A Baseball Organization Is More Than a Shopping List

Thomas Peeters, Steven Salaga and Matthew Juravich studied the joint contribution of upper and middle managers in MLB. Their research identifies the quality of the managerial pairing—how effectively managers cooperate across organizational layers—as a statistically significant and economically meaningful driver of performance. Study

The paper also reports that pairing quality did not improve simply with the length of joint employment. Waiting longer was not itself evidence that the partnership was becoming more effective. Study

That does not establish that any particular general manager and field manager are incompatible. It challenges a convenient assumption: that two impressive résumés necessarily produce an effective partnership.

Our editorial implication is straightforward. Ask whether organizational layers are pursuing compatible plans. Do roster decisions and on-field assignments reflect the same priorities? When they do not, who has authority to resolve the disagreement? Those are accountability questions, not measurements reported by the study.

Leadership also reaches players nowhere near a major-league introductory press conference.

Christopher McLeod, Nola Agha and Simon Rosenblum-Larson examined organizational support for minor-league player development. English- and Spanish-language respondents identified pay, offseason training opportunities and nutritious food among their most important unmet development needs. Study

The study reports that two support factors explained 17% of variation in players' self-perceptions of development. That wording matters: it is not a measured 17% increase in baseball skill, promotions or major-league wins. Study

The research describes its study context, not an audit of every club's current conditions. It gives leadership a more concrete subject than another speech about grit. If an organization celebrates development, asking about players' practical support is reasonable. Branding alone cannot answer the question.

Perhaps we are giving leadership too much credit. Talented players can make a management structure look brilliant. Injuries and ordinary variation can make competent people look hopeless. An apparent coordination advantage may be difficult to separate from other organizational strengths.

That objection should restrain the verdict. Neither cited paper proves that better meetings manufacture a championship. Nor does a successful low-budget club establish that resources are unnecessary. The minor-league research's emphasis on unmet financial and material needs cuts against romanticizing scarcity. Player-support study

Good leadership is not a substitute for investment. That is our judgment, supported here by evidence about needs—not a measured championship effect.

We would place less weight on coordination and support if replicated studies using credible comparisons found that improvements produced no meaningful changes in development or performance. We would place more weight on them if transparent evaluations connected specific changes to sustained, independently measured gains.

For now, ask organizations to explain the work between spending the money and playing the games. The press conference is not the system.

The management study's publisher-deposited abstract was verified through Crossref; full publisher access was restricted. The player-support journal page was directly retrieved. No current Chicago management score or original causal estimate was produced.

Continue with Performance, vision science and the original investigation.