29
2011
Book Review: Moneyball – An Incredible, Revolutionary Masterpiece
An article by 
Moneyball tells the fascinating tale of Billy Beane’s ingenious use of statistical analysis in order to assemble a winning ballclub without the luxury of a large payroll. Through statistics such as OBP, SLG, and a slew of other stats, Beane was able to snatch ballplayers with “hidden virtues” up for a song, creating a team on a $35 million budget just as successful, if not better than the richest teams in the game. Beane’s A’s had become the very definition of quality over quantity.
Michael Lewis’ masterpiece begins with five high school kids performing multiple drills for scouts with the hope of being drafted. One of them stands out significantly over the other four; his name is Billy Beane. Beane was so unbelievably talented in the eyes of baseball’s scouts that the hype for him to make it to the majors was comparable to what we experienced with Stephen Strasburg. Beane was the poster child of a five-tool player. His fatal flaw though, was himself. Beane could not learn plate discipline, but even more importantly, his anger destroyed his playing ability. Beane would have been the first overall pick if he had not been torn on whether to go to college or to sign on with the team that drafts him, making him a risky draft choice. After being picked first round, 23rd overall, Beane ultimately decided to take the money and sign with the Mets, commencing his career in professional baseball. Unfortunately, Beane could not find any success in the majors; his numbers, especially sabermetric stats, were terrible. As a result, nine years after being drafted in the 1st round, at the age of 27, Beane was no longer a player, but beginning instead his new career in the Oakland A’s front office.
Beane began working under Oakland’s GM Sandy Alderson, who turns him onto the idea of sabermetrics. Alderson, a military man and an ivy league graduate, got into baseball because of a man by the name of Bill James, the founder of sabermetrics. Alderson kept a stack of his books on his desk and when Beane came to Alderson, he gave him those books to read and learn from. Needless to say, Beane was hooked.
Fast forwarding to Beane as the GM of the A’s, Moneyball sheds light on his secret weapon behind his genius methods, Paul DePodesta. DePodesta, now scouting director of the Mets under new GM Sandy Alderson, used OBP and whatever other statistics his computer could generate in order to find the players most likely to have success in the majors, the A’s were not looking to “sell jeans”.
In one excerpt, DePodesta tries to get a word in to the scouts, who could care less what he had to say. They probably should have listened:
“Paul said the scouts ought to go have a look at a college kid named Kevin Youkilis. Youkilis was a fat third baseman who couldn’t run, throw or field. What was the point of going to see that? (Because, Paul would be able to say three months later, Kevin Youkilis has the second highest on-base percentage in all of professional baseball, after Barry Bonds.)”
As clearly shown in Moneyball, Billy Beane’s Oakland A’s were not just a few signings that he got lucky on, but carefully orchestrated acquisitions that not only benefited the current ballclub, but the A’s of the future. The idea of drafting carefully to produce star players, retaining them until the end of their contracts and then getting more high draft picks to produce even more stars has kept Oakland in contention while retaining their small market status. Any player the A’s lost to free agency could be easily replaced with a no-names like Scott Hatteberg, Chad Bradford or John Mabry and have the same measure of success, in most cases even more success, than with a marquee name like Barry Zito or Jason Isringhausen.
Even when the A’s lost Jason Isringhausen, Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi following their 102-win season in 2001 and were written off as a guaranteed last place team by any and every baseball analyst out there, they managed to outdo themselves the following season, winning 103 games, just as many as the Yankees had won, except the A’s did it with one fourth of the payroll the Yankees had. He proved they weren’t just some miracle fluke team, but that they were a team that could show perennial success without spending hand over fist.
Bud Selig was trying to get support for the idea of revenue sharing to help poorer, smaller market teams compete with the rich, successful teams. Selig’s biggest argument was that small market teams simply could not have the same year-after-year dominance that teams like the Yankees had. Beane blew his theory out of the water with the Oakland A’s. The second smallest budget in the big leagues had won 100+ games two straight seasons with a no-name lineup and a few starting pitchers. Beane made the baseball world stop and re-think everything that they thought they already about the game. He shattered many of the old ideas.
Beane’s method of Moneyball, very similar but somewhat different than sabermetrics, was to eliminate the concepts of ERA, RBIs, runs, etc, and to build the A’s around who were the best run producers and the best out-makers. As it turns out, these ballplayers tended to be very affordable and extremely undervalued. Beane was looking to eliminate from his club the free swingers and the players without plate discipline. He was looking to get rid of the exact type of ballplayer he once was.
Not only did he succeed in creating his lineup of eight OBP-centered players, but he overcame the disbelief from other clubs and reporters to show that he had something, something big, something that could change the way the rest of the league and its fans looked at baseball.
Moneyball is one of the greatest baseball books ever written, if not the greatest. It is Michael Lewis’ crowning achievement, hands down. Combining not only baseball stats and analysis, but the stories and reasoning behind it. Perfectly blending the facts, his and others’ opinions, stats, and even some humor thrown in Lewis has created a genuine timeless masterpiece.
Moneyball is more than just sabermetrics, the Oakland A’s or even baseball. Moneyball is the story of one man with an amazing, astounding new way that comes face-to-face with an entire social order, unchanged for over 150 years, facing countless critics and doubters along the way, and ultimately emerges on top. Whether you are a Moneyball supporter or the opposition, we can all appreciate someone who stands up for what they truly believe and continue to work at it, and emerge victorious.
The best way to sum up this book in one sentence is from a review done by Nat Newell:
“Open this book…and your mind.”
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
About the Author: Clayton Collier
Clayton, a Long Island native and die-hard Mets fan, started writing online roughly 2 years ago. He is currently a senior in high school and plans to major in Journalism/Broadcasting in college. Although very disappointed with the current state of the team, Clayton remains hopeful that the young prospects in the farm system will bring the Mets back to a respected franchise in baseball once again. Besides writing for MMO, Clayton maintains his own website: TrifectaSports.org and works part-time at his school doing PA announcing and play-by-play. You can contact Clayton by following him on Twitter: @Clayton_Collier or E-mailing him at MaybeNextYearMets@yahoo.com
258 Comments + Add Comment
NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braves | 26 | 17 | .605 | - |
| Nationals | 25 | 17 | .595 | 0.5 |
| Marlins | 23 | 19 | .548 | 2.5 |
| Mets | 22 | 20 | .524 | 3.5 |
| Phillies | 21 | 22 | .488 | 5.0 |
Last updated: 05/22/2012
Recent Comments
- Nathan: on On The Road With Petey Pete: Wet & Soggy In New Britain: I am seriously jealous. Work has always...
- Nathan: on 2012 MLB Draft: OF David Dahl, SS Carlos Correa, C Stryker Trahan: I love draft time. It's like the...
- Joey D.: on Morning Grind: We Sure Could Use Someone Like Angel Pagan In Centerfield Right Now: Fonzi, Forgot to add to my assessment that...
- Joey D.: on Morning Grind: We Sure Could Use Someone Like Angel Pagan In Centerfield Right Now: Hi Fonzie, Oh, I agree that anyone who...
- Petey Pete: on On The Road With Petey Pete: Wet & Soggy In New Britain: Seriously? I may just want to take...
MMO Live Chat
Write Your Own Mets Post
oh no..here we go again. Let’s be like the A’s – the famous revolutionary A’s who’ve won countless World Series year after year every year and they’re invincible lineup and pitching staff.
Billy Beane is called a genius here. I know his record of World Series victories and powerful teams is second to none
Depo discovers Youkalis – Paul DePodesta is the ONLY SCOUT to EVER discover a good player. THE ONLY ONE. In the history of baseball and the thousands of superstars that have played this game let’s write a book about a guy who scouted one player who became good. And then was fired as GM after his 2nd year.
A book.
Unbelievable.
you read it, bayonne?
He discovered alot more than just Youk, that was just one example.
In Moneyball they even say, the playoffs are a crapshoot. Based on odds, the mere 5 or 7 games series have no consistant stats. they only even out through the course of a 162 game season. That is one reason why the A’s did not go deep into the postseason.
oh..so excuses.
let me tell you something and we had this chat once before you better start watching the game more and rely less on unimportant numbers because you need to learn a LOT about baseball. And your assertion the other day that the pitcher is only responsible for HRs, walks, & Ks is one of the most ignorant and down right unintelligent things ever said about pitching that i have ever read in my life.
A pitcher is SOLEY responsible for only homers walks and K’s. ERA can be distorted based on the fact that once an error is committed, any run scored after that do not count. If a reliever comes in a gives up a double with men on and then gets an out, his ERA is zero, yet a runner still scores.
The error is a near negligable statistic because it is based on what possibly should have happened. They cannot assume double plays which also distorts ERA.
Hits also can be drastically distorted. If you have Dan Uggla at second, he might not get to every ball going his way. If you have Orlando Hudson at second, hes going to take more knocks away. Year to year, even the best pitchers do not have consistant numbers of hits given up because their defense behind him is never the same.
Wins are not relied upon 100% forpitchers for obvious reasons.
That is why hits and ERA and wins and even WHIP is not soley the pitcher’s responsibility.
Even though you may know a great deal about baseball, there are other ways out there to create successful teams. I am not saying Sabermetrics is superior to the old-fashion way of running a team, but sabermetrics can create a winning baseball team.
Yeah, line drive singles, doubles/triples in the gap, a pitcher inducing a groundball with a certain pitch or making the batter swing at pitches HE WANTS them to swing at forcing them to hit it to different parts of the field.
Oh..and thanks for telling me about the various ways of creating successful teams
I have kids like you on teams that I’ve coached and can tell you from experience that you have ABSOLUTELY no idea of what you’re talking about. Believe it.
oh and sometimes the pitcher can have his stuff and sometimes not and all the variable that go into that.
But hey, you read a book and you believe you got it down..and at 16. Amazing.
I don’t see how without reading Moneyball you can be so knowledgeable of it. How can you be so opposed to something that you haven’t even read?
And I was telling you that there are more ways to create a successful team than just the one way you and much of baseball is normally accustomed to. You have said time and again that Moneyball and sabermetrics do not work. So I was telling you that even if it is not the superior option, it can be successful.
If you would like to continue this debate professionally fine, but if you would like to insult me then we are done here.
Look, there was no insulting..think of it like a McEnaney/Malusis exchange on Face Off
I’ll read moneyball when you actually play, coach, and experience some life involving actually being on the field playing and being involved in baseball. See me in 10 years.
I will go see the move though
The movie does not include Bill James, Sandy Alderson or many other crucial aspects of the book. To get the full, educated view of it is to read it with an open mind.
And to be in baseball doesn’t have the necessity of playing/coaching baseball first. Sandy Alderson never played or coached, yet he is one of the most respected men in baseball.
Bayonne Mets Fan im not trying to be mean mean but you have been ignorant of what Clayton says and only care about what you say. If you havent read this book why should you be commenting on an article about the book.
Wait, why does Depodesta get credit for finding Youkilis? The Redsox’s drafted him….
Hasn’t Omar Minaya drafted/signed/been more responsible for discovering more talent than Depodesta? We had that discussion before right? Why isn’t there a book about Omar.
But Depo is mentioned in a book for signing…..who?
Shame on you Bayonne!
Just look at all the first round picks in Depo’s last 5 year of drafts. Not one dud among them.
Athletics Bradley Sullivan (minors)
Athletics Brian Snyder (minors)
Athletics Omar Quintanilla
Dodgers Scott Elbert
Dodgers Blake DeWitt
Dodgers Justin Orenduff (minors)
Dodgers Luke Hochevar
Padres Nick Schmidt (minors)
Padres Kellen Kulbacki (minors)
Padres Drew Cumberland (minors)
Padres Mitch Canham (minors)
Padres Cory Luebke
Padres Danny Payne (minors)
Padres Eric Sogard
You want to compare that record of excellence against a schlep like Omar Minaya?
I thought you understood baseball?
What a genius boy am i glad he’s now running the Mets Minor league system.
Was it Craig Lerner who said we’re in good hands now? Not sure which saber hack did but if not what the heck they all think the same and say the same things so it doesn’t matter who actually said it because they’re all of one mind anyway. Kind of an Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing.
Depo supposedly gets “credit” for Youk because he wanted him and missed out. He had identified Youkliss through his college numbers but the Director of Amateur Scouting who ran the 2001 draft (Which set the stage for Beann’s 2002 “takeover” of the draft in moneyball) dismissed Youkliss. Later Beanne tried to get Youkliss back in a 3 way with Boston and Us but by that time Epstein was in Boston and said no dice.
The most similar player to Youkliss that Depo DID draft is Jeremy Brown, a central character in the book Moneyball who the traditional scouts thought was a joke as a supplementary round pick. He was taken ahead of guys like Brian McCann, Jon Lester, Joey Votto, Jonathon Broxton, Curtis Granderson and Josh Johnson. How Depo escapes getting “credit” for drafting Brown is beyond me. No one else would have taken him earlier than round 10 at best. He was a classic bust.
I’m pretty sure Oakland’s owners were having heart palpatations about having to sign 4 first and three supplemental rounders so Beanne took a guy who would sign for under slot well ahead of where he should have gone with the idea that he would be another Youkliss. He wasn’t. Not even close.
The whole moneyball performance scouting is rendered irrelevant when your scouting guys swinging aluminum bats and pitchers afraid of coming inside because of those bats. The facts are very clear on this draft. The two guys both camps agreed upon, Swisher and Blanton made it, the whole rest of the draft sucked big time and the A’s have paid the price for it since 2007.
WOW – that’s some resume for Depodesta now I understand why he’s featured so prominently in a book, incredible!
I never knew so many of Depodesta’s picks wound up being major league stars with long careers.
Oh, by the way, is Moneyball the Movie a comedy? If not, it should be.
Depo supposedly gets “credit” for Youk because he wanted him.
Did you just say that?
wow.
I guess Omar Minaya gets credit for Mark Teixeira and Bryce Harper, he wanted them too.
DePodesta gets this credit not because he was the first person to discover Youk but that Youk was a prime example of Depodesta’s method of drafting.
he badgered the scouts to go look at Youk yet they ignored him, not look at him, a MLB star.
I used the word credit because that’s the word Vinny used. Perhaps the better word I should have used is linked. Nontheless you can see that my post was critical of Depo’s draft. If you read beyond the first sentence you would have realized that.
Why are you so critical of his draft agee?
I agree on the fact that Jeremy Brown was not a smart move but Beane wanted to make a point that conventional baseball thinking was out the window in Oakland and this new wave method of Moneyball. Brown was more of a symbol than a real attempt at a future star. I do not agree with wasting a 1st rd pick but I can remotely see where DePodesta and Beane were coming from.
I’m not going to get into this, its silly.
Clayton, nice piece but you’re preaching to the choir and the people who will complain are deaf to the music and refuse to admit it.
Here’s the bottom line.
If you think for one minute that winning 87-91-102-103-96-91-88-96 from 1999 through 2006 is not impressive especially paired with a payroll that on average was $100m less than most the successful teams in the AL… then you’re either a liar who desperately needs to hate the book OR you’re an imbecile.
There’s no other way to put it. If you try to discredit Billy Beane’s work over an 8 year period, you’re just ridiculous.
Bottom line, nothing more to say. Did he win a World Series? No.
But are you going to sit here and tell me the Bills or Braves weren’t one of the best franchises during their era?
Winning 60% of your baseball games over 8 years is a hell of a lot harder to do than to win a Best of 5 series. You want proof, go find me all the teams that matched Oakland’s regular season, and then take away $100m and tell me what happens.
Jessep, you are dead on. Teams like the Yankees, Mets, Angels, Cubs would be crippled if not for their massive budgets.
With such overwhelming evidence that indeed does work, the only conclusion I can arrive at is that they do not want to accept change to baseball as a new way that can work.
No Clayton what we don’t accept is that it actually HAS worked. It has actually STUNTED their growth and if they has spent some money on some good players and pitchers they might have actually won a WS!
You say Moneyball got them there…
We are saying Moneyball KEPT them there and OUT of the WS!
It’s called over committing to an ideal that would be fine if you were not being an extremist about it!
The problem with what Beane did was that he got himself into a good position then failed to capitalize on the situation Moneyball presented!
All because Moneyball said don’t spend!
And if he had spent it the problem would be that we could still say moneyball was NOT what made them winners (since it by itself did not allow them to win a WS. It would have been the spending that made that possible, not Moneyball!
And here is the nugget that I think is tripping most people up…
It wasn’t the MONEYBALL philosophy that got him those wins. It was the EVALUATIONS made using Sabers that were still semi unknown at the time that caused the success he had not the fact he didn’t pay big money or found cheap players. It’s because he found GOOD players by using statsistics to find things about players others didn’t see.
Thats not MONEYBALL that is STATISTICAL ANALYSIS!
Two different things!
Why did Boston win a WS and Oakland not?
BOTH teams used Sabermetrics to identify and drill down the numbers on players.
The one who actually won though is the one who went and spent money to get players you didn’t even need the Sabers to know they were good!
