Right, back to work.
“There’s another kid. Xander Greene. Lanky, gap-to-gap hitter, can run like the wind.”
“Three rookies?”
“It’s, in theory, how we pay for Nakamura . . .”
“How old are they?” he asks, taking another sip of his beer.
“Twenty-one.”
He nearly spits out the beer, coughing as he manages to wheeze, “What, all of them? Three rookies and Nakamura? It sounds like a mediocre eighties movie.”
She ignores my stray thought. “Like I said, it’s how we pay for Nakamura. They’ll all be making the minimum. It cuts more than fifty million off our books right away.”
“So you want to win a World Series starting two rookies every day at two of the premier positions on the field, one of which is going to have to learn an entirely new pitching staff and adjust to the major leagues. That pitching staff will have one rookie and one import from Japan who’ll also be making that adjustment five thousand miles away from home.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck. I’m gonna need something stronger than beer.”
“Stew knows about it. He’s on board. Hell, half of it was his idea.”
“Which half?”
“The half that has you managing them and Javy coming on to work with Nakamura and Esposito.”
“No other major changes?”
“No, nothing major. So, what do you think?”
“I think it’s insane. What did your computer spit out?”
“The margins are . . . tight. I’ve run a ton of simulations and most of them are inconclusive, but the ceiling is high. More than a significant percentage have resulted in optimal outcomes.”
“In English?”
“Most of the time it thinks we win, a lot.”
“How much is most?”
“Forty-two percent
“Pretty sure forty-two isn’t most of anything.”
“It’s the plurality of the result . . . the largest percentage. Twenty-seven percent of the time it has us out of the postseason entirely. The rest of the time it has us doing well, but not ultimately coming out on top, but I’m skeptical of post-season predictive analytics.”
“You think your own computer is wrong?”
“I think, on the day to day, it’s more right than not, but once the season shortens to just winning the game in front of you and worrying about tomorrow, tomorrow, that’s when it gets fuzzier.”
“Stew didn’t mention any of this when he brought me in.”
“Stew doesn’t show his entire hand to anyone, let alone someone he isn’t sure is actually sticking around. And then, before he got the chance, he ended up in theCCU. Besides, none of this is your job – you’ve just decided to make it that way.”
“I guess I did.”
“Do you think you can bring Davis along?”
