Will fans buy a Nick Swisher T-shirt, knowing that he'll probably be traded in a few years' time?

I think that this might be a bit of a red herring. The vast majority of guys on any team will be gone through trades, free agency, or general sucking in a few years time. I'm writing this as I watch the Jays-Yankees game, and just looking around the diamond, of the A-Rod, Jeter, Womack, Tino, Giambi, Matsui, Sheffield, Williams, Flaherty group that they're putting out there today, the only ones likely to be there for the start of the 2007 season are A-Rod, Jeter, Giambi and Matsui. With Oakland's starting lineup, you'll likely see at least Swisher, Crosby, Chavez, and Kendall still around. I'd imagine that they'll have less turnover with their starters as well.

I believe the A's already performed their own market studies, and came to the conclusion that winning has a higher correlation to attendance (and hence revenue) than anything else, star players included.

Unless you have a guy who is gunning for a "sacred" record (read: Barry Bonds), no one is going to bother watching a team that is never in contention. Even if you did have Barry Bonds, do you guys think their attendance would be nearly as good if they didn't have that 2002 WS appearance?

"There are people who read Moneyball from the beginning and didn't become Beane emmissaries, but understood what BeaneLewis was talking about--identifying and exploiting market inefficiencies. "

Oh, yeah? And where were these supposedly sensible people when so many statheads here insisted Moneyball = Fatfukk Softball Players? Huh? You meant to tell me that these supposedly sensible people were not, in fact, the same bunch who extolled the Moneyball/Beane model as the high OBP/fatfukk, no defense/no speed model, collectively gathering their snottiness and generally and massively sneering at any other alternative model?

"Whether Beane is some kind of visionary for trying to do so is subject to debate, but he obviously is trying to do so, and that in itself is worth reading and writing about.

This is the hubris and propagandic rhetoric that sets my teeth on edge. No, he's not visionary; the initial model of high OBP softball players was experimented with by Earl Weaver, slightly, and by the early 90s Orioles and late 80s-early 90s Tigers. It's a viable model depending on context, just as OTHER MODELS are viable according to their contexts. This last phrase is a sore point for me, because in the early Beane hagiographies, statheads *insisted* that the high OBP softball player model was the *only* viable model for a small budget team.

To which I said, where were you fukkos when Herzog was exploiting inefficiencies in the 80s? Where were you when the Expos were doing it in the late 80s and early 90s? Only recently have statheads come around to appreciating the Braves' model of exploiting inefficiencies (so much like the Buck Rodgers model in Montreal), but it took you, collectively, years to do it.

I know where you "where" -- you didnt care about those sort of exploitations of inefficiencies, because they were (Cardinals version) centered around speed & defense & ground-ball/non-stuff pitchers and (Expos version) centered around the Mazzone-like ability to sign cheaply washed up or underrated crapulent pitchers who could be turned around and used very effectively, also not very "saber" friendly. To make it plain my suspicion has long been that few if any statheads give a #### about "exploiting efficiencies" per se, they only care about it when it is played to the traits they admire, hence all my objections to that model were sneered at by Nieporent, Mahnken, et al as "aesthetics" and "stupid".

But Beane ruined it for y'all. He started going with speed and defense and character and always had the pitching, which may or may not be to his personal credit -- to the extent that it may not have been was minimised, of course, by statheads. Uh-oh! No more Giambis fatties to preach the Only High OBP Fatties Can Be Part Of A Winning Team Model were on the A's, or at least the presence of that type of player was greatly minimised. Only then did statheads choke-up a bit and decide that, well, defense and speed might matter a bit because Beane says it does, but that's *only* because it was contextually cheap. Hah.

"If people start a cult to worship him, they are subject to ridicule if they simply follow his name and don't understand the critical thought involved."

So it's okay to make a Cult of the Thought. Well, no $hit. Cults *are* usually ideological. The problems is with cults qua cults, not if they are based, on whatever level, on personalities or ideas. And as I've said, to the extent that this particular cult is ideological is being misrepresented by its members. It's not about exploiting inefficiencies; the real cult is about fatfukk high-OBP players.

"But detractors of the books and critics of the group are subject to the same standard. "

It doesnt get any sillier than that. No, opposition to True Belief is not morally equivalent to True Belief, unless you mean to equate skepticism to credulity, which is a really moronic equasion. Next you'll say that science is equal to supernaturalism.

It's a viable model depending on context, just as OTHER MODELS are viable according to their contexts. This last phrase is a sore point for me, because in the early Beane hagiographies, statheads *insisted* that the high OBP softball player model was the *only* viable model for a small budget team.

In the context of the late 90's and early 00's when run-scoring was completely through the roof, that was pretty close to true - the value of an out increases with runs per game, and OBP was a lot more undervalued than it is now.

In Herzog's glory days, an out was worth a lot less relative to a single run. I haven't ever done the calculations, but I'd guess that the matrices you so despise would show that in the NL of the early-mid 80's, aggressive baserunning was the sabermetric way to play.

It doesnt get any sillier than that. No, opposition to True Belief is not morally equivalent to True Belief, unless you mean to equate skepticism to credulity, which is a really moronic equasion. Next you'll say that science is equal to supernaturalism.

No, I'm saying that the cynicism and wide painting of anyone who disagrees with you as moronic and not worth listening to is equivalent.

There are tons of people who find what Beane is saying to be interesting without doing any of the things you imply that anyone who doesn't hold a book burning of "Moneyball" must approve of.

"Whether Beane is some kind of visionary for trying to do so is subject to debate, but he obviously is trying to do so, and that in itself is worth reading and writing about.

This is the hubris and propagandic rhetoric that sets my teeth on edge. No, he's not visionary; the initial model of high OBP softball players was experimented with by Earl Weaver, slightly, and by the early 90s Orioles and late 80s-early 90s Tigers. It's a viable model depending on context, just as OTHER MODELS are viable according to their contexts. This last phrase is a sore point for me, because in the early Beane hagiographies, statheads *insisted* that the high OBP softball player model was the *only* viable model for a small budget team.

You are a parody of yourself. Read the original quote. I am attacking the propaganda. I am not saying that Beane is a visionary. I'm saying that he is trying to push the envelope in what he believes to be a revolutionary way and that that is interesting and worth studying WHETHER IT IS TRUE OR NOT.

