A lot of people are hoping for the demise of the whole "Moneyball" concept, pointing to the supposed impending failure of the A's now that the Big Three rotation has been reduced to one. They say the A's were successful because of Mulder, Hudson, and Zito, not because they were able to take advantage of the inefficiencies in the game. The 2005 season will be the true benchmark for the scouting vs. statistics debate.

I'm personally pulling for Billy Beane - I dig the "thinking outside the box" mentality and praise him for challenging the status quo.

I have always appreciated Billy Beane's assertion that OBP is a far more important statistic than BA. This holds as true for youth baseball as it does for major league baseball. If one does not get on base, one cannot possibly score runs.

Unfortunately, OBP is an incomplete statistic in that fielder's choice and reached on errors are not taken into account. One could try to make the argument that both FC and ROE are virtually negligible, however, on teams that do not rely heavily on the long ball, those two types of events are more prominent.

However, most people do not look any further than the standard BA and SLG numbers. I think part of the reason for that, is that these are easier statistics to calculate. I am not sure about anyone else, but I need to know how to calculate a stat before it has any meaning to me, therefore, many of the stats go way over my head, because their formulae are so cumbersome (and I have taken a year of college calculus).

What I find flawed in the book is the implied assertion, by Mr. Lewis, that Billy Beane's way of being a general manager in a small market is the only way a small market team can be successful. This theory has been disproven for three straight years in the case of the Twins. The Twins continue to be competitive, even with all the trades and changes, which is a tribute to Terry Ryan.

Well, first I’m going to admit that I haven’t read the book, but I think I’ve heard enough about it to comment. From what I’ve heard and/or read, the book gives BB’s recipe for building a winning ball club in an era of huge disparity in club resources, and that recipe is to basically focus on stats, instead of gut-feel or athleticism in evaluating players. And particularly for position players, the stats say that what matters is offensive production, not being the five-tool type of guy that scouts normally look for. And finally, in evaluating offensive production, the guys that “produce” the most are the big bangers: glorified Sunday softball types who swing for the fences, might strike out a lot, maybe don’t have great speed, but hit a lot of HRs (and, hopefully, walk a lot too). Essentially, forget the suicide-squeeze and the “manufactured” runs; go for the guys that can get you the 3 run HRs.

So, if that’s the general drift of the book (and I admit that it might not be), my comments would be the following:

First, disparity of club resources is still – in my opinion – the biggest problem in the game today. Think what a team the Twins would have if they could have kept more of the talent that they’ve developed over the last few years. Like everybody else on this site, I love that the Twins have been able to stay competitive despite the imbalance, but I’m not sure how long they can pull that trick off, and really, they shouldn’t have to. There are too many teams in baseball that go through long-stretches where they have no chance to compete. You know, I spent 3 years in Boston and I went to a lot of Red Sox games during that time. I love Fenway and for a long time the BoSox were my 2nd favorite team (I don’t have to tell you who’s #1), but I still couldn’t get excited about the WS last year, for the simple fact that it smacked of buying a championship. MLB’s got to fix that.

Second, I love stats. It’s one of (but not the only thing) that makes baseball the best sport on the planet (and, yes, I’m all for sass too, which is why I like this site) . So my hat goes off to Mr. Beane for making use of more meaningful stats to put together a better team. And someone will come up with a better method in the future, which is also positive. Progress marches on.

Third and lastly, I think that BB is probably right in this home run era in focusing on the longball to win games, but I think that it makes for less interesting baseball. I hope that cracking down on steroids will get rid of some of that, but I think that MLB can help with the ballparks, mound height, ball construction, etc. I’d like to see the game get back to where the home run was something special and there’s more strategy. Until we do though, you can’t fault a guy for going with what works.

gopher38--I'm about a third of the way through the book, but what I'm reading doesn't talk about the long ball at all. It's about not making an out. Beane was looking for the guys who got a lot of walks and had a high OBP. I have more to read, as I said, but it seems the Beane philosophy is different than how the A's of that era played in real life, because they were definately long ballers. As CMoney said, maybe their success was really a result of their pitching more than anything.

Must go read more...

We see the shortcomings of MoneyBall in the A's recent playoff runs (to be generous). If I'm not mistaken, they have won ZERO playoff series since Beane. That is because he undervalues 1) closers, 2) fielding, 3) manufacturing runs via bunts/steals etc.

So MBall works for the regular season. But in the fall, you gotta have a closer, and you gotta catch the ball. And there is much value in stealing a run here and there when you need to, esp. against the better pitchers.

Well, I'm going to shut up, because - as I said - I haven't actually read the book, but I thought that the focus was on OPS, which is of course part long-ball and part on-base, with the typical BB moneyball player being someone like the A's-era Giambi: no speed; glove nothing to write home about; but he hits (hit, past tense) home runs and (as you point out) gets walks and therefore has a good on base.

Don't forget that there are portions of the book dedicated to defense (especially Mark Ellis) and pitching (especially Chad Bradford). The book about finding players that other teams undervalue, which is something the Twins have done a great job of as well, especially in the bullpen. The Twins and A's aren't terribly similar teams in most respects, but when it comes to the way their bullpens are constructed they are very similar.

Also, as far as their success being about their pitching, it certainly was. But then again, they had to acquire those pitchers as well. All three of the "big three" were college pitchers that were close to the majors, which matches the A's philosophy pretty well.

Last, while I agree there is a financial disparity in baseball, I don't think it's as large as people make it out to be. And there aren't any teams in baseball that can claim they haven't had the opportunity to compete for long stretches of time. I think the A's and Twins (and Marlins) have shown that the opportunity is there if you take advantage of it.

As someone who was in the front office of a MLB team when Moneyball came out, I will say that a certain GM of an AL Central team was not too thrilled with it. But he conceded that it did have some good points. The problem is that like many theories, it won't work standing on it's own. I think the Boston Red Sox proved that it works when you combine Moneyball analysis with a few players that are more traditionally desired (Manny Ramirez, Curt Schilling), you will probably get good results. Moneyball analysis is just one more tool to use--not the bible.

Like Batgirl, Just Beth is finding the book fascinating and flawed (err, I'm not quite done reading the book yet, so I'm going on the first half).

I'm a math person--I love stats. I like to know all the stats so it amazes me that some of these stats weren't regularly avaialable until recently. But sometimes gut instinct can give you something, too, but it should have at least something in the stats. Thus, I'm all for the gut instinct and sass without quoting stats. Sometimes you just know a player is good or bad. However, after a couple of years of bad stats, your gut instinct should be re-examined. It might've been heartburn. And some people have a gut instinct that seems to subconsciously know what the stats are. They don't have to look at the OPS and walks to know that a kid with a poor batting average is still worthwhile.

I think when you don't have money to pay the "Big Guys" with the dominating bats and arms, you need better fielding. Why did the Red Sox look for some defensive players when going on their World Series run? Where would Carlos Silva be without the double play? If he didn't have good fielding, odds are his record wouldn't be nearly as good (although his ERA might not be too much worse, due to errors). Sometimes it's worth your while to keep a poor offensive player for his defense. *waving to Henry Blanco* [Apparently, this is discussed later in the book, but I'm not that far yet.]

I do have to agree that errors are fairly subjective. For example: A dropped ball by the first baseman is often an error on the player who threw it (unless it was exactly on the mark). At what point should the first baseman take responsibility for catching something that's not exactly on target, but not too far off, either?

But, in general, I think there were some very valid points made in Moneyball, so far.