Metsie,
You’re acting as though Oakland’s owner told Beane he can spend $100m and because Beane loved moneyball so much he decided to only spend $40m
Do you understand Beane worked within a budget handed down to him from ownership?
Do you realize he had the best team his budget could buy?
Do you realize that in a best of 5 game series, anything can happen but its harder to maintain success over 162 games?
Were the St. Louis Cardinals the best team in baseball in 2006 when they finished 2 games over .500 but won the World Series? Or did they get hot in the post-season and win it all?
Exactly! Of course he would have kept/signed more stars if he COULD have, but his team could not afford it
But if he had all that VALUE why couldn’t he afford it?
Because the owner didn’t want him to win?
Be real here!
If Moneyball is a winning combination then it works REGARDLESS of budget!
Truth is it isn’t a PHILOSOPHY of judging talent and building a team it is nothing more than a way to deal with limiting factors and if there are NO budget restraints it still won’t work until you get to the point where you do go away from Moneyball to COMPLETE your roster and make it good enough to win a WS.
Through Drafting he Got his STAR players like Giambi Zito Damon etc.
He SIGNED the value players to take their place.
Ah thats just it isn’t Clay?
He FOUND good players (Using Sabers) but could not keep them (Moneyball)
Is Moneyball the reason for those allegedly WINNING seasons or the Sabers? And if it is the Sabers then really what is so great about Moneyball?
Like I keep saying and you guys keep arguing against it was the use of STATISTICAL ANALYSIS that got them good oplayers not MONEYBALL.
Moneyball screwed up the good analysis by not allowing Beane to keep the good players that he did find under moneyball limitations and it cost them consistency and a shot at the WS!
Boston didn’t have that problem and they won a WS.
They used all of the ways Beane did to identify GOOD PLAYERS but they also spent on keeping a few and won a WS!
NOT MONEYBALL! Sabers!
Moneyball did not cause whatever success you think Oakland had.
Good Statistical Analysis in the form of Sabers is what made them whatever successful you think they got!
NOT moneyball!
“They do not use sabers and due to that, they fail to be a competitve team.”
2003 WS champs. and they did that without sabermetrics…and with a low payroll too – I’d rather read a book about that team, a team that you know, actually won something..instead of a team that didn’t win anything.
The A’s COULDN’t Spend money to keep their star players, so he used MOneyball to find these guys, Sabers was the basis of MOneyball. MOneyball takes it a step further and builds a team based off of Sabers.
Moneyball was a backup plan when the luxury of money does not exist.
A team with no money and lacking the value of Saber is alot like the Marlins.
If they had money, they could have retained Beckett, Miquel, Uggla, and many others. They do not use sabers and due to that, they fail to be a competitve team.
The A’s lose Isringhausen, Zito, Giambi and Damon and are an even BETTER team.
What other team loses their entire franchise star players and go out and are even better without them.
Yes they won in 2003, but after that, when they could not afford their star players, failed to remain competitive.
The A’s never won a WS, but they were in the race, made the playoffs before and after their star players!
They still had winning seasons after 2003. And they are in much better shape than the A’s are now….with a lower payroll. They also lost their star player (uggla) and are so far doing better. 16-8.
Beane has done a TERRIBLE job drafting recently. So now they have to get guys in free agency and trades for their postion players. Because of that they are counting on average AT BEST players on offense. Guys like Crisp, Matsui, Dejesus, Willingham, Kouzmanoff – that’s why they haven’t had a winning season since 06.
And when you look at the Marlins, you see how much more young promsing players that they have. Morrison. Coglhan, and Stanton. Hanley at SS and Sanchez at 1st – that’s a LOT better than the A’s. The A’s have a nice rotation but the Marlins are probably just as good with Johnson, nolasco, and A Sanchez.
The Marlins are a MUCH better run team than the A’s….and they actually won something too.
Right Clayton they couldn’t spend money to keep their star players which is why they6 never won a WS.
Moneyball FAILED because finding good players isn’t enough, you have to KEEP them to succeed!
Just as anyone can find an Indy Car to purchase. But if you don’t have the money to maintain it then it races like a Kia!
There off to a hot start, could be a fluke.
And to say the A’s have done terrible in drafting isn’t true.
Brett Anderson, Andrew Bailey, Trevor Cahill, Kurt Suzuki, Dallas Braden, Vin Mazzaro, and many others have been produced by the A’s in recent years.
I would not say Moneyball failed.
A team that lost its stars, like any poor team does in most cases, Beane brought in a bunch of NOBODY’S, were predicted for last place and were even BETTER without their stars.
Regardless of postseason, I say 103 wins and even making it to the playoffs is successful.
To Make the postseason four straight year on a $30-35 million budget is pretty good. Moneyball does work.
How about the Mets? they are one of the biggest spenders in the game and the most they’ve put up is two straight years in ’99 and ’00. or the Cubs, ’07 and ’08. The A’s put up four.
The twins have made it to the playoffs 6 of the past 9 years, think they are a failure because they’ve lost in the ALDS 5 of the 6 years and the ALCS that one time?
Of course you would not say it!
Because you want everyone else to fall into the same false slumber and misinformation that you believe in!
If you say Moneyball failed then the book is useless and that doesn’t seem to be your point now is it.
Keep going back to OLD arguments that may have served you well when you were arguing with Bayonne and HarryC but they fall apart with me Clay.
I have said How many time (go on and count) MONEY SPENT IS IRRELEVANT TO SUCCESS!
Are the Twins a success? Well ask anyone who the dominant teams were the last few years and the Twins name won
‘t come up. ONLY MONEYBALL RELIGIONISTS think they are a success!
Because Success for them is getting a B not an A in the Test! Which is probably also why a Book that has SOME good ideas is elevated to being GENIUS!
If the Twins are a GREAT team then what the hell are the Yankees on your scale? GODLIKE?
It is common for baseball people to re-adjust where the success/fail borderline is in order to make something seem better than it actually was.
That is the case here with Moneyball. And since you think an ALSO ran was successful it is logical to see why you think a failed philosophy is also successful.
Despite the fact it’s not and has been proven by anyone who has ever used it INCLUDING Beane who invented it.
The aspects that were PART of moneyball are al about doing more to evaluate players BETTER than anyone else. Where those players are found and how much you paid to get them is irrelevant!
You found ALL of them on a stat sheet and ran a few calculations and looked for WHERE to get that player only AFTER you decided he was good. Thats what Boston did, Thats what the Yankees do and thats what most of the MLB does in this day and age.
Bill James had been doing those things as far back as the 80′s when Beane was still a player.
Sandy Alderson was doing it (evenb before Sabers were published) by making his own metrics and then using the stuff Bill James was talking about.
And before that the Statisitical analysis had been going on for a century but because Computers were not a powerful as they became in the late 80′s it was much harder to crunch the numbers of an entire league!
So in MY opinion it was the computers that changed the face of baseball not MONEYBALL!
And since you could run a metric calculation on the entire league and minors. and sort based on any metric you wanted to look at it because VERY VERY easy to drill down deeper and deeper into the things it used to take an entire accounting firm to look at before!
Computers also made it easier to record. save and display many more statistics than could be kept previously and that made the job easier because you didn’t have to enter all the data before you made an evaluation.
And as computers started getting used more and more Bean’s edge was lost!
It wasn’t where he looked for players that made him successful (if you want to call it that) it was HOW he looked at the stats and then went andfound ways to get those guys that the stats said could be good.
And if he had bothered to keep any of the guys he found like the Yankees did he might have actually won a WS.
But that wouldn’t be MONEYBALL would it!
Yes the computer greatly contributed to his success, and Bill James did start sabermetrics, but Beane modified it and brought it into the front office of baseball and shaped an entire team around it. Alderson began to do that in the late 80′s but Beane took it a step further once Alderson left.
What Beane’s success was do to was Sabermetrics in part, but correct me if I am wrong, but sabermetrics does not say anything about drafting does it?
Beane got so much out of his drafts, and still does as hes in the procss of building a championship team now.
I think the A’s will make it to the playoffs this year over the Ranger, over the Angels, Cahill, Anderson, Braden, gonzalez, Bailey; they are going to show once again that Moneyball DOES work.
No Clayton he didn’t shape the entire team based off Sabers the book says he based the team off what he could afford.
Sabers was the basis for making the picks but the MONEY dictated where he could look!
And those teams were shaped based on how much they cost not the Sabers because there were PLENTY of guys with better Sabers he could not go after because they cost too much!
This is by your own admission.
Sabermetrics succeeded but MONEYBALL FAILED!
Get it now?
Now the fact that he used sabers BETTER than most others makes Beane a smart guy and maybe even a good GM. But it does not make Moneyball a path to success nor does it mean MONEYBALL proved the value of Sabermetrics.
BEANE proved the value of Sabers as did Epstien in Boston but moneyball itself does not make the sabers good if you don’t know how to use them.
Moneyball says nothing about HOW to look at the Sabers or how to evaluate players all it does is illustrate that by using sabers CORRECTLY you can find good players regardless of how much you have to spend.
Which doesn’t mean not spending is a plan for success or that spending too much will not work.
If you use the sabers (or ANY deep statistical analysis) correctly, it doesn’t matter how much or how little you spend. If you are good at picking players then spending 200 mil will even more successful than spending 60 Mil! Because not only will you FIND the good players you will keep them!
And then if you continue to find even better players and keep them on your team you can win 4 or 5 WS and dominate the WS for a decade, not just your division or win once and call it a career!
“How did moneyball fail if he used sabermetrics?”
It failed because it did not allow him to use them ANYWHERE like Boston could!
It failed because it stopped a GOOD SABERMETRIC evaluation skills from being good enough to win a WS!
It FAILED because it limited WHO he could get, WHO he could keep and WHERE he could look for even BETTER players that were there and sabermetrically better but not an option because they cost too much!
MONEYBALL limited the ability of Sabermetrics to build a World Series Champion! Without Moneyball Boston was able to do that!
SO Moneyball isn’t the key to success you and the authors would paint it to be. In fact it is a shining example that you need to do MORE than just evaluate well, draft well, trade well and watch your money well to win the highest prize!
It is a classic examples of putting limitations on good method and causing that method to not meet the goals it would have if not for those limitations!
How did moneyball fail if he used sabermetrics?
He found a player, traded for them, and traded others to make room on the salary.
For example to get the reliever Rincon, they traded one or two others that were doing terrible to get him.
In retrospect, Beane out sabered everyone, getting even more under the radar OBP and saber guys then others were even considering.
Yep they did it with no names. Is there a trophy for that?
The didn’t adapt to their new enviornment they SET their new enviornment.
Beane adapted as best he could and fell short!
All his evaluation skills didn’t win him anything he couldn’t have won by NOT playing moneyball and doing what the Yankees and Angels did. Except the Angels won the WS that year!
Were they playing moneyball too?
Sorry but basically your entire argument is akin to saying I got a passing grade on the test by blindfolding myself and guessing!
Point is you think it was a GOOD idea to handcuff yourself and because you didn’t get all the way you dismiss that and instead lower the bar on what is good to ELEVATE the concept into being good.
Which if you use statistical analysis on towards moneyball’s success rate the way Beane did his player selections you would not buy it (and neither would he) no matter how much you had to spend!
Beane did a good job. But Moneyball did not!
It lead to NOTHING not a single WS title! And winning the WS is what the game is all about!
Not how hard you made it on yourself!
“A team, already with finacial limitations, according to conventional baseball, would not be able to contend with a team quadruple their budget.”
And did they contend in the playoffs? Or did they fall short?
Ok I’m going to try a little Q&A with you and answer honestly.
1 – Do you need to play Moneyball in order to do deep statistical analysis? Y or N
2 – Does spending money hurt your chances of winning a WS? Y or N?
3 – Does not spending money make you a better team? Y or N
4 – Can you win as much as Oakland did without playing Moneyball? Y or N
5 Do any of the teams that have multiple WS wins play Moneyball If so name them (and don;t say Boston they use sabers and stat analysis not moneyball. They do not limit their budget just use it wisely. Don’t limit who they analyze based on cost.)
Go ahead and answer those and then tell me Moneyball was a success not the Deep statistical Analysis that anyone can use regardless of budget!
MOneyball is the A’s adapting to their new enviornment. They were limited by their resources and made due with what they had.
Paul DePodesta explains it perfectly:
◦Moneyball is not about statistics or On Base Percentage, “It is about constantly questioning the efficacy of your belief system and trying to uncover value where it’s not readily apparent.”
Where it is not readily apparent. Namely Chad Bradford, Scott Hatteburg and John Marby.
A Bunch of Nobody’s were brought together up against a team with a lineup not seen since the 1927 Yankees and ended up wining just as many games as them!
And just for the record. the A’s and the Yankees in 2002 both one 103 games and both lost in the ALDS. SAME amount of success, but the A’s did it with no-names and 30 mil.
I am not saying to go ahead and bind yourself to become a better team.
A team, already with finacial limitations, according to conventional baseball, would not be able to contend with a team quadruple their budget.
Beane had this limitation already, he did not willingly have a miniscule budget. He took the ballclub and made them into a team able to be at the same level as the Yankees in the regular season.
Yes he doesn’t have a WS trophy, but the A’s still have a banner at Overstock.com Coliseum(althought they have to work on their stadium titles…)
Do you consider the Mets 2006 and 2000 campaigns failures?
Metsie doesn’t understand things like this. He kind of blocks it out to fit his agenda.
and if he thinks a walk is a “gift from the pitcher’ he’s obviously never played the game before or faced a plus fastball.
Its not a coincidence that the same players that walk a lot do it year in and year out. and the same players that don’t walk a lot, never do, year in and year out. Walking is a result of having great plate discipline and not chasing pitches. get a clue.
I think we’ve learned we can take anything this clown says on here with a grain of salt.
This from the guy (Chris) who thinks a walk is something the Batter can FORCE a pitcher to do…
He gives credit to a player based on what he saw!
Chris also believes if he looks out the window in Mommy’s house and see a storm cloud that he is responsible for it raining!
He takes credit for it!
what does that even mean? jesus dude it’s like arguing with a six year old. where did I say a walk is something the batter forces the pitcher to do? i’d love you to copy and paste that.
Basically it means your an idiot and think a Batter can CAUSE a walk!
Tell us how he does this if the pitcher throws strike and if you can’t go back and suck your thumb until you figure it out!
name me a pitcher with a 100% strike percentage Metsie, you friggin imbecile.
When you name me a batter who can mind control a pitcher to throw it out of the strikezone I will name one with 100% strike count.
Of course you will have to offer proof that he can telekinetically FORCE a pitcher to throw a ball 4 time or prove he has the ability to create a forcefield around the strike zone so that no baseball can pass through it…
And in your little childlike Star Wars mind I suppose you think it could actually happen since Obi Wan could do it!
Well Jessup then if you can’t win a WS using moneyball what good is it?
You can say he didn’t have the budget but obviously even if he did he couldn’t get good enough players under moneyball philosophy
Why?
Because there are only 25 Roster spots and you need to get MORE than just VALUE out of a few of them to win a WS…
Which is why StLouis won the WS because they have a Pujols to do more than just MONEY VALUE and actually go above and beyond the performance of VALUE!
You can’t win shopping at KMart all you do is set a revolving door and keep replacing guys who looked good and then didn’t.
Metsie: By that argument I can easily say if you can’t win a world series spending $100m then that good is spending $100m?
By the way… I don’t know what this idea is that a hitter cannot “FORCE a pitcher to walk”
Have you ever heard of pitching around a hitter? Are you telling me a hitters reputation like Bonds, Pujols etc doesn’t force pitchers to walk them because of who they are and how they perform?
By jove (or Jessup) I think you got it!!!!
MONEY IS IRRELEVANT to Wins and Losses!
You can LOSE as easily spending 200 Million as you can Spending 40!
It is about the players you select and the money only comes into play when you want to KEEP THEM!
And sure I have heard about pitching around a hitter!
Who decides when that happens the Batter or the Pitcher?
Batter can’t FORCE the pitcher to pitch around him the Pitcher doesn’t HAVE TO DO IT!
A batter can inspire a Pitcher to pitch around him. But only if he has a HIGH BA not a High OBP which is where the idiot Chris was trying to say was more important than BA!
A guy with a high OBP but a low BA is dead if the pitcher just throws strikes at him. BYE BYE High OBP, Hello low BA!
I meant he did a terrible job drafting on offense. Who’s their young star players on offense right now? Pennington? Suzuk? That’s not good. The two guys he did have that were really good, He traded. Carlos Gonzalez and Andre Either…I guess Milton Bradley was one of those players with “hidden virtues” that you were talking about earlier…and the guy they got back from the Holliday trade was Brett Wallace. They traded him too. He’s now hitting .388 for the Astro’s – Last year the A’s were one of the leagues worst offenses, and this year they have the 3rd worst offense in the majors.
So your going to tell me he did a good job devloping offensive players recently? He did a TERRIBLE job. Now their pitching is pretty good, they have some nice arms there, but they aren’t going anywhere with that lineup.
