It is nice to see that Jim Duquette ‘88 has been hired as general manager of the New York Mets after having served as interim GM for the last few months. For those non-baseball fans out there, the general manager is, for most purposes, the person who runs the team. The article notes that:

Jim Duquette started the remaking of the Mets this past summer, dumping several big contracts and bringing some minor league players up to the big club to see if those players can cut it.

“I’ve been using the word retooling. In our market, in New York, I’m not sure there’s patience to rebuild,” Duquette said earlier this summer. “Rebuilding is more of a four or five-year plan. We have a plan for this year and next year. That’s what I’m hoping to [implement].

“We need to get younger, get more speed and get a blend of players who can play in New York.”

This is worrying. Of course, Jim Duquette knows much more about baseball than I ever will, but a central point made by the Sabermetricians — baseball number crunchers — is that speed is an overrated ability in baseball. But since almost all my knowledge on this topic comes from Moneyball, I’ll defer to Jim’s judgment.

As a side note, there is great material here for a senior thesis, in either economics or math/statistics. I’d wager that Jim, being a nice guy, would be willing to share lots of good data with a Williams student doing a project on Sabermetrics. Another idea is for a Williams students to do a Sabermetrics inspired study of Williams baseball. Of course, in doing that, the major headache would be in gathering and inputting the data, but it would still be a great thesis.