Just Beth

I think a lot of people have mischaracterized the book. What I got from it was that if you only have a certain amount of money to work with, you spend it in areas that are undervalued. If everyone values OBP and college pitchers, it's time to look elsewhere to find an advantage. The strategy is the same -- find relative bargains by thinking differently than everyone else. The target won't be high OBP players forever.

After I read Moneyball, I read Lewis' book Liar's Poker, which detailed his experiences as a bond trader in the 1980s. I think that Liar's Poker provides insight into Moneyball. You get an understanding of the author's experience and mindset.

I found it rather interesting that the player that the scouts loved that pissed Beane off so much in the beginning of the book -- Jeremy Bonderman -- has become a good major league pitcher. That's interesting, but beside the point. Baseball teams aren't going to be perfect, they will make mistakes. What the book does is challenge the status quo and the same old thinking. And judging by the number of people that it pissed off, I'd say it was an overwhelming success.

SBG is correct in that the book is often mischaracterized as the Beane recipe for builing a ball club. While at the time there was an advantage in that OBP guys were undervalued, everybody has kind of caught up to that. The A's, while still valuing OBP are out looking for the other areas that are undervalued.

As for drafting college pitchers, that is a matter of mitigating risk. Seeing as the A's haven't been able to retain their player, they have to make sure that the pipeline is constantly ready to produce more major league talent. While they may be missing some of the super high ceiling high shcoolers, they also aren't taking on their super high risk. The big market teams can afford mistakes because they can buy a free agent to fill a hole. The A's haven't had that luxury.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and view it more as a businees book in a baseball setting than a baseball book. However, Lewis conveniently glossed over details to further bolster his case. For example the Ted Lilly/Carlos Pena/Jeff Weaver trade wasn't accurately represented at all. In those concrete cases it is easy to see what Lewis is doing. Given those inaccuracies, you can only speculate about the validity of the rest of the book.

Nick: "Last, while I agree there is a financial disparity in baseball, I don't think it's as large as people make it out to be. And there aren't any teams in baseball that can claim they haven't had the opportunity to compete for long stretches of time. I think the A's and Twins (and Marlins) have shown that the opportunity is there if you take advantage of it."

Are people making it out to be larger than the Yankees $208 million payroll? Or the Red Sox $123 million? When the median payroll is around $65 mil, those numbers are staggering. Doesn't bode well for the other teams in their division, does it?

Teams that haven't competed in awhile? There are two right in the Twins division - Detroit and KC. You can argue that they're not the best-run clubs, but not everybody can just "grab the opportunity" like the Twins, A's, and Marlins. If somebody's up, somebody else has to be down. Unfortunately, for about ten years we've had a pretty good idea who will be up and who will be down before the season even starts.

rodander: "We see the shortcomings of MoneyBall in the A's recent playoff runs (to be generous). If I'm not mistaken, they have won ZERO playoff series since Beane. That is because he undervalues 1) closers, 2) fielding, 3) manufacturing runs via bunts/steals etc."

Have you read the book? And secondly, have you watched the A's recent playoff series? They lost four in a row (2000-2003) but all of them went the maximum 5 games, and the losses were incredibly close to the Yankees (twice), Red Sox, and Twins. I think that's more bad luck than a basic fundamental flaw with Beane's system.

Frankly, I don't think there is a simple formula for postseason success. If it was as simple as the three points you mention, the Twins would be three-time world champs, not just division champs. You've either got to be hot in October, or your opponent has got to be cold.

Agree with SBG and billfer that people have made the equation (either accidentally or on purpose) that "Moneyball = Sabermetrics." Lewis approached the book as a financial writer, and so was fascinated by Beane's ability to find value in players undervalued by the market.

There are rich teams that look at sabermetrics (the Red Sox, Dodgers), there are poor teams that don't use it as much (the Twins).

The confusion stems in part from Lewis' marshalling of his stories to make Beane look like a genius and the 29 other GMs look like idiots. Even if that opinion is Beane's.

No wonder major newspapers still sometimes describe the book as "Billy Beane's 'Moneyball'".

I have not read the book, which makes me a bit guilty for tossing this out there, but here goes:

The book Moneyball is not representative of Billy Beane's baseball philosophy. The reason that Beane went after OPS and OBP, station to station style teams, and why he doesn't pay for closers is not only that a team like this has a pretty good chance of winning over the course of a long season.

The other reason that Beane picked that sort of team to build is that it fit his financial constraints. Power, by and large, is overvalued: The White Sox are an example of this. All the juice in the universe (Juice in a power sense, not a steroid sense, as no one has ever accused the Sox of being steroid enhanced) and yet...there was something missing. A cohesion, maybe.

Anyhow, back to my point: Beane built an OBP team b/c it was cheap to build a team like that. OBP was undervalued. And, if we have any commodities traders out there, if something is undervalued, you snatch it up. Beane is not wedded to OBP--witness his trying to get Mike Cameron to Oakland--but is wedded to working within the financial constraints of his organization (It's a shame that Beane cannot marry his partner in this country...sorry for the non-baseball dig.).

In short, Beane must zig where other teams zag. He can't afford Sheffield, so he takes Hatteberg.

There was some brouhaha on the internet a couple of months ago that defense was the new OBP. As the Twins show, there's more than one way to skin a cat. The twins could have a book called "DefenseBall" and have it be the same thing as Moneyball...Finding value where others don't.

In that sense, Moneyball got it wrong. Once again, I have not read the book: I don't have the time. But if Lewis states that an OBP style team is the only way to win for a small/Mid market team, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

Also, "the endless, fruitless dispute between creationists and evolutionary theorists…” and “a religious war?” 95 Theses?

What’s this? It's like Michael Lewis is channeling the ghost of Steven Jay Gould, Pat Robertson and John Scopes (He of the Scopes Monkey trial) all at once. With just a dash of Darwin and a hint of Huxley (T.H., not Aldous). Could he have potentially chosen less loaded and complicated metaphors to compare to baseball? That’s a little deep for me, even if Lewis is just comparing the “Moneyball war” in baseball to Evolution v. Creationism, or Protestant v. Catholic, in form and not in substance.

Is Michael Lewis prone to hyperbole like this throughout the novel? These issues are FAR more important than whether Beane can put together a good bullpen.

Also, given any thought to your next book? 'Eight Men Out,' while I've never read it, is supposed to be exceptional.

I felt the book mainly talked about finding what others undervalue and for Billy this was easy to do because most other GM's did things the same way as one another. All he had to do was find a different way to win. He did so by relying on the stats of players and scouting people differently then others had in the past. I never felt it was said this was the only way to win, or the only way to win with a small market team, but that it was a very viable option that did work.

The twins play moneyball. Not the same way Beane does, but they find players that others undervalue and develop them. Johan is a rule V draftee. He wasn't wanted by others, but the twins looked at him differently.

Boston also plays moneyball, but they can do so with a larger payrole and pickup the best top players. In the book it's pointed out many teams that Oakland would love to keep the Giambi's, but once Oakland shows others how good the players really are the teams with big pocket books will sign them up.

Overall I thought it was a good book that showed a possible reason why the A's have had a lot of success with a smaller payroll. If it continues as long as Beane is the GM you really couldn't deny the validity of a majority of the statements in the book. It will be proven as a system that works.

