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Baseball Term Paper: Or, How I Learned That Ned Colletti's Job Is Hard

Here are the basic, tentative guidelines for my term paper, folks! This will be my sanity provider during the next few weeks...

  1. Select a team that, in the 2010 baseball season, ranked among the bottom 12 teams based on win-lose schedule. Your goal is to systematically analyze every facet of the organization—management, money, fans, media, coaches, stadiums and other items Mnookin identifies to determine how the team needs to improve and what changes need to be made in order for that team to go to the World Series by 2016. In addition to analyzing the organization, you need to analyze the players on the team, the team chemistry and other facets of the actual team, on a player-by-player basis, to decide whom to keep and whom to get rid of.
  2. In addition to analyzing the weaknesses of the team, and the player profile, you need to make concrete recommendations about what is specifically needed to bring that team up to the top. This could include recommendations for changing ownership (and to whom), building a fan base, other ways to get money if necessary, media outlets. Is the current general manager doing the best job? If so, why would you keep him? If not, who would you put in instead? Don’t just analyze the regular players, but identify which players are not holding their own, or taking away from team cohesion and who you would replace them with. What about the farm system? Should the team rely on the farm system, trading players, or some combination? If the third choice, where should it go for trading, where should it seek out top players, or is drawing from the farm system sufficient? Again, the Mnookin book will identify more decisions that need to be made, so keep a list of them for class discussion.

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