Business lessons from the Atlanta Braves winning the World Series

(I wrote this for work. The editor of the section in question declined to run it for reasons I understand. But I think it still has merit, so here it is.)

At the All-Star break this year, the Atlanta Braves hadn’t done a lot. Players weren’t sure if the front office was going to try to win, since they’d recently lost their all-star center fielder, one of their best pitchers was out for the year, and another standout outfielder had been arrested.

Then a front office leader told Alex Anthopolous he had whatever resources he needed to make a move.

Another team might have decided to pack it in and not spend — baseball is a business, after all. Anthopolous instead decided to pack the lineup with talent, and traded for four players: Jorge Soler, Eddie Rosario, Adam Duvall and Joc Pederson.

It was a gamble, even though Anthopolous had the support of his front office. The Braves could have spent a ton of money but continued to play mediocre baseball.

In fact, for about a month, they did.

Then they got better. And because their division — industry niche, if you will — wasn’t the strongest, they were able to win it without having an amazing record.

Put another way, they devoted the resources to a minimum viable product that was good enough to achieve their business goal: win the National League East Division pennant.

Teams in other divisions had to win more games to win their divisions. But that’s because the playing field wasn’t level, just as the playing field is never level across industries. For example, just as the Los Angeles Dodgers won more games than the Braves but didn’t win their division. Likewise, one company might outearn another company but not have as much market share (or overall success) because it’s in a different industry.

In the end, the acquisitions worked out well for the Braves: One of those players was voted most valuable player of the National League Championship Series, and another was voted MVP of the World Series.

Neither player was on the Braves’ roster when the season began. And sometimes, in business, a crucial recent hire becomes indispensable to a project or process.

Here are other lessons from the Braves’ win that apply to business:

No hard feelings

In last year’s playoffs, Joc Pederson helped the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Braves. Pederson’s Dodgers then won the World Series. Anthopolous looked at Pederson and saw not a reason the Braves had lost but a player who could help his team win, too.

And a few months later, Pederson provided all the runs in one playoff game the Braves won. He also provided a certain swagger, lifted spirits and gave fans and teammates alike things to enjoy: the fun of Joctober, his pearls and a (profane) bit of text that started here and has ended up all over Twitter.

Take risk

The Braves needed a run. Manager Brian “Snit” Snitker took a risk by pulling his pitcher for a pinch hitter. Two batters later, he was rewarded with a lead his team never relinquished. His pitcher had been performing well, but in that moment, he needed a skill his pitcher was unlikely to deliver on. After that pinch hitter delivered, Snit replaced him with other pitchers who did well enough to win the game for Atlanta.

In business, not all of your employees are going to be great at everything. They can’t be. And sometimes you need one person’s skill set at the risk of losing another’s. Understanding how to manage that — how to shuffle talent around for the betterment of the team or product — is a core part of leadership.

Manage for the long game

Up three games to one in the World Series, the Braves needed to win once more to clinch. They had two excellent pitchers who weren’t available because they’d both just pitched. And in baseball, going on what’s called “short rest” is often a recipe for disaster.

So instead of risking two excellent pitchers who weren’t ready to perform, Snit used other pitchers. The Braves lost that game, but two days later, one of those excellent pitchers put up an excellent stat line — one that nobody had ever produced in a World Series-clinching game. His was the fourth-best performance in a playoff game in the past six years. It drew comparisons to a Hall of Famer’s World Series-clinching game.

In business, sometimes the person you need to seal a deal is sick, dealing with family problems or something else. A sick employee is an employee you need to let rest, and an employee dealing with a screaming toddler similarly needs time to deal with that situation. So when you can wait for that person to be ready to be amazing, do.

Learning from Luke Jackson

In 2020, Luke Jackson had a year I might charitably describe as not his best. He did a lot of things that good pitchers don’t do, and he did few things that good pitchers do. To use one statistic that some folks might be familiar with, his ERA was nearly 7.

In 2021, he did great. Again, to use a common statistic, his ERA was under 2, which is elite — for perspective, Hall of Fame pitcher Greg Maddux’s ERA was under 2 in only two of his 23 seasons. And when the playoffs began, Jackson kept doing well.

Then he got torched. Twice. But he’d been doing well all year, and everyone knew he’d have to be good for the World Series. So in Game 1, Snit put him in, and he did great. He was back. And he needed to know he was back, Snit needed to know it, the bullpen needed to know it, and the fans sure appreciated it. In fact, he was so back that a few days later, when he did something well and a teammate messed it up, he teased the guy about it.

In business, you’ll have employees who go from being okayish to being amazing.

And then they’ll slump.

Your job as a manager is to put them in a position to right themselves, because the one thing you don’t want is for a reliable employee to suddenly be a question mark. That mindset affects the whole team.

Be honest

After the Braves won their third World Series game, Snit was asked about his feelings heading into the next game. He said, among other things, that he didn’t expect he’d be able to sleep.

