The bloggers here at The Sports Economist will all know Professor Steve Walters of Loyola University here in Maryland. Steve has signed on to advise new Orioles GM Dan Duquette “to help quantify players’ financial values to the team.” He had a similar role when Duquette was with the Red Sox.
To learn a bit more, read here. My favorite tidbit from the article is: “He has already provided financial valuations — based on an undisclosed formula“. Does anyone think it might be related to marginal revenue product?
Congratulations to Steve. As a long suffering Orioles’ fan, I deeply hope the team takes his advice.
Many thanks for the kind words and good wishes, Dennis. Also the optimism — whether we “make good” or not remains to be seen. All my “undisclosed” formulae, of course, have been published in scholarly journals; reading the journals could save teams a lot of money. But I’m hopeful that eventually every professional sports team will realize it’ll be useful to have a consulting economist to apply micro principles to key decisions; I’ll try not to deal that process any setbacks.