Dear readers,

Batgirl finds this all very interesting. She will get into Lewis and his hyerbole later. Batgirl's question is--while Moneyball does not equal sabermetrics and while in the afterword Lewis says something about how it really is just the undervalued commodity that matters, the book certainly does show the organization making a huge deal about OPS, and not simply because it's undervalued. About Paul DePodesta, Lewis says, "He'd plugged the statistics of every baseball team from the twentieth century into an equation and tested which of them correlated most closely with winning percentage. He'd found only two, both offensive statistics, inextricably linked to baseball success: on-base percentage and slugging percentage."

There are other similar statements. It seems in much of the book, these stats are shown not just as undervalued, but as THE way to win--until a hasty comment in the afterword. Yes? No?

Questioningly,
BG

p.s. Dear MikeQ, the BatKitties would prefer you chose a different metaphor.

Someone pointed out another Lewis book, Liar's Poker. That book and Moneyball are similar. Although the first book was about traders giving structure to a market that was not involved in Wall Street - then using their leverage to exploit the position for huge profits.

In Moneyball, Lewis likens Beane to a trader. Finding undervalued assets. That is probably the best way Moneyball can be described. It's not all about OBP and Beane realizes that. Many people point to his post season record or Jeremy Bonderman as examples of his 'style' failing. Bonderman is still young and could flame out any day. The A's could have just as easily won a playoff series as lost. 5 games is just an awfully short series in my opinion.

Here's some recent Moneyball moves...

Moving Hudson and Mulder - they have incredible value. They are also just human. They can break and/or become ineffective. In return they got 2 great bullpen arms, 2 starters with impressive minor league track records, 1 uber-prospect, and maybe the best fielding left fielder in the game (Charles Thomas). He extracted a lot of value by trading them before 'he had too.'

Defense - Look at their outfield, Kotsay - Thomas - Brynes - Swisher. 3 of those 4 are really, really good defensively. In fact, you could argue that they are a better defensive team than the highly regarded Twins. They have great defensive players at C, SS, CF, 3B, and LF. That doesn't sound like 'Winning with OBP' to me.

Closers - Beane knew he had a problem with his bullpen. Beginning last year, they were awful. Almost everyone is gone now. They now have an impressive assortment of guys:

Dotel - Cruz - Street - Calero - R. Rincon - Duchscherer

They all have really good stuff. They're not quite as strong as the Angels pen, but getting close.

My favorite thing about the book and the whole story is about Beane's humility. As physically gifted as he is (or was), he can look in the mirror and know that he was a failure (as a baseball player). How many people do you know who have really changed? It doesn't happen often, but somewhere along the way Beane changed. Of course it had to do with his failures, but that's how people emerge stronger from their problems - they adapt to change.

Moneyball is objective. There isn't much room for opinion. Decisions are not made on a hunch and they managers who use its approach do not marry themselves to one methodology or another. In order to do that, you have to know yourself, your habits, and your emotions. Sometimes your emotions (fear, hope, or greed) blind you from reality. Whether you're a GM, a trader, an entrepreneur, or a shift supervisor - those are lessons we can all benefit from.

I'd like to start a little poll... Whose your favorite 'character' outside of Beane? Here's a list to pick from (but feel free to go outside the list, as I may have missed some people).

Ron Washington
Scott Hatteberg
Chad Bradford
Jeremy Brown
Paul DePodesta
The chorus of Scouts (from Draft room)
Bill James
Nick Swisher

My favorite would probably be Paul.

paraphrasing:
Beane: "But you went to Harvard, are you sure you wouldn't feel bad about not doing something important with your job?"

Paul: "Important? Like being a Wall Street trader? Hell no."

"What I got from it was that if you only have a certain amount of money to work with, you spend it in areas that are undervalued."

Bingo. You exploit "market advantages"--a concept that Michael Lewis knows well, as a former Wall Streeter and finance journalist--to somewhat close the gap created by resource disparities. When Beane took the reins, OBP was undervalued, and so he picked up guys like Hatteberg who had shown some offensive skills. The purpose of DePo, and whoever has his job now, was to measure out what's undervalued, and what's correlated with winning. Later, they deemed those things had more to do with defense; most recently they seem to have gotten into relievers who strike guys out (Kiko Calero, Juan Cruz, Huston Street) and whom, eventually, Beane will trade away as "closers," I'm sure (or use one or more of them to replace Dotel, who already has the bogus "closer" label).

But the statistical measures are symptomatic, not causal: the root of what Beane did, and what still probably differentiates him from his "disciples" now scattered throughout baseball (of whom I think Shapiro in Cleveland is the smartest, FWIW--the Indians and Twins will battle it out all decade, brilliantly implementing two very disparate approaches), is his willingness to 1) embrace risk and 2) disregard PR.

Trust me. As a Phillies fan, I feel almost daily the pain of a GM who's utterly risk-averse and PR-sensitive, and has all the creativity of a World War I infantry commander. Beane, by contrast, was willing to try Hatteberg at 1b, to pick up Chad Bradford off the scrap heap, and (since the book) to deal away two of his signature players to remake his team as younger, cheaper and more flexible in terms of roster composition. He shrugged the PR hit, put himself right in the cross-hairs, and figured that with the young talent he's accumulating, it would work. I'm rooting for him to pull it off, though I don't think the A's are playoff-bound in 2005.

Beane's also shown a gambler's instinct, and a smart trader's savvy, in making a series of deals for players in their free-agent walk years. Keith Foulke, Johnny Damon, Jason Isringhausen... a lot of good players spent single seasons or half-seasons in Oakland, helping the A's play into October, and then moving on--but generally leaving Beane with more compensatory draft picks to keep reloading his minor league system.

But that actually brings me to the hidden similarity between the Twins approach and the A's approach: minor-league player development. Maybe Terry Ryan still goes for the guys with "the good face," and is beholden to conventional scouting wisdom about how you pick talent; what the results tell us, though, is that the Twins and A's are similarly excellent at getting their young players from amateur ball to the majors sound in body and solid in the fundamentals. I haven't seen budgets, but I'm guessing that both "small-market" teams spend disproportionately more on minor-league coaching, roving instructors, training staff, et al than do, say, Baltimore or the White Sox.

And that's probably the bigger difference between the Twins and other "old school" minded teams. Like, alas, my Phillies, who still don't emphasize plate discipline to their minor league hitters.

Oh, and one more thing: a lot of the success of the Big Three, which I don't think Lewis got into much in the book, had to do with the smart developmental approach emphasized by former A's pitching coach Rick Peterson. He's now with the Mets, and hubris maybe has gotten the better of him--the Kazmir for Victor Zambrano trade looks like a slow-motion disaster in the making--but his "pre-hab" techniques did a lot to get Hudson, Mulder and Zito to the majors, healthy and knowing how to pitch. Though Peterson is gone, the A's apparently retain the approach: Rich Harden could wind up better than any of the Big Three, and Joe Blanton doesn't look bad himself.

Anyway, goes to my point about minor-league player development--a strength that all the quality organizations, "Moneyball"-influenced or not, seem to share.

I'm inclined to agree with what BG wrote. Lewis reports that Beane believes that a good eye is a natural instinct that a player either has or doesn't have. You can't teach it to him. The only way you can tell if he's got it is by looking at his stats. His athleticism ("good body") and the scouts' intuition about his potential don't give you this info. It seems to me that if you believe this, and if you value a good eye as an important trait in a player, it will affect the way you choose to build your team. From what I've read so far (not the whole book, I admit), Beane seems to value this trait independently of how other teams value it.