Does that not make sense to you? Can you understand the concept? Or did you just not bother to read because you if you read more you wouldn't be able to attack in the exact way you had already decided to?

Your question of "where I where" (in quotes for emphasis--the typo is fine, since the idiotic meaning still comes across) is particularly interesting. For Weaver, I was not born, but I still have studied Weaver. For Herzog, I had just started following sports, but I enjoyed witnessing his handiwork. Mazzone I have had the joy of watching for more than a decade.

All of these stories are interesting, and anyone interested in how to build a successful baseball team should studied the principles these teams employed. But either because there was no author available or they did not provide as much access as Beane did, the strategies they used are not as easy to study.

I don't have a key to the Atlanta clubhouse, but "Moneyball" gave me one to the A's clubhouse and front offices. If I ignore that opportunity to learn because Beane isn't Earl Weaver, that's awful foolish.

Basically what you are saying is that to focus on one child's ability to play piano is to imply that none of your other children have any skills whatsoever. Unless I say, "Billy Beane is a messiah of baseball who has the one true set of successful baseball principles!" I'm not doing anything nearly as ridiculous.

I'm not saying that. If you have a problem with the people who are, that's fine, but go play in your wacko extremist corner and let the rest of us learn and study in peace.

Why should we exclude the Win Shares/$ (or whatever other metric) of players under the reserve clause? I agree that the system is immoral, but Beane didn't put it in place and by exploiting young players in this way he's simply playing the game.

Oakland have a consistent strategy of using youngsters under the reserve clause as opposed to veterans commanding fair salaries. That is essentially the heart of the Hudson and Mulder trades.

As you stated, if this is a consistent strategy that works, then Beane can get credit.

The problem with using it now is that Beane has done nothing to get the advantage of that specific rent. He inherited the talent. That happens on occasion. Teams will have a great core that becomes ready, and then they will have to make a strategic choice about how to use that core.

Again, consider Scheurholz. In the first few years of his tenure, he had the same circumstances as Billy Beane. We can give him credit for not trading away the young pitching, for not dealing away the stars in waiting drafted by Cox. But we don't call him a genius because he won with a low payroll. If you take the first few years of the Braves run, they will perform similarly as the A's.

But then the Braves had to make a decision, do they make a run, or do they just keep plugging rent controlled talent. They spent a little money and won a world championship.

Better yet, consider the business model produced early. Does a new GM/CEO/leader who inherits a company with a great patent portfolio get gleamin reviews just because he has a percentage of profit to revenue? Obviously you get a lot of license revenue without any overhead. You can get sales at monopoly prices. High revenue percentage should be expected.

If that person can maintain that model over time, then yes, they get major credit. But if they start to lose that revenue percentage as people design around you or you patent terms expire, have you been successful.

As people do start to design around you, and you start investing the normal market amount in sales and marketing and still perform under market, haven't you done a bad job? Do you talk about your normal investments in these areas like you have uncovered some "market inefficiency" If you do that while taking away from serving existing licenses (thereby losing revenues) aren't you failing.

Its exactly like Retardo mentioned. This is Beane. He inherited a bunch of talent, then tried to use some kind of gimmick to build his team. He overpaid for fatfukk softball players all the while telling his followers he was exploiting inefficiencies. He gained his wins and profits by using the Alderson talent base. And teams exploited him heavily.

Then he started doing things like everybody else. He started getting people that could actually field a little bit. He convinced his legions that it was because he developed some super properity way of measuring defense. All he did was have his numbers start catching up a little bit with normal baseball practices.

Along the way, he made some good deals and some bad deals. They tended to balance each other out. He did make what at first look looked like two excellent deals. But they didn't provide nearly as much value as his followers would have you believe. But he bragged about them like he was some guru. Maybe he did take advantage of an organization that could have better management. Now he's jumped in with some trades against some well run organizations and he got fleeced.

Along the way is ego pushed out of town a guy that was useful as a yes-man, his intellectual capital in scouting, and his best management resource. He skewered all of this human capital for some spreadsheets. He can't get a real manager in because his ego gets in the way.

But as bad as Beane has been with his ego, his fans are even worse. The hypocrisy is amazing.

Singleton is the worse deal in baseball when the Orioles sign him. Beane is a genius when he signs Singleton. Singleton performs better for Baltimore for less money.

Holding a veteran for draft picks is genius when Beane does it. Until he trades away Hudson, then its genius for reloading with young talent. That draft pick is wasted on a non-slot selection of a fat catcher. He gets dreck when trading away Hudson.

Beane is a genius when he picks up players with promise like Teahan, Meyer, and Haren. Beane is a genius when he trades away players like Teahan and Bonderman. Bonderman is likely to be way better than everybody else put together.

Then many of these obvious contradictions in genius are explained by "success cycle" except that Beane makes these contradictory deals with teams out of the race and teams contending. He trades away Karsay when he still sucks.

What it boils down to when you take away his aura is that there isn't some super secret. He has shown two and only two strategies

(1) Drafting of college players
(2) The fatfukk softball method

Time has shown that the second really sucks. There is nothing to show this proprietary defense metric. Its relegated to him not resigning Tejeda and obtaining Kotsay and Miller. The Miller experiment was abandoned with the not so great defensive player Kendall. Kotsay is a good pickup, but probably not worth Hernandez, who was a bargain at his cost.

And the draft philosophy has produced no dividends. That Moneyball crap has gotten him what, Nick Whiffer. Whiffer just fielded himself with Beane's proprietary methods into a broken shoulder and a concussion. And that's too bad, because he was going to easily break the strikeout record if he played a full year.

If we're going macro, then we should actually go macro - the macro aim of a baseball franchise is to make money.

Ok, fine, let's go macro. As you probably know, revenues are not that important in terming the real measure of profitability. Its capital cost increase.

