Salon's Kaufman accuses Kindred of 'ignorance'

Next era down.

 

And I'd put Raines in.

 

Don't his career stolen base numbers kind of make the point?

 

Absolutely the single biggest flaw in "Moneyball" is barely mentioning Hudson, Zito and Mulder. Pissed me off something fierce.

If your points are good ones, and a lot of them are, what do you have to fear by painting a more well-rounded picture? When you ignore that rotation, you make it seem to anyone who knows baseball that you are conspicuously hiding a key element to that team's success.

 

Bu, bu, bu....Scott Hatteberg!

 

I understand -- to a point -- that complaint, but I think it's way out of proportion to its relative importance to the main theme of the book, usually. Again, that's not what the book is about. But I've had this conversation before. It usually ends up going in circles, so I'll get back to learning about Twitter.

 

Lewis' next book will be about what happened to the players Beane DRAFTED using stats back in the early 2000s. While not a failure, neither was this approach anymore successful than more old-fashioned scouting.

 

But didn't it accomplish its goal? (Yes, I know I said I was leaving. Ha.) Didn't it save money, keep the A's profitable and still allow them to win more games than they lost?

People forget the premise was essentially how do you build a competitive team with far less money than other GMs are allowed to spend. They make it about new school vs. old school, and to a certain extent so did Lewis and Beane, but critics always forget the full context. It's the first half of the title of the book: Money.

 

Um, if you're crediting one theory for the success of something, and ignore a major alternative theory, then you're at the very least not being scholarly and at the very worst lying.

 

cute little rolly eyes. and yes, dan quisenberry is one of the best darned pitchers ever to play the game. i guess HOF voters did miss the boat on ERA+.

 

Um, that's not how I took the book at all. I guess I need to reread it.

 

I did not express myself well, JD. You are right, the point of Lewis' book was Beane's attempt to find undervalued players through statistical analysis. I meant to say that this approach was first successful when acquiring big league players, then Beane applied it to drafting as well. Lewis' book is about what happened to the guys Beane drafted when he was there doing Moneyball. It's more a people book than a money treatise, at least that's how Lewis has described it.
If Beane was attempting to save money when drafting, he made a mistake. Drafting is where you attempt to acquire guys who become stars you can control in their young, cheap, and productive years in the show. In that sense, EVERYBODY drafts to save money, even the Yanks (Can't trade vets for vets, you need young cheap guys). So the idea of the draft is pure talent evaluation. Statistical analysis did not produce all washouts, but it was no better in identifying talent than older means. It battled scouts to a draw.