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Monday, April 25, 2005
Freakonomics: Will the real Billy Beane please stand up!?
Steven Levitt is back with another run at Billy Beane...or to tell the truth, maybe he means Orson Bean.
Whenever I post on baseball, people get very agitated. So I figured it was time to ruffle a few more feathers.
My contention is that the secret to Oakland’s success has little to do with the things described in Moneyball, such as the emphasis on finding the skills in baseball that are good at producing runs, but not properly valued by the market.
Thanks to JCB and his take on it at Sabernomics.
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Sorry, I can't let this go. Try another analogy, because that is just dumb. Heating oil and telephone are not even remotely related to each other.
Offense and defense are both part of outscoring your opponent, and thus winning. Therefore, it is possible to transfer from one to the other and improve your chances of winning.
He is looking like he had a few bad outings.
Hilarious.
You cannot win without offense. It is not discretionary.
I'm sorry if you require things to be explained to you like you are a grammar school kid. But change heating oil to food. I can't live without eating, and I can't live in deathly cold temperatures. I can't achieve a reasonable standard of living without either (or telphony) for that matter.
You were much better off to let it go, because your Dannyism on this point just shows you are incapable of complex thought. There are minimum levels of need at offense, pitching, and defense. There are diminishing returns past certain levels.
You cannot get the job done with a softball team of fielders. You cannot get the job done with a little league offense. You must source in both categories. You must get both levels of production from a single player.
That is just about as basic as baseball gets. I guess all the sophistry and math has gotten you to forget the basics and quibble about non-essential points.
Beaneball/Moneyball/et. al. might work fine if you could source nine fielders and nine DHs. But you can't. Recasting something in your limited world view will not change these facts. If you can't hit, you won't win. If you can't field, you won't win. You can trade one for another, but you can't go on a binge.
Beane finally woke up and realized that the reason his OBP goons were low priced was because they couldn't field. They weren't market inefficient; his spreadsheet just didn't capture the market. Then when he realized his mistake, he started binge spending on defense again thinking he was getting low price. Again, they were priced correctly because they couldn't hit.
Now that's better. That at least makes sense. I am sorry that I hurt you feelings, but it was your choice for an analogy, not mine. I can't read you mind, and I am certainly not going to jump to some unsupported conclusion based on your failure to communicate what you mean. If you are going to post about how dumb people are, how their logic is faulty, and how the "lesser primates" should stand aside while others discuss, you better be prepared for it when you screw up.
600? 650?
Please give us some examples of Beane's binge spending on defense. I'm genuinely struggling to think of anyone.
I don't think you'd qualify any of these as binge spending, per se, but Beane acquired Kotsay and signed Miller last year. Kotsay has turned out to be a pretty damn good hitter, and Miller, though not completely hopeless, was certainly a defensively-minded pickup.
This year, Beane replaced Miller with a more offensively-minded catcher in Kendall. He also picked up Thomas in the Hudson trade, who has been a disaster at the plate so far but managed to hit pretty well for the Bravos last year.
Ellis came up in 2002, I think, but he certainly didn't cost the A's much, and Beane made an effort to complement him with Ginter.
Chavez got that fat deal because he's excellent in the box and in the field. Crosby was inked by the same rationale regarding his future.
Is this based on anything, or have you slipped to a Trederism of assuming dogma is fact?
You are right, I screwed up in thinking that people would know you can't win without offense. Apparently some wish for this hypothesis to be proved. I also screwed up in thinking that people would know that an analogy about sourcing money out of necessity would be clearly apparent. I should have known that many of you don't have that type of intellectual capacity.
Whoa is me for overestimating the intelligence of many of the population of primates.
So, Backlasher, if the A's "can't hit", what would you project as a reasonable over/under for their OPS the rest of the year?
600? 650?
I don't know. I only play the prediction game when absolutely forced too.
I made the prediction and bet that the A's would not win more than 180 games over the next two seasons. I could care less how they manage to accomplish their descent, only that their descent will occur.
Uh huh. And why are the Red Sox playing Manny Ramirez again?
Binge spending on defense? The good defensive players the A's pay big bucks to are Kotsay and Chavez. Those guys can hit a little bit.
The non-hitting defenders? Thomas, Mark Ellis, Chris Singleton. Not a whole lot of money spent there.
Really bold of you. So even if they win 90 games each of the next two years (and I sure hope they don't) you can say "I was right. They are a failure."
I don't like the Red Sox. I forsee a collapse from them. I predict that they win less than 8 games in the next two world series. I look forward to my prediction of failure to be proven true.
That was the bet that was offered. You are going to rag me because an A's fan made that bet on his team.
The only prediction I care about is that the A's will falter now that Beane doesn't have Alderson's crop of talent. The only thing worthwhile is to determine if Beane has found some type of system, or if he was just free riding on available talent.
That's the best you have? The old "you knew what I meant?" One that you have blasted countless times? An excuse straight out of the "lesser primate" handbook? I expected better, though perhaps I shouldn't.
The non-hitting defenders? Thomas, Mark Ellis, Chris Singleton. Not a whole lot of money spent there.
Precisely. As usual Backlasher is making hyperbolic points he can't back up and then ignoring it when he is called on it. Kotsay has alway been a decent hitter whose numbers have been masked somewhat by playing in San Diego.
Beane has his faults as all humans do, but the table spoted on the link above to the sabrnomics site highlights that over the last five years Oakland and Minnesota stand out for their ability to win with limited resources. You can argue rightly that the Twins don't get enough credit. But this knee-jerk anti A's stuff is far more asinine than any of the pro A's stuff that gets posted on this site.
Depends what job. You may not be able to put a championship team together this way, but judging by 1999, you can at least put an interesting team on the field that wins more than it loses. And you can do it on one of the smallest payrolls in the game.
The 1999 A's won 87 games while Zito and Mulder were still in the minors, and Hudson only helped them for half the season. Chavez and Tejada were just end of the order hitters at that time.
If not for the big 3, Billy might have stuck with that team, kept up the "OBP is life" mantra, and fielded the equivalent of the Fielder-Deer-Tettleton Tigers.
What hyperbolic points. I've made the same points I've always made.
(1) Beane is overrated.
(2) Beane's success is largely attributable to inherited talent.
(3) The balance is largely attributable to two pitchers he drafted with high draft picks. He gets credit for those.
(4) That this "Market inefficiency" garbage is garbage.
(5) The A's will decline when they lose the big 3.
The only new item is that the Beane apologists are promoting his genius for getting defense. I am asserting that doesn't matter too much if his defense is at the cost of his offense.
Kotsay is a complete player albeit not a star, and not anything like Miggy. I would have signed Chavez also. I doubt I would have signed Chavez over Tejeda.
But getting Kotsay weakened you at catcher. Some of these examples of not binge spending cost you Tim Freaking Hudson.
Oakland and Minnesota stand out for their ability to win with limited resources. You can argue rightly that the Twins don't get enough credit.
The Twins don't get enough credit. Maybe that is because they don't think of cute phrases to identify their management operations. Maybe that is because Terry Ryan doesn't sound off on everything under the sun. Maybe Ryan should promote his success more.
But this knee-jerk anti A's stuff is far more asinine than any of the pro A's stuff that gets posted on this site.
There is no knee-jerk anti-As stuff. There is only the truth. The truth is the A's are in for a long summer. The team was lead by a group of good young players: Chavez, Tejeda, Zito, Mulder, and Hudson. They got a few good steroid infused years from the greater Giambi.
They did not surround this core with talent. Instead, they tried to be gimmicky and missed their window. All their gimmicks amount to nothing. You give another organization this core and they tend to win championships. The A's haven't. Now that the core is gone, Beane will be exposed.
The Anti-A's stuff is just pointing out what has happened. The A's have failed to win. The A's fans just can't handle the truth.
If you just want to see interesting gimmicks, then by all means go right ahead. Beane could go the route of putting a bunch of really short people out on the field to draw walks. That may entertain for awhile. But, if all the A's are doing is trying to be the league joker, don't come talking about market inefficiencies.