Last year, the A's actually declined in estimated value by 1%. Since 1998, the A's club has increased from 118 million dollars in value to 185 million dollars in value. The reason for choosing 1998 is because these are Beane tenure years and this is as far as Forbes has data. By comparison, the NY Yankees have gone from 362 Million to 950 Million under Cashman. So you want to claim that is not fair, lets look at the Twins, these are the A's main competitors. They have gone from 94 million dollars to 178 million dollars. Or how about one of those so called "idiot" organizations like Kansas City who have gone from 108 million to overtake the A's at 187 million. The A's rank 28th in team value

But if you want to look at the revenue and other numbers as well, Oakland ranks 21st in revenue. The only place where they even look average is in EBIDTA where they were 17th. Most of the teams beneath them were ones investing in Brand Management by making a run. The A's made a paltry 13 million on licensing their IP.

And that EBIDTA number should be taken with a grain of salt because the ownership group is heavily leveraged in debt, and you have already seen the abysmal performance in appreciation.

(all data courtesy of Forbes)

If you want to go macro, Beane sucks.

If you want to go macro on the playing field, Beane has yet to even win a playoff series. Every year its some new claim about his ownfield success. First it was division titles, then playoff appearances, now 90 win seasons. After they tank this year, god only knows what the knew arbitrary measure du jour will be.

Honestly, how many ownership groups do you think would #### up Tejeda, Chavez, Giambi, Hudson, Mulder and Zito. How many do you think would not put together a streak. How many do you think would not really outperform Beane.

In all seriousness, we have about four examples over the past few years:

Yankees
Braves
Indians
Expos

Two of them won world championships. Three of them won multiple pennants. If you want to give Beane credit for managing this group better than the Loria run Expos who were in a non-English language market, ok fine. Beane is better than Dan Duquette. Ask some Red Sox fans how big a compliment this may be.

I believe the A's already performed their own market studies, and came to the conclusion that winning has a higher correlation to attendance (and hence revenue) than anything else, star players included.


Well its nice that you believe that. You want to show us the study so we can really talk about it.

I'd even be willing to talk about what your claim that some ghost study suggests, if it even mattered in this discussion. Gate receipts are a nice component of revenue, but if you really want to make money you better improve that evaluation. The two places to do it is attacking your market and in managing your brand. More time and reason should be spent getting the little Treder's of the world on BART and out of the Cove. You do that by winning championships. You don't do it by trying to hawk Eric Byrnes jerseys at the local flea market. You don't do it by getting people to fall in love with fat catchers and fatter outfielders. You don't do it by losing the playoffs on fundamental errors and kicking the ball around like a Premiership contest.

There are tons of people who find what Beane is saying to be interesting without doing any of the things you imply that anyone who doesn't hold a book burning of "Moneyball" must approve of.


I find those guys hawking no money down real estate and debt counseling interesting as well. I don't doubt that the latter probably can reduce debt to 80% in many cases. It doesn't mean that I go to them for my investments or my financial counseling. I don't burn their books, but I also don't buy them either. If somebody wants to preach they are geniuses, fine. Just don't expect me to take them that seriously.

If I ignore that opportunity to learn because Beane isn't Earl Weaver, that's awful foolish.


And with you, that is fine. You have consistently proven to be a very insightful person with many good things to say. Its not those who want to learn that draw ire. Its those that wish to preach the message.

That is why that I am interested in Levitt taking this own. I have a collegue who has experienced some honorifics in his profession. He doesn't watch that much baseball. He does read Moneyball. He reads Lewis and Beane's PR spin about "market inefficiencies" and "genius" and whatnot, and it causes him to also buy into the message. Yet they don't know about reserve system rents, and Lewis doesn't tell them about it. They don't know about exemplar's and comparable performances. They don't know about the real valuation of the A's.

If they were actually retained to try and measure Beane, they would do all these things, and probably land where Levitt has landed.

If you want to make Beane a market genius, why not let some of these market experts take a crack at it with their set of tools. Don't rely on Lewis, Don't rely on Beane; they are hiding from you the most important information to conduct the study.

If you want to make Beane a baseball genius, then look at baseball. He did nothing but take an extreme approach to Weaver's philosophy. It paid him no dividends.

If you just want to pat him on the back for winning, ok, then also smack him for losing when it counts.

If you just want to waive your A's pennant like Danny, take it to the Game Chatter.

If you just want to feel like your smarter than someone else for drinking the Kool-Aid; keep it to yourself.

Obviously, none of these apply to you E-X, but they do to a large number of Primates.

If you just want to pat him on the back for winning, ok, then also smack him for losing when it counts.


I should add, this is the most annoying. Most people making these arguments are the same ones crying bloody murder for looking at pitcher wins. I'm fine for giving a pitcher or a GM credit for wins. It takes something to not #### up a good situation. But if you really want to look at skill, don't you start adjusting for things that aren't in your control. When do you adjust out the Alderson draft picks?

Most of the time with Beane, you want to talk about lack of control with "random fluctuations", "luck" etc., but this now disappears when you deal with the fact of having a healthy core all emerge together. Same for signings and luck.

Its genius to get Jaha's production for $315,000, its bad luck to get his performance for $3 million. Its genius to sneak into the playoffs. Its bad luck to lose in the playoffs. THe list goes on.

Billy Beane has worse luck than Shleprock. If I were the A's, I'd invest in some rabbits feet.

Responding the point from last page about backups and everything ...

... going by WARP1:

Kotsay + Miller = 7.5 + 4.4 = 11.9
Hernandez + Long = 5.1 + 2.0 = 7.1

That's a 4.8 win advantage for Oakland. Of course, that assumes no contribution from the backups.

Kotsay played in 148 games; the rest of the A's CF games were played by Eric Byrnes. About 17% of Byrnes' 2004 was spent in CF ... his WARP1 was 5.3 ... 17% of 5.3 is .9.

So between Kotsay and Byrnes, we have a value of 8.4 for Oakland CF in 2004.

Behind the plate ... Miller's backup was Adam Melhuse. He was essentially only a catcher, and had a WARP1 of 1.4. So between Miller and Melhuse, that's 5.8 for Oakland catchers.

So Oakland gets 14.2 wins above replacement from those two positions.

San Diego behind the plate ... Hernandez had 5.1 WARP1. His backups were Miguel Ojeda and Humberto Quintero. Ojeda was worth 1.6 WARP1, and Quintero was worth 1.4. So that's a total of 8.1 for Padre catchers.

