Do front offices in pro sports follow fan boards?

[homer]

I read the book Mindset a few weeks ago. The theory it covers is that having a "growth" mindset sets you up for more success, happiness, fulfillment than a "fixed" mindset. Here are the basic differences:

 

http://www.paget.staffs.sch.uk/media/1953322/5-160817-fixed-vs-growth-mindsets-2.png?width=435&height=629

 

A lot of the examples in the book are from the corporate world where a CEO will personally go out and talk to customers or factory employees rather than think that he or she has all the answers themselves. Given that, is it possible that front offices have some intern or low-level grunt keeping tabs on fan sites and blogs to get personnel ideas? I doubt they'd ever cop to it but I wonder if anyone has heard of such a thing.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

With how easy it is to access and how much quality information is out there among the useless information, there's no chance it's not happening.

 

At a minimum, grunts are stealing other people's ideas without attribution. Wasn't there a blogger that named Jeremy Lin the best guard in the draft a year before Linsanity and he had some formula he used to deduce it? Lin didn't become a HOFer but still, those people are out there and if it's solid info you can bet people are stealing it.

 

Interesting semi-related note, my brother is a baseball fan and software developer. He got an interview with the Brewers this past offseason. Didn't get the job, but the hiring manager was a former college player the Brewers drafted, but he didn't pan out. I believe he was a pitcher. In the interview my brother asked for an example or a project the team recently used. The guy responded saying he would love to share, but they don't like to talk about the things they work on - so the job would've been directly involved with personnel decisions. Gives you a bit of an idea as to how they work.

 

On another tangent, I used to work as a reporter. In college I ran sports for the newspaper. Probably 7-10 times I was called in to meet with the AD or a coach over something I had written that they didn't like. I'm not kidding - in every single one of those meetings, they would start off with some variation of "We don't read the paper, but we caught wind of..." By the third time I would just laugh inside. Yeah, sure you don't.

[nate82]

With how easy it is to access and how much quality information is out there among the useless information, there's no chance it's not happening.

 

At a minimum, grunts are stealing other people's ideas without attribution. Wasn't there a blogger that named Jeremy Lin the best guard in the draft a year before Linsanity and he had some formula he used to deduce it? Lin didn't become a HOFer but still, those people are out there and if it's solid info you can bet people are stealing it.

 

I don't think stealing is the right word here more like reverse engineering the information. If you are placing information publicly you have to expect this to happen and really you want it to happen. Most of these blogs or public projects are being used as an example in interviews to land a job. I have used a few of my own public projects to do this as it is extremely difficult to explain what I currently do at my current job without getting someone overly confused.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

I was using steal more tongue in cheek, not meaning it was malicious.

[JimH5]

I think it would be dumb to not pay attention. Not from the baseball ops side, but from the business side. We're giving them free customer data about what we like and don't like.

[PeaveyFury]

I think it would be dumb to not pay attention. Not from the baseball ops side, but from the business side. We're giving them free customer data about what we like and don't like.

 

I have absolutely zero doubts that someone from Brewers marketing/media relations is reviewing sites like ours on a regular basis. Not sure if that involves anyone in the 'front office,'/baseball ops, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if some things make it back that way.

[KeithStone53151]

I would buy that Brewers people are looking at the site, but not necessarily FO/baseball ops as noted above. There are plenty of threads related to SSH rewards, rule changes, ballpark policies, etc that would certainly be useful. I also wonder if the Brewers FO ever got wind of the whole HH19 episode. He did call the Lucroy trade, and I'd think they'd at minimum review something like that to try and plug leaks. Just like I'm sure they are aware that Brett guy on twitter caught wind of the Moose trade multiple hours before any reporter had it.

[sveumrules]

There was a poster on the Bucks RealGM board during the Kohl years that a bunch of people seemed to think was Jim Paschke because he was such a steadfast shill for all those terrible teams.

 

I think Charlie Bell promised the RGM Bucks board a pizza party at one point too but never followed through.

[rickh150]

Brewers staff might have been watching the "Guns at Miller Park" post and decided to do something (minor) about it soon.

[MrTPlush]

Marketing wise, yes, I have known quite a few that have checked out forums/Facebook/etc. It is more social media now though and not so much online boards. Before social media really took off these board were a handy way to see what people thought about things.