Money Ball the movie

But this is, of course, if we take it at Lewis' word that Brown was really "on nobody's radar."

They were clearly able to sign him for way below slot, but given Lewis' tendency to exaggerate, he was probably more of a known than the book implied.

 

Regarding Jeremy Brown and the whole draft philosophy...

What happened here was not "This is the better way to do things and the way we're going to do it from now on." It was "This particular year we have a tough spot, so we're going to try this."

The A's had seven of the first 35 picks (comp for losing Giambi, Damon, Izzy). Taking the best available player at each of those spots and paying them all their slot value would have blown out their budget. Essentially, they decided to gamble on a few of those picks (not all of them). Jeremy Brown, the last sixth of those seven, by the way, was the gamble. It was sort of a punt, a throw-something-at-the-wall flier.

You can compare Jeremy Brown to all other 35th picks, but I think the A's would compare him to all other picks who got $150,000 bonuses -- or whatever meager sum they paid him.

The A's first two picks in that "Jeremy Brown draft" were Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton, and I think they've both had very good careers. Mark Teahen has also done pretty well.

Everyone focuses on Jeremy Brown, but it's really the other guys -- Ben Fritz, John McCurdy and Steve Obenchain -- who were real busts, because they never even sniffed the majors, as Brown did.

I don't think it was a great draft, but if you have seven picks and three of them play in the majors for at least five or six years, I think that's aint bad.

 

By the way, here's a list of all 35th picks...

http://bbref.com/pi/shareit/jvgFm

Only seven of them have a career MLB WAR of over 1. (I know, WAR, isn't a great number, but in this case it's good enough for comparing multiple players to put them in a broad career categories like star, regular, journeyman, bust.) 21 of them never made the majors, and another made it for one game.

 

Extremely unsurprising. The whole tone of Moneyball is arrogant and it has far more to do with Lewis's "voice" in the book than Beane or his ideas.

I picked up an edition with an afterword written by Lewis about a year or two after the original edition was published. It's an embarrassing fuck you to his critics. It reads like early 90s rap album liner notes or Axl Rose's Get In The Ring.

 

Following back to the total 2002 draft for Oakland, I did not realize that the A's took Jonathan Papelbon... in the 40th round. He went back to school and was drafted the next year by Boston in the fourth.

Also, while Beane is busted on for the "Jeremy Brown" draft, a cursory look at just about any teams shows that the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of picks -- even in the early rounds -- never get to the big leagues.

 

Yeah, the Jeremy Brown thing is not all that bothersome to me -- especially because the main reason they picked him was they weren't going to overspend on a guy with such a low chance of becoming an impact player. Draft position is far less relevant than signing bonus in baseball. (Case in point: The Cubs just drafted Shawon Dunston Jr. in the 11th round and gave him a bonus of more than $1 million to lure him away from his scholarship at Vanderbilt.)

What bothered me more about the draft chapter was the implication that they were the only team in the world that had its eye on Nick Swisher. Sure, he fit their high-OBP profile, but every team in the league had him as a first-round pick.

 

I don't remember that implication. They talked about Swisher being the one guy that traditional teams and the A's agreed on.

Then they sort of crammed it into the narrative of Beane finding redemption in a ballplayer that was a mix of himself and what he lacked.

 

I can't say I remember it enough to dispute that -- but wasn't Swisher the one that they kept as a super-secret so other teams wouldn't be onto them? Not that that is unusual in drafting, but I took Lewis to mean the A's felt like they had discovered a diamond in the rough and didn't want to let anyone else in on their genius.

 

That happened too. They were trying to keep Beane's love affair with him off the radar.

 

It is very common for teams who aren't picking in the first four or five to avoid having their GM go see first-round type players, because it's very much a poker game for those picks.

The A's picked 16th and the Mets picked 15th. In fact, the Mets were going to take Swisher unless Scott Kazmir was still there, which no one expected to happen. Lo and behold, Kazmir was there, and the Mets took him, and the A's got Swisher.

 

Why does it matter in baseball, where you can't trade picks?

 

BB, what you say about that draft working out is true. But that's solely due to the careers of Swisher and Blanton, traditional picks who were on everybody's draft board as first-rounders. The fact remains that the "Moneyball" picks bombed.

Also, a few things to note here about that draft and the arrogance of Lewis and his writing style. This line, for instance: "Here's an astonishing fact: Prince Fielder is even too fat for the Oakland A's." Yes, wonder what happened to that fat high school kid the Brewers picked?

Lewis wrote of the glee in the room when the A's realized they would get Blanton at No. 24 and McCurdy at No. 26. They were so thankful that the Giants wasted their choice on some high school pitcher at No. 25. That pitcher was Matt Cain.

Then there's the selection of Brown at No. 35. They were going to shock the scouting world with that pick and steal the Alabama catcher for a $350,000 below-slot bonus. Good for them. The Reds took a high school catcher out of Canada at No. 44 and signed him for $600,000. His name was Joey Votto. The Braves also took a high school catcher at No. 64 and had to pay him the whopping sum of $750,000. His name was Brian McCann. You tell me which team got the most bang for its buck? So it was worth it to Billy Beane to save 300 or 400 grand or so in order to outfox all of those baseball scouts and pick Jeremy Brown. You wonder why the A's have fallen into the dumper? Look, Lewis wouldn't know a baseball if it bounced up and hit him in the nuts. That's clear -- today more than ever. He was simply repeating what Beane and DePodesta were selling him at the time.

The book and the movie are a fantasy. Nothing game-changing happened. It's great that Beane took little Steve Stanley at No. 67 and signed the outfielder for $200,000. But you know what? The A's pissed 200 grand right down the drain with that pick. Meanwhile, the Tigers picked Curtis Granderson at No. 80 and spent $469,000. Which team made the better investment over the long haul? I believe the Tigers made out pretty well with traditional scouting and development, and that extra $269,000 was really only spit in the bucket of a major league team, even those self-proclaimed paupers like the A's. Billy Beane's a genius? Really? Anybody looked at the standings since "Moneyball" went into effect?

The Royals are remaking their farm system these days by paying over-slot to sign the best players. They're spending the money now and getting what they can out of these young players before they hit free agency. They've learned that the draft is the one place you should spend the money to compete because the costs are still far lower. They know they can't afford to compete when these players reach free agency, but if a few of them give the team a hometown discount down the road, it was worth it.

This movie is a success because of Brad Pitt and moviegoers who don't know the story is a manufactured one. There's nobody who can say that Beane's system has been a success, not once the non-"Moneyball" crowd of the Big Three, Tejada and Chavez departed.