Has “Moneyball” Failed, Or Succeeded?
I don’t really follow baseball in enough detail to know for sure if he’s wrong, but this Buzz Bissinger argument is wildly unconvincing:
Whatever happens in the National League and American League Championship series unfolding over the next week or so, one outcome has already been decided–the effective end of the theories of Moneyball as a viable way to build a playoff-caliber baseball team when you don’t have the money. That no doubt sounds like heresy to the millions who embraced Michael Lewis’s 2003 book, but all you need to do is keep in mind one number this postseason: 528,620,438. That’s the amount of money in payroll spent this season by the teams still in it–the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Angels, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Moneyball? You bet it’s Moneyball, true Moneyball, like it always has been in baseball and always will be.
Bissinger goes on to diss Billy Beane across various modalities. But my impression watching from afar is that recent developments in baseball largely vindicate Beane’s work. Obviously, having a bigger payroll to work with is helpful to a general manager. But for a while, detailed attention to statistical work allowed Beane to exploit massive market inefficiencies and put together high-quality, low-payroll teams. But then other people noticed. Michael Lewis wrote a bestselling book about it! So the insights spread, and there are fewer inefficiencies to take care of. If it had somehow been possible to copyright on base percentage and force everyone else to keep relying on batting average, that would have been nice for the early adopters. But it’s not, and the broad outlines of statistical analysis of baseball performance are now pretty widely understood.
60 Responses to “Has “Moneyball” Failed, Or Succeeded?”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 18th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Yap. Moneyball + Money = Success.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
This is exactly right. In the mid- to late-90s Beane piggy-backed the groundwork Sandy Alderson had made folding modern statistical analysis into traditional baseball scouting and player evaluation. Being ahead of the curve he found that a specific type of player – high on-base percentage, high slugging percentage, little speed – were being undervalued by the draft and trade markets. Teams were obsessed with so called “five tool” players – highly athletic and fast draftees that coaches were convinced could be “taught baseball skills.” Beane and the A’s exploited that market inefficiency and drafted sluggers.
That theory (combined with a very solid pitching core) worked for them until other teams started copying their strategy, eliminating the market inefficiency. The “Moneyball” strategy has nothing to do with payroll. It has to do with player analysis. Part of the problem is that now, post-Moneyball, rich teams are doing the same thing the A’s were doing. Brian Cashman and Theo Epstien both run “Moneyball” evaluation teams in New York (Yankees) and Boston (Red Sox.) On top of that they have far more payroll than the A’s, so the advantage is no longer with Oakland.
Of course, some major market teams with high payrolls are still late to the “Moneyball” theory of player evaluation. Notably the Cubs and the Mets, and to some extent the Angels. You can win with large payrolls and bad evaluation, and you can win with good evaluation and small payrolls. But if you have teams with huge payrolls and cutting edge evaluation – NYY and BOS – those teams are going to eat up playoff spots every year.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:50 am
As someone who does spend a lot of time following baseball, I’ll tell you that you hit the nail on the head.
Buzz Bissinger has a long standing hatred of new baseball analysis; his 2005 book Three Nights in August, IIRC, was essentially intended as an answer to Moneyball which “proved” that relying on old-timey baseball knowledge was way more important than any newfangled stats.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:55 am
I do follow baseball closely and I think your critique of Bissinger’s analysis is spot on.
Bissinger is a tool. His shtick is to criticize anyone who challenges sports status quo. He fights with bloggers along the usual tired old media lines of attack. He attacks Beane out of the same dinosaur mentality that all you need in baseball is your gut and that statistics and analysis are for nerds, not baseball men.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Buzz Bissinger doesn’t know anything about anything. He makes up for it by being extremely nasty and temperamental.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Matt if you haven’t seen the video of Buzz Bissinger verbally attacking Deadspin founder Will Leitch I highly recommend watching it. The video gives a good insight into Bissinger’s mentality.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
Sports is like every other business. It’s a copycat world. The thing in baseball that CAN’T be copied, only done on one’s own, is the ability to identify and acquire amateur talent that becomes professional talent.