And if you compare that with the Marlins….The A’s OFer’s are all over 30 yrs old, while the Marlins OFers are all in their early 20′s. The Marlins also have one of the best young players in the league (Hanley Ramirez)…and one of the best young pitchers in the league(Josh Johnson).
The A’s do have some NICE pitchers, but none of them are as good as Josh Johnson. And I think Nolasco and A Sanchez could be just as good as some of the A’s pitchers.
It’s not even close, the Marlins are a much better run team than the A’s….and they even have a lower payroll, AND lost one their star players this year.
Ok here is the deafness the Moneyball crowd is sufferring from.
Giants don’t play moneyball NOR do they play BUY the Trophy!
They won a WS last year!
Phillies did not break the bank nor did they play moneyball and they won one WS , made two.
Cardinals, Astros, Diamondbacks, White Sox yankees and Boston are not MONEYBALL teams either. All of these teams have won AS MANY as the Oakland “SUCCESS” yet they took it further and made and won a WS!
Was Oaklands success because of MONEYBALL? Or was it Moneyball just a LIMITATION imposed on a decent GM who if he had the money to spend might have built a WS winner maybe even a decade of dominance team?
You want to be impressed with what they did with less then thats fine no one will say your wrong for that but if you go and try to say that MONEYBALL works you had better offer some proof that it works even when money is NOT a restriction!
The truth is Moneyball is not ever a good FIRST choice it is a means to an end when money is a limitation and usefull towards saving money that you CAN spend on something else that will get you passed the inherent flaws of using the moneyball plan all by itself.
And while it seems logical to assume that taking away 100 Mil from the latest ACTUAL WS Winners will change their fate all you are really proving is without spending money, You CAN NOT WIN IT ALL!
Not that Moneyball can!
Why? Because it hasn’t won a WS EVER! And thats because by subscribing to moneyball as a philosophy but never BREAKING from that limited thinking you can not get the rest of the way you need to go to BE that WINNER!
Winning 90+ games is impressive but if your playing teams who suck then it really doesn’t matter what you did. Because once the playoffs start all the weak teams they were beating are gone and when faced with REAL PLAYOFF CALIBER competition it folded!
Unless the plan works to achieve the goal which is win the WS it is a FAILED plan!
I don’t care how many games you won in the regular season. No plaque or credit for third place!
Metsie “I don’t care how many games you won in the regular season. No plaque or credit for third place!”
Are you telling me that from 1996-2005, the Atlanta Braves have nothing to be proud of as a franchise because they didn’t win a World Series during that time?
Are you telling me from 2002-2010, the Minnesota Twins aren’t a very proud franchise even though they never won a World Series?
Taking away success in a 162 game season during an 6-8 year period is done just to fit your argument, not to shape it.
There are plenty of teams who spent more $ that would kill to have the success Oakland had from 1999-2005 while spending an average of under $40m.
Moneyball CREATED the philosophy that Epstein used. Nobody should think Theo used Moneyball, because he didn’t. But he took principles of it and applied them to a large budget team just like we hope Alderson does with the Mets.
Without the moneyball era that Billy Beane created, Theo Epstein wouldn’t have had a chance to run the Red Sox. That’s a fact. Look at the history of GM’s prior to Billy Beane giving jobs to guys like DePodesta and guys like Epstein getting internships etc.
You went from good ole boy network, to ivy league law degrees getting you in the door.
The folks in Atlanta called them Choke artists until they finally won a WS.
Used to say they were great but fold under pressure!
SO yes the Atlanta team if they had NEVER won the WS would have been a disappointment to everyone in Atlanta!
Lucky for them they did! Otherwise people would not regard them as highly as they do!
Nice writeup, Clayton. Clear and concise.
When I first read Moneyball some years ago, I knew that rear guard naysayers would need lots of Tums to digest it. But some of us will move on, taking the best from the story and the insightful thinking. Others won’t.
As it’s been said:
“Open this book…and your mind.”
asking the anti-saber (sabermetrics is the devil that is ruining baseball!) to open their minds to this is like asking the republicans to come out and support Obama. it ain’t happening.
Great comment. BTW, I’m a clear thinking Republican. Just ask me. LOL.
I guess to be even, I should have also said the oppostite about Dems saying something nice about Dubya.
yeah sure, maybe it helped sign Mark Bellhorn and you write a book about it.
But what about a fearless talented superstar like Pedro Martinez, or a warrior and very talented pitcher like Curt Shilling who was signed. How about clutch HOF level talented players like Manny Ramirez, steroid-induced Big Papi who was nothing with Minnesota before he came to Boston.
Maybe Jonathan Papelbaum helped a little bit in 2007? How about gritty veteran leaders who can help solidify a club house and who also produce like Mike Lowell?
Citing Phoneyball as a reason for the Red Sox success is downright ridiculous. I would think good scouting is responsible for signing a guy like Bellhorn who ALSO luckily had one of his best years with Boston
MONEYBALL SABERMETRICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That should read DOES NOT EQUAL!
Moneyball was an interesting read of one small market team’s attempt to rebuild after losing so many stars to free agency. The way they broke down Giambi’s attributes and tried to make up for them in multiple seemingly imperfect players was a more clever maneuver than just seeing who’s available as a free agent every year to be sure but the focal part of the book centers around the 2002 draft.
The A’s have four #1 picks and three supplementary round picks in a very good draft. They have this hypothesis they want to test that college players have the best chance to make it to the bigs and they want to see an already established ability to know the strike zone in both their hitters and their pitchers.
This is what leads to the confrontation between the new guard and the scouts. Billy Beanne constantly bringing up Jeremy Bonderman (2001 1st round #26) as an example of his scouting Dept’s failure in thought process by drafting a High School pitcher. He traded Bonderman almost as soon as he was able to along with Carlos Pena for 3 guys including Ted Lilly and cash.
So, How did the 2002 draft work out for Beanne? Well there was Nick Swisher (#16) who everyone agreed on, followed by Joe Blanton (#24) and the following John McCurdy (#26), Ben Fritz (#30), Jeremy Brown (#35), Steve Obenchain (#37) and Mark Teahan (#39) followed by Steve Stanley (2nd #67) and Bill Murphy (3rd # 98) These are the players the A’s expected to be their new Damon, Giambi and Isringhausen over the years 2006-2012.
Everyone knows the MLB is a crapshoot but certain organizations continually pull talent from all rounds of the draft decreasing their reliance on free agency, the waiver wire, rule 5 and the vulnerabilities of counting on just one prospect for every position. The Braves for example got Heyward #14 first round, Hanson supplementary round, Freeman and McCann 2nd round, Kimbrel, 3rd round, Venters 30th round. This is the kind of draft the A’s needed to remain competitive in 2006-2012 and it was right there to be had. The 2002 draft was a great one filled with players who right now are among the best in the game and doing it for the teams that originally drafted them.
Among the players the A’s left on the board beginning with their first pick were Cole Hamels (HS), Jeremy Guthrie (college), Matt Cain (HS). In the 2nd round were Votto (college), Lester (HS), Broxton (HS), McCann (HS). In the 3rd round you had Granderson from college and in the 4th you had Josh Johnson from High School.
I think it’s pretty clear that while the High School player may have a higher bust rate, the one’s who are deemed worthy of first round selection and DO make it up here have both a higher ceiling and a longer career due to their earlier start in the pro’s. Having the best players on the field is a huge competitive advantage. The downside to drafting the High School player is that you have to wait a year or two longer after drafting them and you have to pay them more to forgo their Scholorships. This shouldn’t be an issue with a big market team, after all if KC and Tampa can routinely go over why can’t we?
As for drafting by performance rather than tools there should be a balance but overall even if your bust rate was high on the Billy Beanne type some of those WILL MAKE IT, and those who do will make it HUGE. You can then piece around those guys.
Perhaps Beane was testing his eye theory (innate/learned) and came to the wrong conclusion but it is clearly a learned skill and even those that already have it, won’t display it in a lineup of free swingers so the college numbers just aren’t as useful and their not exactly facing guys with great breaking stuff in College anyway. With the Aluminum bat a pitch up and in can be turned into a HR as easily as one over the middle, why would you take a pitch you can hit on the handle for a HR?
I hope Depo has learned something from his 2002 draft because he left a lot of valuable players on the board and as far as I’m concerned their conclusions were all wrong. The results of this “famed” moneyball draft are directly responsible for the A’s winning only 76, 75, 75, and 81 games over the last four years.
I’ll also point out that while I love baseball much, much more than Wall Street I thought Michael Lewis book Liars Poker was a better read than Moneyball.
You should read the follow up he did for Portfolio. He related it to the real estate bond crash.
Thanks Des!
I cannot say enough about Moneyball, it is such a splendid read and a truly eye-opening experience to read.
The best book i’ve ever read
“Moneyball is more than just sabermetrics, the Oakland A’s or even baseball. Moneyball is the story of one man with an amazing, astounding new way that comes face-to-face with an entire social order, unchanged for over 150 years, facing countless critics and doubters along the way, and ultimately emerges on top”
On Top of What?
It has never producd a WS winner and probably never will!
You know why this book is so popular?
Not because of it’s success but because it heralds the hobby of stat geeks who never had the baseball philosophy to explain their math based approach to baseball!
It has never won a thing.
It has never produced a champion.
Even Beane has abandoned it!
If you want to read up on the concepts behind deep statistical analysis then your better off reading Bill James who inspired the Moneyball philosophy and the drive of MLB teams to look deeper at the statistics in ways FAR BEYOND the OBP centric bias’ of Bill James and Billy Beane.
As with anything in this world you need balance to create a winning team.
Saving money where you can is good but only if you spend some of the money you saved on those team leaders and batting stars who will make all that OBP work for you.
I know everyone LOVES the simple as it is easy to grasp but LIFE, REALITY and BASEBALL are not simple!
They are both very very complex and trying to whittle the complex to the simple leads to the wrong answer more often than not!
I give Beane for having the tenacity to see his idea through but even he has given up on the concept because as they say in Top Gun there is no prize for second place!
It is a good look at how you can take a THEORY and use stats to try and implement that strategy but the strategy itself has proved to be a failure!
And it isn’t the statistical analysis that failed it is the creation of the analysis that was BIASED by the theory that caused the failure!
Like I have said before. If you have a theory that 2+2=5 the problem isn’t the equation it was the guy who created the equation not the math used to implement it.
The concept of finding GOOD things no one else is looking for is sound, but only provided you are also looking for all the GOOD things they ARE looking for as well.
If Beane had done that he might have actually won something by now!
Considering how much good he did find going against the norm if he had just decided to spend some of that money on the WELL ESTABLISHED GOOD that everyone else had he might have a trophy or two to display in Oakland!
“It has never producd a WS winner and probably never will”
theo esptein might disagree with that.
He doesn’t use Moneyball! Can you say Carl Crawford?
Your problem is you think MONEYBALL = SABERMETRICS
It’s not!
Moneyball is a philosophy of baseball, sabermetrics is a statistical methodology it is Philosophically neutral. The Philosophy drives how you build the metrics the Metrics do not build the philosophy!
This is why you made the dumb statement you did!
They acquire type-A rental players like Billy Wagner in order to get more draft picks, that is a Moneyball method.
The idea of bringing up your closers through the farm system, a Moneyball method.
Also the majority of their core came through the farm system, Pedroia and Youk are two shining examples of sabermetrics.
Have you ever been to Oakland and seen the area? Who would want to play there? Beane did some great things and made great accomplishments. Take the work and expand on it if you find it incomplete. Knocking it only makes you feel self-satisfied but accomplishes nothing.
Have a nice day after a great night that we Mets fans had.
List the accomplishments Des.
I hear people here say all the time that Beane accomplished something but whenever challenged to list those I get nothing back in response!
He hasn’t accomplished a thing!
He competed in a division who has had no Boston, Yankees or any other team who spends money to compete against. And while he may have made a playoff or two he was quickly eliminated by the teams who do not subscribe to his philosophy!
Thats proves his Philosophy simply doesn’t work!
It’s like having a philosophy that says a guy who runs the 50 in 6 seconds can win races. And it works if everyone he competes against runs the 50 in 6+ seconds.
But the philosophy fails when other philosophies beat it time and time again.
It’s a nice way to make a profitable team, low overhead and enough wins to keep the stands full.
But as a philosophy of winning baseball it is a complete failure!
No championships since it has been implemented and no other team that has subscribed to it has won anything either.
See the Pirates if you want proof.
Here are a few of his accomplisments:
He traded Andre Either for Milton Bradley. He also traded Carlos Gonzalez and Huston Street for a half year of Matt Holliday…..and the A’s haven’t had a winning season since 2006, and this year they are currently 12-13.
“He competed in a division who has had no Boston, Yankees or any other team who spends money to compete against.”
Tom Hicks didn’t spend money?
Not effectively!
Well, you can argue the Yankees don’t spend effectively either. They just spend so much that it doesn’t matter.
Exactly, they can cover for their mistakes with more money. Like Burnett, Nick Johnson(2010), etc.
Yep but how many WS do they have to thier credit.
Because of the luxury of money the Yankees could cover for their mistakes and win ring after ring.
By the Way Metsie, I personally interviewed Matt Klentak in a mock press conference, a Front Office member for the Orioles and he said that every front office in baseball one way or another has implemented methods of Billy Beane’s Moneyball.
It is not just in use from the A’s or the Redsox or the Mariners, its spread one way or another to all of baseball.
Yes Clayton many teams do things that Billy did and mentioned in the book Moneyball…
Such as:
Using deep statistical analysis and trading for Type A to get picks. Looking at the draft with a more dicerning eye.
The only affect Moneyball had on that is it FORCED beane to make up for the lack of money and do those things but those ideas have been the goal of franchises since the dawn of time!
All Moneyball did was prove that Deep Statistical Analysis can make your team better because that what he had to do to get good players. But Moneyball didn’t invent statistical analysis, they have been doing that since the 1800′s!
but NONE use MONEYBALL itself. They use the parts of it that are good but not the entire concept!
Deep Statistical Analysis is not Moneyball!
It is Deep Statistical Analysis and is more closely labeled Sabermetrics which are not limited to just the analysis Beane did!
But they did not adopt the philosophy or follow the book to the letter…
Why?
Because only some fools who read the book and have no idea what the goal of a GM is thinks it worked!
I get why you guys like it. It was the first and only book on how a GM operated and created his team and the only reason it was written is because it was an example of what to do when SEVERE LIMITATIONS are put on your ability to build a winner.
But it is not some HOLY GRAIL of baseball knowledge that professes or explains how to build a WINNING TEAM!
Especially since no team that has ever used it has won anything of significance!
The LUXURY of the Yankee money was that it allowed it to keep guys like Jeter, and A-Rod and Posada and Rivera over the course of a decade! Not just cover their mistakes. MOST of their mistakes have been paying for FAs that were not worth it! And now they have some kids that are ready to replace those guys who carried them through the first decade of the Millenium.
Beane never kept his and it may not be HIS fault for not having the money but it sure wasn’t SOLVED by moneyball!
Moneyball brought Sabermetrics to the entire baseball realm. Sandy Alderson was one of the only men in baseball to use sabermetrics before Beane.
Beane showed the overwhelming success in the regular season you can have with just using sabermetrics. Sabermetrics was the basis, Beane took it to the next level inducing an entire team, creating Moneyball.
In the book it actually explains why the postseason ended so badly, their players actually scored almost an entire run MORE than they did in the regular season, Tim Hudson just could not get a good start in against the Twins. It says that acording to raw statistics and odds, the postseason is a complete crapshoot. You can’t base how good your team is on five or seven games.
No Clayton, Bill James did! Moneyball just was the only PUBLISHED version of a use of Sabers that seemed to work.
Sandy Alderson was dabbling in Sabers 3 or 4 years before Moneyball was introduced.
He introduced them to Beane who adopted it as his assistant and then When the owners said reduce the payroll it was KEPT because Sabermetrics had NOTHING to do with Money!
And here is a key quote you seem to be agreeing with me.
“Beane showed the overwhelming success in the regular season you can have with just using sabermetrics”
Yes SABERMETRICS not MONEYBALL!
You also seem to buy the book as gospel. It wasn’t beane that invented Moneyball despite what the Book says it was Alderson who implemented it! Beane worked with the writer, you don’t see the self promotional aspect of making your contribution greater than is true?
Sure the book comes up with EXCUSES for failing. Tim Hudson couldn’t get a good start. But Moneyball is the KEY to success? Why did it replace Hudson? Why was he there? Wasn’t he the KEY to that winning season you say they had?
Bottomline if Moneyball was any sort of revelation then it would have beat everyone. It didn’t. Teams not using Moneyball at the time were consistently winning their seasons AND the WS. Oakland did not!
Your problem is you are not reading the book with a scientific mind you are reading as if it is a Gospel!
As I said I know why everyone does as it is the ONLY book ever published that tells fans how a major league FO operates! But if lets say Cashman writes a Gospel about how he did it with the Yankees would his book have to make any excuses or blame any player for his failure to win WS’?
