Questions and Answers with Tom Tango of Inside The Book

By: brockforbriglio.com

Tom Tango, (aka Tangotiger) runs the Tango on Baseball website, where you’ll find a large number of research devoted to sabermetrics. He works as a consultant for major league teams in hockey, and has worked as a consultant in major league baseball. Born and raised in Canada, he now resides in New Jersey with his family. 

Q.

Can you tell us about your first child hood memory of baseball?

“Looking back my first memory of baseball was the Bucky Dent game; though I was watching the Sox that whole season. I was 10.

Back then, we had no cable. We used to get the signal on UHF 22. So, that’s how I became hooked on the Redsox: it was the only team outside of the Expos that was broadcast in Montreal. That, and the sight of the Wall.

That’s how you get fans: get them young, and make it seem like what they are watching is special. And in the late 70s, Montreal was a great sports town. The Olympics in ‘76. The Canadiens had arguably the greatest team in all of sports history, reeling off 4 straight Stanley Cups. The Montreal Alouettes were Grey Cup contenders.

The Expos were a team of destiny. Unfortunately, that destiny was Blue Monday. And the Montreal Manic (soccer team) were on the verge of setting the city on fire. Nothing like being indoctrinated into the world of sports in a city of championship-caliber competition at such a young and impressionable age.

Q.

Rob Neyer recently had some glowing remarks about your work. The praise came with a question I think many would be interested in knowing the answer to: Do you have any plans to work permanently in a major league front office?

“Working in MLB is not this exciting venture. You are just this cog on the wheel, paid as much, and given as much attention. The GM is the power broker, and everyone else is just a helping hand. That’s why the GM gets paid millions, and everyone else gets paid at a discount compared to similar jobs in corporate America.

My goals are to have a dialogue with people open to looking at data in new ways, and avoid those who will argue in the face of mounting evidence. The former group you can come to a reasonable basis for discussion, while with the latter, there is no middle ground. I have no aspirations to work in an MLB front office, any more than I’d like to work for Oracle, Accenture, or IBM.

Q.

What type of unique and memorable experiences has your work lead you to?

“I wouldn’t call it exciting, but the coolest thing was getting feedback from Tim Raines’ lawyer that Raines really liked our website for him: Raines30.com

Michael Lewis had also contacted me regarding a book he was writing (Moneyball). He mentioned that the A’s front office actually was reading my research. That’s around when I heard of other front offices reading my stuff. A few contacted me for work. And when we published our book, there were orders from several teams, including multiple copies for a couple of the teams. We self-published the original edition, so I could see the orders coming in. Kinda neat.

Q.

You’ve built a reputation on taking a scientific approach to player evaluation. How would you value players in a standard 5×5 scoring format?

“There are two main components:

  • player valuation, and
  • player acquisition

The valuation part is really easy…

The basic formula for hitters is:

HR/10 + SB/10 + xH/10 + R/30 + RBI/30

And for pitchers, it’s:

W/5 + SV/10 + SO/50 + xER/10 + xWHIP/15

The acquisition part (drafting, bidding, keepers, etc) is a tiny bit harder. I’m sure the Ron Shandlers of the world would be in a better position to give guidance here. But, I don’t really see it as an issue.

Q.

What’s your general opinion of the skill required to be consistently successful in fantasy baseball?

“The “experts”, fantasy, reality, media, fans, etc make things out to be so much harder, but it’s quite the opposite, once you shed your biases and authoritative persona.

You use a simple forecasting engine to get your numbers, a simple dollar generator to get your fantasy dollars, and you are on your way. I have to believe that if you play with typical fans that you can get at least 10% ROI. That is, if every team has to spend 100 million$ on players, then you should be able to get at least 110 million$ worth of players for that money, if not alot more. That doesn’t guarantee success, but it certainly gives you a great start.

 

I’d like to thank Tom Tango for participating. He was surprisingly accessible while working with me to put this together. I’d highly recommend visiting his site at Inside the Book - no man combines the beauty of numbers and baseball more seamlessly.

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The idea behind Brock for Broglio is a fantasy baseball resource first; general MLB commentary second. In my opinion, there’s a lot of cross over between the strategy in the real game, and the game we emulate as general managers through our monitors. You can read more about the idea behind Brock for Broglio here. For now, I’d like to Thank You in advance for your attention; it is my hope I can earn it long term. I look forward to sharing future baseball dialogue with you.

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