The Twins found Mauer and Morneau, and remain competitive. The A’s have had some bad luck in this regard, and have become less competitive.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I have nothing to add, except to say how unusual it is that I agree completely with Matthew’s post, and all the comments above.
Bissinger is an ass and a moron.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
What Greg said. Bissinger’s point is exactly 90 degrees from Moneyball. The remaining teams are 1st, 3rd, 7th, and 8th in OPS+ out of MLB’s 30 teams. They do exactly what Moneyball suggests they should do, and they have lots of money to do it with.
Moreover, this is not what Moneyball said. I don’t understand why so many sports writers don’t get this. High OPS hitting, not stealing, high K/low BB pitching, only taking college pitchers, and using minor league stats as predictive of major league stats: these are very highly correlated with winning, but when Moneyball was written, they were very poorly correlated with player salaries. So the A’s focused on them, because they were cheap ways to win!
Now these stats are not cheap. Now they are very expensive. Now, the undervalued things are defensive ability and high school players (college players are overpaid rather than underpaid and drafted too soon rather than too late). To win this way, you have to stretch those dollars a hell of a lot farther than you did eight years ago because their correlation to winning is just a lot worse. The A’s are doing what they can, and they are one of MLB’s best defensive teams, but they’re going to have to luck into some hitters at some point to compete.
But that is what Moneyball was about: finding inefficiencies and exploiting them. The A’s still do this. It’s just not OBP and SLG and K/BB ratios anymore.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I’ll second Trevor and agree that you nailed it. The Mariners fired their old-school GM last year and brought in a new GM who hired a team of people to create a statistical analysis dept. The guy who heads that up carries the title of assistant GM, so he isn’t just some quant-nerd who is cranking numbers in isolation.
Part of the responsibilities of the team is to analyze stats on, they say, every minor league game played. This means with a team of 2 or 3 people they get a view on every play and every player across the thousands of minor league game played each year. It would obviously take a staff of hundreds of scouts – both in the States, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, to replicate this.
Not coincidentally, the Ms executed a series of trades last spring that saw them ship out over-valued players for under-valued ones. And they transformed themselves from a team that lost over 100 games with a $100 million dollar payroll to a team that won 85+ games with an $80 million payroll.
Interestingly, much of this advanced stats work has focused on the quantitative analysis of defense. And what this work has revealed is that defense has been a hugely undervalued asset for baseball. The Ms built their success on finding guys like Franklin Guiterrez, Endy Chavez, and Ryan Langerhans – all excellent defensive players – who were basically floating around the majors and were freely available because they aren’t great at the plate.
Guiterrez – in particular – was one of the most valuable OF in all of baseball last year because of his ridiculously awesome defense. And he was picked up from the Cleveland Indians for a bunch of spare parts even though every defensive stat available indicated that he was one of the best defensive OF in all of baseball – maybe THE best.
These improvements were possible for the Ms because they have the resources to devote to hiring a new GM, bringing in a bunch of new people to staff a stats dept., and to also maintain a payroll of near $100 million. In other words, the advantage held by the As has evaporated.
But don’t ask me if defense – and the ability to correctly weigh defensive ability against offensive ability – is important. Just ask the Angels or the Cardinals how important it is to convert balls in play into outs.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
JMG,
The Twins didn’t “find” Mauer. He was the consensus top high school player in the country the year he was drafted and the number two overall prospect behind Mark Prior (Teixeira was the fifth pick in that draft, but no worse than the consensus number three prospect). Most believed the Twins picked Mauer over Prior because he was local and had lower bonus demands, so that certainly lucky for them given the career arcs of the two. The Twins were truly terrible for a few years in the late 90s and thus had many years to pick at the top of the draft. It’ll be interesting to see how Oakland rebounds over the next few years because it does take a few years to rebuild from within.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
The real success of Billy Beane and Moneyball, is how it has shown the true fallacy of human instinct in contrast to the clarity borne out by science and mathematics for both understanding phenomena and making decisions.