NO!
And that pretty much is the original point here!
Moneyball failed and had to make excuses for that failure or there would be no need to write the book, no one would want it!
If it wasn’t the first book published on how a FO worked to find players under difficult circumstance no one would have read it!
And if it wasn’t for the Sabermetric people DYING for the respect of the league the book would not be supported at all!
It is a good ILLUSTRATION both of how a GM and player evals operate and a good example of how Sabers when used correctly can have some good effect without breaking the bank.
But as a methodology to winning something it has never won it is a failure!
The good parts, the parts that seem sound and logical were used but the rest were discarded like yesterday’s trash.
Most teams now look at the Sabers and some even create new sabers and models based on their beliefs in what is good and what is not. It’s not Moneyball it is deep statistical analysis.
And what made it possible is not the Book but the advent of the PentiumII proccessor and the internet that allowed teams to easily look over the stats of EVERYONE, plug it into their Excel program, set up metric calculations and find those players that never got a first look because you didn’t have the years of data entry needed to do it all before then!
It’s fascinating to you because it is the only book on the subject of GMing.
If Cashmen wrote a book you would find it JUST as fascinating and would probably see where MONEYBALL failed.
Fascinating doesn’t mean it is true!
All Moneyball did was force Beane to take risks on players that other teams didn’t need to take risks on. They won as many and MORE games without having to take those risks because they had the money to get and keep RELIABLE LOW RISK players who could do as much if not more such as CARRY their team through the playoffs and win a WS.
And the truth is Beane would not have made MONEYBALL his first choice.
Moneyball was invented to cope with a situation he would prefer to NOT have. And he made the best of a bad situation.
But he would not use it if he wasn’t FORCED to.
With the limited success he had he would have been fired by any team who did not care more about money than than they care about WS titles.
And the truth of the matter is Ownership has obviously realized how badly they messed up by forcing Beane to operate under MONEYBALL!
Even they realize that winning the division means nothing unless you win a WS at some point, which is why Moneyball is no longer being used by the guy who made it popular!
I do not think of it as a Gospel, I think of it a a fascinating in depth story of how those who are overlooked by everyone in the game, are picked up by Beane, and this group of players that would otherwise be riding the bench or in Triple-A come together and create a dominant ballclub.
And Beane didnt invent it, but he put it into effect brought it to everyones eyes that this way can win aswell! except at a fraction of the cost
Only a success if thats all you were shooting for.
Is running 23 Miles in a 26 mile Marathon a success?
Was the goal to only run 23 miles when you started or was it to go the full 26?
Is getting a B on a test a success? Maybe to someone who is used to getting a C, D or F but no one shoots for getting a B they shoot and PLAN for getting an A!
Moneyball is a plan of building teams. Is the goal of building teams to be the cheapest or is it the goal to win a WS?
If you did not achieve your GOAL then you failed!
Now answer my question below. If merely making the playoffs is a SUCEESS then what word do you use to describe the teams who DID win the WS?
They are not a BETTER success? Their way is not BETTER than Moneyball?
REALLY? Winning the WS is a failure because you spent more than some other guy?
Moneyball is better because it leaves you in third place (which is the best you can go without appearing in a WS) and it’s better than systems that get you to the WS and win a boatload the way the Yankees did?
If you want to go 100 Miles do you buy a car that can only go 90 and say HEY I succeeded because I saved money? Your still 10 miles away from where you want to be!
a plan that has never once done better than all the other various plans that exist not even in regard to SAVING money which the Marlins did better than any Moneyball version of Oakland and STILL won a WS!
The only problem is they didn’t write a book about it or you might see just how bad the system of moneyball REALLY is!
Metsie, if a team makes the playoffs, you do not see that as a success?
Moneyball is the story of Beane using sabermetrics and a little bit of his own spin on it to make the A’s of the late 90s early 00′s.
And I do not believe that the A’s have had more success than the Yankees, because obviously they have not. What I am saying is they were able to compete and go toe-to-toe against them because of using sabermetrics and his own theroms.
The A’s were able to have success in the regular season with a tiny budget. All a GM can control in the regular season. the postseason is completely a crapshoot and comes down to the momentum of a game.
The Yankees have had much more postseason success than the A;s, but they had four times the budget. the A’s were restricted by low budget and managed to make it to the playoffs
If Cashman wrote a book I wouldn’t find it interesting in the slightest. They just bought up/ traded for the best guy out there and gave them enormous contracts to stay in pinstripes.
They havent raised a decent pitcher through the system since Pettite, and he was on roids, and in the past few years they’ve only brought up Cano as a mainstay in that lineup.
They trade away all their prospects, Austin Jackson, Ian Kennedy, Mike Dunn, Phil Coke etc, and get little in return.
Now they have a bunch of 35+ guys who will retire in the next four years renduring them in rebuilding mode.
Why read a book on that?
I’ll read a book on Beane because it a a carefully orchestrated signings of 1 year and 200K instead of blowing 7 years 100 mil on average players
I’d rather read a book about Larry Beinfest and the Marlins.
I don’t want to read a book about a GM that never won anything. And who traded away two very talented hitters Andre Either and Carlos Gonzalez for a half year of Holliday and milton bradley. They couldn’t develop any good postion players, so they have to count on average players over 30 Yrs old for their offense – Why read a book on that?
So your not interested in how to win 4 or 5 WS your only interested in setting impossible limitations and watching a guy fail under them.
Point is if you consider Oakland’s moneyball experiment a success then the Yankees have been much more successful, they won more for longer than Oakland and won a few WS too!
So this says to me your not really interested in building a winning team your really only interested in saving money!
Which is why you like what Oakland did and not the Yankees or Boston.
“No I like reading on hard work and stories of overcoming obstacles”
and like trying to turn one hand tied behind your back into a WINNER of a plan that never won!
Helen Keller had a rather inspiring story to but I don’t think that most people would read it and decide to get rid of their hearing, pluck out their eyes and cut their vocal chords as a way to have a winning and compelling life!
You like the book, Fine! It sure isn’t a masterpiece of Baseball philosophy it is more an excuse for not being able to win a WS.
Boston and Yankees went farther and won much more than Beane did with Moneyball.
And if you don’t think that’s more interesting then all I can say is Winning really doesn’t interest you in regards to team building, Saving money does!
If all you care about is money and not winning then Moneyball is a great system to use!
Welcome to Pittsburg!
Clayton what I am trying to get accross to you is it was the use of stats that you actually think was good and the use of stats has nothing to do with moneyball!
Moneyball is a failure! The Stat analysis a success.
Maybe you should applaud and read Bill James’ book instead of someone else who READ bill James and still couldn’t win a WS despite it and then wrote a book about it!
I am trying to get you (and others) to start looking at things with the skeptical scientific mind needed to PROVE (or Disprove) assertions made by biased and beliefs and look at what the TRUTH is not the story that contains the truth but tries to characterize it in a false manner!
It wasn’t moneyball that worked it was deep statistical analysis and those teams that adopted that limited part of the book but did not hamper themselves based on money are the ones who LEARNED the lessons that were in the book but did NOT make the same mistakes!
The mistake was going cheap! It has it’s uses but not as a the central tenent of your philosophy and plan.
Moneyball did not succeed Deep statistical analysis did and the truth is you don’t need sabermetrics to do deep statistical analysis either. They just happen to come with a predefined set of tools but you can (if your smart and willing) create your own metrics and stats to look at and come up with even BETTER analysis than is possible by just using Sabers.
The moral of the story (and this argument) is you can reduce the number of bad signings, bad drafts and bad teams if you worry LESS about the checkbook and more about the player you are going to get in return. The money spent does not give you leg up or a leg down on winning the WS the money has NO RELATIONAL affect on how good your team is unless you MAKE money Affect you by limiting what you can get or discarding good player based on cost.
And doing that is in itself a MISTAKE!
Pick good player, magae your assets wisely, keep the good sack the bad and do it long enough you win 5 Ws in 7 tries!
No I like reading on hard work and stories of overcoming obstacles, which is what Beane did. Regardless of what you think, making it to the playoffs IS a success.
And You cannot lump the Redsox and Yankees into the same mix. The Epstein was a Saber guy, Yankees were just the opposite.
Vinny you bring a good point on that deal for Holliday, he flubbed big time there. But Beane always has the 30+ players, like when he brought in the 38 year old Dave Justice to show that an aging player can still perform.
I find the Redsox interesting, sure I would read about them. The Bankees and roiders of the the late 90s do not interest me. They simply bought out every other team when pursuing a player.
Theres a difference between a successful team and a team with an overwhelmingly unfair advantage. double the budget of other teams really is an unfair advantage. No wonder they won so much.
Im guessing Cashman’s book would read something like this
“and then I added another zero at the end of the check and I got Jason Giambi”
and that Hellen Keller reference was completely irrelivent.
The book yes was great to read. Some of the ideas are good. But there is also somethings ,indangables that numbers dont take into consideration. For example our top free-agent to be? Reyes sure his OBP isnt great! But there is much more too him than that? Does the book bring up how a pitcher changes his pitch selection with Reyes on 1st or 2nd?? NO. All i hope is this Mets management takes everything into consideration,when dooling out contracts and keeping players around?
Reyes is a .350-.355 OBP player. that is actually reasonably good for a lead off guy (compared to what the rest of them do), and reyes actually brings more to the table (slugging) than most other leadoff guys. As a package, he is one of the better offensive lead off men around (without even factoring in any disruptions on the bases)
The book was about the As 2001-2003 seasons. Reyes wasn’t in it.
Not Reyes specifically but they had Damon and Durham that were somewhat like Reyes
Actually they do cover pitching selections. Jamie Moyer, who by no means has overwhelming stuff, has been able to pitch since the 1980′s because of the fact that he has no pattern. You will expect a fastball and get a curveball, he got inside your head and messed with you, that even the best OBP and plate disciplined guys like Hatteberg couldn’t hit him.
nothing like a good old moneyball debate to get everyones blood boiling. And to completely confuse moneyball and sabermetrics, since they are not different names for the same thing.
it is short sighted to look at the moneyball concept and say it did or didn’t work simply based on Oakland’s record 9and frankly, it did looking at the 2001+ era when you could consider it to be their own little novelty).
The bigger impact is looking at how other teams incorporated (stole?) a lot of the concepts/thinking and were successful. same for more advanced use of sabermetrics.
tampa of course followed a lot of the same principles, and has stayed competitive in a tough division. And Boston has been described as moneyball with money.
and no it is not all about getting “bad” players that try to get walks all the time (as OBP seems to often be interpreted). Looking for undervalued attributes (harded to do now that more people are looking!), investinging in young talent (draft picks, overslot), trading off guys or offering arb to restock while letting other teams pay big $$ for past performance, are all part of the concept.
I always just thought of moneyball as meaning trying to get the most bang for your buck to maximize wins with a limited budget. Sabermetrics is simply a tool/technology to try and identify attributes or players that others don’t realize can actually lead to more wins, so they could be gotten cheaper.
Moneyball with Money is not MONEYBALL!
READ THE BOOK and applywhat Boston did and how far AWAY they were from the Moneyball principles!
Metsie – you are embarrassing yourself in this thread.
Bayonne Mets Fan – winning championships isn’t the only measure of success in the business of baseball. If you can’t see that, then you’re even dumber than I originally thought.
Yeah prove it! Show me what I said that was wrong Darth!
I DARE YOU!
If your spending money then your not playing moneyball!
Using sabers is not MONEYBALL!
Moneyball may use sabers but sabers do not use MONEYBALL!
Only the ignorant soles who have zero reading comprehension or zreo understanding of sabermetrics and statistical analysis believe that!
Metsie you friggin goon, you convince me more and more every day that you know very very little about this game.
If a team wins 102 and 103 games in the regular season and doesn’t win the world series, it is NOT the GM’s fault. You build your team for 162 games. He has no control over how his team performs over five games. October is a crap shoot. Any GM will tell you that. Saying moneyball or sabermetrics didnt work because they didnt win the world series only shows your ignorance.
EVERY successful team uses moneyball. Moneyball is getting the maximum amount of value for your dollar. The Rangers, Giants…moneyball. They put their money into the draft rather than into expensive free agents. Way more value for their money. guess what that’s called Metsie..MONEYBALL!
Omar did not use moneyball, so Omar lost, miserably. He was signing guys like Oliver Perez for 36 million while the Giants were signing guys like Tim Lincecum for 2 million.
You know nothing.
Yankees don’t, neither do the red Sox.
Did they get the best bang for the buck on Crawford?
Did the Nationals with Werth?
Who is the goon here?
The guy who thinks SABERS=MONEYBALL!
They are two different things as I have alread explained.
Sabers are a philosophy about creating metrics to pinpoint aspects of a player.
Moneyball merely USES Sabers to identify the cheap ones!
Did they get the best bang for the buck on Crawford?
Did the Nationals with Werth?
I don’t know, and neither do you. we’ll know in seven years. and last I checked the Nationals weren’t a successful team.
“The guy who thinks SABERS=MONEYBALL!”
I’m sorry, I’m confused, when did i say I thought sabermetrics were the same as moneyball? actually i think quite the opposite. actually, I didn’t even mention sabers, so not sure where u got that from. goodness gracious you just search for arguments and make sh*t up when you get proven wrong.
Well you seem to think that any team that uses Sabers is playing moneyball!
Which just goes to show you how dumb and uninformed you actually are about Moneyball and Sbermetrics in general!
Yep, in the world of moneyball it’s not about winning. You got that right.
well, hard to say that 205 wins over 2 years is not winning. very few teams have ever done that.
oh almost forgot. A team that totally fit the model was actually the late 90′s Yankees.
You joking right?
You didn’t just seriously say that with a straight face?
That is the most ridiculous comment ever posted on this site!
you obviously have not been paying attention then.
the logic is they built a team around patience (working the count, wearing out pitchers), high OBP (taking walks when given, keeping runners on for when hits came), and even picked up some relative scrap heap guys that fit the mold.
combine this with a core base of young (pre-FA at the time) talent from the system (investing heavily in prospects), and you had a team that not only was a scoring machine that killed oppostin pitching staffs, but was also sustainable for a multi-year run.
They also were not the highest payroll in that day (this was before they started lapping the field in that regard).
No, they were not cheap, but philosophically, they were what Oakland was trying to build (the model of it). They just happened to have enough money to add a few FAs to put them over the top, and of course, keep the guys when they got expensive.
so no, as much as I appreciate being nominated, it was not a ridiculous comment.
No they did it by hitting and when Pitcher got tired of giving up hits that drove in runs they settled for walks that don’t!
Pirates GM Neal Huntington:
“We are going to utilize several objective measures of player performance to evaluate and develop players. We’ll rely on the more traditional objective evaluations: OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) , WHIP (walks and hits per inning pitched), Runs Created, ERC (Component ERA), GB/FB (ground ball to fly ball ratio), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), K/BB (strikeouts to walks ratio), BB%, etc., but we’ll also look to rely on some of the more recent variations: VORP (value over replacement player), Relative Performance, EqAve (equivalent average), EqOBP (equivalent on base percentage), EqSLG (equivalent slugging percentage), BIP% (balls put into play percentage), wOBA (weighted on base average), Range Factor, PMR (probabilistic model of range) and Zone Rating.
That said, we will continue to stress the importance of our subjective evaluations. Succinctly stated, we believe that a combination of quality objective and subjective analysis will allow us to maximize our probability of success and to make the best possible decisions.”
http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071101&content_id=2290860&vkey=news_pit&fext=.jsp&c_id=pit
Look at how sabermetrics are helping the Pirates. Huntington has been their GM since 07, and every year they had over 90 loses, and last year they lost 100 games.
“That said, we will continue to stress the importance of our subjective evaluations. Succinctly stated, we believe that a combination of quality objective and subjective analysis will allow us to maximize our probability of success and to make the best possible decisions.”
Vinnie B., Why do you attribute the Pirates lack of recent success to what Huntington calls ‘objective analysis’ and none to ‘subjective analysis’? Sort of stacking the deck, aren’t you?
Everyone on here says how all the teams that use sabermetrics win. But the Pirates use it and they are one of the worst teams in the league. It’s not helping them.
The Mariners are also big on sabermetrics – they lost 100 games last year.
Again, they have also sucked for a while. If you’ve got a magic formula that turns a crappy franchise into a championship one over night, give it to me so I can patent it and sell it.
By “everyone” do you mean “no one”?
And as has been pointed out before (could you please do us the courtesy of reading our responses before trying to refute them?) The Pirates as a franchise were lousy for a while and need time to get straightened out.
And they’ve sucked for way longer than 4 years. I think that has more to do with them being the Pirates and having lousy ownership than the GM saying they’d use advance metrics to evaluate talent.
the Pirates had nothing when he took over. 4 years to start from total scratch (which is what you are doing when you trade the few marginal ML level players you have) is not all that long a time to build a system up and get the results to show on the ML level. Unless (like Omar in 2005) you also have a boat load of cash to spend.
now, if they show no signs of life in the next couple of seasons, you can say they did a crappy job with the plan!