Hold up one minute. I was offered (and took) that same deal and it wasn't 180 games it was 182 - an average of 91 wins per season.
Just in case it's close I want those two games.
Now please carry on.
I quote:
Then when he realized his mistake, he started binge spending on defense again thinking he was getting low price. Again, they were priced correctly because they couldn't hit.
If you can't tell me which players you were referring to, then that seems pretty hyperbolic to me.
In any case, the fair test of the A's is not this season. Whether you like it or not, Beane has tried to trade off 2005 success for future succes by trading Hudson and Mulder. Any success this year would be gravy. I think it will be fair to call this a success if the A's make the playoffs twice in 2006-8 while maintaining the same sort of payroll disadvantage relative to their divisional and wildcard rivals. That's a pretty demanding target for a team with the A's payroll. Would you agree that achieving it would reflect well on the A's management?
I really wish this paragraph from backlasher could have been given more consideration instead of the mindless rush to back him into a corner and "win" whatever the hell argument you folks are having.
This point that the "OBP goons" weren't as inefficiently priced as Beane beleived is one that is deserving of more nuanced consideration from folks arguing in support of Beane and the A's.
It would be so refreshing to have seen a simple acknowledgement of that before the mindless rush to win the so-called debate.
If either side could consistently do that the debate would be much more interesting and fewer people on each side would come looking like Jr high debate club rejects.
If you really believe that the playoffs are a crapshoot and that not trading Hudson/Mulder would have lead to a playoff spot, then Beane punted on 12.5% of a championship.
The decision to potentially reduce that 12.5% to 0 is not something that you can simply ignore because Beane wasn't focused in 2005.
That lost opportunity is a huge part of the equation. Trading a 12.5% chance in 2005 for a 12.5% chance in 2007 isn't genius re-tooling on the fly it's a zero sum transaction.
Missed the "if" I started that semtence with?
Given the Angels look pretty vulnerable, it seems pretty likely that bringing back Hudson and Mulder would have at least made the A's favorites.
Beane supporters have simultaneously argued that:
a) the A's are close contenders this year (some say they will win)
b) the trades lead to the A's taking a step back
c) we don't know that they would have had a better chance at the playoffs by keeping Hudson/Mulder
Those contradictory povs are clearly jsut aimed for convenience in the debate at hand and not any real analysis.
of course nobody, not even Beane, truly believes that the post season is 100% equal crapshoot, just that random luck plays a larger part in the post season than in the regular season.
This point that the "OBP goons" weren't as inefficiently priced as Beane beleived is one that is deserving of more nuanced consideration from folks arguing in support of Beane and the A's.
Well, it would be worthy of more consideration if Backlasher could say who these OBP goons were. For example on the 1999 team, Beane brought in John Jaha, who was presumably not much of a fielding liability as he played DH. He put up an OPS+ of 146 for $525,000. Matt stairs was inherited from the previous team. At a salary of just under $2mn, his 127OPS+ more than for a -5FRAA. Tony Phillips was OBP heavy at 2B for an OPS+ of 103. He was -3FRAA which seems a veritable bargain at $700,000.
I could go on, but don't you think just once the onus might be on Backlasher to back up his hyperbolic arguments with some facts, rather than put the pressure on the rest of us to refute his wild assertions?
Actually yes, I'd like to see nothing but gimmicks by the A's - Entertaining 3rd place teams that pose no threat to the Angels.
The softball A's of 1999 won 87 games. Ask fans of Tampa Bay, Detroit, Kansas City, Washington, Pitsburgh, Cincinnati, Colorado (ie other teams in the A's payroll class) if they'd like a gimmick team. It may not be a championship team, but it beats what any of those teams have had in the last decade.
For the Twins, I agree Ryan deserves equal credit with Beane for what he's done. Both have built fine teams with fewer resources than the big boys.
I can accept the Twins game 5 win in 2002 as balancing out the A's winning 100+ games in tougher divisions, but I can't put him ahead.
Who is making all three of these arguments?
I think it is long overdue that the Twins team, the team which has one of the single most evil men in the world owning it(sorry but god I hate Pohlad) is still able to find a way to make a consistently good quality team. (part of that is smart understanding that his division is weak and he just has to make sure not to sabotage his chances by hiring a Larry Bowa)
I'm surprised that there hasn't been an evaluation of some major undertaking about the Twins success(I imagine that Aaron has done some of course but don't remember seeing anything in a while)
Test it on any player you like this side of Erubiel Durazo. This is just simply ludicrous. The A's apologists come forward claiming Beane finds market inefficiencies in defense. No list of players, nothing to support this statement. The A's apologists come forward claiming Beane previously found market inefficiencies in OBP. No list of players, nothing to support this statement.
I rebut this incorrect point by noting that you have to have both offense and defense to win. I rebut this point by saying that the players weren't incorrectly priced because of their limitations in other areas.
Then, you get your yuk-yuks by claiming I don't post a list of players. Post your list of players, and we can identify whether or not they were some kind of genius move.
You want to talk about Charles Thomas. So who has been listed by the Beane apologists.
Charles Thomas. You want to measure on salary, but you forget he costs you a roster spot and more importantly TIM FREAKIN HUDSON.
Matt Stairs. Here is his salary in Beane tenure:
1999 Oakland Athletics $1,950,000
2000 Oakland Athletics $3,050,000
2001 Chicago Cubs $3,200,000
2002 Milwaukee Brewers $500,000
Looks like the Brewers were exploiting the inefficiency to me.
Mark Kotsay - He cost you All Star catcher Ramon Hernandez and a glaring whole at catcher for the entire season.
The only thing the A's apologists care about is some esoteric dollars/stat ratio. The A's can win the Beane count every year as far as most people are concerned because they are the only one's competing for the Beane Count trophy.
But, I doubt its worthwhile. The A's have underperformed teams in similar situations. They did not have any more success than the Braves before the Braves enlarged payroll. In fact they had less success. They don't outperform the Twins, who may be the only team even trying to compete for this stat trophy.
And you will not see the A's continue to win the title that the saberists care about. They were able to get $/wins because of the slave system that allowed them to give low contracts to their existing stars.
If Beane repeats his level of divisional championships replacing his core with the Bing Crosby and Nick Swishers of the world, then he gets some extra credit for being good at running a K-Mart style organization. But despite all the hardware that Danny is handing out. The A's haven't won anything in 2006, 2007, 2008, etc. Right now, they are a team with a good bullpen, above average defense, and a woeful offense. In previous years, they had weaknesses in bullpen or defense. Not just little weaknesses, but exploitable weaknesses.
The A's will continue to do what they always do in October--that is play golf. Until they make an organizational change, they will just strive to be the best of the little market teams.
It would be nice to see if Beane can really build a team rather than just maximize a worthless stat. However, when he had his chance, he was too chicken to run with the big dogs.
YEAR, RECORD, OPS+, ERA+
1997, 65-97, 100, 83
1998, 74-88, 94, 95
1999, 87-75, 105, 101
2000, 91-70, 111, 103
2001, 102-60, 110, 121
2002, 103-59, 101, 126
2003, 96-66, 102, 117
2004, 91-71, 101, 112
A pretty good chunk of the drop in OPS+ from 2001 to 2002 is the departure of Giambi. The rest of the starting 8 remained largely unchanged with the exception of Damon. I'd say the first real defense-centric year was 2003, with Chris Singleton being the poster boy. The team's OPS+ actually increased, although they did score fewer runs than in 2002.
In 2004, Beane essentially replaced Singleton and Hernandez with Kotsay and Miller. The team's OPS+ was largely unaffected, and they scored more runs than in 2003. Kotsay (114 OPS+ in 2004) narrowly bested Hernandez's 2003 OPS+ of 112 while providing terrific defense at a premium position. Miller (92 OPS+ in 2004) outhit Singleton (75 OPS+ in 2003) by a ton while apparently living up to his good defensive reputation at catcher. The observation that getting Kotsay weakened the A's offensively at catcher is true, but it misses the forest for the trees. They got a huge offensive upgrade in center without sacrificing any D, and they took a modest offensive hit at catcher that was at least partly offset by an improvement in D (assuming Miller is better than Hernandez).