Another example: Sandy Alderson, Beane's mentor, had a philosophy that he taught Beane. Lewis describes it: "A lot of the offensive tactics that made baseball managers famous--the bunt, the steal, the hit and run--could be proven to have been, in most situations, either pointless or self-defeating." Also, Alderson's number one rule: "Every batter needs to behave like a leadoff man, and adopt as his main goal gettin on base."

Hyperbole is an interesting question also. I'd be interested to hear how Lewis' description of the Lilly/Pena/Weaver trade differs from what billfer knows about it.

Attempting to answer BatGirl's question:

Yes. If you could assemble a hypothetical team emphasizing the dual values of plate discipline (which OBP measures reasonably well) and power (which SLG measures very well) - and conversely, the ability to deter those things on the pitching/defensive side of the game, you would have a team that has a distinct advantage in scoring more runs than it allows, which has been shown to be a powerfully accurate indicator of W-L record. (Note to detractors: powerfully accurate is not the same as infallible.)

This is why sabermetricians have been attracted to the book and its ideas. For many years, those with a statistical/analytical preference have looked for statistics which optimally predict the likelihood of success. To learn that there's a GM with the "courage" (or "idiocy" as traditionalists might put it) to try to build his team as much as prudent on the basis of those values, is exciting to those who have tried the same thing with their fantasy leagues and computer simulations.

This is not, however, the book's purpose as I read it to be. That these same values are also often underemphasized by more traditional scouting measures and how one GM has emphasized that to produce long-term success is the basic thesis of the work as I read it.

Everyone loves a five-tool player. That's the problem. If lots of owners/GMs love him and see the value, they're likely to bid against each other until the final salary figure tests the limits of sanity (i.e. "the A-Rod effect"). If you can find a way to identify talented players who can fill a role on your ballclub that don't attract the interest of other clubs, you have a better chance of avoiding either a bidding war or picking them up later in the draft than you otherwise would.

Does that mean I wish that my Twinkies followed the Beane system? No way. Though I admire the courage it has taken to align a team's talent procurement efforts around a relatively academic, statistically based model, I also admire the "art" and hard work of the Twins scouting system who consistenly seem to be able to identify overlooked talent in lower level of other teams' systems. Though the Ryan-philosophy will result in a relatively high turnover ratio due to low payrolls, it's exciting for me as a fan to watch the prospects rise through the system and to see an A-ball castoff from another system end up providing productive innings as a starter for the Twins.

In fact, with the post-Beane emphasis on statistical principles, it means there are fewer scouts out looking around for those "roughs on the diamond" that can be polished into shiny major-league goodness.

Call me a contrarian.

I have read the book and think that much of it is common sense to a fan of my age, 27.

I and most of my friends grew up getting the Bill James abstract when we were kids, I remember getting the first rotiserrie league book by Dan Okrent introducing the concept to the country. When I was 13 my friends and I started our own league which essentially used ops as the principal stat. We weighted everything a hitter could normally do. We didn't count double plays or advancing a runner with an out. We did however weight walks and singles equally and made every other hit worth it's weighted value. Finally, we subtracted points for strikeouts. We did much the same for pitchers.

As for the Scott Hatteberg chapter. I don't see what is so revolutionary about the concept of seeing many pitches per at bat. That has been the theory for lead off hitters in the National League for as long as I can remember. There are three reasons to do this as hitter. First, especially for the first two hitters in the line-up, it gives the big boppers further down in the order a chance to see everything or at least more than one or two pitches what sort of stuff the starter has that day. Second, in this age of middlemen, setup men, and closers, as well as the dreaded pitch count, working the count each at bat gets you one pitch closer to getting the starter out of the game. And what is any reliever except a starter pitcher who has failed in some way. Whether it is having only one or two pitches, a lack of stamina or just being bad. Finally, it gives the hitter a better chance of getting on base, and not just by the walk. Every "pitcher's" pitch one you let go by is a pitch that you would have missed or hit very meekly to one of the infielders. If you can lay off of those pitches or foul them off if strikes then you can wait until the pitcher serves up a relativley fat one and smack it.

Finally, as for what MikeQ said, I agree whole-heartedly and am trying to remember when it was that Billy Beane came out of the closet? I was wondering why that one fact wasn't metioned, especially in a book about how this club is run in a manner unique in baseball and by people who are or at least were unique in baseball.

I have a nomination of my own for the next book in the club. "The Great American Novel" by Phillip Roth for an early almost Sabermetrics look at baseball in a very funny work of fiction. I'm sure one of the batlings out there has read this book, combining as it does literature with baseball, and maybe even a hint o'sass.

rodander says: "We see the shortcomings of MoneyBall in the A's recent playoff runs."

Well, yes, and no one would dispute that. There's a scene in the book where Beane is pacing back and forth underneath the Coliseum gnashing his teeth and saying "my shit doesn't work in the playoffs."

Because the truth is, NOBODY'S shit works perfectly in the playoffs. You try your best to put together a team that will win as many games as possible out of 162, so you get the best berth in the playoff bracket. There are many ways to do that: the Yankees buy superstars, the Twins develop the farm teams, Beane goes on an OBP bargain hunt.

But baseball involves so much random chance that the winning percentages of the best and worst teams are not that far off. If the #1 NFL team loses to the worst, it's a monumental upset; but when the Royals beat the Yankees on some Thursday in July, no one blinks. It happens. In a short series (especially a 5-gamer), anything can happen, and Beane knows it.

metsfan: Billy Beane didn't come out of the closet. Billy BEAN did.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569244863/

I read the book last year, and can't help but think that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in sabermetrics. Lewis' breathless cheerleader-style writing for Beane wore on me pretty quickly, even if I agree that his philosophies are effective. But Lewis slams Joe Morgan pretty hard towards the end of the book over one comment Joe made about the Yankees' playoff series, which bugged me...surely Morgan's one comment is a "small sample size" that didn't merit such an outright slam. Also the "small sample size" argument that explains why the A's aren't winning playoff series gets a little harder to stomach every year they don't win. Finally, some of the players (like Bonderman) that the A's pass on and even ridicule have made it. I've even seen the A's sacrifice this year...twice already!

I think one can be a centrist on this matter. There's more than one way to win a baseball game.

One of the problems with this book is that so many, from Joe Morgan to Kenny Williams, have commented on it without actually reading it. So while the temptation may be strong, I would recommend that fellow posters refrain from commenting until they've finished their homework rather than comment on things they've heard secondhand.

I think the comments that have emphasized the "undervalued commodity" aspect of the book are closest to the mark. Whether it be OBP machines, college pitchers or side-arming relief pitchers, Beane has sought effective, low-priced major-league talent to fill out his roster rather than over-valued and risky "known" commodities. To an extent, this is no different than what the Twins have done, preferring talented inexpensive home-grown young players to the pricy, headline-grabbing free agent signings. One need only look at the Knoblauch trade to see this approach, or to a lesser extent, the Rule 5 acquisition of Senor Presidente from the Astros. So while the Twins may not expressly focus on OBP or OPS, they do have more in common with the A's than the Cardinals or the Braves for example.

Also, FYI, Billy Beane is not Billy Bean, the former major-leaguer who revealed his homosexuality in a 2003 autobiography, though I share MikeQ's sentiment.

TS

>Because the truth is, NOBODY'S shit works perfectly in the playoffs...In a short series (especially a 5-gamer), anything can happen, and Beane knows it.

That's why I absolutely *love* the best-of-five format for the opening-round series and think baseball would be crazy to change it.