That’s not surprising. There he was, close to the pinnacle of achievement in his career, after decades of trying to get there.

As a human being, when you get close to achieving a dream, you’re going to have feelings unless you’re a psychopath. Acknowledging those feelings helps you deal with them.

That doesn’t always mean you get the result you want — for example, lots of sleep — but ignoring them ignores the human you are. So whether that means taking time to grieve when someone dies (or not doing so because you know you need to escape that emotion), or being present for your children or other family members at their milestones.

However else your life interferes with your work, being honest allows you to process the moment and better understand what you need.

Sometimes the past is just that: the past

In preparation for the 2019 World Series against the Houston Astros, the Washington Nationals “developed a complex system of mixing signs to thwart any attempts by the Astros to steal signs.”

As one Nationals player said, “It was amazing, once [it was assured] we were playing the Astros, how many people were coming out of the woodwork to let us know what they were doing [with stealing signs].” Faced with this information, “The Nationals ended up overcoming it by using wristbands and multiple signs.”

That was 2019. Two years later, two of the players involved in the Astros’ illegal sign-stealing scheme are no longer in baseball. The managers have been fired, the team fined and deprived of draft picks, and the players involved who are still in the league are contrite.

That might matter little to fans (like me), who will never have any taste for a team or players that cheated, but if you have no compelling evidence that a team or its players are still cheating, part of you has to focus on what they are doing, not what you think they might be doing.

To that end, I have seen no evidence that Brian Snitker discussed the team’s preparation for the Astros to steal signs illegally. So we’re left with two options:

1. The Astros are still trying to cheat.

If they are, they aren’t very good at it: In the Braves’ World Series wins, they held the Astros to an average of one run per nine innings — the lowest ERA in Series wins since 1985. (This is mitigated by the fact that in the 2017 World Series, when the Astros were cheating, they were held to an average of 1.33 runs per nine innings in the Dodgers’ wins. That’s … not a robust difference.)

2. The Astros aren’t still trying to cheat.

I’m not sure this is provable. You have to trust them. Whether you do or not is your call. I’ll never trust them, but I get paid to trust nobody and nothing, so I’m not a great example.

Finding comfort in hard times

Braves legend Hank Aaron died this year. The news wasn’t hugely shocking: He was 86, and most people don’t get to live that long. We were lucky to get so many amazing years from such an amazing person and further lucky that so many of those years were recordable. If you want to know how Hank played, you can watch video of him. If you want to know how Hank sounded or what he said, you can watch and listen. You don’t need to rely on printed reports or other people’s recollections.

Hank wore number 44 as a Brave. The Braves had number 44 mowed in their outfield all year. And in the aftermath of us winning the World Series, a number of people took to Twitter to examine the 44s in the season. My favorite is that we won 44 games before the all-star break, 44 after the all-star break, and the World Series in the 44th week of 2021. Then there are the four players Anthropoulos traded for at the deadline: Three of their numbers add up to a number that begins with a 4. The fourth number ends in a 4.

To some people, those 4s and 44s bear religious or other significance — a sign that hank had something to do with his team beating his old friend’s team (Hank mentored Dusty Baker, the Astros’ manager). To others, it’s fate that we’d be doing things with a clear connection to Hank. And to other people, it’s a comforting thing in a world full of discomforting things.

You get things like that a lot in business and in life whether you look for them or not. Some people need them because they need to feel like the people they revered are still there. It speaks to the control we crave over the fundamentally uncontrollable entity that is death.

My sister, who is Catholic, found peace in the fact that our father’s team won the World Series around “[the time when] the day Catholics honor the dead” and “the feast of Daddy’s confirmation Saint.”

For perspective, Hank was our father’s favorite player, and the reason he got into the Braves. He died eight years ago this month.

Eight is four plus four. And I derive comfort from thinking some of this stuff is connected, even if it’s in a way I can’t understand and maybe never will.

Conclusion

So, what lesson can you take from this sport if you didn’t even know the sportsball season was over?

1. Hiring a rival’s key performer can be a great idea because that person is good at something you do.
2. Shuffling a team around when the situation changes and different skill sets are required can be the difference between a project succeeding or a project failing.
3. Give your employees the rest they need so they can be at their best in crucial situations.
4. When your high performers suddenly stop performing well, take a close look at why, and monitor the situation as your training tells you to.
5. Acknowledging the undeniable — and the human — is part of good leadership and good management. Doing so also helps you deal with reality, as opposed to hiding from it and pretending the situation hasn’t changed.
6. If everything you see says that a bad thing has stopped, continuing to focus on that bad thing might not be the best use of resources. Focusing on what’s ahead of you rather than what’s behind you can help you succeed in the now, not the then.
7. Let yourself enjoy the little coincidences (or not) life gives you.

#BattleWon, Braves County.

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