The royals might be a better example to look at. same situation, but people seem to rave about their abundance of talent in the minors close to being ready. They could start to make some noise now.
If the Pirates can get it together, they can make some noise in that division. within 3 years. St Luis is getting old, Cubs and Astros are going to be bad for a while, Brewers will get dismantled. Redsa nd Pirates will have some good races.
Sure. That’s what the Pirates fans were saying when they had Bay, Wilson, Snell, Gorzelanny, Maholm, and Capps all coming up.
Oh and I forgot about Mcclouth….
The Pirates owners don’t care about winning, they just pocket the money from revenue sharing.
That’s right, they don’t care about winning – that explains why they hired a GM who uses sabermetrics, like Huntington.
That is not what I meant. They use sabermetrics because it is cheaper and they can pocket more money.
Well Clayton here is the issue your missing.
People here are claiming (and you allude to it in your post) that MONEYBALL is a key to winning, despite the fact most teams who use it have NEVER WON a WS.
If MONEYBALL is a key to success then it should ALWAYS BE successful regardless of the team and their intentions.
If that is NOT the case then it is proved that the PHILOSOPHY was NOT the key to the winning it was the SELECTIONS made under it’s constraints that made it work for one and not for the other!
So the example posed by comparing moneyball in both Pitt and Oakl shows that MONEYBALL all by itself does not work but it is WHO is implementing it and what they do while operating UNDER IT that makes the success!
What this basically says is that Beane is better than whoever is using his plan in Pittsburg, and if he had not used Moneyball he would probably be JUST AS SUCCESSFUL because he picked good players by doing good statistical analysis and scouting on the players he chose to sign.
NOT that he got them cheap or decided to work under imnposed philisophical limitations!
Where did beane go wrong in my opinion?
Well he did save a ton of money and had a bunch of competitive winnign seasons.
But did not do what was needed to get to the promised land. THAT is his mistake.
Like in a game of Chess it doesn’t matter HOW you get to checkmate. Only that you DO get to it!
You could play a perfect game and get yourself into a position to checkmate your opponent.
But if you fail to realize that and never make the move that does checkmate them then what you did to get there is meaningless!
Moneyball has situational usefulness for ANY team. No one is questioning that.
But as a PLAN all by itself it has not worked. It was NOT enough!
It needed that final abandonment of the principles that got them there to take the next step. A step Oakland never took!
The best contribution the Book made was it proved many of the concepts being metricized by the Sabers. It showed that by using a deeper analysis of the numbers you could find good players that were not identified as such using the older metrics.
But as a system for team building Moneyball is not enough.
Oakland proved this!
I do however agree that people should read it. They should also read Bill James’ stuff so they get a sense of what Sabermetrics is REALLY all about.
It isn’t about saving money thats for sure it is about finding good players.
Something Beane did and would have done no matter how much money he spent!
Which is why using moneyball oakland did well and the Pirates did not.
It wasn’t Moneyball it was the evaluations made under it that caused the success (if you really think Oakland was successful)!
Metsie, I am not saying that Moneyball is superior, it is a way for poor teams to become competitive with the rich teams.
And if you think about it from Beane’s or any Gm’s perspective at the time, if your team is winning 100 games, you are going to keep doing what your doing, not abandon the Moneyball method. You know? because maybe it would have helped in the playoffs, but that is easier to tell looking back.
If Beane were to change it at the time, it would be the feeling of “if it ain’t broken, why fix it?”
And what I am saying is deep statistical analysis (be it sabers or whatever metric you use to evaluate) is they key to poor teams competing with the rich one and Moneyball in and of itself is merely a LIMITING factor on where you choose to POINT those analyses to find what you can.
basically it wasn’t the use of MONEYBALL it was the use of deep statistical analysis which would work if you have money or not.
And while you say if it isn’t broke you don’t fix it but it IS broke until you win a WS which is what the goal is!
It did NOT work due to the fact it did not BY ITSELF achieve the goal of winning a WS which is why you play the game at all.
If he had that many wins by saving money then he had plenty of money to go buy the pitching or hitting he needed to go all the way.
He did NOT do that and that is why he never got over the WIN THE PLAYOFF hump.
Bottom line (and I can’t say this enough) It was not “MONEYBALL” that made them a success it was the players they selected UNDER IT that caused them to be competitive.
And the problem I have with Moneyball as a Philosophy is on it’s OWN it doesn’t work. It takes something MUCH MORE than just looking for cheap value to win games. Beane had that and Pirates do not!
So it isn’t Moneyball that made Beane successful it was BEANE who made Moneyball successful and knowing that he would have been successful if he spent money as well!
The idea that NOT spending money helps you win is as rediculous as thinking spending money does!
What it takes is taking a good hard look at what you plan on getting, Making good choices when you do and WHERE you Look, HOW MUCH you spend is irrelevant.
Moneyball’s contribution is it PROVED that good analysis works REGARDLESS of money!
Not that finding cheap is a winning way to go!
I’ve never read the book, but from what I remember reading from a summary of the book, those same scouts who looked over Youk also looked over Prince Fielder. Unbelievable.
They actually mention that in the book for a quick second. There was concerne about Prince’s health issues, mainly his diabetes.
Fortunately for him, he took the discipline it takes to be a world class athlete and used it to help get himself into a healthy lifestyle.
Donal — I admire Price’s discipline. He says he got some of his mentality from witnessing the lack of respect baseball folks had for his dad, Cecil.
Ya, Cecil “didn’t look like a ball player” according to a lot of the same traditionalists that slam sabermetrics and “Moneyball”.
Then again, Jackie Robinson didn’t either.
Neither did Campy, Yogi, and a whole bunch of other stars.
By the way, Cecil lacked focus on the field and off it too. He wanted to sell his 55 room mansion in Florida for $7-$8 Million but wound up with only between $2-$3 Million. Prince wants none of this kind of lack of clarity in his personal life. For a long time, he didn’t speak with his dad.
the only two teams last year that lost 100 games were the Pirates and Mariners. They both use sabermetrics
The Mariners use it:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thehotstoneleague/2011049671_tony_blengino_on_how_the_marin.html
their record 61-101
The Pirates use it:
http://pittsburgh.pirates.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20071101&content_id=2290860&vkey=news_pit&fext=.jsp&c_id=pit
Their record 57-105.
Ah, gotta love all this SUCCESS these sabermetric teams are having – They had the two worst records in the league last year.
OK, you’ve proven your point: You don’t understand how franchises work.
You don’t need to keep reiterating it. Your best bet now is to keep quiet and learn from people who actually have a clue as to what they are talking about.
Wait, so the Mariners have a winning record in 09. The next year they sign Figgins and trade for Lee, and lose 100 games and it’s the previous GM’s fault why they lost 100 games? Makes sense.
The Pirates were bad before Huntington took over. OK fine. But they were EVEN worse last year with Huntingotn as GM.. They lost 99 and 105 games the last two years. Their record the last two years was WORSE than their records befroe he was GM – So they have played WORSE since he took over.
And face it: the two worst teams in the league last year use sabermetircs, it dosen’t matter how you spin it: they were the worst two teams in the league.
Yes, but do you understand correlation and causation?
Are you asserting that sabermetrics caused the losing?
“Wait, so the Mariners have a winning record in 09. The next year they sign Figgins and trade for Lee, and lose 100 games and it’s the previous GM’s fault why they lost 100 games? Makes sense. ”
Yes, I’m sure one year of aquiring good players caused a -24 win difference. I’m sure it wasn’t the fact that they had a -52 run differential in 2009 and it just caught up to them. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the current FO inheritting a depleted farm system.
And lets ignore that in 2008 they lost 101 games. That their winning percentage since 2004 is .444. That even in the 2 winning seasons, they had a negative run differential (over 1200 runs total for the span).
No, it was a system of analyizing metrics a rookie GM brought in barely 2 years ago uses.
Depleted farm system huh? Then how did they trade for Lee?
I’m not saying sabermetrics is the reason why they are doing bad, I said it’s not helping them. What good has it done for their franchise? More losing?
You mean the three way deal that the Phillies made with them and Toronto? The one where they gave up 3 prospects, none of whom were rated highly?
And what happened with the three prospects the traded?
JC Ramirez continues to struggle through the minors
Tyson Gillies puts up OK numbers when he isn’t injured, which is often, and is projected as a 4th outfielder
Phillipe Aumont is the most highly regarded, and he comes in at #93 on the 2010 Baseball America ratings. struggling in the minors.
The Mariners currently have 3 players in BA’s top 100 list and 2 of them were drafted the last 2 years.
So, ya, their minor league system needs a lot of work.
You do understand it didn’t cause the winning you think it does either!
Sabermetrics are only as good as the metrics you decide was important to look at!
If you look at OBP but not BA then it doesn’t matter if you used Sabers you will fail because all it takes to defeat an OBP picked team is to throw strikes!
Until you can prove that Sabers DOES make winning what you say about the failures being irrelevant makes the winning irrelevant as well!
Sabers are a form of MATH! Not a baseball philosophy. The Philosopy can be completely different and yet still use sabers.
It is the philosophy that makes the success or failure not the stats or the math used to judge them!
There are three different ways to calculate WAR in sabers.
Each is different based on the PHILOSOPHY of the person who created the metric.
Moneyball is about valuing things that others don’t value.
The sabers don’t do anything until you decide what that undervalued stat actually is. And if you guess wrong then the sabers weren’t wrong your CHOICE of what was undervalued and decision based on them was.
Again, if anyone here has a magic formula for taking a crappy franchise and making it a winning franchise overnight, give it me so I can patent it and sell it.
“If you look at OBP but not BA then it doesn’t matter if you used Sabers you will fail because all it takes to defeat an OBP picked team is to throw strikes!”
OBP > BA. I’ve explained this before but ehre we go. Yes, OBP does not differnetiate between any of the outcomes that do not result in an out. However, BA does not differentiate between any of the types of hits. Not only does it claim a 1B = HR, it completely ignores the existence of another outcome (the walk).
Also, you are asserting that people that value OBP advocate going to the plate with the bat glued to your shoulder. Why do you keep asserting this when I’ve pointed out how wrong it is?
How often do guys have a high OBP but a low BA? How long does it last?
Yes, going to the plate looking for a walk is a bad idea. But so is going up and swinging away. If you get a good pitch to hit, swing. If its out of the zone, take it.
High walk rates and high OBP are usualy indicative of good plate discipline, which generally leads to good hitting.
And I’ll say it again since every time I mention it you go ghost because you know I’m right.
If your looking at OBP you also not looking at what KIND of hits he got.
So OBP ignores HITS and TYPES of HITS.
At least BA tells you how often a guy hits PERIOD!
OBP does not. It eleveates a player based on things he didn’t do but got as a GIFT from the pitcher!
So if you want to know what TYPES of hits he got OBP fails just as much as OBP PLUS it also fails to tell you if the guy hits at all!
Something you OBP crowd seem unable to admit because it proves that OBP tells you NOTHING about hitting or at bats at all despite your thinking that it tells you more about outcomes of ALL PA better than BA does!
OBP is about OUTS not GOOD HITTING!
If you want to know how a player ACTUALLY hits then abandon your highly vaulted OBP!
Correction on Typo…
So if you want to know what TYPES of hits he got OBP fails just as much as BA PLUS OBP also fails to tell you if the guy hits at all!
“So OBP ignores HITS and TYPES of HITS.”
By “ingoring” you must mean “counts”. Although ,yes, OBP does not differentiate between the types of hits. Much like the inferior batting average.
“At least BA tells you how often a guy hits PERIOD!”
No, it doesn’t. It completely disregards the PAs that end in a walk. How can you tell how frequesntly a guy is hitting when you compeltely disregard a common outcome?
And saying things like “period” or “end of story” doesn’t end the discussion.
“OBP does not. It eleveates a player based on things he didn’t do but got as a GIFT from the pitcher!”
It elevates a guy based on his control of the strike zone. Pitchers frequently throw out of the zone to get the batter to chase something he can’t hit.
Shall we discount Ks now because the batter swung at a pitch off the plate? By your logic, yes.
“So if you want to know what TYPES of hits he got OBP fails just as much as OBP PLUS it also fails to tell you if the guy hits at all!”
Yes, which is why we count hits and figure out things like SLG, ISO and wOBA.
“Something you OBP crowd seem unable to admit because it proves that OBP tells you NOTHING about hitting or at bats at all despite your thinking that it tells you more about outcomes of ALL PA better than BA does!”
We’ve already established that OBP doesn’t tell you which specific event happened. It only tells you how often the hitter has a positive outcome. Why do you keep harping on that? I think its an attempt at a red herring.
And BA tells you less than OBP does. Already established. Moving on.
“OBP is about OUTS not GOOD HITTING!”
the first objective of any hitter is not to make an out.
“If you want to know how a player ACTUALLY hits then abandon your highly vaulted OBP!”
You don’t abandon it, you move on from it. BA gets abandoned, since it claims 1B = HR and completely ignores walks.
OBP is not the be all and end all of evaluating hitters. It is, however, where you start.
Donal is Greek for DUMMY right?
A WALK is NOT a HIT!
a WALK can not be FORCED to occurr by a BATTER!
If the Pitcher throws STRIKES and the Batter does not HIT then the BATTER did not CAUSE the WALK!
You pick players based on giving them credit for something they have no control over!
So you think something he COULD NOT DO is a sign that he CAN DO SOMETHING
This is the syupidity you ascribe to!
“Again, if anyone here has a magic formula for taking a crappy franchise and making it a winning franchise overnight, give it me so I can patent it and sell it.”
You realize that BOTH the Pirates and Mariners haven’t made any improvements since Huntington and Zduniernick took over? I understand that it would be difficult for them to turn into winning teams overnight, i get that, but COME ON!!! they were the worst two teams in the league last year!!! You would think that if sabermetrics or moneyball or whatever, was right, that they would be improving right? But no, they are getting worse!
The Pirates have played even worse with Huntington was GM. Before he was GM they were bad, but now they are worse. The last two years they had a worse record than they had before he took over.
Before Zduniernick took over, they lost 101 games, and now they lost 101 games last year with him as GM. How has sabermetrics helped them?
So what good has sabermetrics done for their franchises? It has done nothing for them – just more losing.
So I guess losing 105 games last year and 99 the year before is improving huh? yeah ok…..
Vinny: “You realize that BOTH the Pirates and Mariners haven’t made any improvements since Huntington and Zduniernick took over”
As somebody who follows the Bucs because I go to Pittsburgh every year and have friends who are Bucs fans… you are dead wrong on this. The fact you don’t think the Bucs have improved their franchise is just proof to me that the baseball world doesn’t exist to you outside of Flushing.
And by the way, why is that critics of moneyball, saber etc think that supporters of it think when you use it you win 162 games a year? Teams are still bad at things. Nobody said because you use a certain method you will automatically win baseball games.
‘That said, we will continue to stress the importance of our subjective evaluations” pittsburgh guy.
“Some decisions will ultimately be driven by what we see with our eyes, and what the scouts see with their eyes” seattle guy.
i found the problem.
The Pirates owners are not looking to win as their 1st priority, they are collecting millions off of revenue sharing.
Do you mean to suggest they use Sabers to select and then take the wrong guy?
If the Sabers can tell you to take the WRONG guy then what good are they?
As I said the PHILOSOPHY dictates what Sabers are used. Sabermetrics is not a philosophy of baseball it is a philosophy of analysis.
The GM chooses what to analyze and deem as a good quality not the Sabers themselves.
And in the case of Moneyball the GM decided that OBP was the good quality to have and it resulted in ZERO world championships!
Moneyball allows a poor team to compete with rich teams.
If Beane used conventional baseball methods, hi steam would likely had been a 100-loss team, but due to his ingenious drafting and use of under the radar signings based on that analyizing to create a dominante ballclub
No picking good players allows you to compete with the rich teams. Money has nothing to do with it and if you want proof then just look at what happened when they faced those RICH teams in the playoffs!
It wasn’t moneyball that helped Beane compete with the rish teams it was his player evaluations (using Sabers) that did it!
Moneyball merely told him where he had to LOOK for those players because he could not afford them!
And once he could he should have spent enough money to get him PAST those rich teams he kept losing to when the playoffs came around!
You know what I find fascinating about these monthly moneyball saber tirades?
Is how it starts off with people arguing about the validity of moneyball and when Oaklands lack of success can’t be explained the Moneyball guys all start talking about Sabermetrics as if they are the SAME THING!
Which just goes to show they don’t understand moneyball or they don’t understand Sabermetrics.
They think they are the same thing! Which should tell you everything you ned to know about those who are trying to change the subject from moneyball to sabers at the first sign of trouble!
All so they can cite Boston who doesn’t play moneyball at all!
Yes Boston does, Metsie have you read Moneyball? they are a large market team but Kevin Youkilis and Pedroia are poster guys for Saber players.
