Craig R. Wright

Craig R. Wright is a major proponent of sabermetrics, a baseball writer and historian.

He was a very early pioneer in integrating science into major league baseball and first began working under that premise for the Texas Rangers,^[1] after the strike of 1981. He later became the first front office employee to work under the title sabermetrician, but he abandoned the title around 1990 because he felt "... the meaning had shifted too far from a scientific approach to baseball to one focused on statistical analysis of baseball."^[2]

He worked over 20 years in major league baseball, mainly in the area of player evaluation and acquisition. His longest association with a big league team was the Los Angeles Dodgers with whom he worked ten years as a year-round consultant during a period when they had the second best record in the league behind the Atlanta Braves.^[3] With LA he significantly helped advance the career of Mike Piazza from non-prospect to blue chip prospect. Wright was an early proponent of Piazza's hitting, argued for his staying at the catcher position, and pushed hard for his rapid advancement to the big leagues while persuasively arguing for the moves that cleared the way for Piazza to be the club's #1 catcher in his rookie year.^[4]

Along with Wright's consulting arrangements, from 1989 to 1996 he also provided a supplemental Advance Scout service for post-season play that was used by six pennant winners and four world champions. He ended that service to have the time to serve two years as a year-round consultant to the Arizona Diamondbacks in preparing for their expansion draft. The Diamondbacks' draft is the only expansion draft to produce a 40-homer player (Tony Batista) and two All-Stars (Batista and Damian Miller.)

Wright was the primary author of The Diamond Appraised (1989) with 10% of the material being provided by pitching coach Tom House.^[5] With most of Wright's work taking place outside the public domain, it was a rare look at the type of work he was doing and how it was being used - or not used. In this book Wright was the first to give a sabermetric perspective on many issues within baseball, including the optimal way to utilize a bullpen and pitching rotation, how to better develop pitchers so that they are primed for future success, the significance of home field advantage, and catcher's ERA (CERA).^[6] Wright's chapters on pitching included a ground-breaking study on pitcher workloads and how they might be better managed. They inspired a wealth of studies, and looking back at the book nearly a dozen years later, Rany Jazayerli, one of the founders of Baseball Prospectus, called Wright's study one of the five most important ever done in baseball.^[7] After The Diamond Appraised was translated into Japanese, the Hanshin Tigers of Japan's Central League became a client of his consulting service. The other client of Wright's business that was not a major league team was STATS Inc.. For a dozen years they used Wright as a consultant to design their products for the major league teams.^[8]

Few details were publicly known about Wright's pioneering career until he wrote a few vignettes about that period on his web site for The Diamond Appraised Baseball Column. Of particular interest is the different take he has on those early days of sabermetrics in major league baseball that is quite at odds with the theme in Michael Lewis's Moneyball. Lewis portrayed the early practitioners within the game as simply being ignored. Wright acknowledges the scarcity of teams back then that were adding such a perspective, and that the usage was at times on a frustratingly small scale, but he makes a strong case that there were pockets where it was not only valued but had real impact. He gives interesting examples from his career and he scores a key point with his question: "All my contracts were 1-year contracts. Do you really think teams are going to keep shelling out the money year after year just to have you give advice that they will ignore?"^[9]

Dodgers GM Fred Claire backed up that point in a 2004 interview: "I was very impressed by [Craig's] approach, his evaluation process. This really kind of pre-dated a lot of what's happening in the game today. Using Craig's services went with the philosophy that I had as a GM: Gain as much information as you possibly can and make your decisions based on that information. ... Craig added some valuable input to the process. ... I felt he was very good as it related to players in not only their major league careers, but also in their minor league careers. You had your scouting looking at certain other organizations—there is always a large emphasis on pro scouting. But Craig was able to add a different dimension with his own analysis ... . There was a lot of looking at prospects, but also him helping on the major league level. I can recall when we signed Tom Candiotti (1991) we were looking at free agent pitchers, and Craig felt he could be a guy who could give a lot of innings and pitch successfully."^[10] (Candiotti proved to be the bargain of that free agent class. During his four-year contract he led the Dodgers in innings and ERA. His 3.38 ERA was actually the fourth best in the whole league.)

Wright was known for his support of the sabermetric movement. He was one of the very early members of SABR, served on the Board of Directors of Project Scoresheet, the forerunner of Retrosheet, and he was very open about his appreciation of the early work by Bill James when such a view was still anathema in MLB. He gave recommendations, help, and encouragement to those who aspired to similar careers in baseball, including Eddie Epstein, Mat Olkin, John Sickels, Keith Woolner, and Bill James. In his retirement from major league baseball, he has responded to offers of employment from the teams by making recommendations of others in the sabermetric community.

Wright is semi-retired and lives in Montana where he continues to write about baseball. When asked if he would ever return to major league baseball, he has said it is "very unlikely," and that he would never accept a job that would move him from Montana. But he adds, "I have a distinct vision of where things should go from here in the application of the science of baseball within major league baseball. If a team wanted to explore that vision and decided they wanted my help in bringing it to life – that would certainly catch my attention." ^[11]

Wright currently maintains two subscription services: A PageFrom Baseballs Past and The Diamond Appraised Baseball Column. Rob Neyer, senior baseball writer for ESPN.com, subscribes to both and advised his readers: "I'm not one of those people who refuses to pay for anything on the Web, ... but if I could pay for just one thing, it would probably be Craig Wright's baseball writing."^[12]

---

Baseball Historian

Wright is the researcher and writer of the radio show A Page from Baseball's Past which celebrated its 25th anniversary as a pre-game show in 2009.^[13] He created the show with producer Eric Nadel who is also the voice of the show. In 2008 Wright began doing a subscription text version emailed to subscribers. This text version is enhanced with pictures, charts, research notes, and added details that often had to be cut in the time constraints of the radio show. Bill James, author of the popular Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract has praised the new text version as "... just excellent. I learn a lot from reading it."

References

1. ^ RotoJunkie - Roto 101 - Sabermetric Glossary (powered by evoArticles)
2. ^ http://www.diamondappraised.com/about_crw.htm
3. ^ Ibid.
4. ^ "Piazza, Hall of Fame Catcher," The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2009, 148-55.
5. ^ Craig R. Wright and Tom House. The Diamond Appraised. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989. ISBN 0-671-70719-1.
6. ^ RotoJunkie - Roto 101 - Sabermetric Glossary (powered by evoArticles)
7. ^ http://www.diamondappraised.com/about_crw_files/dabook.htm
8. ^ http://www.diamondappraised.com/about_crw_files/numbers_game.htm
9. ^ http://www.diamondappraised.com/about_crw_files/moneyball.htm
10. ^ http://www.baseball-analysis.com/article.php?articleid=2720
11. ^ http://www.diamondappraised.com/faq_dmd.htm
12. ^ April 7, 2010 http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot
13. ^ Nadel, Eric, "A Silver Anniversary," 2009 Texas Rangers Souvenir Program

External links

Baseball portal

• The Diamond Appraised
• A Page from Baseball's Past

Persondata
Name	Wright, Craig R.
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death