September 2021

Event Recap - Meeting with Niv Shah, September 28, 2021

Niv Shah, the developer of the popular fantasy baseball site, Ottoneu, discussed both fantasy and real baseball with the Cleveland Club on September 28

Niv Shah, the developer of the popular fantasy baseball site, Ottoneu, discussed both fantasy and real baseball with the Cleveland Club on September 28. Shah developed an attachment to the Cleveland Indians while a high school student. He watched the Indians at Jacobs Field and played crude fantasy baseball with his high school friends. After college and a stint as a software developer in Silicon Valley, he began a fantasy site that more realistically duplicated what Major League Baseball (MLB) general managers do to build a winning team over time. This means studying player statistics and then buying or trading for them – within a salary cap – with other GMs who are working just as hard to develop their own winning teams. Shah’s site – ottoneu.fangraphs.com – creates 12-, 14-, and 16-team leagues composed of real players with their attendant real statistics that update with every real game those players play. Teams have as many as 40 players and each Ottoneu GM creates a lineup for the day, including a pitching rotation and player positions. Teams rise and fall within their leagues based on real-time statistics of the players who compose the separate teams. An inspiration was the Michael Lewis book (and subsequent movie) Moneyball. Unlike some other games that dissolve their teams at a season’s end, Ottoneu teams trade and buy through the winter just as their real counterparts do in hope of emerging with a winning combination as the spring season starts. People who have played Ottoneu have moved on to front office jobs with MLB teams. Ottoneu now has 4,000 GMs playing in 370 leagues.

Shah told participants that a friend put him in touch with Indians’ GM Mike Chernoff, who has admired the site and given advice, as well as watched games with Shah.

Asked which real MLB teams Shah thinks will be strong in the post-season, he named the White Sox and the Astros, and called the Dodgers a great team.

Asked about this summer’s pitching substance abuse issue – MLB cracked down on substances pitchers sometimes worked onto the balls they were pitching in order to increase the ball spin rate -- Shah said it had an effect on real pitchers, whose statistics then sank and thus created consequences on Ottoneu teams as well. He surmised that pitching injuries would be on the rise in the coming year on account of trying to compensate by attempting to throw the balls faster.

Shah said in his opinion the Indians have been quite astute in their trades in recent decades, including moving on from Corey Kluber and Trevor Bauer at the right time. He also pointed out that the Indians use their farm system differently than, say, the Yankees -- the Indians try to develop talent for the long haul whereas the Yankees look to purchase super stars once they have developed.

You can learn more about Ottoneu at ottoneu.fangraphs.com and more about Niv Shah from the April 13, 2021 article in the Washington Post.

Event Recap - Meeting with Senator Sherrod Brown, September 14, 2021

The Senior Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, met with the Cleveland Club of Washington, D.C., on September 14

The Senator and his wife Connie Schultz live in Cleveland. He told the Club he loves and is proud of the city and thinks it’s one of the best places to live in the country -- though he believes it needs to do a better job promoting its advantages such as the hospitals, colleges and universities, and arts institutions.

Senator Brown said he lamented the “decades” of trade and tax policy he has felt for a long time undermined NE Ohio’s industrial base. But he is proud of having recently helped to pass the American Rescue Plan, which, he said, contained a pension fix that would help small businesses and 100,000 Ohio union workers. He is proud of the work he did to expand the Child Tax Credit, which he said will help families of 92% of Ohio’s children. He also was pleased with the Senate’s passage of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, aspects of which will help Cleveland and Ohio industry.

He said that traditionally the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee has given undue attention to big banking, whereas he as Chairman will steer it more to addressing such smaller financial institutions as community banks and credit unions. He will also work to shift its focus to housing, including inequities arising out of historic redlining, and to reviving inner cities. He noted that in the 1950s when Cleveland’s population was about 900,000 only 2,000 people lived downtown whereas now with less than half that population, 20,000 persons live downtown. He said he is working to help real estate companies convert commercial office space to affordable residences in city cores – as is happening in Cleveland – because internet usage allows more people to work from home and thereby frees up existing office space.

Other points Senator Brown made when answering questions from Club participants:

  • With respect to trade, he said he believed Congress won’t make the mistakes of the past and welcomes reforms in the Competition Act, including better provision for using U. S. materials and workers rather than outsourcing.

  • He advocates a small tax on corporation stock buy-backs to encourage companies instead to invest in their workers, research and development, and other value-creating activities, and believes some form of his proposed legislation concerning it will be part of new federal revenue-raising.

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Senator Brown is Chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. He also serves on the Finance Committee, the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

You can learn more about Senator Brown’s positions at his website www.brown.senate.gov or in his three books: Myths of Free Trade -- Why American Trade Policy has Failed; Congress from the Inside; and Desk 88 -- Eight Progressive Senators who Changed America.

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