rod is making more in 2008 than the entire roster for the Florida Marlins. 

From Yahoo Sports:

"Alex Rodriguez makes more this year than his hometown Florida Marlins. Boosted by his new deal with the New York Yankees, A-Rod tops the major league baseball salary list at $28 million, according to a study of contract terms by The Associated Press. The 33 players on the Marlins' opening-day roster and disabled list total $21.8 million.

For the first time in baseball history, the average salary topped the $3 million mark. The 855 players on opening-day rosters and the DL averaged $3.15 million, up 7.1 percent from last year's starting average of $2.94 million.

Florida's highest earner doesn't even make the average. Pitcher Kevin Gregg tops the Marlins at $2.5 million."

Always interesting to see the battle of haves and have nots in MLB. 

Meanwhile, teams with low payrolls always pop up (more randomly, of course) as huge successes in a given season.  Last year's examples?  The two teams playing in the National League Championship - the Rockies and the Diamondbacks.  With payrolls of $54 and $52 Million respectively, these franchises took the Moneyball approach, seeking to use less proven talent to deliver wins via on-base percentage, base hits and defense.   The result for those teams?  A greater degree of success than the Yankees last year, which drives an owner like Steinbrenner crazy.  Thus the Joe Torre firing...

Who will be this year's Rockies, doing more with less?  As a Missouri guy, I can only hope the Kansas City Royals...

(Hat Tip to Capitalist reader, Heather, for the link)

Comments

[Ed Harris]

KD,

First time I heard it said that the Rockies and Diamondbacks use Moneyball baseball tactics. Do you have any statistics to back up your claim?

Ed Harris

[Kris Dunn]

Ed -

You are obviously into baseball. I'm talking the Moneyball approach in the broad sense of the word, meaning "we can't spend 200M in payroll, so we better grow from within and find relative value in the free agent market". I think its a pretty widely-held fact that all teams who control payroll are looking at Talent in ways described in Moneyball....

Thanks - KD

[Ed Harris]

Kris,

The sports references are interesting to sports fans, but unfortunately more than 60% of HR professionals are women, many of whom don't know what you are talking about when you, for example, reference Dick Vitale, cross-over dribbling and moneyball.

In my diversity training classes, we were advised to not use sports references to avoid alienating women. And women were told to limit the conversation about Dooney & Boorke handbags to avoid alienating men.

Ed

[Kris]

Ed -

Love the fact you found me and are reading, but you need to chill. Blogs are a blend of professional development and personal style. I'm not trying to be everything to everyone and water the product down - I'm just being me.

My readership has plenty of women who like the content, many of whom have no idea what I'm talking about with the 1 out of every 15 posts that has a sports reference (same thing with some of the men, I'm sure). They're still here, and the site has allowed me to meet and connect with some great folks.

I've got some cool readers, and I don't think you are giving them enough credit by suggesting they'll be confused or turned off by my style.

Come back often - but leave the gender stereotypes at home.

KD

[Heather]

Ed,

In my view, the sports references are as relevant as the other pop culture references that are entwined in this blog (I also appreciated the LL Cool J reference this week!). I think that these references offer a fresh perspective on topics that might otherwise be overlooked by many readers. BTW – you might have noticed that this particular article was submitted by a loyal female reader :)

I’d also like to offer, that you’re making a quick assumption that many of the HR professionals, who happen to be women, don’t know what cross-over dribbling, Dick Vitale, or moneyball is. To borrow from a Dickie V quote: You'd have to live in a cave not to know about Dickie V … he practically put college basketball on the map.

I think that the bigger message of your diversity training was to know your audience, and foster an environment of inclusion. A good way to do this is to seek feedback from those participating in a meeting or group discussion to ensure that the message is received and understood. For example – if you were to have a meeting with the group that you lead, and your sole focus was comparisons to sports, there could just as easily be male participants who lose your message as females in the group. You could open it up to the group to provide their own comparisons, from their frame of reference, and still keep it on topic and engaging.

In everyday conversation, be open to listening to others – and if you can handle it – be genuinely interested. If you offer up conversation about how your weekend was, favorite team is doing, etc – be willing to do the same for your co-workers. This may mean that you’ll have to listen to how someone’s kids are doing (even if you’re not the Mary Poppins type), the great Dooney & Bourke purse that they picked up, or the amazing hike that they took with their buddies . If you can’t feign interest – it might be best to stick to business, since that’s what it’s all about anyway, right?

On a random note, on the topic of diversity (and Dickie V), I think that I could be categorized as a “personalizer” - what kind of bracketologist are you? http://assets.espn.go.com/espn/bracketologists/index.html

I make my NCAA bracket picks based my familiarity with the “brand”. I’d take a “Notre Dame” over a “George Mason” in the same way that I’d take a Coach (did you know that it’s rumored that Coach’s founder was inspired by the leather on a baseball glove?) over a Dooney & Bourke handbag.

Good luck out there Ed, it’s a lot easier than you might think!

“You'd have to live in a cave not to know about the Carrier Dome. It put Syracuse on the map.” – Dick Vitale

[Richard Parker]

OK, Chris. Time to give it up! Because someone disagreed with you, you tried to squash him here on April 4th and then wrote another article about "And then I said to him... Harumph!" in the April 11th newsletter blog. You can be challenged, can't you, without your ego going into overdrive? I agree with both sides, but find this petty.

[HR Wench]

Female HR pro here. I hate Dooney & Burke's products slightly less than I hate sports. But I still read the posts anyway cause Kris usually knows what the crap he is talking about. Ed baited him and he took it. No big whoop. It's his blog. Come over to my blog and I'll make jokes about your mother. FOR FREE!