You have to be on your game from the first pitch of the playoffs. It's win or go home, no excuses. What could be more exciting than that?

Me, I like to think that when psychometrics are an applicable science, that's when baseball will really change. But psychometrics will take even longer to accept than sabermetrics. But boy I still think people, even those trying to be open to sabermetrics, still mischaracterize the book, esp. those who have not read it. Gee, go figure.

Does anybody think the A's are managed/built only in the manner in which they were presented in Moneyball? Does anybody truly think Beane is not going to analyze his successes and failures? Of course he is. He will change. He will adapt. And he will strategize as best he can with the more knowledge he gains. Unless the strategic analyser now lives in L.A. and is named DePodesta. :)

Regarding scouting, it was J.P. Riccardi who did away with the scouts, IIRC. At Toronto, not Oakland. Beane wasn't completely against the scout's eye. But if he had to pick between only stats or only scouting, he chose numbers. He used both as tools for picking draft picks. Ideally, he wanted the numbers to back up the scouting report. Chad Bradford, IIRC (it's been two years since I read the book) was one of these guys. A scout said something about him, Podesta looked at his laptop, they made the move (trade or draft pick, I forget). No matter, come draft day, when a scout hadn't had a chance to see a guy or when there were no stats on a guy, he'd trust stats over scouting when choosing a draft pick, but ideally wanted both tools as input.

Who's my favorite character from the book? Was Michael's wife Tabitha Soren mentioned? Then her. Otherwise, DePodesta. Go Dodgers!

The whole "The A's wait for the homerrun" was a pretty common misconception during the first two years of the A's playoff run. Its simply not true as power is overvalued and that is not at all what Beane is trying to do. I can only think its a carry over idea from the days when the A's had McGwire and Canseco.

As far as the A's playoff woes. I'm not sure what else you can do. The A's had the best top of the rotation in baseball, they had a dominant set-up guy and had A's built but established closers. They went into the playoffs hot offensively every year but ran into better or hotter teams.

The Braves suffer from the same fate. Sometimes a team even "built" for the play-offs does not gaurantee play-off success.

I think an important piece of information that gets glossed over in the book but that Beane points out is that "Moneyball" isnt meant to be the best way to build a team, its meant to be an economical way to build a competitive team.

The other thing I'd like to point out is that I'm not sure there is anything different at all from how Terry Ryan finds and develops players then how Beane does. They look for undervalued players that fit into their teams concept.

In fact the pitching big board of both franchises have almost identical type pitchers. Moderate power, multiple pitches thrown for strikes, low BB/9, league average or higher k/9 but very few pitchers with dominating "stuff". Twins have a few pitchers with dominating "stuff", among them Kyle Lohse and J.C. Romero. Otherwise they have Radke-esque clones who dont walk anyone and consistently throw stikes.

In general I think Lewis did Beane a disservice by felatting him in written word format. It left a bad taste and most readers mouths that led to some pretty bitter feelings towards Beane and his ego.

I have a quick and unrelated question that came about after watching "Oh Five" for the 47th time. Do any of the Twins have a world series ring? Was Stewwy with Toronto when the won? How about Mulholland somewhere along the line? Newman obviously has one, but how about any of the other players? I can't think of any.

At work and without my copy of the book, but in brief:

I'd love for the Twins to value OBP more highly than they seem to, and to draft more college players than they normally do. I wouldn't want them to go as far as Beane, though--I do think defense and a good closer, for example, have been proven to be important for this team.

Every team has a different character, if you will--a different combination of owners, office personnel, manager and players as well as a different set of circumstances like payroll, fan base, and home field. Each team needs to draft, develop and play to its own circumstances. Being driven almost entirely by stats may work for some teams some of the time, but I can't conceive of it being a sort of cure-all, which some of the people in Moneyball seem to envision it as. But being driven almost entirely by the old-fashioned ("good face") method of scouting isn't going to work for everybody, either.

Stats are a tool, and probably an underused or ineffectively used one in many organizations, but they're not the *only* tool.

I liked this book, I thought it was a fun and interesting read, and it sure gave me a lot to think about, even changed the way I look at some aspects of the game, but I wouldn't take that system and try to apply it to a team as it was presented. I just don't think it would fit most clubs, as-is. Maybe it fit the A's (and that, like anything, is debatable), but every team and every market is different.

Before I read the book I expected to see a lot more of promotion of the "Genius of BB" involved. But I really didn't see that. To me this was a story composed of several examples tied together by a driven/crazy manager driven by self doubt and obsession. So it felt a little familiar.

The book states that Beane/Depodesta were/are looking for players that the "system" doesn't value because of their outward appearance. A value that EVERYONE should identify with. This isn't a baseball philosophy, this is universal problem to not judge people by their appearance. Something that we as a general society have trouble with. BB is just trying to look for people that others overlook. I completely believe that if BB was around at the time, Jackie Robinson would have been a A instead of a Dodger.

And it wasn't OBP, but pitches per plate appearance that they coveted. How after an 0 for 3 day, that BB would congratulate Hatteberg for having a good day. That was great. It was about the process, not the end results. As long as the process was correct, good things will happen more times than not.

I mean those two messages were what I devined from the book, Process is important, Appearance is not, and those are key to life and work in general.

I can see how SOME teams would be offended, Detroit, Milwaukee, and the White Sox draft strategies were belittled. But this is a process that has worked. And there is theory behind it, besides, "this is the way that it's always been done".

Very enjoyable book.

The 2003 ALDS went to five games because the A's, up 2-0 going into Game Three, committed four errors and squandered two runs on the base paths. Eric "Xtreme Baseball" Byrnes decided to engage Jason Varitek in a free and frank exchange of views about his masculinity rather than touch home plate, and Miguel Tejada decided to stop between third and home to lobby for an interference call before bothering to finish the play. Boston won 3-1 with a two-run homer in the eleventh inning.

The 2002 ALDS went the distance because in the fourth game, with the A's leading the series 2-1, Tejada sailed a lazy flip over third base, starting a sequence of wild pitches, hit batsmen and errors that gave the Twins sevens runs and a complimentary fruit basket in a single inning.

And the tragic effects of steroids on sliding skills, as demonstrated in the 2001 ALDS, probably don't need mentioning.

There may be a lot of luck involved in winning the fifth game of short series, but that doesn't mean there's a lot of luck involved in getting there.

As a Minnesotan misplaced in the Bay Area, I'm familiar with seeing the moneyball A's exhibit on the field a wandering attention and petulance of the kind that the Twins usually -- provided they don't have the opportunity to hit into a double-play -- reserve for their parting spats with Gardy. Especially on defense, the more tremendous their individual talent was, the more nervous you got when a routine grounder came their way. I wonder how much of this results from the attitude about coaching that the Alderson-Beane model entails. Coaching is certainly given importance -- Rick Peterson had those pitchers bio-metrically calibrated down to their cuticles -- but it is mostly, as jeffstoned puts it, "pre-hab" coaching: the mechanical implementation of a design set down by the front office. By reputation, at least (somebody who knows more about Oakland's inner workings correct me), A's managers are house cats, and A's teams, while known for being loose in the clubhouse, play tight when the stakes get high or things get weird, as they always do. There's no Tom Kelly, or threat of Tom Kelly, in the organization.

These can't all just be dismal intangibles: the way an organization teaches and guards the game is as objective and concrete as the way it evaluates talent. And, day-in and day-out, it is more material to players.