In examining the A's offensive decline, my opinion is that the departures of Giambi and Tejada bear the bulk of the causation, not the supposed recent emphasis on pursuing better defenders.
Just glancing over this thread, I've seen players listed. Kotsay and Miller were mentioned, Singleton, and Ellis too.
"Mark Kotsay - He cost you All Star catcher Ramon Hernandez and a glaring whole at catcher for the entire season."
Miller posted a .262 EQA (league average .248), and pretty good D, hardly a hole at catcher
"It would be nice to see if Beane can really build a team rather than just maximize a worthless stat. However, when he had his chance, he was too chicken to run with the big dogs."
You know, before "Moneyball" came out, everyone loved Beane. Traditionalists loved his willingness to make trades at the deadline and take risks. This team building nonsense is something that was not a mentioned before he upset everyone, probably because it isn't true. You want to see a team that needs building, look at the Yankees. I fail to see how Beane doesn't have a real baseball team right now.
Who did Beane exploit market inefficiencies with Adam S. You are the one demanding strict proof.
At a salary of just under $2mn, his 127OPS+ more than for a -5FRAA.
This is why you miss the point. The A's do nothing to manufacture runs, so their offense will only be the sum of some stat. Inadequate defense across a wide spectrum cost you more than the aggregate of FRAA. Let's don't even talk about baserunning.
More important. If you are looking at 162 games some measure of OPS+ or FRAA might give you an indication of value for a season, but these things become more glaring in shorter intervals.
If you can't field, players with built in rest days and higher stakes are going to put the ball in play and run on you.
If you can't hit, you better not be playing station to station baseball. (Of course the A's have trouble running the bases also, so maybe you do have to play station to station).
Ask fans of Tampa Bay, Detroit, Kansas City, Washington, Pitsburgh, Cincinnati, Colorado (ie other teams in the A's payroll class) if they'd like a gimmick team.
Outside of this little culture of saberists, I don't know any fans of these teams. Why don't you go ask Red Sox fans how it feels to be close to a championship and not get one. Ask them how it feels to win a championship.
I can accept the Twins game 5 win in 2002 as balancing out the A's winning 100+ games in tougher divisions, but I can't put him ahead.
You will after this year, and the only way you wouldn't put him ahead is if you make some excuse about the A's being dominant in 2008. That is the old rally cry of the Mets. That was the kool aid of the Indians (what happened to Phillips and Escobar and all those other sure fire hits).
I'm sure Danny will tell you how they have a team of all stars in the minors. I might even agree with him wrt that catcher from Cal. State. Buy into it if you like, it will keep you from wasting your country club fees.
....
I'm sure Danny will tell you how they have a team of all stars in the minors.
Why do you continue to make things up about me? Your "arguments" are pathetic enough as it is.
And Kotsay has been dealt with over and over again. You weren't upgrading Hernandez's defense. And let's be realistic. Catcher is a premium position. It would be easier to get that .262 EQA there. I find it hard to believe people would argue its easier to find offense from catcher than it is from CF. If you are trying to do a balance sheet, Beane loses on that deal.
And Singleton - This is the same guy who accordign to Primates made the Orioles look like idiots for signing at 1.4 Million to post 262 .296 .410. When Beane signed him at 1.2 Million to give you 245 .301 .340 (and worse defense than with the Orioles), he became a genius for exploiting defensive inefficiencies. I like that genius. In 2004, the market valued Singleton at $0.00, or about the same as I'm valued.
Ellis - Ah now we get to it don't we. The thing that made the Beane legend. A couple of successful trades with the Royals. Undoubtedly, they were good moves, but they aren't as good as history would have you believe. And they sure aren't market inefficient: Let's take a look
1 year rental of Johnny Damon at
Trades that got the A's a 1 year rental of Johnny Damon with an 85 OPS+ for $7,100,000. Just about the same thing that the Red Sox paid for far more production over a far longer period of time.
Trades that got you 3 above average years of Jermaine Dye at this cost:
2001 Kansas City Royals $3,800,000
2002 Oakland Athletics $7,166,667
2003 Oakland Athletics $11,666,667
2004 Oakland Athletics $11,666,667
It also got you one of the worst baseball seasons in memory. That might be slightly exploiting the Royals, but it isn't exploiting the market.
So where are the deals?
We also previously talked about Stairs, yet the Beane apologists are silent on how Brother Bud exploited the market.
If you think that Beane has exploited a market inefficiency, than remove all the reserve clause players. Is Beane getting more $/production from players during their A's tenure than other GMs are getting for the player's tenure at their clubs.
Its just not happening.
I'm not making anything up. You are constantly crowing about these minor league players. Meanwhile your A's are getting shut out more than a stray cat.
And pathetic is talking about market inefficiencies. I'm still waiting to see the players. It is Dye and Long at their prices. Is it Kotsay for the cost of Hernandez. Is it Chris Singleton, Is it Matt Stairs. All these guys look better for less in other places. Maybe that is all just luck, or maybe its something about the approach that leads to diminished performance. Maybe Beane isn't exploiting an inefficiency, maybe he is overpaying. He sure is extracting value from Tim Hudson.
Its a good thing you A's fans don't care about championships.
I think I'm consistently making a case. You are gleaming about the future, and living in the past that included some good players, but where the management was completely incapable of surrounding these players with any type of complimentary talent.
Ortiz and Encarnacion for Dye (half year).
Adkins for Durham (half year), Blanton, Snyder, and Quintanilla.
Stotts and Sierra for Hammond.
Olivo for Bradford.
Arnold for Durazo.
Hinske for Koch.
Koch and Cotts for Foulke (1 year), Valentine, Johnson, Powell, and Putnam.
...
Corey Lidle gave the A's the two best seasons of his career (121 and 119 ERA+) for a below-market rate.
David Justice had a nice little last hurrah (106 OPS+) for them in 2002, improving on his previous season in NY for less than the Yankees paid him in 2001.
Jason Isringhausen made himself a career in Oakland for peanuts.
Chad Bradford has given them some excellent years at a cut rate after being retrieved from Kenny Williams' dustbin.
I just don't think you're looking very hard, Backlasher.
I didn't demand strict proof, just some examples. Nor have I said anything about 'market inefficiencies', although I would say that the market values OBP more than it did in the late 90s and that the A's success has been a contributing factor in that change. It is my contention that Oakland have since 1999 made more good moves than bad moves and have been one of the best run franchises in baseball over that time. Furthermore, that the management deserve credit for that.
A few of the good things they have done include for me: the arb buyouts/long term deals for Mulder, Hudson, Zito, Tejada, Chavez; pickups of Isringhausen, John Jaha, Scott Hatteberg, Miller; trades for Damon, Dye, Foulke, Durazo, Durham, Bradford, Dotel; a good (although not great) system of drafting and player development that has given them the big 3, Harden, Crosby, Hernandez, Ellis, Melhuse; not trying to match the Yankees to keep a franchise player about to decline; trading grieve ahead of his decline.
Of course, there were some poor decisions mixed up in there as well. Contracts handed to Dye, Long, Rhodes (which i thought was a good signing at the time) and Redman were poor decisions, as were a number of smaller contracts along the way such as Eric Karros last year. Although subsequently justified by events, it is unclear to me that the decision to trade Jeremy Giambi was made rationally or could be called good decision making.
And there is a third category of things that are too early to assess, such as the recent trades and contract extensions.
On balance, the good outweighs the bad by a large margin. more so than you could find for most other franchises. I'm less inclined to believe that there is a grand unifying theory to all of it. but the A's do a better jobof intelliugent decision-making and maximising their resources than most franchises. Would you at least concede that?
[em}Inadequate defense across a wide spectrum cost you more than the aggregate of FRAA
Why?