But then you get to Terrence Long, who was the team's fourth outfielder. So I'm not sure how you account for that in this comparison ... Jay Payton was the main Padre CF, he had 4.1 WARP1, and Freddy Guzman had exactly 0.0 WARP1 as the other CF. Long had 2.0 WARP1 overall, and played approximately 36% of his time in CF; 36% of 2.0 is .7.

4.1 + 0.0 + 0.7 = 4.8

Adding that to the 8.1 for the catchers, you get 12.9 for the Padres between C and CF; the A's, remember, were at 14.2 for the two positions.

Did they A's screw up their salaries to earn the extra ~1.3 wins?

Salaries for the Padres: Payton $1.5M, Long $1.269M (35.5% of his overall salary), Guzman $.3M, Hernandez $2.9375M, Ojeda $.305M, Quintero $.3M ... that's a total of $6.6115M and six roster spots to get 12.9 wins above replacement. The salary over minimum for the six players was $4.8115. That's $2.68M per win (12.9/4.8115).

Salaries for the A's: Kotsay $5.5M, Byrnes $.05576M (17% of $.328M), Miller $3M, Melhuse $.3575M ... a total of $8.91326M and four roster spots for 14.2 wins above replacement. The salary over minimum for the four players was $7.71326M. That's $1.84M per win.

Of course, the A's are also saving two roster spots in the deal, so you have to credit them for that in some way. You could just subtract $.6M from their marginal total to get $7.11326, which gets them to $2.00M per win. I would imagine, however, that the value of a roster spot is more than the league minimum salary, but I don't really know, or know how to figure that out. It depends on who the team gets to fill those roster spots.

The Padres' WARP1 total was 64.9; they had 48 players total over the year, and BB-ref reports salaries on 28 of them in the total of $61.532833M; that's $53.132833 over the minimum. That's $1.22M per win above replacement.

Oakland's WARP1 total was 67.3. They had 37 players total. BB-ref reports salaries on 27 of them in the total of $59.102667M. That's $51.002667 above the minimum: $1.32M per win above replacement.

That leads me to believe that the A's made good use of those two extra roster spots they gained. There's probably a more sophisticated way of looking at this, but I don't know what it is right now ...

I agree, neither Lewis nor Beane present a thorough analysis of Beane's moves and skills--Lewis is selling books with an interesting story; Beane is trying to improve a franchise and whether he's great, good, average, poor or terrible at it, he doesn't identify any good reason to present a complete, objective analysis of himself anywhere. In this boat are a ton of people who want to believe Beane to be great for whatever reason, but aren't really interested if he is actually great, only that they can convince others of the fact.

On the flipside, there are plenty of detractors of Beane who are skewering him because he preaches a different philosophy without actually addressing whether his is practicing a different philosophy or whether what he is practicing is effective or not.

I agree with you that a real thorough analysis is necessary, and that Levitt might have the skills to do this. This is why it is particularly disappointing that he chooses NOT to do this, but instead just throw his hat on one side or the other with a shallow analysis.

Do people do this justify Beane supporters who unthinkingly vilify anyone who doesn't hold up Beane in the highest? Of course not. I have been particularly disgusted by people who continually vilify Morgan, or Kenny Williams or Dusty Baker simply because they don't walk around with "I *heart* Billy Beane" T-shirts. And while doing so, apply a completely different standard of evaluation for people they see as agreeing with them as opposed to those who don't.

Let's bring it back to this "revolution", beyond fat catchers, defensive metrics, scouts vs. computers, etc., wasn't the real issue defining more comprehensive utilities for evaluating performance? You may laugh at this being "revolutionary", but think about it from the point-of-view of those us who have had to endure the aversive bias of a societal institutions of power for such a long time. Aren't metrics that measure context-based performance an utter godsend? For once, instead of being judged on whether we conform to unspoken socio-cultural norms, we can witness ballplayers (and maybe someday the rest of us) judge on our contribution rather than other cosmetic factors.

Have you ever sat in a room and watched people pour over applications for a position? Scientific research shows that when a strongly qualified candidate of African descent's name comes up, suddenly all the "Well, she's overqualified" or "There was something that I just couldn't put my finger on--I don't think she'll be a good fit here!" Beyond anecdotal research, check out U of C/Harvard's research on interview call back's correlation with "black sounding names". Or check out the study on
white college students asked to evaluate applicants of different ethnicities.

Whether Beane or Theo or Depo are doing this expertly or not is less important to me than the fact that they are at all. What scares me is the group of their critics that is so opposed to the idea at all of not just trusting random scouts' "gut instincts"--if people attack viciously a bunch of rich, white, male Ivy League grads who push this idea in BASEBALL, how are they going to treat people of color who push contextual performance analysis in the general society?

If we learned anything from any of the baseball reformers who have pushed this idea into baseball, it's that poor use of metrics can be extremely damaging. In the same way that AVG out of context without understanding what it measures will elevate certain players and deny others their careers, evaluating GMs on specific transactions out of context with make the overall evaluation, positive or negative, completely useless. (Or to extend it to society in general, what does the SAT, LSAT, or the MCAT measure? Who does it select for? Is that what we want to measure?)

What do we want out of a GM? How do we measure that?

These are the only questions we should be interested in evaluating Beane or any other GM.

Wow. After reading all that, I'm convinced. The As have lost 100 games each of the last six, seven years. Beane is awful.

Sheeh, BL. Step back. You're way off the deep end. These things are true:

(A) The As under Beane have had lots of success while spending relatively little money.
(B) Beane inherited cheap talent.
(C) Moneyball oversimplified many things.
(D) Moneyball has been interpreted by people on all ends of the Beane spectrum, from worshipper to hater, to say all sorts of things it never said.

To argue that Beane may be getting credit for a situation he inherited is fine. To argue that Beane's success might be a lot more conventional than Lewis portrayed it as is also fine. Those are open for debate. (A debate which will not be settled for several years. It cannot be settled by predicting that the As are going to fall apart. Predictions are not evidence in favor of hypotheses.)

But to talk about a "softball" model which the As hadn't fit for years before Moneyball was published is a... (you guesed it) strawman. John Jaha hasn't been a regular on the As since 19freaking99, and you're still pretending that this has anything to do with Beane and the As over the last few years.

