Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? Baseball Edition

(Previously in the “Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?” series: “Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy? Finance Edition”1)

Here are three interesting facts:

  1. The process of getting Cuban baseball players to MLB is so shady that it may amount to human trafficking.
  2. “The RICO Act … allows the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for the crimes they ordered others to do or assisted them in doing, closing a perceived loophole that allowed a person who instructed someone else to, for example, murder, to be exempt from the trial because they did not actually commit the crime personally.” —Wikipedia
  3. Modern baseball is increasingly driven by evidence-based decision making, which requires analysis, which requires data.

The picture that ties everything together:

Excel spreadsheet with text and color codes, showing names of employees and notes on their suspected criminality

From Eric Stephen on Twitter2, who in turn got it from the primary news source for this, a Sports Illustrated article3. I first saw it on FanGraphs4.

Key takeaways:

  1. Don’t rank your employees by level of increasing criminality
  2. If you do rank your employees by level of increasing criminality, regardless of your opinion about where the line of actual criminality is, don’t label any of the levels “Criminal”.
  3. If you do label any of the levels “Criminal”, do alert the appropriate legal authorities promptly.
  4. If you don’t alert the appropriate legal authorities promptly, or at all, at least don’t retain the employees you have described as criminal for another year.
  5. If you retain employees you have labeled criminal for an extended period of time, don’t write any of this down.