The Value of Work After Moneyball
Advisor: Mr. Zachary Wekilsky
Internship Location: Kadima Careers
Onsite Mentor: Alan Stein
Professional baseball players are compensated extremely well for their physical labor. The professional baseball player, and the low-wage laborer both provide physical labor, but what makes the difference in salary compensation is the freedoms offered to the baseball player via the capital he yields. Since the “Moneyball” revolution, player evaluation has been defined by investments in technology that can track and establish new deliverables. For my senior project, I am evaluating the history of compensation in professional baseball, and how technology has affected compensation. I will use this to connect to low-wage labor in the US, and what changes technology can bring, as it becomes cheaper to implement in the workplace. I have been researching my senior project through online journals, and old articles detailing historical events that apply to my project. At my on-site, I have been working with Kadima Careers, and its founder Alan Stein, a specialist job coach who works with career acceleration. For Kadima Careers, I have been busy compiling a report on the top MBA programs in the US. I have been aggregating ranking and ROI data for top graduate business schools, sharpening my spreadsheet skills. Ultimately, I hope to assuage some of the fears of AI implementation in the workplace, showing an alternative to the commonly presented AI dystopia. I also want to add to the preexisting understanding of professional baseball and its intersection with the low-wage labor market in America.
Project Blog
Week 0: Blog
My name is Zeke Butler, I am a big fan of professional baseball. My love of baseball helped me to foster a love of labor and economics, which I plan to share in my senior project. I have begun researching in longer form pieces of media such as labor publications, and economics publications. I have been frequenting the Library in order to pursue this interest, while also furthering my baseball knowledge by involving myself in the front office business during spring training. I have attended a business class to further my interests, and been actively following issues online since. I will be doing labor research for Kadima Careers for my On-site placement. I will write a final -paper for my graded deliverable, and give a presentation on it.
Week 1: Blog
Hello, welcome to my Senior Project Blog! This first week of my Senior Project has been focused on researching, creating a schedule for myself, and taking my on-site research into account. My on-site internship at Kadima Careers has started, and I have been researching, compiling, and standardizing data on top MBA programs across America. At my internship, I have been learning about the advanced features of Google Sheet and Excel which I am planning on applying to my own research.
While not at my internship I have been spending time at the library checking out books to assist in my research. As part of this research, I have started collecting data on the history of low-wage labor with a focus on observing the trends that affect it. I am hoping to find a definition of low-wage labor that I can use for my connection to Major League Baseball. Other sources including online databases, and long-form publications have been extremely helpful in finding definitions and connections in the history of this Labor to economic, and social principles. I look forward to updating my blog with my findings in the coming weeks. Thank you for reading!
Week 2: Blog
Hello, welcome back to my Blog! This week I have made significant progress in researching the history of low-wage labor. I have looked into the Industrial Revolution, and how it shifted large workforces into factories, establishing cities as cornerstones of modern industry. Something else I have been looking into is the history of labor-management practices, especially their relationship to low-wage labor. This was sparked by an introduction to scientific management, which is a progenitor of modern management practices that attempt to make profits as effectively as possible, which often negatively affect the freedoms of wage workers. I will begin to incorporate this understanding of hierarchical workplace systems and their evolution into my research so that I can use their principles to find out more about futures of low-wage labor management as technology disseminates into industries with less capital concentration.
For my on-site, I have completed working on aggregating employment and class data of the top 50 MBA programs in the country. Through this research, I have polished my skills in Microsoft Excel, and cardinally. I've learned more about the value of an MBA in terms of return on investment and compensation.
Week 3: SP Week 3 Blog
Hello, welcome back to my Blog! this week I have been busy at work, researching the history of labor and unionization in professional baseball. I learned about the “Reserve Clause”, a tool to keep players' rights contracted to one team. I investigated its murky legacy in the repression of player rights. I also researched early attempts by players to unionize, with their original players’ union and failed Players League in 1889. It is important to note the history of unionization attempts before the institution of the MLBPA, exemplifying the constant clashes between employee and employer, and the original low standing of MLB players in the lens of negotiation power. I also looked into statistics about the modern low-wage laborer, one thing that stuck out was that over 70% of low-wage labor is waged by people without any college degrees, which is 25% lower than the 96% of professional baseball players with no college degree. This is a jarring statistic considering only 10% of pro baseball players make it to the Major Leagues and are compensated as professionals.
For my onsite, I have been utilizing Excel, adding extra data points to the MBA research spreadsheet I am working on. I believe that checking the median compensation by industry from MBA employment reports can help the data to show more about the level of these top MBA schools, giving a more in-depth report overall.