Amazing that the game most directly tied to probability and statistics went so long directed by tea-leaf-readers.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Look, I dislike Bissinger as much as the next guy, but I must say most of the the comments here show what appears to be a total lack of understanding of his article. He repeatedly acknowledges that ‘Moneyball’ was about market ineffeciency. He just seems to think that it didn’t change anything, which is kinda ridiculous, but that’s his argument. For once, Bissinger seems to have based his criticism on understanding his target. Of course, his conclusion that Lewis essentially wrote a compelling narative about nothing is laughable. Every team in baseball espouses at least some of the philosophies popularized in Lewis’ book.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
This I think is also an example of the actual efficient market hypothesis in action, no?
October 18th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
i remember about a year ago, billy beane said chase utley was either the ‘best’ or ‘most underrated player’ in baseball. that was after he signed his current contract. it goes to show that moneyball principles are still at play, even though contracts are higher. thanks to the lewis book, players and agents know how managers evaluate them, and so know how much to ask for.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I’m surprised nobody mentioned Bill James. His work served as a guideline for Billy Beane. Beane was smart enough to realize that James knew a lot more about what teams need to win baseball games than the so-called professionals. Now, unfortunately for Beane, the secret’s out. Meanwhile, The Red Sox have hired James as a consultant.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Basketball is relatively new to rigorous statistical analysis. Are there still market inefficiencies that can be exploited in the NBA like Beane did in baseball?
October 18th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
If Bissinger thinks that Lewis’s thesis was that moneyed teams would do less well than poor teams, then he has fundamental reading comprehension problems and should repeat 8th grade.
More likely he’s just looking for yet another way to attack his bete noir, which isn’t any better.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
MY “I don’t really follow baseball in enough detail to know for sure if he’s wrong”
Apparently you do! Old Buzz would be a Gran Inquisitor type if not for the fact that his arguments are “wildly unconvincing.”
Too funny.
What Sam Hutchenson says, and I would point out that before the chosen one, Bill James, there was Earl Weaver. He was sorta like John the Baptist.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1157671/index.htm
October 18th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Whoa, guys! If you keep posting about how Buzzy doesn’t know sh*t about anything, he’s gonna go on TV again and start screeching at some poor blogger.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
#19 for the win.
Earl Weaver was the font of truth & light.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Yeah, practically everything said in Moneyball was handed down from on high in Weaver on Strategy two decades before Moneyball came out.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Agreed on the “everything old is new again” nature of the Moneyball “revelations.” Earl Weaver played Moneyball for years. Branch Rickey was running OBP when he was developing farm systems and integrating the Dodgers. Baseball is often quite cyclical and this is no different.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Amazing that the game most directly tied to probability and statistics went so long directed by tea-leaf-readers.
Perhaps, though you get something of the same split in cricket — lots of people who know the numbers, but treat them like tokens rather than mathematical data, instead leaning on non-quantitative criteria.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Yep.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Wasn’t Bissinger last seen writing an article in the NYT Play Magazine filled with demonstrably false claims about historical pitcher usage patterns? And then trashing anyone who pointed this out and saying, “well, Tony LaRussa told me it’s true, so it must be so!”. He’s the absolute worst of the “new media is destroying journalism even though half what I write doesn’t stand up to a cursory fact-check” set, at least in sports media.
October 18th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Matt
you are totally slipping. there was only one active link to The New Racist yesterday, and there is only one active link to the writers at The New Racist today, and it’s almost 2:00pm.
Why the sudden dearth of active links to the shitheads over at The New Racist? did Marty say something that got you upset, again?
October 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Anybody remember Manny Sanguillen. Free swinging catcher with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the early-mid 70’s. He was the ultimate anti-Bill James player. He went six straight seasons with 475 plate appearances and fewer than 22 walks. That is an almost impossible feat to accomplish, especially considering old Manny NEVER got a strike to hit. I mean never. Everything pitchers threw at him was either wild high or in the dirt. But Sanguillen was lifetime .296 hitter. Imagine if he had an ounce of discipline. He would of hit .400, at least once.