The Redsox tried to get Beane in 2002 as their GM but they got Epstein instead, who like Alderson, got into baseball because of Bill James, the creator of sabermetrics.
like you said before, moneyball does not mean putting together a team with no money, it means putting together a team with more bang for the buck.
more money, usually more bang!
besides, moneyball is actually just the name a writer made up for a book.
Does it really? Isn’t that what EVERY team does? Tries to get the best players they can no matter if you have money or not?
Player Evaluations has nothing to do with money or cheapness.
Player Evaluation is the same in Moneyball as it is for a Rich team. Find the BEST PLAYER possible and Moneyball finds that guy and then look for the CHEAPER alternative.
But every team goes for the BEST player they can find and afford and if you do that well it really doesn’t matter how cheap you did it.
Moneyball is a philosophy of ECONOMICS.
Player Evaluations (using Deep Statistical analysis) is what causes or gets you the success. If you are good at that then how much you spend or where you found it is irrelevant.
Beane picked good players! Not because he used Moneyball but because he Picked good players!
If he had money to spend he would STILL have picked good players and probably won a WS or two along the way as well!
Yes I have I have also read Bill James which is much more what Boston does than Moneyball.
You have to get over the fact that Moneyball is an econimic philosophy not a player evaluation philosophy.
Moneyball uses SABERS!
SABERS do NOT use MONEYBALL!
This is what you need to understand.
Boston SPENDS money. They use SABERS (not moneyball) to decide who they get!
Sometimes they use a few of the tricks that were used in moneyball to save money.
But thats a far cry from being able to claim they use moneyball!
Not when you look at thier Salary structure.
And your previous assumptions that if Beane has spent money he would have lost 100 games then explain how the red Sox with the 3rd highest salary in the MLB are playing moneyball and due to lose 100 games too!
Metsie,
Part of your problem in this thread is you’re refusing to differentiate the difference between MLB in 1999-2005 ish to 2011.
The game has changed, player evaluation has changed. Beane used statistics to find undervalued talent because during that time guys like Bill Mueller for BOS were overlooked, but because of Beane’s approach, Boston got themselves a batting champ when nobody else gave him a second look.
Player evaluation has changed from just old scouts giving their opinion to scouting plus analysis. You can sit there and say Beane had nothing to do with that, but you’d be wrong because guys like Joe Torre, Brian Cashman, Theo Epstein etc have all said it before.
Did Beane win a World Series? No. But you cannot tell me his team’s regular season from 99-06 isn’t damn impressive.
He helped change the way baseball executives think about a player’s value. Do players values change over time? Absolutely, but while the Yankees were stealing players like Jason Giambi from Oakland, he was replacing them with Scott Hatteberg’s of the world and still maintaining a successful regular season.
Nobody’s saying in 2011 Beane is using moneyball, he’s changed his course because the game has changed.
He arguably has the best young 5 man rotation in baseball, and in today’s game that is more vital than just stacking up on high OBP guys only
And you refuse to differentiate the STATISTICAL ANALYSIS from the EVALUATION POOL it was used on!
Moneyball is not HOW to evaluate players, Sabermetrics is!
SABERMETRICS DOES NOT EQUAL MONEYBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stop trying to link the two in any other way than one was used (sabers) to look at the player pool that was LIMITED by the MONEYBALL philosophy.
You don’t use Sabers or evaluate high end FAs in Moneyball. You instead use it on CHEAP guys!
Does that mean that Sabers is and can ONLY used in Moneyball?
If you do then re-read the damn book AFTER reading Bill James’!
Sabermetrics is not a method of TEAM BUILDING is it a way to analyse statistics.
It can be used no matter what the budget is!
Moneyball as a principle has failed to get enough players to win a WS. What success it had was due to the SABERS not MONEYBALL!
If you can’t get that through your heads then live in ignorance and watch all your MONEYBALL teams play also ran for the NEXT decade!
The only thing the book Moneyball proved is there ARE some cheap ways of getting good players and that by using sabermetrics correctly you can find those players under unsearched for rocks.
Boston is not a MONEYBALL team they are a SABERMETRIC team.
Yankees are neither a Sabermetric team nor a Moneyball team as some dolts have tried to say. Do they use Sabers? Sure they do but not as much as Boston and Oakland did.
Phillies aren’t Sabermetric at all! Neither can anyone say they are moneyball!
They are good because they are good at EVALUATING the talent they aquire be it cheap value full value or OVER VALUED!
It was the evaluations that made Oakland have whatever success you deem they had (which I say was incomplete success) not the fact they did it without spending a dime.
It might impress YOU but obviously you think winning a division is success and most everyone else including every GM in the league defines it as a WS trophy!
So you want to elevate HALF ASSED success by thinking moneyball was good and walking a lot (OBP regardless of BA) is something to be rewarded go ahead.
I really don’t care if you see the truth for what it is and was if you wish to believe in false principles go ahead.
But Statistical analysis has been going on for over a century now and only the math used to do it has changed. It was this MATH that made Oakland successful not Moneyball cause as I have already stated, if they had broken away from it for even a single year and bought a big bat or a big ace arm they would have won for only 20 Mil investement!
But they stuck with Moneyball and have NEVER WON A THING WITH IT!
If the Mets had never won a thing using it I wonder how you would all feel about the philosophy then. Easy to admire a half success for a team you don’t really care about!
Try living through all that NO WS under that philosophy here!
Metsie:
Did I say Moneyball = Sabermetrics?
Moneyball was the process in which Oakland’s team salary budget was significantly smaller than most of their opponents in the AL. During the time period where Beane’s budget was smaller, he had to find ways to challenge the larger market teams and through his idea that the old school way of scouting a player such as how fast he runs or RBI was flawed.
So he decided to spend money more wisely and used sabermetric and statistical analysis
Moneyball was about finding players who were undervalued in an high spending market.
You did claim Moneyball made them win 100 games!
I say no!
It wasn’t Moneyball that made them good is was the SELECTION made under the CONDITIONS of moneyball that made them good!
So Moneyball as a philosophy is a limiter not a path to success!
Regardless of how the playoffs result, The only thing you can fully plan for is the regular season. And they won 100+ games 2 straight years despite losing Isringhausen, Damon AND Giambi.
If the Mets lost Wright Reyes and K-Rod in one season how do you think they would fair the next year? not well.
Moneyball allowed Beane to continue their success from their Moneyball method of drafting that resulted in their 2001 season.
Moneyball analysis allowed them to top their season with conventional stars, with cast offs and under valued players with “hidden virtues”
No Clayton, Deep Statistical analysis allowed them to continue their “Success” Moneyball limited that success to regular season and then done!
Bayonne,
I find it funny that you throw things out like
“I’ll read moneyball when you actually play, coach, and experience some life involving actually being on the field playing and being involved in baseball. See me in 10 years.”
And that you’ll go see the movie.
So basically you’re going to base YOUR opinion on SOMEBODY ELSE’S view of the book, real educated there. I’m beginning to think reading is the problem here
AND you keep talking about baseball experience when Billy Beane has more professional baseball experience in his right index finger than you have in your entire life. So how come Billy Beane’s experience doesn’t count?
The Movie will end up being very different than the book. They don’t include Bill James, Sandy Alderson, Zito, Damon, Isringhausen, Giambi, Jeremy Brown, Youk and many other crucial factors in the book. Jorge Posada is in the movie for some reason… But not Jason Giambi, who has a full chapter in the book, as does Alderson and James.
Not to mention they used an alias for DePodesta at his request because his didn’t want to be seen as a nerd or something.
The movie will be a shell of what the book has to offer.
Metsie is wiping the floor with you moneyballers. He is the only one relying on facts and not theories.
Here are some cold hard facts for you.
Yankees 2002: $125,928,583 103 wins 58 losses. Lost ALDS to the Angels 3-1
A’s 2002: $39,380,000 103 wins 59 losses. Lost in ALDS to Twins 3-2
The A’s did the same exact thing the Yankees did except sparing $86.5 million!
And they did it with a bunch of cast offs and guys that would otherwise be a bench player or in triple-A.
There’s some facts for you.
So i guess Hudson, Zito, Mulder, and Tejada would be bench players or AAA guys if it wasn’t for Beane?
I am reffering to Hatteburg, Bradford, Mabry, etc.
Anything can happen in baseball in any given year. Geez youre a Mets fan read about the 69 team. The A’s couldnt sustain their 2002 success the Yankees have, why? Moneyball? NOT!
They didn’t sustain that success? Is that a joke? the 2002 season had the A’s without Giambi, Damon or isrighausen yet they TOPPED their 2001 campaign.
not to mention after that season the A’s had 96 wins, 91 wins and 87 wins the following three years. still successful.
A’s – 76, 75, 75, 81 wins 2007-2010. Yankees – 94, 89, 103, 95 wins 2007-2010, I said sustain.
Of course you took those stats from right after the A’s began to taper off. How about the following four seasons after 2002?
the A’s still had great seasons. 96-91-88-93
Yankees 101-101-95-97
Yankees did even better yes, but the Yankees also had their budget increase exponentially more than the A’s. In 2006, the Yankees had over $194 million. The A’s had $62.2 and still had won 90+ games.
And in 2006, the Yankees lost in the ALDS, the A’s made it to the ALCS
Thats why I said “SUSTAINED”. Do you not know the definition of the word?
Sustain: [səˈsteɪn] Middle English sustenen, from Old French sustenir.
To keep in existence and maintain at an established level. To maintain or prolong. To endure without failing or yielding.
The United States has sustained an unsurpassed level of superiority as a global super power.
So what Clayton!! I mean the playoffs is a success?
What percentage of the league makes the playoffs?
What percentage actually get to the WS?
You can’t make it a success by lowering the bar on what is and what is not a success (turning a B to be as good as an A) without some justification.
Your justification is they made it hard ON THEMSELVES and then suggest EVERY TEAM should make it hard on themselves!
The truth is the only way Moneyball is a success (based on what your saying) is if EVERYONE thinks it’s a good idea to make their own lives difficult by cutting the budget!
But since no one else seems to feel the need to do that Moneyball can NEVER SUCEED!
A FAILURE as a plan!
If and when the MLB institutes a Salary Cap Moneyball HAS NEVER and WILL NEVER work!
That success you mention is compared to who? The Yankees?
Who are you comparing as a success. If Oakland was a success then what were the Giantas and Angels that year?
Juggernauts?
Is the goal to build the best team in baseball or is the goal to screw yourself as much as possible and try to overcome it?
I have never seen a trophy for DUMBEST FRANCHISE that won despite itself ever awarded to anyone!
Sure they did have a choice. beane didn’t but the TEAM (THEY) did!
And regardless it didn’t result in a WS.
Marlins did it jjst as cheap without the benefit of moneyball or billy beane.
Beane was a success, Moneyball was not!
Beane was a success because he analyzed stats better than most not because he found cheap players. He FAILED because he could find as many good players as anyone but never enough in one year to win a WS!
Oh and you caught me in a typo…
the ONLY way moneyball works is if every team is limited in how much they can spend equally and if that were to ever occurr you wouldn’t need moneyball because every player would be cheaper than now!
So Moneyball will never work UNLESS every team puts themselves in the same position Oakland VOLUNTARILY put themselves in.
Yes they sustained having success. 2003 returned to the playoffs. they missed it two years being in an unimagineable difficult league but still had great years.
then 2006 93 wins and went to the ALCS
Never did I suggest they should make it hard on themselves.
They did not have a choice to do so. Beane worked with the budget their GM allowed him to have. Not one that he set up.
And if MLB had a salary cap, that would work better. There is a part in Moneyball that DePodesta calculated how many runs Scott Hatteburg produced. They said that the Yankees scored 890 runs that year, if there was a lineup of nine Scott Hatteburgs, it would produce 950 runs, the best offense in baseball.
So in theory, Moneyball still could be successful even with a Salary cap.
The Postseason cannot be planned for! There has been no consistant results of playoffs based on teams simply because they did not perform well in a 5 game series.
Were the 1988 Mets better than losing in the ALCS to the dodgers like such? Of Course they were.
The true measure of a team is in the regular season, not the postseason.
And Yes the Yankees had more success but they had an exponentially higher budget to work with!
Beane did not have the choice to limit himself, ownership does, as does any other team in baseball.
I don’t think just strict poor moneyball is the best way to go.
For best results on a team some moeny is required. But Moneyball shows you do not need to be a New York Bankee to have success with a ballclub.
So Clayton on the scale of great plans you can use, which is the better one to follow?
Moneyball or the one that had MORE success?
If there is a plan that works better than moneyball (of which there are many) then Moneyball is about one of the worst plans you could even follow since it NEVER wins and never is AS SUCCESSFUL as other plans!
SO is the book still the great REVOLUTIONARY achievement plan as you tried to suggest or do you admit anyone can beat that plan provided they spend a little money?
Or Analysis without limiting the pool to draw from?
Cause thats really the only thing the money does is it allows you to draw from MANY WELLS of TALENT where Moneyball is a limited way of building that has never had the success every other plan has had!
“The true measure of a team is in the regular season, not the postseason”
It’s only the TRUE measure if you are trying to make a flawed and useless plan look good!
Try that with your parents and tell them that the final grade of B is the true measure of passing and those that got a A are just geeks who over achieved or were lucky!
Moneyball FAILS the true test, getting to and winning a WS while various other plans did not!
The only reason why you think the regular season is the better test is because it fits your warped sense of accomplishment and use of the word “SUCCESS” better that the REAL measures do!
It’s a common practice of CHEATING called LEANING ON THE SCALES to make lesser weight heavier!
I’m no moneyball priest. I’m not a sabermetrician either. I’m just open minded enough to give credit where credit is due.
In any objective analysis of the 2002 Oakland A’s a reasonable person couldn’t come to the conclusion that the A’s were a failure. You did. And the proof of this according to you is that they “could have signed players like the Phillies and Yankees did.” That’s ridiculous.
If you cannot appreciate how a small market team like the A’s was able to win 103 games, in a Division that included the 93 win Mariners and the 99 win Angels (who went on to win the World Series) AFTER losing three of their best players that cool.
As a lifelong NY Met Fan I can appreciate it and feel no need to run down their accomplishment. I understand that only winning the World Series would have been considered a success by you but not everyone else feels the same way. Not everyone else feels the need to make things up to butress their opinions either.
Considering that we have had the highest payroll in the Majors over the last 20 years and have only qualified for the playoffs three times, and only then when one of our Division rivals gives up, and gives us some of the best players in baseball, perhaps we could learn something that might improve our results rather than smirking at what the A’s were able to do while calling them a failure.
Personally I don’t think Met Fans have anything to smirk about when it comes to the results of our favorite team over the last two decades.
“In any objective analysis of the 2002 Oakland A’s a reasonable person couldn’t come to the conclusion that the A’s were a failure”
You mean SUBJECTIVE, not OBJECTIVE…
My evaluation is OBJECTIVE! It is based on the appearances in the WS which is what every other team is judged by not just the ones who spent money! 17 out of 30 different teams SUCEEDED since the invention of Moneyball…Moneyball teams in that list? ZERO!
Here read the difference.
http://www.asdatoz.com/Documents/Website-%20Objective%20vs%20subjective%20ltr.pdf
I’ve stayed out of this because, honestly, you’re all hurting my head. But that link is hilarious. +1 to Metsie for that.
It really is such a rediculous discussion isn’t it X?
It was fine when me and Clayton were actually discussing it because we were at least being civil.
Bottomline on Moneyball IMO…
Beane did a great job of finding players in places you didn’t look before than.
He did a good job on statistical analysis (for the time) and I am willing to bet if the gloves were taken off he might have spent a little money and won quite a few WS over that course of time.
But he didn’t and for whatever reason he didn’t it showed one thing.
Moneyball in and of itself either forced upon or by belief in it’s method did not produce a World Series entrant since it’s invention.
Boston is the team that took SOME of the lessons which had little to do with spending money and looking for cheap and EVERYTHING to do with deep statistical analysis on EVERY player to try and find the best guys they could and it resulted in the SUCCESS as I have defined it!
Bottomline beane is a good GM and probably better than his current record has showed.
He did a good job but he hardly revolutionized baseball and has not come up with some holy grail that leads you to the path of success.
He had a pretty good run but no cigar and lots of other teams who used some other system did just as well…
INCLUDING the polar opposite Yankees who spent like crazy and won 5 of their 7 WS appearances.
THATS success! And Maybe it’s a revolution!
Or maybe as I tried to say it’s just that The Yankees do all the deep statistical analysis Beane did but don’t limit or throw out of the pool the BEST PLAYERS in their analysis due to money concerns.
“But he didn’t and for whatever reason he didn’t it showed one thing.”
Budget constraints. The owners refused to give him more than $40 or so mil to spend and he had to stretch it. He did a tremendous job. If Beane was the GM of the Yankees, he’d have won five WS, too.