Week 4: Blog (Blake Snell is overpaid)
Hello, welcome back to my blog! This week I have consulted my reading list, mainly Jim Bouton and his groundbreaking novel, Ball Four, one of the only pre-free agency descriptions of contract negotiations in professional baseball. Bouton chronicles his career as a pitcher in the 1960s giving anecdotes about his day-to-day life, one that stuck out to me was his contract negotiations with the New York Yankees in 1965. After winning 21 games with a 2.53 ERA the Yankees refused to meet Bouton's request for 30,000 dollars (Roughly $200,000 in 2024), instead offering $15,500 (~$153,000). After negotiating for months, Bouton was able to work past this discrepancy of nearly half of his initial contract to get $28,000. This episode is important, as it is an example of a front office attempting to take advantage of a player who only has two grounds to stand on for his demands, through ignorance of contribution to a team. It is important to note that Bouton’s contract was primarily decided by his win-loss record, with his ERA getting secondary consideration. Bouton's power to negotiate was, like every other baseball player before the overturning of the reserve clause (see last week's Blog for more info) weak, he was forced to sign one-year contracts with the Yankees for as little as they wanted to pay him. The Yankees front office trying to negotiate with their 4th best player from last year (Based on bWAR) is stark considering they could afford him considering their deal with CBS for 11 Million dollars that year. Ten years before free agency and the overturning of baseball’s trust exemption, and even 5 before the reserve clause was heavily scrutinized, Bouton gives insight into the life of a player
After I’m done learning about the past of Baseball and labor, I will begin to look toward the free agency era before Moneyball next week. I will also be reading Nickel Dimed for next week, looking into the low-wage labor market to connect it to my research from baseball. I have also been working diligently on my On-site, learning more and more commands in Google Sheets, which I am becoming increasingly literate and proficient in. Thank you for reading my blog.
Week 5: SP Week 5 Draft
Hello, Welcome back to my blog, unfortunately, this week has seen me sick with two separate illnesses, and I have been struggling to put together research. What I have been able to accomplish this week though, was finishing my reading of Ball Four, it is an important source expect to cite in my work. While I did not get to start Nickel Dimed I was able to do more research on the state of labor relations in baseball before the advent of Moneyball. Around the time of Ball Four, the Players Union (MLBPA) began to take itself more seriously with the appointment of Marvin Miller, a famous labor leader. This appointment signaled the beginning of the Ballplayer taking his rights into his own hands, as following Millers' installation the literacy of players increased greatly. The Drysdale-Koufax Holdout served as an epoch of this era of change, from this holdout to the Seitz decision which overturned the Reserve Clause Miller was present, also advising Curt Flood in his famous court battle with the league that ended up in the Supreme Court. The progress made during Millers' time as the director of the MLBPA was massive, and his version of the MLBPA operated similarly to the Warren Court in terms of progressive changes serving as the basis of legislation aimed at equalizing an unequal playing field. With his reign came the establishment of MLB’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, which allowed the collective power of the MLBPA to delegate with the League to decide standards for players. The relationship has always been tense, with players and the league often going back and forth on issues, resulting in countless labor stoppages over the past 50 years. Next week I hope to be able to report on Nickel Dimed, and more on the state of low-wage labor in the US, so I can better connect it to professional baseball.
This week for my onsite placement I finished my initial research on the rankings of top MBA programs. I will now be using my data to show more, creating in-depth ROI charts, and rankings that can reflect more about the schools than what is online right now.
Week 6: SP Week 6 Blog
Hello, welcome back to my blog, this week I have been working diligently to make up for my illness last week. I have been busy reading Nickel Dimed, one of the books on my reading list. Unfortunately, it did not give me what I was looking for as a source, this is ok as Ball Four was significantly better than I originally thought. This week though, I have begun the first draft of my final deliverable research paper. At this point, I have compiled enough research to discuss the history of labor in baseball up to the modern era. I am working out how to discuss the history of baseball while tying in the history of low-wage labor in general. Stats such as Wins Above Replacement (WAR), and Statcast will be important in my argument for the current situation of Labor in pro baseball. Both statistics and the principles they represent are integral in contract calculation for the modern player, as teams struggle to argue against them considering their history of subreption in contract discussions. Providing the final value of a player is extremely important in contract negotiations, as it allows them to be viewed simply for their production. As the technology gets more and more complex to track players, the meaning of statistics has become easier to describe, considering how they track players more completely.
For my Internship, I have been finishing up the ROI data I began inputting last week, finishing up the top 50 schools. I made a coefficient based on the average of all of the schools, to rank them on top salary, and ROI, based on average salary, and cost of attendance, I have had to come up with a method of removing the data given by Executive MBAs.