He used a 37 inch, 37 ounce bat -one heavy, unwieldy warclub. Talk about stacking the deck against yourself.
October 18th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
One detail you are perhaps missing or at least not mentioning. The process by which the advantages Billy Beane used to exploit were diminished because other GM’s started exploiting them was probably greatly accelerated when he cooperated with Moneyball book. In addition, this book probably had the effect of making it harder for Beane to make trades with other GM’s. He’d have probably done much better to be more circumspect.
October 18th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Meh, given the level of success Oakland was having relative to their payroll, other teams were going to start signing away their assistants and so on sooner or later (and of course Boston hired the guy who taught the concept to Beane). So that sort of leakage was really inevitable.
Now that I agree with. Beane was obviously a little too proud of himself for being smarter than everyone else, and bragging about how, say, he deliberately managed his bullpen to overvalue certain relievers for the sake of dealing them out hurt their ability to make trades with teams (as did working their young starting pitchers into a pulp).
October 18th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Nonsense. Everybody knows that markets are incapable of self-correction.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
One name that seldom figure in these moneyball discussions is Tony LaRussa. To the best of my knowledge, LaRussa claims not to use an organized moneyball analysis system, yet he has had great success with relatively low payroll. Do LaRussa and the Cards GM actually have a guy in the back room doing moneyball analysis, do they have some other system, or do they work by intuition alone?
Cranky
October 18th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
A lot of ad hominem in this thread, probably because the Cult of Beane is largely irrational, and because Bissinger is right. For all the wildly overhyped worship of Beane as some OBP prophet the three-year run of the A’s as written up in Lewis’ book was their success in drafting those three young pitchers and having them all at once. Bissinger is correct in all his assertions. Jeremy Brown was a complete failure–the “fat scout” was right. The famous 2002 Moneyball draft yielded a collection of failures and mediocrities after the first pick, Nick Swisher. And look at his following drafts! 2003 yielded one good player, Andre Ethier, who they dumped in a disastrous trade. Swisher and Ethier are the last two good hitters the A’s have identified in the draft. Beane’s total failure to identify and develop good hitters via the draft over the last seven years is the reason why the last three Oakland teams have been so crappy. Somehow the genius of OBP has assembled rosters that were 11th and 13th in the 14-team AL the last two years.
They’ve been crappy for years and they’ll be crappy for a few years more. But people will still worship Beane as Teh Smart forever.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
‘Moneyball’ is one of the most overrated books and concepts ever. Success in baseball is the same as it was in every decade since the game was invented. Pitching is like defense in basketball of football – it’s easily the most important commodity and the best teams typically have the best pitching. The Oakland A’s success over the years comes down to pitching; not statistical analysis BS. The A’s had a good farm system and good scouting and most of all, good luck with the pitchers they selected. Baseball is, always was and always will be about the pitching.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Vidor, you’re making a lot of sense on the Oswald/JFK thread, so I won’t hold your mistaken opinions here against you. Actually, they’re not mistaken, so much as not germane to the issue. I’m not going to go back over every comment to double-check, but I don’t think anyone here is espousing the Cult of Beane, nor is Bissinger (in the quote above) really taking on Beane’s recent record as a GM. Instead, he’s claiming that the success of rich teams in this year’s playoffs disproves Moneyball’s thesis, which is nonsense.
October 18th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
“Pitching is like defense in basketball of football – it’s easily the most important commodity and the best teams typically have the best pitching. … Baseball is, always was and always will be about the pitching.”
Okay, N, who were the great pitchers on the ‘61 Yankees? I’ll give you Whitey Ford; who else? What about the Murderers’ Row Yankee teams of the late twenties—was their success due to their pitching? Did the San Francisco Giants not have the best pitching in the National League this year? How did that work for them?