Vince:

Stewie did not win one with Toronto.
Mulholland and Nathan were on World Series losers.
Naked Batting Practice has one from the Marlins.

TS

Yes, spycake, I did read the book. Only by reading the book would I have discovered the trade-the-closer concept and been able to comment on it. As well as the

And yes, the playoff series were close over the last few years. And if Jeter doesn't make the play-of-the-century to catch Giambi at the plate, they beat the Yankees that year.

But a team with no closer, weak fielding, and no small-ball is vulnerable to losing close games (or to bad "luck") against the better teams. And the A's are a prime example. That was my point; not that one could predict each and every series by this.

I thought I’d chip in as a foreign neutral in the holy war – I’ve read the book but have only been to one baseball game so I can’t really jump into the trenches on either side.

First, I think it should be read as essentially a work of journalism rather than an authoritative review of how to win at baseball. Lewis’ aim is to spin a good yarn, linking baseball and financial theory with some good human interest stories. In this he succeeds, holding the interest of readers who don’t know their OBPs from their ERAs. The moral of his story would appear to be that Billy Beane has made it possible for the ugly duckling to become a swan. Or, alternatively, men with breasts can overcome discrimination and make it in professional sports.

Second, having read Liars Poker some years ago, when it comes to content I think Lewis is a bit of a one trick pony. He adapts the facts to fit the successful formula of his first book – that you can do well by valuing things that others don’t value. As has been pointed out in this thread its not the adoption of a statistical theory, but assembling a competitive team cheaply which has been Beane’s success. That’s hardly a profound insight. By definition a winning team with a low salary base has bucked the market and Oakland aren’t the only ones who’ve done it.

I was interested in how little credit is given to the on field manager of the team – is this the same across baseball? It appears that “back office” staff get far more coverage and credit in baseball than other sports, for example Epstein at the Red Sox last year.

Whoops. Read before sending. Sorry for the mistake in the last post. Here's what I meant to say:

* * *

Yes, spycake, I did read the book. Only by reading the book would I have discovered the trade-the-closer concept and been able to comment on it. As well as the concept of signing less-than-Gold Glove fielders (Hatteberg, I believe) and the no-steal philosophy.

And yes, the playoff series were close over the last few years. And if Jeter doesn't make the play-of-the-century to catch Giambi at the plate, they beat the Yankees that year.

But a team with no closer, weak fielding, and no small-ball is vulnerable to losing close games (or to bad "luck") against the better teams. And the A's are a prime example. That was my point; not that one could predict each and every series by this.

* * * *
There, that's better. Sorry for the double-post.

So many points to cover. And I'm sure that I won't cover them well.
1) While scouting and drafting talent (or procuring minor league talent through trades and the Rule 5) are highly praised in the case of the A's and the Twins, I just want to point out that the guys developing the young talent should be just as highly praised (as jeffstoned pointed out in the case of Rick Peterson). You can draft all the talent in the world, but if you don't bring them along right, they won't pan out. Take a look at the Pittsburgh Pirates (an example, by the way, of a team that hasn't had much of a shot at competing since Bonds left in the early 90's). In recent years, they've had so much depth in their minors that when the rule 5 comes around, their system has been raided by other teams. Whenever a prospects report came out, they always had a bunch of guys listed. And yet, no one has really developed into a superstar. Somewhere along the way, their development system just isn't getting the boys ready for the majors.

Same thing goes for my sad little Orioles of Baltimore. Ever since they decided to stop being the lesser-Steinbrenners in the late 90's (thank you Albert Belle), they've drafted well and picked up decent youngsters in trades, but hardly any of them have lived up to their potential. Something is getting lost in the minors.

2)I wonder if Beane had been in the position, like the Twins, to draft Mark Prior, he would have passed on him too because of his high price tag. There was a college-seasoned pitcher with major-league caliber stuff...fit right into the pitcher's mold of Beane...but would his "overvalued"-ness in being everyone's consensus number 1 pick have dissuaded Beane from picking him? And would Beane then have chosen Mauer too, a high-school prospect with a through-the-roof ceiling? And is "through-the-roof ceiling" an oxymoron?

3) Beane doesn't undervalue closers, in my opinion. He just doesn't think it's worth it to pay top dollar for a known closer when someone with the right mindset and "stuff" can step up to the role for less. Isringhausen, Koch (although, yes, he'd been closing for Toronto for a few years before his pickup), Foulke (who'd "stumbled" but not really for the Bitch Sox before they traded him) are a pretty good track record, and Arthur Rhodes and Dotel are experiements that had as good chance of working as the others. Next up, college-primed draftee Huston Street.

4) Is no-one going to comment on Lewis' writing itself? When Batgirl first posted that this would be the next book for the club, I wrote about how I didn't like Lewis' writing style. I'm curious to hear what other people thought, considering that we all enjoy the exquisite writing of Batgirl, and also considering how well-put together many of the responses are.

spycake:"Teams that haven't competed in awhile? There are two right in the Twins division - Detroit and KC. You can argue that they're not the best-run clubs, but not everybody can just "grab the opportunity" like the Twins, A's, and Marlins. If somebody's up, somebody else has to be down. Unfortunately, for about ten years we've had a pretty good idea who will be up and who will be down before the season even starts."

Detroit and KC are great examples of clubs that don't seem to know what they are doing. Same with the Devil Rays and Expos/Nationals (though they have a better excuse than the other teams). The question is, do those teams fail to compete because the system is unfair, or do they fail to compete because they are simply incompetent? It's nice to have a system where everyone is equal, but it's also nice to have a system that rewards excellence and punishes incompetence.

Take the Yankees out of the payroll structure, and from the lowest to the highest team payrolls it's almost a straight line. The Yankees are certainly an outlier, and they certainly have an advantage no one else does.

As far as moneyball goes, my favorite character in the book is Chad Bradford, for no reason other than I like the way he throws a baseball.

The book itself did a good job of showing how a team can succeed by finding players that other teams don't want. But I think Lewis went way overboard in making it seem like the A's method for finding those players was the only way to do so. I also think alot of the stuff about the A's running their team with a computer was just Lewis trying to tell the story he wanted to tell, rather than what actually happened.

rodander:"But a team with no closer, weak fielding, and no small-ball is vulnerable to losing close games (or to bad "luck") against the better teams. And the A's are a prime example. That was my point; not that one could predict each and every series by this."

Is this really true though? The Braves are a team that has played basicalyl every kind of ball, offensively, since their run of division titles began, and they've also consistently lost in the playoffs. The A's have had good and bad closer (from Isringhausen-good to Koch-average to Foulke-great to Rhodes-bad) and it hasn't helped them in the playoffs. They've had bad to average defensive teams early in their run and very good defensive teams late in their run and it hasn't really helped them. And the common thread between the A's lack of success in the playoffs and the Braves is that both teams tend to lose when their starting pitching doesn't perform as well as it did in the regular season. I think that's alot more significant than their willingness to bunt (though it would have been nice if they'd have taken the time to teach Jeremy Giambi to slide at some point).

Billy Beane is NOT Billy Bean!? Man. I feel like an idiot. Serves me right.

Sometimes, you hear what you want to hear.

Dearest Mr. Q,

Nothing would plese BG more than having an openly gay GM, but we must wait.

Love,
BG

Even having a female GM? I think that's a lot closer to happening at least.

MikeQ:
I feel like a fool too. And would be great to have a gay GM or woman, but first we need to have an actuve player come out. There has to be at least one that is gay. right?