Mark Kotsay - He cost you All Star catcher Ramon Hernandez and a glaring whole at catcher for the entire season.
If Damien Miller was a hole at catcher, I shudder to think how you would desribe the catching situation at half the MLB franchises.
Guthrie and Yates for Justice and cash.
Cairo for Hinske.
D'Amico, Rigby, and Stein for Appier.
He also deserves credit for hedging, realizing that he may have been catching lightning in a bottle in a few cases, by stashing useful bench players / potential alternatives (Gant, Myers, Mabry, Ellis).
Good trade and a win, but not a landslide. Grieve outperformed Damon over that period for less money. Teahan is gone. Ellis is marginal and fragile. Swisher will likely K more than Adam Dunn and not put up nearly the same numbers. Lidle is really the value and I don't think its a market inefficiency at:
1999 Tampa Bay Devil Rays $210,000
2002 Oakland Athletics $2,550,000
2003 Toronto Blue Jays $5,350,000
2004 Cincinnati Reds $2,750,000
Its certainly not the kind of inefficiency you guys like to crow about.
Ortiz and Encarnacion for Dye (half year).
Goody, goody. A half year of Dye, and then overpay the he11 out of him. Good trade, no market inefficiency.
Adkins for Durham (half year), Blanton, Snyder, and Quintanilla.
Sorry Blanton was drafted. So you have a pitcher who has put up an above average year and a near average year going one direction for a half year of Durham. Sorry, no go.
Stotts and Sierra for Hammond.
You mean the guy that the Braves signed to a minor league contract to put up one of the best releiver seasons ever. The guy they paid four times as much for to get about one third of the performance. Great exploitation there Beane man.
Olivo for Bradford.
The starting catcher for the Seattle Mariners?
Arnold for Durazo.
The guy that can't field with these salary progressions:
2002 Arizona Diamondbacks $375,000
2003 Oakland Athletics $1,065,000
2004 Oakland Athletics $2,100,000
Still a decent trade.
Hinske for Koch.
The starter for the Blue Jays.
Koch and Cotts for Foulke (1 year), Valentine, Johnson, Powell, and Putnam.
Good trade.
How about
terrence long and Jeremy Bonderman and tim hudson
...
The biggest thing is that this is typical Danny, and typical A's apologists. You want to talk about "market inefficiencies" then when you realize that you don't have an argument, you will move to trades. Then if you don't have an argument, you will move to wins. Then when you get your poor performance thrown at you, you will claim the other side is misdirecting and unresponsive.
Beane has made two or three good deals. So has just about every GM in the business. His good deals aren't nearly as good as they are reported. His bad deals are proclaimed as genius then swept under the rug.
Then there is all the talk about market inefficiencies that just doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Then there is all this talk about drafting philosophy that has you wasting draft picks on fat catchers.
The A's were nothing more than a team that had a good group of young players all develop at the same time. Most of those players were drafted by Alderson. Beane failed to surround them with what it took to win.
Instead, he free rode on Alderson's success, and then tried to claim his gimmick was producing something useful. His ego chased all the good baseball people out of town.
Now his fans are left to hold the bag of broken promises and snake oil.
I guess your "worthless softball player" comments only go one way.
Teahan is gone.
As the main piece for Dotel.
Swisher will likely K more than Adam Dunn and not put up nearly the same numbers.
He must be terrible if he's not as good as Dunn.
Lidle is really the value and I don't think its a market inefficiency at:
1999 Tampa Bay Devil Rays $210,000
2002 Oakland Athletics $2,550,000
2003 Toronto Blue Jays $5,350,000
2004 Cincinnati Reds $2,750,000
Looks like the A's got great value and then cut bait at exactly the right time.
So you have a pitcher who has put up an above average year and a near average year going one direction for a half year of Durham. Sorry, no go.
Huh? 71.1 career IP with a 4.67 ERA. Have you ever heard of Quintanilla?
You mean the guy that the Braves signed to a minor league contract to put up one of the best releiver seasons ever. The guy they paid four times as much for to get about one third of the performance. Great exploitation there Beane man.
Is that not a good trade for the A's? Seriously...
The starting catcher for the Seattle Mariners?
A 26 year old with a career .230/.282/.387 line.
Still a decent trade.
You would absolutely rip Beane if he was on the other end of this trade.
The starter for the Blue Jays.
Uh, yeah. Who do you think would have given the A's more value: Hinske or Koch?
You want to talk about "market inefficiencies" then when you realize that you don't have an argument, you will move to trades.
First, I haven't mentioned market inefficiencies. You're the one that keeps talking about it. Second, I was responding to your question: So where are the deals?
The rest of your post is more useless drivel with no real point or evidence.
Then prove it. You are talking about examples. Are they doing this with Matt Stairs. How about Terrence Long. Your man Beane is the one who kicked Bellhorn to the curb. They really had to bid hard to get the 4 for April of Bobby Kielty.
It is my contention that Oakland have since 1999 made more good moves than bad moves and have been one of the best run franchises in baseball over that time.
Contend all you want. Your chance of really contending that premise is about the same chance the A's have of contending for the world series.
the arb buyouts/long term deals for Mulder, Hudson, Zito, Tejada, Chavez
Equally balanced by the contracts to the Longs, Singletons, Hattebergs, etc.
trades for Damon, Dye, Foulke, Durazo, Durham, Bradford, Dotel
I will not repeat the analysis on all of these players, but how is an 85 OPS from Damon a good result.
On balance, the good outweighs the bad by a large margin. more so than you could find for most other franchises.
Not true, and not even close to being true.
Everyone is know enamoured over Chad Bradford. If finding 1 relief pitcher off the dustbin is a good deal, what does that make Schuerholz?
I'm less inclined to believe that there is a grand unifying theory to all of it. but the A's do a better jobof intelliugent decision-making and maximising their resources than most franchises. Would you at least concede that?
No, the A's have developed some good players. As I have already shown, most of these deals involve paying players more money than they got prior to coming to the A's and more money than they got after leaving the A's for less production.
Stairs, Phillips, Jaha, Long, Velarde, Saenz, Menechino, Jer. Giambi and Hatteberg
Finally someone attempting to make an argument. Stairs has been dealt with. More money and less production.
That's a long list of guys in which only two can pretend to play defense. Hatteberg is significantly overpaid. I don't see a bargain in Phillips. He was given a raise at 40 to do about the same thing he did with the Mets. Long has to be a failure, along with Little G. maybe there was a bargain in Saenz. There was no bargain price on Velarde, he got the most moeny from Oakland.
You screwed up Danny, and just because you owned up to it doesn't mean Backlasher doesn't get to hold it over your head every day for the next few years.
1999 Tampa Bay Devil Rays $210,000
2002 Oakland Athletics $2,550,000
2003 Toronto Blue Jays $5,350,000
2004 Cincinnati Reds $2,750,000
Its certainly not the kind of inefficiency you guys like to crow about.
Why not? Look at his stats.
1999 isn't much of a bargin, seeing as he only pitched 5 innings. In 2002, he pitched 192 innings with a 119 ERA+. At double his salary the next year, Lidle has 192.7 IP and an 82 ERA+. Dropping back down to a salary equal to oakland paid him, he pitches 211.3 innings at an 84 ERA+.
Seems to me that Oakland got a hell of a lot more value than anyone else did. Why isn't this a good example?
A mis-google.
I guess your "worthless softball player" comments only go one way.
Grieve is a rock, but claiming you got some value from Damon is just dishonest.
As the main piece for Dotel.
The save blower. Of course you can google us some sim stats to try and argue he is league average in save conversion rate.
He must be terrible if he's not as good as Dunn.
He is terrible if he can't hit. I haven't seen him enough to know. But he does K and he isn't hitting for average and he isn't walking. That is why its not even worth talking to lesser Primates. You have already annoited Swisher as an all star, and you won't even try to defend it.
Looks like the A's got great value and then cut bait at exactly the right time.