Week 7: SP BLOG WEEK 7
Hello, welcome back to my blog! This week I have been busy at work on the first draft of my final paper, through synthesis of my labor and baseball sources. Ball Four has been very easy to integrate, considering the parts of it I plan to incorporate is mainly quotes. My first draft is, for the time being, comprised of the history of labor, and labor rights in the modern era after the Industrial Revolution, an introduction to professional baseball, and the way statistics have been used in labor discussions since the National League was founded in 1876. Things like the failed Players League and sources like Is the Base-Ball Player a Chattel are valuable in painting an image of how labor was originally considered. I plan to finish up this introductory part by my blog post next week so I can begin to paint an image of the future, integrating my labor sources and my understanding of contract evaluations in modern baseball.
For my Internship, I have been finishing up the ROI data I began inputting last week, finishing up the top 50 schools. I made a coefficient based on the average of all of the schools, to rank them on top salary, and ROI, based on average salary, and cost of attendance, I have had to come up with a method of removing the data given by Executive MBAs.
Week 8: SP WEEK 8 BLOG
Hello, welcome back to my Senior Project blog, this week I have been busy amending my first draft, making sure that all of the facts I give as context are correct, in content and citation. I have also been adding labor sources, which I plan to use more heavily as I move on to the next part of my paper. I have not done new research this week, and therefore have nothing new to report on that front. I am in the consolidation part of my research project and don't plan on having as much to write about in the coming weeks.
For my Internship, I have been finishing up the ROI data I began inputting last week, finishing up the top 50 schools. I made a coefficient based on the average of all of the schools, to rank them on top salary, and ROI, based on average salary, and cost of attendance, I have had to come up with a method of removing the data given by Executive MBAs.
Week 8: SP Blog Week 8
Hello, welcome back to my Senior Project blog! this week I have been working to polish off my first draft. I am beginning to go back and move my paper along, making sure that everything is good content-wise. Something I have been looking at recently that relates to my project is the now public bat speed data on baseball savant. I have not done new research this week, and therefore have nothing new to report on that front. I am in the consolidation part of my research project and don't plan on having as much to write about in the coming weeks.
For my Internship, I have been finishing up the ROI data I began inputting last week, finishing up the top 50 schools. I made a coefficient based on the average of all of the schools, to rank them on top salary, and ROI, based on average salary, and cost of attendance, I have had to come up with a method of removing the data given by Executive MBAs.
Week 9: Senior Project Blog Week 9
Hello, Welcome back to my Senior Project Blog! This week I unfortunately re aggravated a major back injury I suffered at the beginning of the calendar year, and have been unable to do much due to the pain. I have made some progress on my draft though, updating the syntax and grammar and moving it closer to a finished product. I have also been expanding my final deliverable, making sure to elucidate my point fluently in my words. The history of Major League Baseball and labor takes up a bigger portion of this final paper than I would have imagined. I am also beginning to work on my final presentation, ensuring it lasts the designated time. Hopefully by the time presentations come around I will be physically able to present my project.
For my Internship, I have finished up the ROI data finishing up the top 50 school ranking. I learned a lot about using spreadsheets and aggregating data to find new interpretations of it. I am grateful for the opportunity the senior project provided me with in terms of an internship.
Week 10: Senior Project Blog Week 10
Hello, welcome back to my senior project blog! This last week before presentations has been filled with working and reworking. Making consistent tweaks and changes to my final paper, and diligently polishing my presentation so I can present on Monday. Working on ordering my citations has been a fun way to look back at all of the sources, and references I have used in my research. Going back looking at all of the sources individually has served as an interesting “trip down memory lane” to be sure.
Week 11: Senior Project Week 11
Hello, I presented my final presentation and turned in my final draft last week, I would like to thank all of the administrators involved in the senior project for the amazing help.
Post 14: Closing Blog
Hello, welcome to my final Blog, after finishing everything and turning it in I am now able to reflect on the progress I made during the duration of my senior project. These past months have been a fruitful foray into setting my study schedule, and execution of projects. Even though I had so much time to practice, and go over my presentation I was still nervous, this is something I will have to work on in the future. Basis provided me with a valuable experience that can help me significantly in the future. As for the project itself, I think that many of my findings can benefit the labor sphere in the coming years, although I do not know if they will be ethically implemented in the way that I proposed. AI and labor have a future together, unfortunately it might not be in the way that I anticipate. MLB has provided a blueprint, and I think AI is very capable of following it, but also like MLB, those with capital are hesitant to implement systems that oust them and their power.