October 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
vidor, tomemos has already made the point, but just to reiterate: insofar as you think moneyball was about billy beane, born winner with low payrolls, then you’ve not read it correctly.
insofar as you read moneyball as about thinking about baseball realities and not old myths, the baseball realities it extols are at the heart of, for example, the yankee roster assemblage.
but really, i meant to answer BT’s question back at comment 17: the houston gm believes there are such inefficiencies to exploit….
October 18th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
tommemos: i’m a pro-pitching guy too. fundamentally, you don’t win without good pitching, but good pitching doesn’t have to be great pitching for you to win (anymore than great pitching without a good enough team around it isn’t going to win).
the ‘61 yanks, for instance? their main 4 starters (112 starts) all had ERA+ above 100, and their fifth starter (17 starts) had an ERA+ of 95. in short, quite good starting pitching.
in relief, they had the league’s best that year (luis arroyo) and two other relievers (one a spot starter) with an ERA+ above 100. in short, quite good relief pitching.
meaning, quite good pitching, period.
the murderer’s row yankees? let’s use 1927: again, the top 4 starters (111 starts) all had era+ above 100, and they had two relievers with ERA+ above 100. they led the league in shutouts and allowed the fewest runs (and fewest earned runs).
in short, there’s no reason to go on: the underlying point, i think, is clear: it’s hard to find a championship team that didn’t have quite good pitching.
October 18th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
“it’s hard to find a championship team that didn’t have quite good pitching.”
Well, sure, of course. It’s just as accurate to say that it’s hard to find a championship team that didn’t have quite good hitting. Championship teams tend to be pretty good at all the aspects of the game, by definition.
I’m perfectly happy to accept that pitching could be the most important aspect of baseball. That’s pretty different from N’s point, which seems to be that the success of the ‘99-’04 A’s was solely due to the Big Three, and that Beane’s use of unconventional offensive metrics made no difference.
October 18th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
As I recall, the actual breakdown is 50% hitting, 40% pitching, and 10% defense.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Oh yes I have. That book was a deeply passionate love letter to Billy Beane.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
tomemos, agreed that extremism in defence of pitching is a vice, but i do think it’s important to emphasize that just because you don’t remember ralph terry, bud daley, bill stafford, hal coates, and luis arroyo doesn’t mean that the ‘61 yanks didn’t have good pitching.
in fact, i’d be willing to bet that in terms of actual post-season performance itself, you’ll find more teams winning despite their hitting than winning despite their pitching (my favorite metric in this respect is that the 4-titles-in-5-year yanks every single title averaged fewer runs scored per game in the post-season than in the regular season, but also averaged a larger margin of victory).
October 18th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
vidor, fair enough, let me rephrase it a touch more carefully: if you think that all moneyball is about is billy beane, then there’s no point in discussing “moneyball”’s influence on the game. and the reason we are discussing “moneyball”’s influence is because it was about more than billy beane.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I would say that’s an example of letting the conclusion dictate the argument.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
You are correct, sir. It’s about being in front of the curve in order to win more games with less money.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Choska, let’s not get carried away. The Mariners had a pythagorean of .461, definitely an improvement over the year before but also suggesting that there was a good deal of luck involved and a great deal of work still to be done. Of the improvement that did occur a huge portion of it can be credited to non-Zduriencik players. Specifically, Ichiro had a huge improvement, Hernandez pitched out of his mind, and Bedard and Washburn were superb for the roughly half seasons they played for the Mariners. The only Zduriencik imports to have a noticeable and immediate impact were Gutierrez, Branyan, and Aardsma, and I would characterize these three as contributing only modest improvements. Also, Griffey, but I’m not sure if he was really Zduriencik’s idea. Probably the best thing he did was get the hell rid of Betancourt. I’d have taken a handful of magic beans for him.
But having said all this, don’t get me wrong, I’m very optimistic about the direction Zduriencik is taking the team, just saying that his approach is far from proven yet.