The problem with this whole entire debate (you included, Metsie) is that you’re all arguing pro or con Moneyball as if it’s a real thing. It’s not. It’s a book. It’s a good book, actually, but it’s a book. Everyone should read it. It takes you behind the scenes, into a draft strategy meeting, into phone calls between GMs about trades or whatnot. Any baseball fan should read it because you get insight to things you never get otherwise.
But that’s where it ends. This silly idea that Moneyball is a “philosophy” is so far from the truth, it sours BOTH sides. The closest thing to right in this whole 9,000-comment post is where Metsie said Moneyball is NOT sabermetrics. That’s right on the money. But Metsie went on to say that Moneyball as a philosophy is what kept Beane from spending money. That’s 100% false.
Everyone who made any point based on the premise that Moneyball was a philosophy was wrong, whether it was pro- or anti-sabermetrics.
The fact is, the reason the Yanks, Sox and Braves have been the most successful franchises over the last 15 years or so is because they use a good amount of sabermetrics to identify the good players, then use generous payrolls to buy them. They ALSO have top-notch scouting systems and minor-league instructors. When has either of those three teams rushed a prospect before he was ready? I honestly can’t remember one. I can’t remember one guy from any of those teams who came up and looked as lost as Tejada did, or couldn’t find the plate like Mejia did, or had such a drastic difference between his AA/AAA numbers and his Mets numbers like Duda has.
It’s just so immensely silly that this whole thing started because people take a STORY as gospel. And that goes for both sides, because the anti-saber crowd seem to feel Moneyball is a philosophy, same as the author of this post. Reading Moneyball and taking it as a philosophy is like watching Titanic and thinking every ocean liner is gonna hit a damn iceberg.
and the truth shall set you free.
I will quote….
“Moneyball is more than just sabermetrics, the Oakland A’s or even baseball. Moneyball is the story of one man with an amazing, astounding new way that comes face-to-face with an entire social order, unchanged for over 150 years, facing countless critics and doubters along the way, and ultimately emerges on top.”
My first response was basically ON TOP OF WHAT!
And thats pretty much been the debate ever since.
Was it Moneyball that allowed Beane to find those good players?
Or did moneyball merely define WHERE he could look?
Wasn’t it the Analysis of players that made whatever success people seem to think ON TOP was?
Thats the point I have been making will continue to make and ON TOP is nothing more than a SUBJECTIVE view of success that only seems to apply to teams with a 40 Million dollar payroll while other teams have far surpassed those ACHIEVEMENTS without having to look where beane had to look.
If it is the SUCCESS story everyone wants to make it out to be then it should have actually succeeded DESPITE the money limitations.
Is Hobbling better than Running? TO a guy with one leg YES! To a healthy person NO!
They Hobbled themselves and people are celebrating that as a success.
I say hobbling yourself was a mistake!
A bad situation that Beane did about as good a job as he could under circumstances but did not succeed BECAUSE of the limitations imposed!
A success story should actually succeed in the end!
Would Cinderella be a success story if the prince didn’t try the slipper on her?
Or would have been just a one night stand?
Nice story, crappy ending!
He came out on top because those like Joe Morgan and others were saying that the A’s could not compete without the money to back it up. Selig was trying to do that to get the revenue sharing idea through because his Milwaukee Brewers were one of those poor teams that failed to compete. Beane went in and to Selig’s dismay, proved him wrong.
Then once Beane managed to do that, when he lost Giambi, Damon Isringhausen, everyone wrote them off for dead. He proved them wrong again by becoming an even better team in winning 103 games the following year.
Thats how he came out on top
The question still stands Clayton…
ON TOP OF WHAT?
The MLB? Or on top of teams that only spent 40 Million?
MAYBE you can say top of the AL WEST!
They were on top of that!
But on TOP of ALL TEAMS IN THE MLB?
Not even CLOSE!
And Never in the years they used Moneyball!
you didn’t say on top of anything…
You could have even meant top of the bottom!
By not stating what they were on top of you were infering they were on top of baseball…then did it again with this:
“Every analyst, journalist, owner, fan thought the A’s were done following 2001 and following 1995. Once Beane came in in 1998, he proved them wrong”
Wrong about what?
Every Analyst owner and fan thought they were done contending for a WS which is really all anyone but you moneyball guys take as a success!
Did Beane win one? Did he really prove them wrong?
No one said they were going to be the worst team in baseball!
And every year some team wins 90+ games. They don’t need moneyball to do that!
So it is a revolution or just a good attempt at trying to win something (obviously not a WS) without paying for it?
I did not say on top of baseball.
Every analyst, journalist, owner, fan thought the A’s were done following 2001 and following 1995. Once Beane came in in 1998, he proved them wrong, showing a small market team can be a perennial 90+ win team.
Then again in 2001, following losing thei core guys, they topped themselves in 2002.
He proved them all wrong, standing atop baseball not in the playoffs, but he showed everyone that there is more than just conventional baseball. Although they were not the MOST successful in the playoffs, they were one of the best teams in the game, and were of the smallest budgets.
In a very competitive division with the Mariners, Angels and Rangers, The A’s, minus their core, were said to be at the bottom of the AL West, that was many people thought this.
Like I’ve said, He proved them wrong they couldn’t be competitive.
Everyone thought they knew everything there was to know about baseball, until Beane came along with his A’s.
By the way, never once in Moneyball does it speak of taking a team and using them for the most Profit.
I didn’t! Who had more success since Moneyball was INVENTED The Moneyball team or the polar opposite Yankees?
In this new day and age where most players just go somewhere for the money, the rich teams get the best players. Beane was revolutionary in that it makes us re-think:
“what is the best way to determine the best players?”
James was the founder of it all and came up with the idea. Beane took it a step further and put it into a team. He was a radical sabermatician if you will.
This is revolutionary because only before have miracle teams like the 1969 mets ever been in existance and they never had sustained success. they were fluke miracle teams. The A’s continued to make the playoffs for 4 seasons
“In this new day and age where most players just go somewhere for the money,…” (See Cliff Lee)
“Beane was revolutionary in that it makes us re-think:
“what is the best way to determine the best players?”:
No that would be Bill James, Beane just mentioned it in a book about GMing that a few more people read.
“This is revolutionary because only before have miracle teams like the 1969 mets ever been in existance and they never had sustained success. they were fluke miracle teams. The A’s continued to make the playoffs for 4 seasons”
Did the Miracle Mets get their name for making the playoffs? Would anyone care about the 69 Mets if all they had done was make the playoffs?
NO which is why no one cares about Oakland making the playoffs except a few people who seem to think Billy beane discovered something that was not know long before he was quoted in a book!
That by doing GOOD SOLID PLAYER evaluations you get good players. Teams had been doing that for years before Beane did it. Alderson did it at oakland 4 years before Beane got there!
Beane didn’t invent it or discover it, it was already a well established practice. The only thing Beane accomplished was he was good at player evals based on bing good with analyzing statistics.
Moneyball only works if Billy Beane is crunching the numbers!
Therefore Beane is the revolution not Moneyball!
Not one team who has tried Moneyball has won anything either!
You revolution was just a regurgitation of Bill James with a list of the odd and out of the way places they had to use the number crunching to find players they could afford.
Anything you think Moneyball has accomplished has been SURPASSED by a multitude of OTHER PLANS (See Yankees, Atlanta, Phillies, all those teams I listed above that you pretty much ignored!)
Which means it isn’t even the SECOND best option for a team to use.
The only thing revolutionary is the fact that the team made a concious decision to hamper themselves and it cost them dearly in WS they could have won if they had cared more about winning than their wallet.
Basically Moneyball is a book that is analagous to saying you know you can save money if you wipe your Butt without tiolet paper. Yes you save the money on paper but you lose it in soap because you have crap all over your hands and have to spend more money on each washing!
They saved Money, it cost them a WS! Maybe even two or three!
Trading Money for a world series is dumb no matter which extreme you subscribe to!
Can’t BUY one nor STEAL one as it has a very high requirement to win.
And that means you have to be willing to KEEP the good players you have found, and add other good players to them to create a team that can beat everyone!
And if the Mets tried Moneyball you can bet that Sandy would not last or keep his job merely making the playoffs!
The Fans would not stand for it! And would not revere a playoff making only team.
Want proof?
How revered are the 2006 Mets? They made the Playoffs! One of the great teams in Met History?
(Careful I will quote your answer in the future!)
“to make it to the playoffs is success in my opinion, anything else after that is even better.”
Well then Clayton Moneyball is great plan.
And what the other teams that have made the WS had for a plan is EVEN BETTER!
So that knocks Moneyball down to making the playoffs when compared to winning a WS on the SUCCESSFUL AND REVOLUTIONARY methods for building a team doesn’t it?
You can lower the scale to make something appear “Successful” but unless it is the BEST lowering the scale still makes what DID get all the way that much more successful!
You can say a B is a success but no matter how much you think it WAS a success other methods and higher grades still make it LESS successful than what 10 other teams did!
Which means Moneyball is not what you try to pretend it is! It isn’t even SECOND BEST!
It isn’t a REVELATION, It isn’t a REVOLUTION!
Revolutions are contagious. No one else who is winning is playing MONEYBALL!
Thats because they read the book know how bad it works and went onto plans that DON’T NEED LOWERED SCALES to call itself a success!
Does getting a B in math make you as smart as the guy who got an A?
NO!
Neither does making the playoffs make your plan better than all the teams who made the World Series and won by NOT using that great plan of yours!
If they had copied your test answers they would have got a B as well.
Beane might have been successful if he copied their plans instead of writing a book about a failed plan!
Even thought the Mets did not make the World Series in 2006, their game seven is still seen as one of the greatest games of all time.
MLB Network ranked Chavez’s catch 4th all time of the greatest catches.
It isn’t just about how far you get, it is the watching a great game of baseball.
Many people still revere in their hearts some of the worst teams in history.
to make it to the playoffs is success in my opinion, anything else after that is even better. The world series winners are never specifically the best team in baseball. In 2010 did you think the Giants were the best team? I personally thought the Phillies and Yankees were destined for a repeat. They were both too good, yet such an incredible team loses.
Cliff Lee was dominant through the NLDS and NLCS but once he got to the world series he wasn’t good. Is there a reason for that? In 2009 Lee was great for the Phillies against the Yankees.
Moneyball Is still a relatively new theory. It is revolutionary. And although it has immediately not gotten a World series it has shown flashes of success.
These thing do not happen overnite. As Beane and other teams perfect Moneyball, it will eventually lead to a world series.
I don’t know Clayton you seem like a nice guy and maybe you are just Naieve or really just dim.
NOT EVEN BEANE is doing moneyball anymore.
NO ONE is PERFECTING it!
EVERYONE save the Pirates have Abandoned it!
It failed miserably!
The reviolution it caused is this…
A bunch of guys who know and knew nothing about GMing a team read a book.
Decided that OBP is some sort of Holy Grail of Stats.
Decided that Sabermetrics was some Karbalic secret science and magic.
And now are decided that winning a WS isn’t important how littel you force yourself to spend while making the playoffs is the new GOAL!
While the rest of the league is getting to and winning WS right by them!
But no one has written a book about how yet because IT works and they can make more money keeping it a secret than Beane did selling a failed system onto the masses in book form!
Money has never and will never win or succeed at anything but saving money!
If Beane abandoned Moneyball then it shows it can be successful because once he did, the A’s were a 75-win team.
When he implored it, they were winning 103 games!
It is said that you can’t change the mind of a fool with facts, thats what makes him a fool!
You say winning the WS is luck.
Did it ever occurr to you that those 103 wins were just LUCK due to being in a division that was very weak at the time?
Metsie I was gonna stay out of this one because I couldn’t handle your stupidity anymore, but how can you talk about fools and facts when you don’t even know any facts yourself you freakin’ waste of space.
weak division?? The Angels won 99 games that year. and Seattle won 93 games. oh yeah and Texas came in dead last with 72 wins and the third highest payroll in baseball under the yanks and sox. AND the Angels won the world series. they just happened to play better against the yankees (who had a payroll DOUBLE theirs) in five games, than the A’s did against the Twins (who spent $600,000 more than the A’s did that year).
gahd you’re a dunce. but I guess I won’t be changing your mind with those facts since you’re a friggin fool.
You were going to stay out of it because everytime you get into it you get your ass handed to you!
Yep all those teams in the west won that many games…
What does that say about the opponents the West faced that year? Pretty damn easy!
Point is they were not good enough to win a WS!
So whatever good you think they were was NOT GOOD ENOUGH!
oh my goodness…ok now i’m really staying out of it. you’re 8.
Winning 103 games in a division with 2 other teams who won 99 and 93 games is a huge accomplishment. When you factor in the A’s bare bones budget and the loss of three of their best players (Giambi, Damon, Isringhausen it’s downright extrodinary.
People around here were falling all over themselves when we won 97 games in a year in which NO TEAM in the ENTIRE NL won even 90 games.
In 2009 we lost (by injury) our SS, CF and 1B and won only 71 games. The A’s lose their 1B, CF and closer and win 103 with a budget 25% of ours in a division with TWO teams (playing each other 20 times) who won 99 and 93 games, one of whom won the World Series.
To not acknowledge that as as a great job is to just be in denial. If Omar had won 103 games after losing Delgado, Beltran and Reyes he would have been cannonized.
In the interest of fairness it should be pointed out that the A’s did play 16 games (16-0) that year against NL Central dregs Cinn, Mil, Hou, and Pittsburgh no doubt helping their record but they still won all those games on the field, something we couldn’t do in 2009 when we lost three of our best players, nor could we do it the two years before WITH all of our best players.
Yeah, winning 103 games with the Majors lowest payroll, after losing three of your best players in a Division that included 2 other 90+ win teams, one of whom won the World Series is proof of the A’s system’s failure.
Right.
it’s Metsie, Agee.
If thats so huge Tag then what is Winning 5 out of 7 playoff appearances and BAD idea?
Moneyball is the way to go?
Your welcome Clayton. I’m not against Sabermetrics, I like some of it, dislike other parts and not up to speed on alot of it but overall I appreciate more, not less info. Some of the recent moves made in Flushing over the last four years defy any kind of rational thought process. Anything has to be better than that.
Moneyball was a good story that I enjoyed reading but I don’t know how much of it should really apply to us. Right now it’s probably a huge help but going forward….perhaps in the area of not hamstringing the payroll or piecing together two imperfect players or identifying a useful part or two.
Overall I’m a big believer in three things, talent, the ability to spot it and the ability to develop it.
My ideal interpretation of moneyball would be to get the best years of the most talented players in our uniform, not someone else’s.
Considering how we have only won 100 games twice in fifty years I really don’t see how or why we should be turning our nose up at someone who did two years in a row.
Thank You Agee!
And correct me if I am wrong Agee, but you are not a fan of sabermetrics/Moneyball. Yet Agee can acknowledge that what was done in Oakland was a gigantic accomplishment.
And 103 wins is hard to be a fluke, especially when it is done back-to-back years
That’s just so unfair T agee,
Reyes, Delgado, and Beltran were lost because of injury, Giambi, Damon, and Isringhausen were lose because of free agency.
That’s a HUGE difference. Omar didn’t expect that Reyes, Delgado, and Beltran were going to miss so much time, while Beane already knew he wasn’t going to have Giambi, Damon and Isringhausen, so he was able to prepare for that, while Omar wasn’t.
And nobody is saying Beane did a bad job those years, and we are not saying Omar is a great GM. we are just saying Beane doesn’t desvere all this praise that he gets because he’s never won anything. And while Omar DID make a lot of bad moves he also made a lot of good moves too, we also have a lot of young promising players because of Omar – You always say we should give this new FO some time, but what about giving some of Omar’s prospects some time to develop, before we say he was a bad GM?
Oh and it’s not like the A’s are the ONLY team to ever to good with a small payroll – the Twins that same year BEAT the A’s in the playoffs with around the same payroll, yet there is no praise for Terry Ryan, heck, I don’t think anyone on here even knows who terry ryan is. And he beat Beane’s A’s with around the same amount of money. And a year later the Marlins won the WS also with a small payroll too.
“Yet Agee can acknowledge that what was done in Oakland was a gigantic accomplishment.”
Now describe what the Yankee success is if thats “GIGANTIC”
What were they Ginormous?
Is that what we are doing makimg lesser GIGANTIC and then coming up with a new word for what ACTUAL success is?
It may not be completely the same thing Vinny but even though Beane knew three of his best players were going to be gone and Omar didn’t, what could Beane do about it? Go after other free agents? Hell even nine months after Beltran suffered his injury (that is really more like a condition that will never go away) the best Omar could do was GMJ. What was Beane to do? Trade for Edmonds?
I’m not even a proponent of Moneyball except as a better alternative then Monkeyball but I can still appreciate that Beane was able to compete (in a tough Division) by maximizing his resources rather than just overpaying for every need and watching the whole thing fall apart and Terry Ryan was my number one choice for GM here. That’s the guy I wanted and I said so on this website.
Getting to the post season is the toughest part of the whole thing. I wish my favorite team had gone four years in a row and I really can’t see why Met Fans are running down a small market team that was able to do just that when we’ve only been able to go back to back once in fifty years and needed quite a bit of luck just to that, even with the largest payroll in the League.