Although with there still being a prejudice against players with "boobies"(I don't think that is the term used in the book, but this a family site so I don't want to use the word I think they used.)I feel that we are many years away from that happening. Also, baseball has had for many years an anti-intellectual bias. Look at the part of the book about Beane in the minors reading books with everyone, especially Dykstra.

Dear Mr. Fan,

That was something also dealt with in BALL FOUR. Bouton says he was mocked for reading and, like, thinking.

Yours,
BG

p.s. This is a family site?

Rodander, I don’t think Beane thought defence was unimportant. As the book says, with his budget he had to look for market inefficiencies. A few years ago, the under-valuation of OBP meant offence was cheaper to buy than defence. The reverse may now be true. Similarly with closers. Good relievers are important but the “closer” label often makes a pitcher cost-inefficient.
As for small ball…Earl Weaver once said, "If you play for one run, that's all you're gonna get." It can be the right move in some situations but many managers over-utilize it.

Nick and Brande, all fair enough. But I think the case for having a stud closer in the playoffs is obvious from the past few years WS winners (Percival, Rivera, Wetteland, Urbina come to mind); sure there are exceptions (BoSox didn'need a closer, Kim for AZ), but I think a pretty good correlation. I haven't done a Bill-James on it, but I'd be shocked if it were otherwise.

As far as failing starting pitching goes, yeah that is a huge factor. But they are facing better hitters in the playoffs than in the reg season, so they will generally be less effective. Outs are harder to come by. Playoffs are about winning games against good teams -- weaknesses become more obvious.

And, yes, I understand how MoneyBall worked, in that players with warts are cheaper, and that it doesn't mean that Beane didn't think defense is important. All I'm saying is that the approach has a cost, and that cost comes due in the playoffs.

I find it surprising that a few posters take issue with Beane (through Lewis) stating that the closer was an overvalued commodity. I think we can look at our own backyard and see that that is exactly the case. Eddie G was a quality closer, but the deal he signed with Seattle was WAY too much money for the performance he provided on the field, and in turn our GM found an undervalued reliever named Joe "VP" Nathan and now we have one of the top closers in the game!

One of the things I wish Lewis would have gone in to a bit more in the book is actual in game decisions that can be overvalued/undervalued. He discusses them briefly when talking about steals but that is about it.

I have always thought that Oakland would be an early adopter of "Jamesian" usage of the best reliever. The idea is that you use your best reliever in the most high leverage situations and not in "inning specific roles". You don't save your best reliver for the 9th inning when in the 7th inning you are in jeopardy of losing the lead. You are potentially wasting your best reliever, because if your middle relief pitchers give up the lead in the 7th or 8th inning, you never have the opportunity to bring you best reliever in in the 9th (well you can, but at that point it is a wasted effort, in that he can't score any runs for your team and you have already squandered the lead). It is definitely an "outside" the box thought in using your best pitcher in a high leverage situation, but it would be fun to see a team try it and at least see the results.

"All I'm saying is that the approach has a cost, and that cost comes due in the playoffs."

It may cost them come playoffs but there are 22 teams sitting at home watching Oakland play after they are done. You have to build the team to make the playoffs first, you could have a team that can win the best out of 5 series, but if you can't make it there it does you no good.

I agree with the immediately previous posting that would be really interesting would be an evaluation of game decisions. I liked the book a great deal, if only for changing the way I watch and think about baseball. Until I read the book I was more inclined to not question traditional type of baseball. But some of the things Lewis exposes, via Beane et al, are so obvious. Like the fact that closers get paid way too much money generally speaking (of course there are always exceptions). And yes, not so Everyday Eddie is a classic example. And probably Joe Nathan will be too, whenever he becomes a free agent and the Twins let him walk and move JD Durbin or Jesse Crain or someone into the closer slot and that pitcher does well. Another thing Moneyball points out that seems like a pretty smart way to think about free agents as a GM, is that Beane was more than willing to take the free draft picks received as compensation. Ray Durham was the example the book used I believe, where Beane figured the two drafts picks he got would be worth more than Durham (this also fits with the 6 for 2 trades he made in dealing Hudson and Mulder this winter).

And if anyone reads the book and ever endorses the sacrifice bunt, even in the NL, again, they are reading a different book than me. I think the sacrifice is one of the most foolish plays in the game, unless it is the 9th inning of a tie or 1-run ballgame. Think about the logic. The team on offense is giving up an out to advance one base runner one base. There are a lot more efficient methods for "advancing" runners than surrending 1/3 of your chances to produce offense. In basketball, do teams willingly throw the ball out of bounds so they can play a press?

Lewis' style is very Tom Wolfe like, which is to say a personal journalism style. And it's the same as his other books. Lewis takes something he witnesses (the A's front office, the trading floor of Salamon Brothers) and discusses how those he witnesses succeed and/or fail. Moneyball shouldn't be read as objective in the sense that it states the A's style of management is the only way to be successful. Just as Liar's Poker shouldn't be taken to mean the Salamon Brothers' Mortgage Department was the only trading department to ever make money, or even make the most money. Lewis isn't saying the A's were the only example of success, just one example of an organization that was able to find an inefficiency and exploit it, just like mortgage traders in the 1980s. And that's really the point of the stuff Lewis observes. That within any large system there are inefficiences to be exploited and often times it's as much luck as anything else.

Favorite character from the book has to be Ron Washington. If only b/c I just pictured him with a toothpick the entire time he was in the book.

Great discussion, let's hope the Twins lay some wood to the Soxs tonight at the Cell.

Count me among the critics. Yes, it opened some eyes. But the book's flaws tend to be overlooked by the mainstream media, which has elevated the fanatical sabermaticlal perspective to the level of dogma.

The fact is, numbers help a lot, but, as Ron said, they are only one tool in the toolbox. Sabermetrics is a young science attempting to describe a complex and sometimes chaotic game. As such, most of the statistics are oversimplifications of how well or how poorly players play the game.

The only way you can really know how to evaluate players is to watch them play and take a lot of notes. it might be subjective, but it's more effective in the end. And the Twins have proven that.

OPS is as close to an objective mesure of hitting that their is. Strikeout rate, combined with average hits and walks per game, can be an accurate measures of past pitching performance. There are no good fielding numbers, contrary to what the sabermatricians tell you. And that's about it. All good stuff, but limited.

The thing that bugs me most about the Bean style is the emphasis on drafting college players. The reason is numbers, of course. College players have more numbers from tougher leagues, so they're safer bets than high-school players.

The problem is, the college game has really slipped, so the numbers that once gave scouts a measure of security are now quite flawed. And high-school leagues in southern states have elevated their competition. So the Twins draft a mix of both types of players with good success.

The As also have had good success, despite their absolutist attitudes. i suspect that has more to do with their excellent scouts than with their numerical analyses. The fat scout made to look stupid by the author of Moneyball signed Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, both out of high school. We shall see how well Oakland does in the coming years without those two. And what of Jeremy Bonderman, also a high-school signee? Bean supposedly broke a chair because one of the scouts insisted on him. Just to spite that scout, he traded Bonderman to Detroit. That's one trade I'm sure Bean regrets.

I'll stop now, cause I could go on and on.

cmathewson -- neither Hudson nor Mulder were drafted out of high school. They both played college ball before they were drafted.

Everyone keeps mentioning defense - that Monyball (and Moneyball GMs) don't value defense. I don't believe that is the case. The problem is that there are no quality defensive statistics to use to determine a players ability defensively. The basics, like fielding percentage, are limited in what they tell you. The more complex ones, like zone rating, include so many variables that you lose focus of what is being measured.