It looks like they paid a heck of a lot more than his previous value, had the Jays be moronic, and then realize they were paying his market rate.
Is that not a good trade for the A's? Seriously...
Like I said, moving to trades because you have nothing on inefficiency.
The rest of your post is more useless drivel with no real point or evidence.
I'm not the one misgoogling and changing arguments. I guess you don't have a single market inefficiency. It doesn't surprise me.
I look at the macro, we have a team that has a below average payroll every year, and still wins 90+ for 5 years straight. That's a good run. Could have been better, could have been a lot worse.
Good job, Beane. Now just stay out of the Angels way for the next 5 years.
Jesus, are you this dense. Yes, Oakland got more $/value from him. But they weren't paying some below market rate. He got a lucky deal, then returned to the rate the A's were paying him.
Besides, I have given you numerous examples of how the A's have gotten less $/value on their supposed market inefficiencies. You have found one example.
But the most telling item. Beane hasn't claimed some super secret for market inefficiencies in pitching. His snake oil is about OBP or fielding defense.
I don't think Cory Lidle provided either one of these things.
Phillips was probably one of the best 10 2nd Basemen that year. The one dependable trait throughout his career was his walk rate and so the A's decided to give a 40 year-old 2nd baseman $700,000 to walk a bunch - and he did. As far as your contention that he was hired to do what he did with the Mets, that's dead wrong. The A's gave Phillips more than twice the PA's, as they were able to properly identify that the guy could play.
Long has to be a failure, along with Little G.
I said "at various points". Long's '00 was quite good, just as Giambi's '01 was.
There was no bargain price on Velarde, he got the most moeny from Oakland.
Maybe that wasn't a market inefficiency exploited, but they did trade for him when he was oldish and considered pricey, largely based on his ability to get on base. He was merely properly valued by Oakland, not exploited, but there is something to be said for that. To boot, they realized Velarde was getting up in age and so after his excellent 1/2 of 1999 and 2000, they traded him to Texas for Harang (and one other too I think). Not a bad little flip.
The more I think about it, Velarde and Phillips really are phenomenal examples of their market savvy. Both were old 2nd Baseman, something that, Jeff Kent aside, has to be one of the least desireable asset classes (if you will let me run with the analogy a bit) in baseball. But both got on base at a nice clip and were well worth the fliers taken by Oakland.
Don't forget the Close Du Jour thing, which is probably his most successful "gimmick."
Taylor -> Izzy -> Koch -> Foulke -> Dotel
That's quite a run. And the save blower is now 27-for-33 (in real live actual baseball games!) since coming to Oakland.
Good job, Beane.
I think that Rallymonkey has nailed it here. Yes beane inherited some good players from the previous regime, but he's done plenty of other things right. This is generally a well run ballclub.
good luck in Vegas, Danny. I'm off to watch some real baseball so am now leaving this thread as well.
I think the trade was better than that, obviously, but you're asking Backlasher to defend a rather simplified version of his argument. (It was pretty silly to call Miller a black hole, though.)
I've responded to Damien Miller. But if you want more than you had plenty of places where Miller was outperformed. You had other places where people were developing catchers. Beane faired ok in the Miller pickup. But considering he had Ramon Hernandez, who out hit and outplayed Miller, and considering that its easier to outperform Miller in CF, it doesn't look to hot.
But I really like this, you made that post approximately how long ago. There is a whole flood of Beane apologists out here making at least ten different arguments. If you wait more than thirty minutes, you claim the other side isn't being responsive.
Some of the arguments are just stupid, like Walkoffs making bad claims about the analogy. Some are just Treder lists, that don't hold up under scrutiny and take a long time to respond too. Then you have Danny who will just google up bad information. You have to spend time checking and showing that he isn't even correct in his response. Then you get ridiculed for pointing out he rarely even is correct about his posts.
I don't think many of you can do this, but here is a challenge for all the Beane apologists. See if you can stick to one subject.
Since Moneyball has come out, you have been clamoring about market inefficiencies. See if you can prove market inefficiency. Better yet, see if you can do it with defense or OBP. You have been claiming this for a very long time. See if you can actually show it rather than claim the other side doesn't show you anything. Every supposed inefficiency regards a player that was paid less on both sides of the A's and who generally performed better away from the A's. If this is Beane's strenght make a case.
When we deal with this, we can do a balance sheet on the trades. We can do a balance sheet on the acquisitions.
Taylor -> Izzy -> Koch -> Foulke -> Dotel
Like I said, see if you can prove inefficiency first.
Then, we can deal with the fact that you left out Arthur Rhodes and Dotel's save rate was abysmal. We can deal with these numbers from Foulke:
2002 Chicago White Sox $4,000,000
2003 Oakland Athletics $6,000,000
2004 Boston Red Sox $3,500,000
We can also deal with the fact that Koch and Foulke were already closers.
And the save blower is now 27-for-33 (in real live actual baseball games!) since coming to Oakland.
81 %, that is something to brag about. That is, if you use Danny's sim stats.
It sure as he11 could have been a lot better, especially considered the talent that was trapped via the reserve clause. Let's see how Beane does without Alderson's draft class.
And I'm fine with the macro numbers. 3 out of 5 division championships. No playoff series wins, and a roster that had Zito, Hudson, Mulder, Giambi, Tejeda, Chavez, et. al.
I love the lowered expectations on those macro numbers.
I think that Rallymonkey has nailed it here. Yes beane inherited some good players from the previous regime, but he's done plenty of other things right. This is generally a well run ballclub.
He's also done a lot of things wrong. The things he claims he has done right are just bogus. The things he has done right are blown out of proportion and similar to other GMs. But you will see this year. Get used to being shutout.
I still don't think any of you will take the challenge.
I think the trade was better than that, obviously, but you're asking Backlasher to defend a rather simplified version of his argument.
That is because most of these Beane lovers can't do anything else.
Velarde and Phillips really are phenomenal examples of their market savvy
Velarde
1996 California Angels $800,000
1997 Anaheim Angels $800,000
1998 Anaheim Angels $850,000
1999 Anaheim Angels $1,600,000
2000 Oakland Athletics $3,050,000
2001 Texas Rangers $3,150,000
2002 Oakland Athletics $1,000,000
In 2000 and 2002 he didn't even put up a league average OPS. His defense was gone by 2002 and he put up a 73 OPS. That is not savvy.
Tony Phillips played less than half his games at 2b in his 40 year old tour with the A's. He was so suspect at defense even Beane wouldn't stick him there at the height of his softball team defense. If you want league average OPS and a .244 BA average from an OF, I don't think you are being very savvy.
It's not about outperforming Miller in CF, it's bout outperforming Singleton. You can't have it both ways, by first comparing Kotsay to Hernandez and then Miller to Hernandez. It was basically Singleton+Hernandez+Long for Miller+Kotsay. That's a huge upgrade offensively (and it's not clear whether it's an upgrade or downgrade defensively, but it's probably not a big move in either direction, as all four starters are/were considered very good defensively).
Hernandez outhit Kotsay, Long outhit Miller.
It's already been done with OBP. I'm not going to Google it for you.
Every supposed inefficiency regards a player that was paid less on both sides of the A's and who generally performed better away from the A's.
That is just patently false. When Lidle was cheap, he pitched horribly for Tampa Bay. I don't know what he got paid in 2001 (bb-ref doesn't list it), but he was excellent for Oakland in 2001 and 2002 at ~$2M. The Jays paid more than twice that for him to suck in 2003. The Reds and Phils paid him about the same $2M+ to suck in 2004. He hasn't been cheaper since he left the A's, and he hasn't been better.
The Yankees paid a portion of Justice's salary in 2002. He was better and cheaper in 2002 for Oakland than he was in 2001 for NY.
Izzy sucked in his cheap years for the Mets, excelled in Oakland at a WAY below-market rate (for 2 of his 3 A's seasons), and has continued to excel in St. Louis. In 2003 and 2004, he was paid more than double the most he ever made in Oakland.