October 18th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Washburn’s superb half-season had everything to do w/the outfield defense, 2/3rds of which Zduriencik put in place.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
And what this work has revealed is that defense has been a hugely undervalued asset for baseball. The Ms built their success on finding guys like Franklin Guiterrez, Endy Chavez, and Ryan Langerhans – all excellent defensive players – who were basically floating around the majors and were freely available because they aren’t great at the plate.
The first part is true enough, because defense is the part of the game least understood statistically. But any advantage in this regard will be short-lived. But as much as I like Ryan Langerhans, there’s no way his defense can make up for his absolutely horrendous offense.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I liked how the article seemed rather happy about the fact that the big payroll teams were advancing in the playoffs. It’s a nice touch for any Marlins or Padres fans out there.
Like everyone else has said, Buzz seems to have missed the point of the book.
October 18th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
“Washburn’s superb half-season had everything to do w/the outfield defense”
His K/BB was the best of his career.
“2/3rds of which Zduriencik put in place.”
Balentien played about as much in LF as Chavez. I think you’re wildly overestimating the value of the Mariners’ outfield defense.
October 19th, 2009 at 12:04 am
@42 Howard: “my favorite metric in this respect is that the 4-titles-in-5-year yanks every single title averaged fewer runs scored per game in the post-season than in the regular season, but also averaged a larger margin of victory).”
Good stuff.
October 19th, 2009 at 12:12 am
The point was that Billy Beane was an innovator, a visionary, and an exceptionally good GM.
Well, no. The A’s have been terrible for years now and Beane hasn’t managed to draft and develop a decent hitter since that book was written.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:34 am
@42 Howard: “my favorite metric in this respect is that the 4-titles-in-5-year yanks every single title averaged fewer runs scored per game in the post-season than in the regular season, but also averaged a larger margin of victory).”
Runs scored per game drop in the post season because you’re only playing against the best teams in the league and against their top three or four starters instead of five or six. Everyone’s stats – hitters, pitchers – get pulled towards the mean.
In addition, teams tend to use better pitching strategy (multiple innings for the closer, or bringing him in in the 7th) which further reduces run scoring.
But yes, otherwise, you’re exactly right, this is an indictment of data analysis.
October 19th, 2009 at 3:59 am
“The point was that Billy Beane was an innovator, a visionary, and an exceptionally good GM.”
This is getting tiresome. Yes, that was a point of the book, but it’s not what made the book so influential, and let’s be clear: it was hugely influential, probably made more of an immediate impact on the sport than any book since…I don’t know, Ball Four? And the impact has lasted, even as Beane’s win-loss record has declined. Yes, people besides Beane and Michael Lewis were talking about OBP, OPS, rational fielding statistics, and overrated high school prospects before Moneyball, but without that book those concepts never would have moved into the mainstream so quickly. It pushed the sport forward 5-10 years.
If the book was just about Beane, why was there a chapter on Bill James? Why the admiration for Theo Epstein, the guy who drafted Kevin Youkilis? I’m really really sorry that you didn’t like it but you’re letting your scorn blind you to the merits of the book and its lasting influence.
October 19th, 2009 at 8:58 am
#1 is right.
Yankees and Red Sox clearly follow Moneyball tactics of quant analysis. Every team in the game now has some quant analysis added to their approach. Yawn.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Two things about Moneyball
1) If it’s such a great insight, and I think it was, what in tarnation motivated Beane to advertise it and thus dilute its value to his team? I suppose it was his sense that everyone else was so obtuse that they’d never adopt it anyway.
2) The Beane approach almost certainly gives you, or gave you (see #1), better value for dollar than the traditional scouting model. But in sports, unlike (say) the socioeconomic development of third-world countries or US big-city crime control, incremental improvements short of the championship are not terribly worthwhile. Nobody expects Costa Rica to end up better-off than Sweden, and nobody expects NYC to end up safer than Copenhagen, but if they use data-driven improvement models and beat their peer groups they’ve accomplished something wonderful in itself. But if Beaneism gets you from fifth to third in the division with a fifth-place payroll that’s just a cool curiosity. Even at its peak there was no evidence that Beane could actually defeat the traditionalist big-money franchises as opposed to just outperform traditionalist small-money franchises.
