The idea of “tacit communication” and its effect on the evaluation of Minor Leaguers
As a follow up to the story of Hal Newhouser, there are very few scouts with the courage of their convictions. Too bad the Astros didn’t realize it. Why is it though that most scouts tend to converge on a player? I previously touched on this in a prior column, but wanted to address another important principle at work.

Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling, in his classic book The Strategy of Conflict, spends a great deal of time addressing the “tacit” game. His thesis is that certain problems, or “games,” can be solved without any communication at all between the players, because certain innate factors naturally provide a suggested answer upon which the players will converge. The solution may not be the optimal one of course. In practice, these tacit factors play a large role, even with bargaining and negotiating, in in the outcome of many conflict situations. The amateur baseball draft provides evidence of this principle in practice.

A simple example is the following: Two players have no means of communication. There is $100. If they can somehow agree on a way to split the money without communicating, each will win the amount they allocated to themselves. It is no surprise that the answer is that the majority of people will come to a 50-50 split naturally, and experiments verify this outcome.

A key point of his book is that in any conflict, there are always distinguishing points that allow the players to converge upon them as a solution, even if there is no communication. His book, in part, addresses this principle in the context of the proliferation of nuclear missiles (there may not be any such point other than no use at all) and the principles of deterrence.

A form of tacit communication in practice can be seen from an example, restated here from my prior post: When faced with a large number of possible choices, what does one do?? To borrow from John Maynard Keynes, lets look at a beauty pageant, but lets assume there are hundreds of participants not just 50. The judges are trying to pick “the most beautiful.” But this is a loose standard, and is certainly not the same as picking the tallest or the one with the longest legs (desirable though those categories may be).

So what occurs is that in an effort to cull through the masses, a focus is inevitably made on a distinguishing feature that separates one from another. What you end up with is not necessarily “the most beautiful” but a winner that likely has one feature that distinguishes them from the crowd. All of the contestants have some claim to “beauty” but how do we pick one over the other?

In baseball we have a similar situation when dealing with minor leaguers. The feature that draws focus is usually either fastball speed, college success or projectability (size, athleticism etc), or some other factor. These factors may be correlated with major league success in a very general, non-specific way; however there is certainly no strong correlation. Picking the “best future player” is much more akin to picking “the most beautiful” than picking the tallest.

An example of this phenomenon last year was Tim Lincecum, who was regarded as possibly having the best overall stuff, but there were concerns about his size and workload. Given that there is extra perceived risk, by consensus, in taking this type of player he drops overall. In order to separate him, his size is a natural converging factor that may or may not have any predictive value in his particular case.

Tacit communication is in large part why things like a bias against short pitchers gain acceptance in the scouting community. They didn’t sit down in a room and agree that it would be a prevailing belief; it merely came to pass because of tacit communication.

Looking at this year’s draft, much of the discussion about David Price revolved around his 6′6″ frame, the fact that he is “big and athletic” with athleticism and makeup as strengths. And all of this may be true. But it may not be terribly relevant; there is arguably only a weak correlation between these traits and major league success.

These factors provide easy convergence points, and though the correlation is weak, it does exist. So, it provides a basis for separating the scouting of Price from the rest of the field.

How is his stuff? Well, according to MiLB.com, here is a basic scouting report. What is interesting is that the repertoire appears to be very good, but the minors are littered with guys with similar profiles who never made it: Fastball at 90-94, touching 95, slider at 84-86, changeup is a work in progress.

Can we really separate players based on the fact that player X throws 90-94, but player Y only throws 89-92? Maybe not in practice, but that 90 mph standard is one that is naturally converged upon and provides a neat stopping point for tacit communication principles to take effect.

There may be very good reason for Price to succeed where others fail. This isn’t about David Price. In any evaluation of unpredictable commodities there is a large degree of psychology at work, as indicated in my prior column. This is buttressed by the scouting tenets that developed over time due to the principles outlined by Schelling.

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