To invent claims nobody said -- picking up Chris Singleton was genius? Get a life. -- is stupid. Why do you act this way, BL? It's the Bill O'Reilly school of debate.

Is the Bill O'Reilly School of Debate where one learns to call Congressional hearings "fascist show trials," or is that learned elsewhere?

I have been particularly disgusted by people who continually vilify Morgan, or Kenny Williams or Dusty Baker simply because they don't walk around with "I *heart* Billy Beane" T-shirts.

Ican't speak to the "vilification" of Williams or Dusty, but Morgan brought it on himself. I haven't been around here long enough to get any kind of feeling that Beane fans are so fervant as you claim. But where it regards Morgan I can say this: he made himself look incredibly stupid by not even having any familiarity about Moneyball's author, let alone it's content. He used it to bash Beane for no good reason and generally made stupid comments, even after he was told Beane didn't write the book. The baseball backlash against Moneyball seems more extreme than any blind devotion to Beane. And after all, the underlying issue is sabermetrics.

Is the Bill O'Reilly School of Debate where one learns to call Congressional hearings "fascist show trials," or is that learned elsewhere?

Nah. You get that from the Federalist Papers.


The BO'RSoD is when you loudly accuse people of saying things they never said for the sole purpose of ridicule.

Credit where credit is due, David. lol.

I mean, let's assume someone really did say that Beane signing Singleton was genius. If so, then that person is a loon or a moron, and there's no point in trying to have a discussion with him. So why do so, except to feel superior by "winning" an argument with a loon? And if the person you're debating with didn't say that, then why claim that he did?

If so, then that person is a loon or a moron

I find myself facing this quandary nearly every time you post, David. Only a loon or a moron could be a libertarian, right? (And you've provided pretty solid evidence of not being a moron, so...

"And you've provided pretty solid evidence of not being a moron"

You're in a generous mood tonight, JC.

I remember being a little annoyed at the O's for trading a prospect like Harris for Singleton, but being equally annoyed at some of the posters on this board for arguing that it was an absolutely horrible deal. I didn't think it was great, but top notch defensive CFs are hard to come by, and Harris wasn't exactly a can't miss prospect. At the same time, IIRC, I think few, if any, people here said that Beane was a genius for signing Singleton. I think most people were basically puzzled by what appeared to be a dumb move. I think the most you could say is that the majority of posters here were far more willing to give Beane the benefit of the doubt re Singleton than Thrift, but given their respect track records, that was hardly an unreasonable position.

You're in a generous mood tonight, JC.

My daughter's birthday cake in one hand, a Yuengling in the other. It's a good life.

Didn't Thrift do a pretty f'in good job in Pittsburgh? Maybe there'll be a serious reevaluation of Beane when he tries to repeat his successes elsewhere. The GM job ain't easy.

Ican't speak to the "vilification" of Williams or Dusty, but Morgan brought it on himself. I haven't been around here long enough to get any kind of feeling that Beane fans are so fervant as you claim. But where it regards Morgan I can say this: he made himself look incredibly stupid by not even having any familiarity about Moneyball's author, let alone it's content. He used it to bash Beane for no good reason and generally made stupid comments, even after he was told Beane didn't write the book. The baseball backlash against Moneyball seems more extreme than any blind devotion to Beane. And after all, the underlying issue is sabermetrics.

That criticism of Morgan is certainly warranted. But I don't think that explains the utter ridicule of him every time he did a chat, wrote an article or whatever. He was a dumbass and commented on a book that he hadn't read and got critical facts wrong. That doesn't make him the dumbest person on the face of the planet.

"No, I'm saying that the cynicism and wide painting of anyone who disagrees with you as moronic and not worth listening to is equivalent. "

But I'm not. I'm saying that the extremists -- and there are oodles of them -- who argued that the model Beane was using was not only Moneyball by definition, but the *only* proper way of constructing a team on a small budget, *are* morons and can go #### themselves post haste, and I said that then and I say it now. We dont have to wait years to make that determination.

"There are tons of people who find what Beane is saying to be interesting "

Interesting to the point of monomania. Hence the Cult.

"I am not saying that Beane is a visionary. I'm saying that he is trying to push the envelope in what he believes to be a revolutionary way and that that is interesting and worth studying WHETHER IT IS TRUE OR NOT.

Does that not make sense to you?"

No, I'm sorry, it doesn't. Is it or isnt it revolutionary? No? But it's still worth studying because Billy Beane *says* it's revolutionary?

"Your question of "where I where" (in quotes for emphasis--the typo is fine, since the idiotic meaning still comes across) is particularly interesting. For Weaver, I was not born, but I still have studied Weaver. For Herzog, I had just started following sports, but I enjoyed witnessing his handiwork. Mazzone I have had the joy of watching for more than a decade."

Well the answer, if typo-free (and it's a pity you couldn't keep that up after slagging me on it, huh?), isnt exactly a model of Cartesian logic much less common sense. You're saying that there has to have been a book written about the model *and* that the model has to be comtemporary to make it worthy of study?!? WTF. I'm used to Nieporent arguing as if history books were only worth using as TP, but I expect more from non-idiots. There's been plenty written about the 80s Cards, Weaver-era Orioles, Sparky's Tigers, and the Cox-era Braves. And the precious precious stats are all, of course, available. It's not my fault you are at an age where you missed those teams: that fact doesn't excuse ignorance of these models which in turn is grist for the Beane-is-genius and trying something never done before rhetoric that is so nauseating and annoying.

"All of these stories are interesting, and anyone interested in how to build a successful baseball team should studied the principles these teams employed. But either because there was no author available or they did not provide as much access as Beane did, the strategies they used are not as easy to study."

You may think so, and see above for my response to that reasoning. But why statheads in general dont "study" certain of those teams, namely the Expos, Cardinals, and Braves, is because those models dont neatly dovetail to stathead biases, unlike Beane's, which in initial form was a stathead's wet dream.

"Basically what you are saying is that to focus on one child's ability to play piano is to imply that none of your other children have any skills whatsoever. Unless I say, "Billy Beane is a messiah of baseball who has the one true set of successful baseball principles!" I'm not doing anything nearly as ridiculous."