In the end, much of defense is based on what you see. Beane fears the observation without basis more than anything, so building a team based on defense becomes difficult. It's not that defense is undervalued, but that defensive ability is immeasurable (at least with current statistics).

Not sure if I made my point well. Just wanted to add my two cents.

"Who's my favorite character from the book? Was Michael's wife Tabitha Soren mentioned? Then her."

She was mentioned in the dedication. Not sure if that counts, but for what it's worth, I feel ya.

One of the things I liked about the book was the sheer volume of contradictory information being dealt with by the main characters, and how surfing through all this contradiction tends to make folks a bit nutty. Right from the start, where Pat Gillick lines up the kids for another sprint because he can't believe his eyes that Beane has outrun the others. Beane talking with Lenny Dykstra about Steve Carlton and the confluence of Dykstra's ignorance of Carlton's greatness and his confidence that he'll be able to get a hit off the lefthander (and, as Beane suddenly realizes, this is the difference between someone who can succeed and someone who is perennially struggling in baseball). Guys who are statistically impressive in college, like Barry Zito and Jeremy Brown, who are nevertheless easily available because of their body type (Zito being 'too short' to be a successful big-league pitcher, while Brown is 'too fat'.) And yet, despite this, Beane's near-lust for Nick Swisher, a near-perfect five-tool player who is exactly the sort of guy you'd think Beane would avoid if he were avoiding drafting players like he was.

I came away from the book less impressed by it as a philosophical manifesto for either on-base percentage or OPS (DePodesta and company state in so many words that they know OBP/OPS are going to get trendy and that they have to be ready to move on to the next thing before that happens), than as a record of a bunch of folks, all of whom are struggling to get by any way they can in this 'unfair game'. The A's pitching coach trying to get Chad Bradford on track by pointing out that Bradford believes in God though he's never seen Him, yet Bradford's seen himself get major league hitters out over and over again, so why can't he believe in that? The game near the end of Oakland's 20-game winning streak that starts out with such a big lead that Beane feels comfortable sitting and talking baseball with Lewis, and then as the lead slowly ebbs away, so does Beane's patience. Ron Washington's Norman-Vincent-Peale-ish tranfiguration of Scott Hatteburg from journeyman catcher to Gold-Glove-caliber first baseman. Beane himself taking a day off from the A's second (or was it third?) consecutive division title-winning season to appear before a congressional hearing to explain how low-revenue teams like his can't be competitive.

I can't say I have a favorite 'character' in the story (the comment above about Soren notwithstanding), but I do have a favorite scene: following along with Jeremy Brown as he drives a ball to the wall and starts considering the chances of making third - even reimagining himself 'Jeremy Brown, hitter of triples' - until, distracted and pushing too hard, he falls over onto the infield dirt as his teammates, rolling around in laughter, point out that his blast actually cleared the wall and that he hit a home run.

It's a fun book, as long as you don't take it all that seriously - in that respect, it actually has a good amount in common with "Ball Four".

Count me as a nondoctrinaire. I tend to lean toward the numbers over the faces, and for OPS over small-ball, but there's a time and a place for everything. Maybe one of the reasons why the A's came up short in the playoffs is that they couldn't adapt to the general playoff circumstance that single runs are more valuable than they are during the season, given the better quality of playoff pitching. So why can't Oakland actually work on their bunting and baserunning in September?

Bean and Beane were teammates on the 1988 Toledo Mud Hens. They batted leadoff and two. I saw them at Columbus 7-2-88. Who knew. Tol 12, Col 6.

RSmithx: yesterday might have been a good occasion for trying out your theory that a team's best reliever might best be used in high-leverage situations prior to the ninth. Wouldn't Nathan have been better to see out there than Romero once the game was tied? Your suggestion as something interesting to see wasn't so very long ago S.O.P. Well into the 1980's, it was common to see leading "firemen" (as we used to call them) with well over 100 innings a year, due largely to a good smattering of multi-inning appearances, and most bullpens had several pitchers with 4 or 6 saves apiece to go with the ace's 25-35. Although some of the stud closers were indeed worked into premature oblivion (remember Bill Campbell?) most of them seemed to handle it ok (remember Goose Gossage?) Again, maybe it would occur to Gardenhire to stretch Nathan out a bit in September to get him ready for the odd extended appearance in October. Just a thought.

In full disclosure, I originally bought Moneyball as a Christmas present for my brother, began reading it and never let it go! I held off reading the book at first because I am not a math person, and the stats emphasis was a real turn-off. However, I found the book to be less about stats and more about (as others have stated) the search for the diamond in the rough. Use of statistical formulas, when the rest of the baseball world was scout oriented, was the best way to pick out the players traditionally overlooked.

What I did not like was Lewis' writing style which was openly confrontational. And then he was shocked that people were offended by his book! By the words chosen, Lewis seemed to infer that any use of scouting was outdated and doomed to failure, but the brilliance of BB was to use numbers instead. He did not balance the two worlds very well, admitting that both have strenght and weaknesses. For a "jouranlistic" work, he needed more balance. What frustrated me the most was when he would praise how a BB chosen player did - forgetting that the scouts had raved about the kid as well. He insinuated that the scouts hated every stats-kid and thus because BB looked beyond that, BB was a genius.

So my two-cents, and interesting read but definitely not a neutral storyteller. Lewis created a controversy through his writing style and then continued to blame the reaction on others not being open minded. Reminds me of Michael Moore movies (which I love) where the director does have a point-of-view which affects how the subject is portrayed. Does this make it less enjoyable? No -- but you must acknowledge the prejudice and not claim to be "neutral."

cxpat: on 7-2-88 in columbus, I ran the scoreboard and played all the music for the mudhens-clippers game. Columbus Clippers, Ring Your Bell!

TS

rodander:"Nick and Brande, all fair enough. But I think the case for having a stud closer in the playoffs is obvious from the past few years WS winners (Percival, Rivera, Wetteland, Urbina come to mind); sure there are exceptions (BoSox didn'need a closer, Kim for AZ), but I think a pretty good correlation. I haven't done a Bill-James on it, but I'd be shocked if it were otherwise. "

But how many playoff teams don't have good closers? Guys like Urbina and Percival aren't really in the class of closers that guys like Rivera and Gagne (and Hoffman for a while) and there are alot of guys that can fill the "best reliever in the bullpen" role that has been designated the closers role. Percival and Wetteland were the second best relievers on their respective teams during the playoffs, as both the Angels and Yankees relied heavily on KRod and Rivera, and the Angels won largely because the Giants (who had an excellent closer as well in Nen) couldn't get to that closer because their bullpen wasn't as deep.

"In the end, much of defense is based on what you see. Beane fears the observation without basis more than anything, so building a team based on defense becomes difficult. It's not that defense is undervalued, but that defensive ability is immeasurable (at least with current statistics)."

Though his most recent teams have been built more on defense than offense, though that's partly due to the loss of key players on offense.

"The thing that bugs me most about the Bean style is the emphasis on drafting college players. The reason is numbers, of course. College players have more numbers from tougher leagues, so they're safer bets than high-school players."

With college pitchers, there is also the injury issue. College pitchers are older and thus there is more information about their health status. Since pitchers get injured so frequently, the extra 3-4 years in college can be used by teams to self select out the pitchers that would not be able to stay healthy in their first 3-4 years as a pro.