Candidates for the job as manager of the Angels were asked to take a long, detailed written exam to demonstrate their knowledge and ability to reason. Oddly, the test posed no questions about players on the team’s roster or in the farm system.
“There’s plenty of time to learn those things,” general manager Billy Eppler said. “We needed to get a sense of how they think, how they problem-solve.”
The questions were situation and probability based. One asked the candidates to state the probability of three consecutive strikeouts, in the context of the league average. The correct answer, according to Eppler, is 1%.