Bradford gave the A's three tremendous years for chump change before slipping a bit last year. Rincon has given the A's 2+ very good seasons for essentially the same salary he had in Cleveland.
Then, we can deal with the fact that you left out Arthur Rhodes and Dotel's save rate was abysmal.
Oops, that was a bad oversight. Can't blame Oakland for wanting to forget about Rhodes, though. Heh. Dotel's save rate last year was fine.
We can deal with these numbers from Foulke:
2002 Chicago White Sox $4,000,000
2003 Oakland Athletics $6,000,000
2004 Boston Red Sox $3,500,000
I think Oakland got some help from Chicago in paying for Foulke, but I may be wrong. Also, the deal he got from Boston is backloaded. He's making $7M this year and $7.25M in 2006. Incidentally, backloading is actually a consistent source of somewhat misleading data in a bunch of the salary figures you've posted.
We can also deal with the fact that Koch and Foulke were already closers.
Foulke lost the closer's job in 2002 despite pitching pretty much just as well as he always had, which is part of why Oakland was able to get him.
81 %, that is something to brag about.
Foulke converted 82% last year. Did he suck too?
Hernandez 2,937,500
Kotsay $5,500,000
Miller $3,000,000
Long 3,575,000
And that Long money is because Beane already fukked up his contract.
When it comes to position players, they just perform better and cost less when not in Oaktown.
The only way you have that 90 win performance at the cost is because of the core of cheap reserve clause players. Its nothing that any team (Yankees, Braves) could have done with a core if they didn't try to win the world series. I doubt its something that even the worst GM could have done with that core.
If Beane can consistently develop talent then he will be closing in on what Schuerholtz has done. And he should get some credit. He gets credit for not fukking up that talent as well, but its mostly Alderson's talent.
He doesn't get credit for (1) winning trades or (2) exploiting market inefficiencies when he hasn't done those things.
People are lauding the Kotsay trade. If you really look at it, it is about an even deal or advantage Padres. He gets special status for his deals with the Royals. They were good but not great. He got nothing out of Damon and he overpaid for the Dye production.
If you can lie about the situation and put Blanton in the deal then it might look better, but it was just a good trade. Not even in the same league as McGriff for nothing or Paul O'Neill for some blankets and beads and the remains of Roberto Kelly.
Long (101 OPS+ in 2004) "outhit" Miller in a whole whopping 307 PAs. Miller had 436 and posted a better OBP.
I'm guessing you won't back up these statements (or their implications) either.
*sigh*
Just like Treder, confusing your aesthetics for real world value. At least Treder's a decent writer who will put his cards on the table though.
Then we can deal with that when the money was earned. As for backloading, feel free to show some kind of adjustment that always has to be done with the A's. If you have an economic argument make it.
It's already been done with OBP. I'm not going to Google it for you.
No it isn't and I'm not going to repeat the argument showing that the proof is assinine. If you can make an argument, make it. No need to google.
That is just patently false.
BZZT, but thanks for playing. Like I said, see if you can stay on one subject. Let's see the OBP market inefficiencies on the OBP, then defense, then we can deal with the pitchers.
Lidle was a good deal. Bradford was a good deal. How many teams don't have a Lidle or Bradford over the course of the last six years. How many do the Tiwns have, how many do the Braves have.
Do I gather that you completely give up on some ability to get market inefficiency on offense and fielding defense because you go to the pitchers. I'll deal with the pitchers later.
Like I thought, either you aren't bright enough to stay on point or you have nothing.
Foulke lost the closer's job in 2002 despite pitching pretty much just as well as he always had, which is part of why Oakland was able to get him.
81 %, that is something to brag about.
Foulke converted 82% last year. Did he suck too?
Foulke underperformed what you need from your closer, which is one of the reasons he lost his job in Chicago. 81% is not an acceptable rate, and its not close to league average unless you use Danny's sim league.
This has all been done before; I was part of it; and I'm not going to google it for you.
See if you can stay on point. I know you can't. There is not one of you that can even think about how to craft the argument.
*sigh*
Just like Treder, confusing your aesthetics for real world value. At least Treder's a decent writer who will put his cards on the table though.
I'll be happy too, but one thing at a time. Are there any takers on market inefficiency. Any at all. Even one. Come on, there is bound to be one Beane lover with at least some ability.
After that, we tackle pitchers. Then we will deal with commutability, additive properties etc.
Of course if you want to just post your slams without even giving the other side a chance feel free. I'm not shy and I'm not going anywhere.
Is there anybody else who wants to claim nonresponsiveness. I actually love this, since I've been straight out on this thread for a long period now.
And gback, that one is a little unfair from you. I don't run away like Treder. I haven't well said one person. Compare me to Ross, call me a troll, do one of you silly laughs. Calling me Treder is just unfair.
That's sad Mattbert. Those extra PAs were a lot of outs. Miller had a 92 OPS remember. And goodness gracious the OBP is almost a draw. Even if you had some weird statistical correlation thingmabob that is just an ugly argument.
As a player ages, of course he'll make more money on his ascent and less money as he fizzles out. The question is whether Beane is spending his money efficiently. Instead of name dropping, why not just look at WS/$ on the A's. If you think it's just the big 3, why not do the same, but removing the top 3 pitchers on each team.
Also, please don't only compare the A's to the Twins or the Braves. The Braves are one of the finest run franchises in the history of the sport. The Twins are an extremely well run franchise in a poor division.
Those franchises have their extreme strengths (scouts, coaching staff, etc.) as does any team that has performed as well as these three teams. Without debating whether Beane is the greatest GM in the game, what are his strengths? How does he really compare to other GMs?
That some people have an inflated or deflated idea of how good a GM Beane is should not affect objective analysis. Both sides are often guilty of this fallacy. Look at how the non-critical thinking self-proclaimer sabermetric thinkers treated Ichiro. Look at how Lo Duca has been both overhyped and unfairly ridiculed as a unvaluable player.
Ok, fine. Foulke delivered more value for less money with the Sox than he did with the A's. Even if you baseline the entire contract that is still true. The A's paid more and got less.
The same is true for all these players.
Instead of name dropping, why not just look at WS/$ on the A's. If you think it's just the big 3, why not do the same, but removing the top 3 pitchers on each team.
Because on this subject, the argument is not the Big 3. If we are talking about WS/$, you have to exclude away players that are reserve clause prisoners and who are also really good.
The Beane argument always comes back to WS/$. If you could go back to '91 or '95, couldn't you construct a team with the Braves and Yankees that would outperform on WS/$. The question now is whether Beane can do it without the reserve clause prisoners.
Also, please don't only compare the A's to the Twins or the Braves. The Braves are one of the finest run franchises in the history of the sport. The Twins are an extremely well run franchise in a poor division.
Why not, Beane is suppose to be a genius. He was out inefficiencied on Stairs by the Brewers. If he is suppose to be the best there is, why not compare him to his supposed peers. Nobody has written a book about Cashman, Ryan, or Schuerholtz.
Without debating whether Beane is the greatest GM in the game, what are his strengths? How does he really compare to other GMs?
He didn't ruin his young talent, and for awhile, he didn't cash out too early. He is not real good at managing people. Most everything else is incomplete and has been very distorted.
Um, talk about staying on point. The point is that comparing the first year of backloaded salary to the last year of another is meaningless. The AAV of Foulke's Boston deal is much greater than that of his Chicago/Oakland deal, the final year of which I believe Oakland had help paying. Are you really going to be so obfuscatory as to suggest that he isn't making more money since he left Oakland? I haven't the first clue where you pulled the idea of some team-wide adjustment from. I was talking about the Foulke contracts and only the Foulke contracts.
No it isn't and I'm not going to repeat the argument showing that the proof is assinine. If you can make an argument, make it. No need to google.
I'm familiar with your objections, and I think you're wrong. That study convinced me and whole bunch of people whose opinions and reasoning I respect greatly. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
BZZT, but thanks for playing. Like I said, see if you can stay on one subject. Let's see the OBP market inefficiencies on the OBP, then defense, then we can deal with the pitchers.
