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Craig R. Wright |
Craig
R. Wright worked
21 years in major league baseball, primarily in the area of player
evaluation. He was one of the early pioneers taking an approach that
integrated science with baseball. He is most often associated with the Texas
Rangers where he got his start in the early 1980s, but his longest
association with a big league team was a 10-year run as a year-round
consultant to the Los Angeles Dodgers. During that period the Dodgers had the
second best record in the league, trailing only the Atlanta Braves during
their amazing streak of divisional titles. 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 work two years as a
year-round consultant to the Arizona Diamondbacks in their preparation for
their expansion draft, the first to produce a 40-homer player and two All-Star
players. He also was a consultant for a dozen years with STATS Inc, designing
their products for major league teams and some cross-over products used by
the media. He is the primary author of The Diamond
Appraised (Simon & Shuster), which was translated into
Japanese and led to the addition of the Hanshin Tigers to his client list. He
also is the co-author of The Man Who Stole First
Base (Taylor Publishing) which is a collection of stories from the
long-running radio show A Page from Baseball’s Past,
which he also researches and writes. (The
show was created in partnership with Eric Nadel who is the producer and voice
of the show.) There is now a subscription text version of the show, enhanced
by pictures, charts, research notes, and is a huge hit among fans and
baseball historians (see advertisement at the right). Craig
lives in his beloved Click
here to learn more about the book The Diamond Appraised
Like a lot of folks who
find themselves saddled with a public persona, there have been things put out
in the public domain about my career that are off the mark – sometimes to the
point of being exactly the opposite of the truth or literally involving a
completely different person. You get used to having to live with such
nonsense, and it was a delight to realize that here was an opportunity to
correct some of the false notions. Most are such obvious mistakes that they
quickly fall by the wayside and are not worth addressing. For example, a
writer for the Associated Press once criticized the impact my book The Diamond Appraised had on pitching practices in baseball, and
specifically credited it with helping to kill the 4-man pitching rotation – a
rather remarkable charge given the chapter in the book titled “Bring Back the
Four-Man Rotation.” It turned out the writer had never even seen the book,
and apologized for being misled without checking out the facts. There is also a bit of
confusion where some folks have written that I worked with the Seattle
Mariners under Bill Bavasi. This appears to stem from a newspaper interview
where Bavasi talked about trying to hire me, and somewhere along the line
someone missed the part in that story that noted that I declined. For the
record, I never worked for the Mariners at any time in my career. Another well off the mark
claim that was recently brought to my attention was a baseball executive who
did an interview where he mentioned knowing me back in the early 1980s and
that I “went on to be the founder of STATS Inc.” Not even remotely close. I
did have an association with STATS Inc where for several years they were the
one client of my consulting business that was not a team. I designed their
products for the major league teams, and they advertised me as their “Director of Major League Operations,”
but I certainly was not the founder of the company or involved in its startup
in any way. To help straighten out a
few other things, I have five sub-pages you can visit: My problem with “Moneyball,” by Michael Lewis My Corrections and Additions to “The Numbers Game,” by
Alan Schwarz Wikipedia Twisting the Truth - Voros McCracken Entry Correcting
the Perception of My Role in the Rockies “Hampton-Neagle” Signings |
The
ongoing series of stories, A Page from Baseball’s
Past, is written and researched by |
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