Pretend for a moment you don' t know this is a sports website.  Are you pretending?  No?  Come on, just play along.

Last night I listened to an upper management type from a local business speak.  Here are the areas he focused on:

-Process vs. Outcome

-Culture vs. Expectations

-Correlation vs. Causation

-Psychological Biases

-Humility in the face of uncertainty.

Given this list of topics would you think I was referring to baseball?  If you were playing along I'm going to say no.

The upper management type I'm speaking of is Paul Depodesta, Assistant to the GM for the San Diego Padres.  Last night a group of Baseball Prospectus/Baseball/Padres fans had the opportunity to hear from the Ivy League grad.  The night was hosted by BP senior writer Joe Sheehan.  We were asked not to share specifics of the evening so I won't discuss the Q&A that followed his address.  However, you can infer from the above topics that baseball is run these days more like a MBA program than an ol' boys club.

A big thank you goes to the BP guys for setting up the event.  Thanks also go out to the Padres for being willing to have such a large group of hard-core baseball junkies pepper their management with questions about upcoming moves and ineffective draft picks.

On a side note, courtesy of the Union-Tribune:

"Padres CEO Sandy Alderson has reached an agreement with special assistant Paul DePodesta that will keep DePodesta with the club past 2008.

"I fully expect him to be here beyond this year," Alderson said Friday."