October 19th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Baseball is, always was and always will be about the pitching.
No, it’s always been about scoring more runs than your opponent, which can be accomplished by either scoring a lot of runs, by preventing your opponent from scoring runs, or both. If you lean heavily on one side while neglecting the other, you’ll probably have a mediocre team. C.f. the 2009 San Francisco Giants, or, on the other side, most Texas Rangers teams of the last decade or so.
If you can do both, then you’ve probably got a winner.
Similarly, long-term success in baseball is some mixture of having money and having good management, where by “management” I mean everybody in the front office, from scouts to data analysts to a GM who can put them all together to an owner who can let it all happen. If you have both money and smarts, then you win consistently — Boston and the Yankees. If you have one or the other, you can have occasional success — the Cubs and Mets on the money-but-no-smarts side, the Twins and Athletics on the other side. But if you have neither money nor smarts, then you have the Kansas City Royals or the Pittsburgh Pirates.
(My own team, the Dodgers, has money but is kind of inconsistent in the smarts department. We did pick up Ethier from the A’s, and Boston’s willingness to let go of Manny in 2008 was a classic case of taking on an undervalued player. But we also had years of mismanaging pitchers, playing expensive “seasoned veterans” instead of better young players, etc.)
October 19th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
“1) If it’s such a great insight, and I think it was, what in tarnation motivated Beane to advertise it and thus dilute its value to his team? I suppose it was his sense that everyone else was so obtuse that they’d never adopt it anyway.”
The word was out already: Moneyball was published in 2003,
the Red Sox were bought by John Henry et al in 2002, who
hired Bill James himself in 2003, along with Theo Epstein,
a Beane-influenced GM. And then Terry Francona as manager
in 2004, accepting statistical analysis as a basis for
tactics as well player acquisition. And since then the
Red Sox have stuck pretty closely to the OPS, hit home runs,
don’t give up outs approach, with unglamorous but effective
players like Kevin Youkilis; and they’ve been the most
successful team in baseball, winning 2 World Series and
losing a 7-game ALCS in 2008.
The Yankees may be starting to get the hang of it now, which
would be bad news for everyone else
Maybe one aspect which has been underrated is the importance
of timing. Part of Beane’s approach with the A’s was to
build a mediocre team for the start of the season, and then
upgrade by acquiring players at the trade deadline from
teams which were already out of contention. The Red Sox
- starting from a higher base, but also with tougher
competition in their division – have done much the same the
last couple of seasons with deadline deals to acquire
Jason Bay, Victor Martinez, Billy Wagner, and others
(Eric Gagne was total bust …)
One more aspect of the emphasis on statistical analysis is
being careful not to commit to long-term contracts beyond
the horizon where performance can be predicted with
reasonable certainty. The Red Sox rarely give contracts
for more than 4 years: even then they’ve suffered the rapid
decline of Ortiz and the hip injury to Lowell which left
them with short of reliable hitting this year.
Another example of the “buy what’s undervalued” principle
would be the increasing trend for low-budget teams to lock
up their young stars to long-term contracts: that has
worked well for Tampa. But again, everyone’s doing it now.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Billy Beane did not particularly care about this book. It is true he did not completely stonewall Michael Lewis, but if you read Micheal Lewis new afterword it is pretty clear Billy Beane did not go out of his way to help Micheal Lewis.
If anything, Billy Beane disliked the book because he felt it made him look like a maniac. Also, Jeremy Brown may not have made it to the major leagues, but he was a pretty good triple AAA player. Clearly not a master stroke for Billy Beane but hardly the bust some people think he was.
October 19th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
No surprise that the playoffs are between some of the highest paying teams. Would putting salary caps in the MLB impress the fans? Several media perspectives in this video: here.