*You* may not be, but others were and are. You want to shut up my side? Then make them STFU as well. I'm not saying the Beane model is unworthy of study; I'm saying that it's *not new* (when presented as merely "exploiting inefficiencies"), it's *not new* when presented as made up of fatfukk softball players (though it was an extreme version of the model), and, regardless, is certainly *not* the only way to build a decent baseball team. IOW, I'm saying that Beane is no more or no less worthy of study than any other GM who's had equal success, of which there are plenty.

He was a dumbass and commented on a book that he hadn't read and got critical facts wrong. That doesn't make him the dumbest person on the face of the planet.


You are correct. All it merely does is makes him fit in with the rest of the journalism industry.

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.


Ok, that's fair enough, Tejada is a better player than Chavy, I think we can agree on that.

Of course, you completely ignore the presence of Bobby Crosby at SS, whom was liked by both side of the "debate" if you will. If you signed MIggy and let Chavy go, whom do you put at 3B? Teahen? Crosby?

That leads me to believe that the A's made good use of those two extra roster spots they gained. There's probably a more sophisticated way of looking at this, but I don't know what it is right now ...


BHW, I think there are multiple ways to look at it. The simplest way is to look at the rates of the players. In which case the Padres win. The most complete way of looking at it requires you to look at opportunity costs and total production. That is beyond the time that I want to spend on this right now. But in the end, are you better locking up a complete catcher and seeking to upgrade the outfield on the open market, or are you better locking up a complete center fielder and looking for a catcher on the open market. The A's spent more money to do the latter, and that doesn't conform to what the market was offering. This is especially true when an absolute star is available. The Miller experiment was scrapped for Kendall.

Everything in between is just an intermedia analysis. So even if I take yours, which at least accounts for other things, you have a cost of millions of dollars to get 1.3 wins which aren't even enough to get you into the playoffs.

Moreover, all those pitchers that were jettisoned were locked up for this year. It would have cost you about 2 Million more to be in a position to have a rotation of Hudson, Mulder, Zito, Harden and Blanton/Saarloos/Ducksure, a catcher of Hernandez, an infield of Chavez, somebody just as good as Scutaro, Ellis, Hatteberg, and an OF with two guys at least as good as Byrnes/Thomas/Kielty/Whiffer and Carlos Beltran.

Even if you don't figure in the opportunity cost of Beltran thinking the A's would never do this, don't you think you could find closer contribution to Kotsay in the OF then you can find contribution for Hernandez. You are now paying more money at C, getting much worse defense, and probably getting worse offense.

have been particularly disgusted by people who continually vilify Morgan, or Kenny Williams or Dusty Baker simply because they don't walk around with "I *heart* Billy Beane" T-shirts.

On that point, we are in almost unanimous agreement.

wasn't the real issue defining more comprehensive utilities for evaluating performance?

This may be the most important point which leads to our present agreement. If this were the only issue, the only questions would be the accurace of those utilities. The issue(s) that have caused the most ire are:

(1) The eschewing of other utilities, particularly human resources for these new utilities.
(2) The denigration by Beane and others who do not buy into his utilities.
(3) The almost cult like following to these utilities and Beane (which you have already spoken).

... rich, white, male Ivy League grads who push this idea in BASEBALL, how are they going to treat people of color who push contextual performance analysis in the general society?


I read your cited study and let me take a step back to respond to it. I understand your point, and its certainly cogent. Its undeniable that this form of racism aka bias exists. Its also undeniable that I could aver that I would be immune to this situation myself.

Nevertheless, from this vantage point it would seem to me that what you would find even more troubling than subjective opinion guiding decision would be biased performance measures guiding decision.

In the first instance, the solution to the problem is diversifying the decision making body. Don't let any programmed bias overwhelm the entire process.

In the latter case, its not only a problem in decision making, it provides a faux legitimacy to the entire action. To put it in the context of your examples, haven't you seen demographic statistics distorted to promote either an overt bias/racism (e.g. percentage of race on welfare) or subtle bias/racism (SAT Performance by race).

We are not privy to Beane's exact spreadsheet, but there are a few things we can infer. The first is some measure of $/OBP. Well $ incorporates more measurements than just offensive value or batting average. Its going to incorporate defensive value, runner advancement value, chemistry/problem value, baserunning value. So Beane is going to find a lot of people that were devauled on other criteria.

Now maybe the previous market did overvalue things like runner advancement value (e.g. bunting, hitting the other way, rbis) and there is a way to get a deal. No maybe the weak racism/socio-bias appears in the chemistry/problem area. However, undoubtedly the defense and baserunning do have non-neglible values. Even the chemisty part has a value when dealing with certain players (Giambi, Rocker, Guillen). But now this performance metric is biasing toward a certain class that have certain skills. If those skills correlate to race isn't there even a bigger problem than before the metrics were advanced. (I don't know that they do).

In the end, hadn't you rather strive to a situation where all performance factors are taken into account. If some may only be done by observation, wouldn't you prefer an observation staff that included a diverse body of observers and evaluators, than one where a metric rules, be damn the consequences.

What do we want out of a GM? How do we measure that?

These are the only questions we should be interested in evaluating Beane or any other GM.

I'm fine with that. I've even issued some challenges on performance areas where Beane is supposed to excel. I have found very few takers. The old problem was that even if you engage in that discussion, you will have the Beane army come at you for insulting the man, stray way off point, and become insulting in the process.

We have done Beane report cards in the past, but very few will ever keep it on point. Danny once even argued when Beane got a B+ on some criteria.

So which criteria should we measure. If its economic, I don't think you will find that Beane has performed that well. Most of the A's value is locked up in the sport, that is just owning the franchise independent of the market. Its had modest growth, below that of the industry during his term. There have been no significant advancements in the value of the intangible assets, where most money can be made.

When we pointed that out in the past, the Beane lovers say his job isn't economic, its baseball. I vehemently disagree, but even if that is so, a baseball analysis isn't that much better. In 7 years, he has hit 90 wins a few times, and won 3 division titles. He has not won any playoff series, much less a pennant or a series. He has inherited All Stars at many key positions, including many that are on pace for Hall of Fame careers. He has had the fortune of not having to tie up much capital in these resources so that he could surround them with other talent. He has failed to surround them with the necessary talent.