Like I say, I consider the OBP question a closed case. You want to keep squawking about it, that's your prerogative. I moved on to the pitchers because I think that's the clearest case where your assertion that "every" A's player that had been mentioned either got paid more by the A's or performed better after leaving them was a complete joke. (Plus, I don't understand defense hardly at all.)
Lidle was a good deal. Bradford was a good deal. How many teams don't have a Lidle or Bradford over the course of the last six years. How many do the Tiwns have, how many do the Braves have.
Beats me. That wasn't your contention. You said all these supposed good deals for the A's weren't good deals at all. I gave you four examples of pitchers who were good deals. I chose pitchers because I understand pitching better than other facets of the game.
Foulke underperformed what you need from your closer, which is one of the reasons he lost his job in Chicago. 81% is not an acceptable rate, and its not close to league average
Foulke was 11-for-14 before losing his closer's job in 2002, and Boston seemed to do just fine with him at the back end last year.
FYI, league average saves conversion rate for 2004 was 68%.
So exchanging Hernandez and Long for Kotsay and Miller netted the A's five wins. Some of that is because Hernandez missed some time to injury, I believe, but there it is.
I hate to use "WARP Factors" and everything, BL, but there has to be some kind of objective measure.
It may be a bit foggy, but it's not ugly. The extra PAs at a higher OBP constitute a contribution by Miller that closes the gap between Long's higher slugging. I know you hate WARP and all those alphabet soup metrics, so I was trying to stay away from those. Looks like BHW let that horse out of the barn, though. Oh well.
He is looking like he had a few bad outings.
Well, I said before the season that I didn't think he'd even last the year as the Brave's closer. I'll have a nice big "I told you so" waiting for when he fails and loses the job.
You didn't respond to a ####### thing. You said he was a black hole. He wasn't, and until you prove otherwise, you're just wrong. I'm not here to argue about Billy Beane's ability as a GM, I want to know how in the world Damian Miller was a black hole at catcher last year.
LOL, you refer to an unspecified study and then talk about agreeing to disagree. That is just pathetic. This isn't aesthetics, this is objective. If you can't make an argument don't pretend like the argument is over. I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I know of one study that says that a point of OBP per $ value of contract is higher now, but it fails to baseline against most any other measure or inflation. At most it shows that OBP is a presently better predictor than batting average for salary. It does nothing to show that the A's capitalized on any type of market.
Um, talk about staying on point.
Err, um, hrmpff and whatever other gutteral expressions you want to make with your advocacy. I respond to your post where you can't stay on topic, and you accuse me of going off topic. Like I said, make an argument if you can. I know you are not capable of doing it. If you want to cite some ghost study, which I doubt you could even understand, as proving your point its just pathetic. Its worse than Danny who will at least google and get it wrong.
If you have anything at all, point it out. I'm not sure what you are trying to say about Foulke. What measure that you think is conclusive. If you have something, post it. If not, then there is no "agree to disagree" You are either right or wrong about a market inefficiency being exploited. If you can't understand that its not a matter of opinion, then you are just really wasting everyone's time. I've seen shallow comebacks, but that is the worse. Its like Beavis and Butthead, Even your phrasology is like Beavis and Butthead:
"Umm, yeah. Some smart guy proved that your wrong. So your wrong, Ok."
That study convinced me and whole bunch of people whose opinions and reasoning I respect greatly.
Well, we have already dealt with you, but if what you need is solace in some camp, then that says just about all we need to know. Let those people come out here and make arguments. It would be a whole lot better than most everything this side of Waterloo and E-X.
Like I say, I consider the OBP question a closed case.
You haven't even opened.
I chose pitchers because I understand pitching better than other facets
And I'll deal with pitching. I can only do so much at a time.
FYI, league average saves conversion rate for 2004 was 68%.
That's sweet. What was it for closers?
Kotsay provided roughly 2.5 more wins than Hernandez last year. (BPro has a 7.5-5.1 lead in WARP1, and had a lead of 8 in Win Shares). Damian Miller had 4.4 WARP1 against Long's 2.0, and beat him in Win Shares 15-5. So that's another 2.5 wins, roughly.
Finally, at least someone trying to make an argument. So what happens if you take into account the people playing when they aren't playing. Are you assuming zero production from the replacements. Not everybody has dreck like Kielty on the bench.
Long hit better than Miller. Hernandez hit better than Kotsay. Its pretty simple. They cost less too.
Unless you believe they could not play as much as the other players, then you have better production and it cost you less money.
On what planet?
I know this is a huge cognitive leap, but if OBP correlates better to salary now than it did when the A's were specifically targeting cheap players with good OBPs, doesn't that at least suggest that they were exploiting a market inefficiency. No, the picture isn't complete. Yes, you need to consider the other reasons why those players were available for less. But you can't deny that the pursuit of low-cost OBP to supplement the existing core of good young players was the driver in Beane's ability to produce some very good offensive teams on a tight budget.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say about Foulke.
The A's got him from Chicago for a song because Manuel gave up on him after he blew a couple saves and pitched crappy early in the year. The A's also didn't pay as much for him as the bb-ref salary figures you keep quoting indicate because, depsite getting the best of Williams on the talent side of the deal, Beane got him to subsidize Foulke to boot. You were saying Foulke pitched better for Boston for less, which is technically true, but it ignores the cash Oakland got from Chicago in the deal, the AAV of the two Foulke contracts under consideration, and obfuscates the analysis (which was not particularly illuminating to begin with).
What was it for closers?
Anywhere from 79-88%, depending on what you use as your floor for defining a guy as a closer.
I'm not sure that I ever endorsed Kolb, but you can have your "I told you so" without any argument from me.
"Hernandez hit better than Kotsay."
On what planet
This one OPS+ 116 to OPS+114.
You didn't respond to a ####### thing. You said he was a black hole. He wasn't, and until you prove otherwise, you're just wrong. I'm not here to argue about Billy Beane's ability as a GM, I want to know how in the world Damian Miller was a black hole at catcher last year.
Whatever, if your happy with a 92 OPS+ for a catcher when you could have 116 OPS+, more power to you. Especially when the upgrade you got was in the OF, where its a little easier to find hitters.
You created a problem at catcher that you caused you to go get an 8.5 million dollar fix. That's a hole.
But the offer is still open. Mattbert has cited some ghost study. Anybody think they can get a market inefficiency with OBP or with defensive fielding? Anyone, last call.
First of all, EQA, which is a more accurate measure of a hitters production, gives Kotsay the edge. Second of all, those 220 abs mean a whole hell of a lot. That's a pretty bush league arguement, pointing to two points of OPS+ when you know Kotsay played an third of a season.
"Whatever, if your happy with a 92 OPS+ for a catcher"
With Miller's defense, yeah, I'd be happy.
"Especially when the upgrade you got was in the OF, where its a little easier to find hitters."
Did you forget that Kotsay is one of the two or three best defenders in the league out there?
No, it doesn't come close to suggesting this, because your premise is faulty. The A's weren't targeting below market value players. They were generally paying the players more than before or after they arrived and generally getting less production.
Anywhere from 79-88%, depending on what you use as your floor for defining a guy as a closer.
So if I set a very inclusive floor, Blotel is near the bottom of the barrel.
The A's were overpaying for OBP.
And why was it that the A's were doing this. When Beane was fetching Alderson's coffee the Yankees were overpaying for OBP. The difference was the Yankees OBP threats could also do a little more than just get on base with a walk.
Moreover, it coincides with the steroid era. When you got guys being given walks because they pop them out of the park, it naturally pushes the study in a direction.
You keep talking about the A's and "cheaply". OK, who are you talking about that did not come up through the A's system. Do you still think Hatteberg is some bargain. All of the A's OBP goons made less before and after their stay with the A's. Most performed better away from the A's.
If you have examples show them. The fact that the interest rate is falling doesn't mean people with bad credit and a lack of personal finance knowledge are going to get a better credit card rate. Believe it or not, some people still pay double digit mortgage rates.
