His analytical work focused on measuring the performance of a team's front office with a metric called Marginal Wins/Marginal Payroll.
In eulogizing Pappas, Neal Traven of SABR wrote:He was a brilliant researcher, blessed with the capacity to digest and describe great volumes of material.
Most SABR research stops there, but Doug continued on, to analyze and make sense of what he observed, and to synthesize his insights into recommendations for resolving the problems he addressed.He was a splendid and generous communicator, writing with clarity and passion, eager to share resources and ideas with all who sought him out, always as ready to examine his own assumptions as he was to challenge the assumptions of others.Doug detested pretension and artifice – he certainly knew that the clothes do not make the man.
His college friend Veronica Drake speaks of his mastery of the Socratic method (as taught at the University of Chicago), but I’d call his approach one of reductio ad absurdum … following the premises of, say, Bud Selig to their logical conclusion, and then simply noting the absurdity and fallacy of that outcome.His abiding enthusiasm for baseball and for the American roadside were amply illustrated in the public persona of his writings and his web presence.
Less obvious, but just as deeply held and as integral to his being, were his commitment to social justice and progressive politics, and his love of rock-and-roll music.