Among his current peers, the only person with a remotely similar situation is Terry Ryan. Ryan has not inherited a similar level of talent. The only one who is even close to that level of stardom is Santana, who was acquired by Ryan in a trade.

Among historically similar situations, he can be compared to Scheurholz and Cashman. Both outperformed him in similar circumstances. You can say he did better than Duquette but that is all. Yet when the Beane lovers try to distinguish S&C;because of money, then this gives Duquette enough of an excuse to be close to Beane. In fact, the total Expos strategy of dumping is very similar to the Beane dumpings. The Expos probably will have extracted more value from teh Pedro dump than Beane will for the Hudson dump.

The Beane lovers preach a lot of Beane virtues but none of them are provable. The only measure they ever fall back too is the WS/$, but they don't discount this for the monopoly rents of the young players.

Like I've said in a number of different ways. I could care less about this unless that WS/? (analogous to profit percentage of revenue) leads to either capital growth or is sustainable past a short period. It has not lead to capital growth, and there is no sign to indicate that it is repeatable.

This is definitively true for the economic value of the A's. This is also reasonably true for the baseball analog. Are the A's in a better talent position now than five years ago?

One thing I've always disagreed with Beane on was holding onto his players and letting them walk as FAs. I always thought he could have parlayed them into a nice mix of present and future value, which appears to be what he was trying with the Hudson and Mulder deals. We'll see how that goes.

But where it regards Morgan I can say this: he made himself look incredibly stupid by not even having any familiarity about Moneyball's author, let alone it's content.

And I disagree, the spirit of everything Morgan said was directly on point to the larger issues of the debate.

The "who wrote the book" is from the Danny school of arguing. I could care less if Morgan gets this wrong if his arguments are tenable.

Beane materially participated in the authorship of that book. He gave those nuggets about market inefficiencies, about jumping for joy when people sign a high school player, the overall tone about disdain for scouting. I seriously doubt he didn't read a pre-pub proof, but even if he didn't, he took no action to divorce himself from those statements.

If Morgan had said, "Beane should not have allowed that book to be written." then followed up with his arguments it wouldn't have made a difference. I'm sure plenty of lesser primates would be here arguing, "He has no control of what Lewis rights. Just look at what Canseco said about McGwire." In some sophistic means to imply that Beane had no control over the process.

If Morgan had very lawyerly said, "Beane owes it to his staff to distance himself from Lewis' portrayal" every wannabe PR expert on this board would be saying, "Beane's best move is to embrace the book" or "Beane should just keep quiet and let the team speak for itself" Well that latter point is exactly what he should have done when he was approached.

Instread, we do have a pretty reliable method of judging how he values numbers and people, how he makes decisions involving baseball. Its not a pretty picture. It just makes people who think they are smarter than those working in baseball feel a little better about themselves. It also exposes flaws in his approach that can be exploited.

Even if you don't figure in the opportunity cost of Beltran thinking the A's would never do this, don't you think you could find closer contribution to Kotsay in the OF then you can find contribution for Hernandez. You are now paying more money at C, getting much worse defense, and probably getting worse offense.

Kendall has beaten Hernandez in OBP EVERY yaer, and has "lost" in OPS only in 2001 and 2004, with Kendall still having a larger edge in terms of career OPS. If you need more power, than Ramon is your man, but if you need soembody who hits 2nd, then Kendall is better for it.

Also, what makes you say Ramon Hernandez is better defensively than Jason Kendall?

Of course, you completely ignore the presence of Bobby Crosby at SS, whom was liked by both side of the "debate" if you will. If you signed MIggy and let Chavy go, whom do you put at 3B? Teahen? Crosby?

No, I don't. Does anyone even remotely believe that Crosby will be the player that Miggy Tejeda is?

If he projects so well, he can be the basis of dumping Terrence Long and also getting a Kotsay. If he is a valuable defensive commodity, you could shift Tejeda off position, or if not, shift Crosby off position.

And there is no real reason to not temporarily increase payroll to take a run at a world championship by signing all three players. SS Chipper Jones was to play LF his first year to allow the Blauser contract to expire. OF David Justice and Ryan Klesko have spent time at 1b before returning to their position. All world defensive CF Andruw Jones played LF for awhile. Arod is currently playing 3B. All Star Melvin Mora bounced around to give the Mets a chance to beat their cross town rivals.

If you are serious about winning, you will retain the cogs necessary to win. Constantly dreaming about how good you are going to be tomorrow is a sure way to make sure that tomorrow never comes. Sometimes you have to appreciate the situation that is front of you and take your best shot.

No, I don't. Does anyone even remotely believe that Crosby will be the player that Miggy Tejeda is?

No, of course Bobby Crosby is not the player Miggy Tejada is now, and probably won't. That's not the question I'm asking though. I'm taking Crosby and Chavez over Tejada and somebody worse than Crosby at 3rd.

Of course from a "win-now" perspective he shoudl have kept most of his "good" players. If it were "up to me", I would have kept both Miggy and Chavy, put Crosby at 2B, and kept Hudson (but still trade Mulder for that package). But I don't have 500 gabillion dollars to own a baseball team.

The choice wasn't "Tejada and Chavez" vs. "Crosby and Chavez." The choice was "Tejada and somebody" vs. "Chzvez and Crosby."

Backlasher,
Stupid. Just stupid. You're not attacking Beane. You're not even attacking Beane followers. You're attacking the very foundation of a principle that in ways you seem to defend when it's convenient to you. RE: Morgan. This is what I mean. Morgan had no knowledge about which he was speaking of, or at lest little-to-spotty knowledge. I'm beginning to get the impression that you're a Joe Morgan copy. Stupid. Just Stupid.

Backlasher,
Stupid. Just stupid. You're not attacking Beane. You're not even attacking Beane followers. You're attacking the very foundation of a principle that in ways you seem to defend when it's convenient to you. RE: Morgan. This is what I mean. Morgan had no knowledge about which he was speaking of, or at lest little-to-spotty knowledge. I'm beginning to get the impression that you're a Joe Morgan copy. Stupid. Just Stupid.