The fact that the median interest rate went up, doesn't mean you got a good deal on your mortgage. You may have still paid too much if you didn't know how to value the deal.
Also, present conditions don't necessarily mean that value is correctly attributed. Many of the goons are gone.
Beane didn't just pay what the market would bear. He overpaid. And he extracted less value for his $ than his fellow GMs. If Stairs was such a bargain, he should have held him for a couple of years.
The only reason that Beane has good WS/$ is because he could pay monopoly rents on good young talent. That good young talent is now gone.
Jesus, if I go to a company that has spent the last 10 years heavily loaded in R&D;, light in sales, and has a good patent portfolio, then I can pull off the same trick for awhile. I can leave things as they are and collect license royalties; it doesn't mean that I increase market penetration to the level I should (by analogy championships). If I don't increase market penetration then sooner or later someone will design around me or my patents will expire.
I can increase my sales force, my marketing, etc. and get the penetration and develop brand, or I can sit back and talk about my super-duper customer service policy. It would still be bunk.
If my scientists were that good, I could probably repeat the cycle and make good revenues, but I wouldn't be optimizing my company. More likely than not, the portfolio would just deteriote.
You didn't upgrade your defense at that position.
Did you forget that Kotsay is one of the two or three best defenders in the league out there?
Did you forget Hernandez's defense. Did you not notice what it took to try to get back to his level of offense. Did you not see the difference in cash. Everybody wants to whine about Beane's budget. He11, keep Hernandez, forget Kotsay and Kendall, dig down for 3 more million and get Carlos Beltran.
Then, let's talk about pitching.
Beane deals:
Acquired P Mike Fetters from Cleveland in exchange for P Steve Karsay.
That looks awesome doesn't it.
Acquired minor league OF Terrence Long and minor league P Leonar Vasquez from New York-NL in exchange for P Kenny Rogers.
No when to fold them.
Acquired minor league IF Adam Morrissey from Chicago-NL in exchange for IF Mark Bellhorn.
Not a pitcher, but I bet Beane is saying "stop me oh oh oh stop me. Stop me if a make a trade like this eyesore"
Then of course there is Bonderman Hudson and Mulder.
So what have you got, Chad Bradford, Ted Lilly, Foulke and Koch.
All were good trades, but pretty balanced by Rogers, Karsay, Bonderman, Hudson and Mulder. That is unless, like Danny, you are handing out hardware to Juan Cruz. Foulke and Koch weren't exactly discounts either.
But lets just pick a random team, I was on the Padres. I don't even have to go back 7 years to find they get these guys for nothing:
Rod Beck
Lindebreck
Steve Reed
Alan Embree
Adam Eaton
Hitchcock
for nothing. Heck I can play Danny's six degrees of seperation and claim Reed is how they flipped themselves into Brian Giles (by using Jason Bay in the middle).
I think you can take any team and find a few good pitching deals and a few bad pitching deals over the last seven years (except maybe the Braves)
Were the Padres exploiting market inefficiencies with Steve Reed?
This has been explored--part of the Foulke pick-up was a partial payment of his salary. Foulke's backloaded RS contract should be averaged with a slight discount for the economic realities of a backloaded contract.
But beyond that, comparing year to year salaries of players is not productive because a player is different from year to year. To give an extreme example Barry Bonds at age 20 is not worth the same as Bonds (after steroids?) at 37. If you pay Bonds $10mil at 20 you got gypped, if you pay him $12mil at 37, you got an amazing deal.
When a GM is filling out a roster, he cannot choose between 2003 Foulke and 2004 Foulke, he/she (will Kim Ng ever get a shot?) can only choose between 2003 Foulke and 2003 Billy Koch (or anyone else in the market).
So it's fair to say, "Why did Depo pay that much for Lowe instead of less for Hernandez (P) or more for Pedro?" and then support why you think he overpaid.
But when Beane picks up a play in 2003, you can't ask, "Why didn't he pick up the same player, 2004 version when he was cheaper?"
So I see your questioning of the Hernandez (C) Long for Kotsay/Miller. But even with that one, remember, he already made the bad Long contract, so don't double count that screw up--it's already a sunk cost.
The Beane argument always comes back to WS/$. If you could go back to '91 or '95, couldn't you construct a team with the Braves and Yankees that would outperform on WS/$. The question now is whether Beane can do it without the reserve clause prisoners.
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Also, please don't only compare the A's to the Twins or the Braves. The Braves are one of the finest run franchises in the history of the sport. The Twins are an extremely well run franchise in a poor division.
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Why not, Beane is suppose to be a genius. He was out inefficiencied on Stairs by the Brewers. If he is suppose to be the best there is, why not compare him to his supposed peers. Nobody has written a book about Cashman, Ryan, or Schuerholtz.
If this is what we are debating, I think this is very feasible. If all you are saying is that Beane is not a God and there are other GMs who have arguments for the best GM in the game, I think you are right.
Sometimes though it sounds like you are arguing the polar opposite of those who think that Beane is the second coming, namely that Beane is a terribly ineffective GM. I don't think there's any support for this.
It's very natural that Beane is overrated by some in the sabermetric community--like all relatively good GMs, he has his strengths. Those strengths happen to coincide with the areas of the game that we have developed comparatively good metrics for and he appears to apply those to some effectiveness.
But I think there is a tendency to ignore the fact that other GMs are strong in other areas and weak in the ones that are easily perceived by the sabermetric community.
That's where someone like Kenny Williams is mocked, disrespected and ultimately underrated by the saber community and Beane is held up as some sort of demi-god.
This type of overestimation of one's own ability to appraise is a risk in any community of thought. Once again, I'd point to the way Ichiro or Lo Duca have been treated by those who ride the stat community group think, but fail to actually use the tools in front of them to do an effective appraisal.
Hopefully, as effective metrics for analyzing executives' performance are developed, we can better understand how GMs compare.
In the meantime, I think we can do a murky ranking of GMs, but it's very hard to compare more specifically which of the successful GMs has performed better than others.
Total bunk. I am surprised you keep running this line out there.
Jaha never made more with the A's than he did in Milwaukee, and he put up the best OBP of his career for Oakland in 1999 before getting hurt the following year.
Phillips was paid $700k for his 1999 farewell tour, and he posted an OBP comparable to his first big money years in Detroit when he was getting paid more than twice that figure.
Stairs had two of the best years of his career for Oakland in 1997 and 1998 while getting paid a whopping $165k and $325k, respectively. He got a nice little contract for his efforts, had another big year in 1999, hit the skids in 2000, and went to the NL and became a very good platoon player.
Giambi the Lesser had one mediocre and one very good year in Oakland while making around the league minimum, got a big raise, then hammered the ball (and the bong) in 2002 and got traded to Philly. Boston paid him more in 2003 than Oakland ever did, and he stunk.
I think that's enough of a survey of the usual whipping boys for now.
So now you want to stay on point.
Phillips was paid $700k for his 1999 farewell tour, and he posted an OBP comparable to his first big money years in Detroit when he was getting paid more than twice that figure.
Phillips played outfield in about half of his starts. Put up an average OPS+, only had a slight improvement over his previous year's OPS, gave you below average defense at every position AND GOT A RAISE FROM HIS PREVIOUS YEAR AND GOT PAID NOTHING THE FOLLOWING YEAR.
Jaha never made more with the A's than he did in Milwaukee, and he put up the best OBP of his career for Oakland in 1999 before getting hurt the following year.
In 1999, Beane got a steal with Jaha. He made up for this by paying him almost 40% of his entire major league earnings the next two years for OPS+ of 66 and -5.
Stairs had two of the best years of his career for Oakland in 1997 and 1998 while getting paid a whopping $165k and $325k, respectively. He got a nice little contract for his efforts, had another big year in 1999, hit the skids in 2000, and went to the NL and became a very good platoon player
Stairs was making 2, 2, and 3 million dollars for the same production that Milwaukee paid 1