Chemistry 101
Here's an AP wire story on our beloved Nats' travails, asking the question of where the chemistry from June has gone. Familiar stuff to most readers, to be sure, but it provides me with the chance to explain my views on "chemistry".
Chemistry in baseball (and other sports) is essentially the same thing as "goodwill" in accounting. When one someone pays $450 million for a company that on paper is "worth" only $300 million, the accountants fudge it by assigning the extra $150 million to "goodwill". Trademarks and brands, which are intangible and very hard to value, are often valued as "goodwill".
Likewise, in baseball, when the stats seem to say one thing but reality says another (e.g. your opponents have score more runs than you but your record is 19 games over .500), many ascribe the difference to "chemistry". Similarly, when a team loaded with talent on paper fails miserably on the field, it is often the lack of "chemistry" that is proffered to explain the difference ("We never gelled as a team"; "The parts just didn't come together"). Statheads eschew the word "chemistry," preferring instead what they see is a more proababilistically honest term: "luck". Whatever it is called, the bottom line is this: When people start discussing "chemistry" in baseball or "goodwill" in accounting, you have entered the world where people are making stuff up.
posted by DM @ 9:01 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I agree with you that good leaders like Rose or detractors like Nomar can have an effect on the team's fortunes, but only to the extent that, like any workplace or collective endeavor, the personalities of the members of the group and the dynamics among them will either help or hurt their ability to accomplish the goal. Quantifying that effect is where people begin making stuff up, and my view is that most people (especially outsiders) resort to the "chemistry" tag to avoid the harder task of analysis.
... and, IMHO, with guys like Rose, it's 95% their performance on the field, and at most 5% leadership that contributed to the success of the Phillies.
Hey, goodwill is a real thing. When you pay $450 million to acquire only $300 million of net identifiable assets, that $150 million isn't "made up". That's $150 million of real money that you paid, and you paid it for something. You didn't just give it away.
Sure, the $150 million dollars is real, and the buyer thinks they are paying for something, and to accurately account for it you must ascribe it to something, but what that is is intangible and subject to lots of conjecture.
Kind of like what we got for $16 million dollars to Cristian Guzman.
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