How can baseball dinosaurs so consistently get Moneyball wrong?

"Longballing" makes me chuckle.

 

JC, that's not a good example given the size of Boston's payroll and its aggressive pursuit of free agents. The philosophy is easier to implement if you've got all kind of money to spend to cover up your mistakes. Saying the Red Sox have the same philosophy as the A's would probably crack Billy Beane up.

 

Of course it's easier, that is my point. To judge the A's to the same extent as the big money teams is ridiculous.

But to say they don't follow the same basic philosophies in evaluating players would be incorrect as well.

 

So you worship stats ahead of Ws?
Sorry. I like it when my team wins, and I don't give a rats ass if they do it with 2-3 stars or 9-10 role players. My guys have done it both ways in my lifetime.

 

So this was sportswriting before blogging? Just making up shit?

 

did you read the article?

 

"There's an app for that."

- Richard Feynman

 

I agree that Boston uses the same principles as far as statistical analysis. But the biggest part of Beane's philosophy involved shopping in the bargain bin. That was the whole point. He was looking for undervalued players. Boston aggressively courts the game's top (and most expensive) players through trades and free agency. Sorry, but that's not Moneyball in the A's sense.

 

The first couple of mass-published Bill James Baseball Abstracts in the early 1980s leaned heavily on speed, line-drive hitting and defensive range as desirable player traits. Base stealing was seen as a positive offensive strategy. Since then of course sabermetric thinking has undergone a rather dramatic change, which was already under way in the later editions of the Abstract in the late 1980s.

Most of the rabid anti-saber crowd leafed through one or two of those first couple Abstracts, threw 'em on the floor, and assumed that was what the sabers were always going to believe. I mean, THEY were gonna believe the stuff they believed about baseball 40 years ago the rest of their lives, why would the sabers be any different?

Bill Veeck, in both his semi-autobiographies in the early 1960s, devoted considerable time to discussing the successes of Branch Rickey in finding "diamonds in the rough" as far back as the 1920s, as well as Veeck's own efforts to identify undervalued sources of talent. In the early 1960s, Veeck identified Japan as a potentially untapped market.

 

Which Beane I imagine would do given the same resources.

I was more speaking to the type of player each organization would go after not as much the moneyball aspect. For Hondo to just completely disregard Beane because of the ignorant rings reference to me is silly. I would bet boston would be just fine right now had Beane taken that job.

 

Oh, that I'll agree to. At this point, all the clubs are aboard the statistical revolution with the amount of money they have invested in players. For most teams, the scouts and the numbers-crunchers both have their places at the table. I don't get the guys like Conlin either. It's foolish to dismiss the changes in the game. For those guys I truly think it's less about the statistical analysis than it is is about the born-again fervor of the analysts.

At any rate, money still means something, too, as one look at the payrolls will tell you. The big spenders -- Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies -- gobble up their share of the playoff spots every season. I see where even the Giants are up to No. 8 this season.

 

The first couple of mass-published Bill James Baseball Abstracts in the early 1980s leaned heavily on speed, line-drive hitting...

I've never heard that before.