Those 1984 style questions were indeed the equivalent of asking a modern day person if he preferred a Model T or a Chrysler Airflow. The latter was obviously newer and more desirable in its day, but not relevant in today's auto environment, so a preference now for a Model T might not even be meaningful. Business Analytics are core to industry and commerce today. That doesn't mean Analytics alone run the business. Much as it's easier to teach a diesel bus mechanic how to drive a bus than to teach a bus driver how to fix a diesel engine, it is easier to teach Baseball to a business analytics person than to teach Analytics to a baseball person. In part, because you're not asking that person to run the team. And hiring only local stats majors barely out of college, as I surmise they are doing, is probably a waste of time if that's all you do in the arena. You need to hire several people with pretty elite skills in this area or you will just flail. Show me they have a mid-30s Wharton hardcore-quant MBA who knows a linear program from a linear regression and I'll feel better. Fuqua or Tuck, even. The analytical role on a baseball team is not fundamentally to come up with new stats, nor new formulas, nor running spreadsheets all day - though these may be important tasks. It is a mindset akin to Systems Analysis.