Salon's Kaufman accuses Kindred of 'ignorance'

Oh, who's kidding who, there wasn't a chance of us changing each other's minds.

Which makes all of this quite pointless. Again.

I know what the book was about. Whatever misunderstanding of it you think I might have doesn't erase that for the better part of 300 pages, this author has his head so far up Beane's ass he could use his lungs for earmuffs.

 

Which I've acknowledged. But don't blame the messenger (Lewis).

 

I fault a messenger who parachutes into something he acknowledges having a less than adequate knowledge of and then failing, bigtime, to stay grounded or centered. From the preface he has determined that these insights are beyond reproach. There are parts of it that are hectoring, parts that are self-defensive and parts that are just plain whiny (him mourning that James didn't make the cut of the Library of America's turn-of-the-century anthology of great baseball writing -- boo fucking hoo). If I'm teaching a course or sitting on a good idea, it's not the approach I take. Your mileage may vary.

Is it a pathbreaking work? Hell yes, and one to be proud of. I enjoy his voice and I've read it a few times, and I'm not part of the fraternal order. But it is also hugely defective, and he oughtn't be let off the hook for it.

 

I agree pretty much 100 percent with you. It's a work of journalism, yes, and a fine one. Lewis is a tremendous writer with a great eye for detail and he knows how to tell a story. But it's a polemic, plain and simple. And the tone is a huge turn off. The sneering mostly. I'll have to read it again, but I can remember being pretty pissed off at the lack of respect he had for baseball people, basically reducing them to caricatures. I thought that was tremendously unfair.

But what I'm saying is that the fact that Lewis was up Beane's ass doesn't mean that some of the premises are wrong. I prefer to evaluate independently.

When I watch a game, something like DIPS makes no sense to me. I remember watching Jason Grilli just get shelled during an outing for the Tigers last year. Just hammered. And then I'll see Mariano Rivera break bats. And, yet according to the theory, both those guys likely give up the same approximate batting average on balls put into play. It makes no sense, and yet it bears out that way almost every time. That theory really, really fucks with my head.

 

Maybe because the theoretical construct doesn't conform to the empirical reality, which is a bad thing.

 

Here's an example of why traditional scouting can't be dismissed.

I believe that Kevin Youkilis was mentioned in "Moneyball." Not sure why - he's never played for the A's.

Anyway, I think Beane was in love with him because of his eye. Well, as we all know, Youkilis blossomed into a legitimate MVP candidate last year. Was "Moneyball" right about him? Not exactly.

In 2006, Yook walked 91 times. He hit 13 home runs and drove in 72 runs.

In 2008, apparently taking a more aggressive approach, he hit 29 home runs and drove in 115 runs.

At some point, someone thought he could benefit from a more aggressive approach at the plate. I'm sure that a sabermetric blog somewhere howled with derision when that tidbit hit the beat writer notebooks, but look what happened to his production, apparently as a result.

Sabermetrics is a tool, and can be a damned useful one. But you can't lose sight of the fact that these are still flesh and blood individuals who benefit from expert individual instruction.

 

The chapter on the draft. "The fat scout" is all but dismissed, intellectually and otherwise, and when he does come into the picture he is literally talking with his mouth full and saying something dumb.

 

The draft chapter is ridiculous, mostly because there's no way to prove that Beane's draft philosophy will work, but it's treated like a foregone conclusion.

But, again, Lewis is advancing a point of view, so I guess pulling out details that make the scouts look like fat idiots is effective in that regard.

 

I'm wondering how arrogant the movie will be. It could be unwatchable.

 

In the movies, will the A's win something? Because that would be cool.

 

And that movie would be called, "Charlie O's Swingin' A's" or "Put The Needle On The Record: The Jose Canseco Story".

As for Beane, the fans are voting with their feet. His constant meddling has created an attendance drop from 6th in the AL in 2003 to 13th in 2008. Of course, the A's drop from division and playoff contenders to woodwork plays a major role in that.

He's become the mad scientist who bought into his own press clippings, sort of the Mike Shanahan of baseball. No one has seen fit to call bullshit on him yet, but the day is coming.

 

Awesome, especially the second one.