Give credit where credit is due.
“It may not be completely the same thing Vinny but even though Beane knew three of his best players were going to be gone and Omar didn’t, what could Beane do about it?”
How about Sign them?
Omar didn’t know he was going to lose players so didn’t act to replace them.
Beane knew it and STILL didn’t replace them!
You cannot compare the NYY to any team in baseball, other than perhaps the BoSox but to compare them to the A’s is just absurd. How can you possibly compare a team with a 300 Million dollar payroll to a team with a 40 Million dollar payroll.
Context Metsie. No one is saying, or at least I’m not, that the 2002 A’s were the greatest team of all time. I just feel the A’s ideas were a lot more creative and successful than just going out and throwing money at Schowenweiss, Mota, Castillo, Alou, and Perez, in at least getting to the playoffs something we’ve struggled with mightily. They also didn’t go in the tank when they lost three of their best players, they won 103 games (in a tough Division)
I mean really you might as well compare the Knicks to the Jaspers.
How were they going to sign those guys Metsie? Now your just being ridiculous.
But it looks like he did replace them. He won 103 games (in a tough Division) We’ve only won as many once in fifty years.
Don’t give Beane any credit for what he able to do in that situation, give all the credit to your swami who committed 3/4 of a BILLION dollars over 6 years to achieve one post season appearance (and zero World Series)
Yeah that makes a lot of sense.
“You cannot compare the NYY to any team in baseball, other than perhaps the BoSox but to compare them to the A’s is just absurd. How can you possibly compare a team with a 300 Million dollar payroll to a team with a 40 Million dollar payroll.”
How can you compare? We are comparing BASEBALL SUCCESS!
“Context Metsie.”
Yes Context Tag…the Context is WHAT IS SUCCESS?
Moneyball guys claim Oakland was successful. Were they AS Successful as the guys who made it to and won the WS?
REALLY? Or are there MERELY Successful compared to the rest of the teams who didn’t?
The OP said that Moneyball was a success. Who is that success judged by the LOSERS in the League or the teams that went right By oakland in all those playoffs and managed to win the WS?
You said “A’s ideas were a lot more creative and SUCCESSFUL than just going out and throwing money at…”
Was it more successful than the Yankees who just went out and threw money at…and went to 7 WS ,winning 5?!!?!??!?
CONTEXT Tag! Context that you guys seem to say anything make very SPECIFIC parameters of what is success so that ONLY what Oakland did could ever meet it.
To the moneyball guys, Success appears to be limited to:
A Team who spent less than 100Mil
A Team who didn’t buy Free Agents
A Team who is GMed by Billy Beane
Must be noted in a book you can read.
You do that so that you can say the Yankees, Giants, Phillies and any other team do not meet the criteria for SUCCESS so the only team left is the team you want to say were revolutionary and Successful!
It’s like saying this .250 hitter is a successful hitter because he only get 1 Mil per year and everyone who hits .350 does not count because they get paid 5 Mil per year. So since they get paid their are not successful!
It’s a way of manipulating paramters to get the answer you want. It doesn’t surprise me that is so because it also is the key practice of many of the OBP centric saber rattlers who make up matrics that favor walks over hits like Tango Tiger!
But the truth is it’s not the truth. It is success via exclusion not success in reality. Just like Oakland!
“How were they going to sign those guys Metsie? Now your just being ridiculous. ”
Pretty much the same way the Yankees and Phillies and Giants did, so WHO is really being rediculous?
Other teams did it and if Moneyball was the success you all claim it was then he wouldn’t have had to resign them to win a WS!
So pick your poison. Either Moneyball was a successful plan and it is a plan that could win the WS or it was a failure and it failed because finding good players and winning the regular season isn’t enough compared to the plans of the other 10-12 teams who made the WS over that time!
I give Beane lots of credit. What I don’t give credit to is Moneyball as a philosophy.
I know in you Donal and Chris’ attempt to change the subject to avoid a spanking you may have forgotten what we were talking about and what I said you have replied to sop I suggest you re-read the Original article and how it so glowingly heaps praise (and success) onto a philosophy that has never gotten to or won a WS!
Only a fool would claim the A’s record in 2002 was due to a weak Division when Seattle won 93 games and Anaheim won 99 and a World Series.
Man, there is no fool like an agenda driven fool.
Clayton – Oakland wasn’t poor. They were making plenty of money the the owners decided should be in thier pockets not in the pocket of Players.
So they WOULDN’T (not couldn’t) sign players like the phillies and yankees do and it cost them the WS!
Thats not a GOOD plan! No better than eating dirt is a good substitute for eating food when you are poor!
And the choice was self inflicted! They had money they just decided to keep it to themselves!
And no Clayton his Win Loss record sufferred the second OBP wasn’t being overlooked by the league anymore!
Metsie, poor teams do not have the money to resign players.
They can’t simply resign players like the Phillies or Yankees do.
So in order to compete, they have to get creative, which is what Beane does.
“Man, there is no fool like an agenda driven fool.”
Ain’t it the truth, Especially when the Agenda is making Moneyball look good and OBP important!
Only a fool would claim that a team that did not win the WS was the best team in baseball!
Only those who can’t prove their point with the STANDARD would resort to changing the standard to fit the team they want to CALL a Success.
And only a fool would celebrate an accomplishment that 27% of the league also accomplished as a Success!
Moneyball was a success only when you remove 27% of the league and compare them to the remaining failed 73%!
Hey Mom I’m a Genius for getting a B on the test! The guys who got an A were just rich and lucky!
Please! Give us all a break from the religionist clap trap!
Metsie you are getting crazier by the day. Yesterday you were claiming that Omar got to a World Series and today this: Clayton – Oakland wasn’t poor. They were making plenty of money the the owners decided should be in thier pockets not in the pocket of Players.
So they WOULDN’T (not couldn’t) sign players like the phillies and yankees do and it cost them the WS!
Thats not a GOOD plan! No better than eating dirt is a good substitute for eating food when you are poor!
And the choice was self inflicted! They had money they just decided to keep it to themselves!
The A’s have the 29th valued franchise, the Majors lowest gross revenue, a lease that requires them to split advertising with not only the Stadium owners but also the Raiders and they have the Majors smallest capacity. Even the luxury boxes are useless as almost all of them are in the outfield.
Even when they were constructing these boxes they were working on them right during baseball games to get them ready for football season.
If your above statement were true it would be very easy for you to prove, however there is as much chance of your proving this as there is of you proving Omar took his team to a World Series, or that the homegrown Atlanta Braves who have gotten MVP votes suck or that the NYY core 5 were acquired by trade or that Omar was responsible for drafting players when he was working for other teams or that Joe Mcilvaine hired Omar or any of your other useless, baseless claims you use to prop up your incorrect opinions.
“So they WOULDN’T (not couldn’t) sign player’s like the Phillies and Yankees do.”
You continue to show an almost incomprehensible lack of honesty in defending your opinions. Your purpose in engaging in debates on different topics can not possibly have anything to do with the reasonable exchange of thoughts, viewpoints or ideas and must have everything to do with a need of yours to “win debates.”
Debates cannot be “won” with untruths.
The craziness is based on your constantly moving parameters for success!
“The A’s have the 29th valued franchise, the Majors lowest gross revenue, a lease that requires them to split advertising with not only the Stadium owners but also the Raiders and they have the Majors smallest capacity.”
DID they have to borrow 50 Mil to pay the bills?
There is your proof!
Oh and if you want more proof Cleveland was the worst draw of any team last year!
Oakland 24th!
In 2002 they were 18th!
So who is making up their own facts again?
Metsie’s proof that Oakland can sign players like the Phillies and Yankees do is because the Mets had to borrow 50 Million dollars.
Some proof.
Most would argue that if the A’s did sign players like the Phillies and the Yankees they would have had to borrow 500 Million.
Perhaps your “proof” is actually everyone else’s proof. The A’s didn’t have to borrow any money because they were living within their means.
Metsie you are getting loonier by the hour.
Moving the goal post again Metsie?
I didn’t say anything about attendance, I said revenue. You know the thing that pays those players the A’s could have signed like the Phillies (Halliday, Lee, Howard) or the Yankees (Tex, CC, A-Rod)
Yeah. Right. Sure. The A’s could have easily signed 6 guys to 20+ million dollar a year deals and the proof that they could have is because the Mets had to borrow 50 M from MLB.
Right.
Tag you and the Moneyball priests are the ones trying to move the goal posts on almost every other post!
My Goal Post has remained ROCK SOLID throughout!
SUCCEESS is judged by winning the WS!
It is you who keep trying to bring budget, record, money, revenue, attendance, and every other attempt to move a failed attempt at winning a revolution in baseball prowess!
The Marlins managed to win a WS under the same situation as oakland did! They don’t get a PENNY from souvenirs or concessions in Pro Player )aka your name here Stadium) the Miami Dolphins do! They also split ticket reciepts with the Dolphins PLUS the rest of the league!
Didn’t seem to stop them now did it?
Stop trying to move a knight like it’s a bishop because you feel they had some mountainous issue to overcome!
Yes they saved money but that doesn’t mean their line of success is lesser than the rest of the league!
You can keep trying to change what a SUCCESS is to try and make your Gospel according to Beane be a true revelation and revolution.
But the bottom line is still this!
NO WS APPEARANCES, NO WS WINS!
Not a problem for the following teams during that period such as:
Braves
Yankees
Marlins
Indians
Padres
Mets
Diamondbacks
Giants
Angels
Cardinals
Red Sox
Astros
White Sox
Tigers
Rockies
Philladelphia
Tampa Bay
17 DIFFERENT TEAMS in a 30 Team league has gone to a WS in that time.
Yet Oakland is the one you call a success!
Right!
“And no Clayton his Win Loss record sufferred the second OBP wasn’t being overlooked by the league anymore!”
Wow, Metsie, you just contradicted everything you’ve been arguing for for the seven or so months i’ve been on this thing.
You do realize you just demonstrated the importance of OBP don’t you? you friggin idiot. sooo pretty much you’re saying as soon as the rest of the league caught on to OBP, like Boston and the Yankees, Beane started losing his advantage. Thanks for proving the point that we sucessfully made a long long time ago but for some reason you are only coming to grips with now.
the funniest part about it is you changed your view on one argument to try to win this new argument lol. gahd you’re entertaining.
No Chris only an imbecille like you would read my statements that way!
No one ever said OBP was not usefull. Just not complete unless BA was taken into account to know how much of the OBP is actually a product of the batter and not the pitcher so it can be maintained no matter what a pitcher decided to do in a PA!
But until you graduate Kindergarten and move on from fingerpainting and playing with dolls, Graduate enough to learn math and advanced calculus to understand math probability and sustainable medians you really should just stay out of these things because your just proving yourself the fool!
“Just not complete unless BA was taken into account to know how much of the OBP is actually a product of the batter and not the pitcher so it can be maintained no matter what a pitcher decided to do in a PA!”
lolololol, oh Metsie Metsie Metsie.
Mestie,
Owners aren’t going to just reinvest all of their money into the team. Of course the A’s owners will pocket SOME. But in Moneyball, it clearly states that under Alderson, when the new owners came in in 1995, they had very small pockets.
They did not retain La Russa as a manager because he was too expensive.
That was how the Oakland A’s were run from ownership, not Beane, and whether the owners HAD the money or did not in order to increase salary is a matter of opinion from our knowledge. We would have to know the A’s financial records to know that answer.
And regardless, many teams remain small market, like the Marlins, Rays, Padres and others. they tend not to be as successful once their drafted players walk. Beane managed to break that chain.
“They did not retain La Russa as a manager because he was too expensive”
And haven’t had a manager take them to the WS since!
Smart Baseball?
Revolution?
The only thing revolutionary about Moneyball is the fact that it ignores BASEBALL success in favor of PROFIT!
Thats the ONLY revolution and it inspired the Marlins, Pirates and all the other moneyball teams to just throw cheap crap out there, winning be damned, I’m too busy counting my Money!
I know Clayton but they still didn’t win a WS since they started cheaping out.
Tell me something how much do you HAVE to spend before not making or winning a WS makes you a failure?
Huh?
I mean how much HEADROOM for failure do you get for not spending money?
Metsie, La Russa was gone before Beane’s era. Howe was there the entire time. I was using him as an example to show the fact that the new regime did not have the deep pockets the former ownership had.
With many small market teams, they hope to see the playoffs, but realistically they rely almost completely on their farm system for their core and hope they can put enough of them together before they hit free agency.
Most small market teams are condemned to really hoping for the best throughout the season.
The A’s, becoming a small market team, instead of falling to that, Beane turned them around and using Sabermetrics and his own stuff, made them into one of the best team’s in baseball.
Exactly.
I did not care for the lack of caring for defense like with Jeremy Giambi and Scott Hatteburg.
But I loved the idea of not spending on closers and raising them through the farm system. Because in the scheme of things, teams like the Mets spend millions on three outs.
The Twins that year had about the same payroll as the A’s, and BEAT them.
and the marlins actually won the WS with a low payroll a year later – that’s more impressive.
And here are some cold hard facts for you.
since Moneyball was invested in 1995…
Yankees 7 WS appearances 5 Wins
Red Sox 2 WS Appearances 2 Wins
Braves 3 WS appearances 1 Win
Phillies 2 WS Appearances 1 Win
Diamondbacks 1 WS Appearance 1 WIn
Giants 2 WS appearances 1 Win
Cardinals 2 WS Appearances 1 Win
Oakland Athletics ZERO WS Appearances, ZERO WINS!
NUFF SAID!!!
Moneyball philosophy no different than Wilpon philosophy. Build a competitive team it doesnt matter if we never win.
Actually moneyball is nothing more than I don’t care if we win just as long as enough people go to the games and pay under the pretense of false hope.
If it really was a good plan Beane would still be using it!
Moneyball has been relegated to simply being a plan? Hmmm. But whatever it was, most of us can acknowledge it was a good read. Now for those who haven’t read it but have strong opinions on it, I say to you facts and views don’t mean anything to you, do they?
Lord of the rings was a good read too!
Doesn’t make anything in it true or reality!
Facts mean PLENTY!
Here are the facts.
No team who used Moneyball as a philosophy has won a WS.
The INVENTOR of Moneyball has abandoned it as a way to build a team!
You like it because it is the first book that discusses how GMs locate and select players.
But just because it is the only book that has does not make it the Holy Grail of team building or the REVOLUTION in concept some readers try to make it out to be!
It is those readers who seem to think FACTS and VIEWS don’t mean anything!
Especially the fact that it has never won a WS!
And started many of you down this OBP path when the only reason it was used at all was because high OBP was cheaper than high BA!
And I have to say I am getting a little tired with the WEAK WEAK attempts by the Moneyball crowd to accuse those who point out it’s flaws of not reading the book!
Truth is WE READ IT!
WE COMPREHENDED IT!
It those who think it is some great epiphany that have MIS READ or did not truly COMPREHEND what the book was saying!
Nor do they read the standings and judge Moneyball based on results!
A “B” is as good as an “A”!
See Mommy I’m a Genius I got a B!
Well what about the guys who got an “A”?
Oh they were just lucky!
Try reading the book and comparing it to what the winning teams have done!
Polar Opposite Yankees have 7 WS Appearances and 5 WS Wins!
Moneyball teams ZERO appearances ZERO Wins!
There IS the fact that you chose to ignore in favor of the facts mentioned in the Fairy Tale!
It’s an interesting read due to the subject matter! But if the Yankees and Cashmen wrote a book on it at least they could say this plan works and it got us 5 WS wins using it!
I wouldn’t say he’s abandoned it. Daric Barton, Cliff Pentington, Willingham, Matsui, Dejesus, Suzuki, Ellis?
And they raise their pitching still through the farm system. Cahill, Bailey, Anderson and many others.
He hasn’t been as in-depth with Moneyball, as you’ve suggested he should do, and his team has had 75 wins seasons. Now that he went out last offseason and shook things up a bit, they are back on track.
Once Beane started to use Moneyball less, his win-loss record suffered.
Wow 204 comments and counting.
Religious arguements are always long and drawn out! And since it’s an arguments of BELIEFS on one side it takes twice as long to get through if ever!
The only contribution Moneyball has made is it introduced the laymen to Sabermetrics and the concept of deep statistical analysis!
Unfortunatly many who have read the book confuse Moneyball with Sabermetrics and fail to learn the lesson that while saving money by doing deep statistical analysis is good it will not win unless you spend some of that money to keep what you have and add some more so that you have enough to win a WS!
And by doing the same Due Dilligence on players via Stat Analysis without budgetary constraints is much more successful than what Moneyball did!
But too many Zealots here. Like trying to argue the Bible with a believer!
Cause the Bible is the word of God! (Editied by the Romans, the Greeks, The Egyptians, and a whole slew of others who knew how to write in the Iron Age!)
At least the Lessons in it make sense and are good things to follow!
Not true for all the stuff in moneyball!