The Singleton issue is interesting. Why Nieporent brings it up is that he was against the singleton signing. Of course no Beanebag said it was genius; Nieporent was one of the most vocal Beanebags in saying it was a flawed acquisition. But statheads like Nieporent won the battle but lost the war.

That signing was in the context of the larger argument I keep refering to: the general objection among one group, mainly composed of non- or semi- statheads, vs the Beanebag True Believers. In the singleton signing, Beane was first showing a desire or necessity to get away from the fatfukk softball player model of construction. *This* fact was what was alarming for the True Believers. Robert Dudek, a stathead but rare in the sense that he is *not* a Beanebag, argued that the Singleton signing boded well for Beane, in that it signaled that Beane had come to believe that defense was important, and a team composed of too many like-players, fundamentally unbalanced as was the softball team the A's had at the time, was dangerously one-dimensional.

This was when so many statheads, both non-morons and Nieporent too, objected to mine and Dudek's arguments as being without substance and "aesthetic". Lectures on Joe Orsulak followed. Whitey's Runnin Redbirds were brought up, only to be dismissed with sneers as either obsolete or only successful to the extent that they embraced sabermetrics: i.e. that the good Cardinals teams had high OBP and that in itself (never mind that it was hugely BA-composed) assured success, in *spite* of the pitching and defense that other who are not dogmatists (including Herzog himself) attributed to the Cards' success (in fact it was balance that got Whitey's teams to the playoffs: *one* fatfukk softballer who could mash, usually hidden at first base; the rest was taken care of by speed and defense and high batting averages.)

Then came the big revision. Post-Singleton even superstatheads had to acknowledge that Beane was moving beyond the softball player model. Now since statheads have a True Belief in the supremacy of this model, something had to give. Either they had to admit that this model, when so exaggerated and attenuated as Beane's was, was flawed -- simply *not possible for statheads to do* -- or they had to jettison Beane as the be-all end-all of GMs. A Real quandary. Then the genius revision. It would be suddenyl okay to jettison the softball player model if it could be explained that they were no longer bargains. Also, defense could suddenly become cachet if it were asserted that Beane's new fascination with it was, somehow, at the expense of scouting and to the credit of spreadsheets and *not* due to the failure of softball players defending adequately. And there it was. The new definition of Moneyball; or, how statheads kept their saint.

The choice wasn't "Tejada and Chavez" vs. "Crosby and Chavez." The choice was "Tejada and somebody" vs. "Chzvez and Crosby."

That is only true because Beane convinced you that was the choice. That certainly wasn't the choice for 2004. And your choice is really "Chavez, Zito, and a couple of AAAA pitchers, or perhaps, "Hudson, Chavez, Tejeda and a couple of AAAA pitchers." or perhaps, "Hudson, Tejeda, Crosby and some AAAA pitchers."


If you are so enamoured with Damian Miller, you could have run out a team last year with Chavez, Tejeda, Crosby, Kotsay, Durazo, Miller and the dreck at the corners, and that same pitching staff. Maybe even kept Teahand and flipped Crosby for a real closer, or Dotel and some bullpen depth, or one more bat to fill in the corner dreck.

Was that worth the shot, or do you really believe that Dan Meyer is going to be Tom Glavine.

Its had modest growth, below that of the industry during his term.

Even if we accept that this is the right way to measure the job that the GM has done, I'd be curious to know how many of the teams who've exceeded the industry average have done so without a new stadium. Outside of the markets like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Boston, I doubt that it's very many.

I don't really see how you can ascribe to the GM's job function increasing the value of the team. Presumably, Billy Beane doesn't get to make decisions as to the size of the payroll he has to spend, or whether investing more would result in further increases to the value of the A's. I doubt he has much to do with managing the brand, beyond the baseball team that's put on the field. The performance, or lack thereof of the baseball team is the only proper criteria by which to judge him. Given that, is your position tenable?

In 7 years, he has hit 90 wins a few times, and won 3 division titles. He has not won any playoff series, much less a pennant or a series. He has inherited All Stars at many key positions, including many that are on pace for Hall of Fame careers.

The A's wins were 91-96-103-102-91-87-74 for wins over the past seven years. I take it that when you say "he has hit 90 wins a few times" what you actually mean is "He's hit 90 wins 5 years in a row, 5 years out of 7, and 100 wins twice." I mean, I can understand disliking the cult of Beane, I can understand that you think he gets undue credit for the players that they built the team upon and I can understand running down their playoff record, but it seems foolish to disregard the regular season record in that way.

I've now learned that just about anyone can come off as "smart" while being a total idiot about something rather simple. "Primate" fits very well here.

realnod,

Please don't judge Primer by Backlasher. There are a lot of people here who are willing to debate interesting topics sincerely.

Backlasher,

Can we agree on a fair way to evaluate DePodesta? What does he have to do to be considered a success? In the next 10 years how many divisions should he win? Pennants? World Series? How much of the teams' success should be attributed to Dan Evans? How much if any should be attributed to Kevin Malone?

Skewed

This is what I mean. Morgan had no knowledge about which he was speaking of, or at lest little-to-spotty knowledge. I'm beginning to get the impression that you're a Joe Morgan copy. Stupid. Just Stupid.

See? This is what people object to. I venture that Joe Morgan knows much more about baseball than 95% of the posters at this site. And that's B'lasher's and RETARDO's et al's point. THere are many ways to skin the baseball cat and achieve success. Bewis came along and convinced everybody that now there was OBJECTIVE analysis; baseball finally had been figured out. It too could be explained by math, and if you knew the right formulae, winning was assured. This is, I daresay, the new gnosticism and like gnosticism it has its adherents and its secret knowledge (e.g. the super-secret proprietary defense metric the Saber-geniuses must have that explains the confounding preference for Singleton over some OBP guy).

When and as Beane (or other's) fail, or fail to act in predictably "sabermetric" ways, the failure is explained in the one case by "luck" or in the other by super-secret sabermetric advances (it's always been about market inefficiencies!). And the standard MO for evaluating other GMs, commentators, writers, etc., has been disdain, contempt, and ridicule (see the early to mid Rob Neyer career, see BProspectus, etc). How could this not be off-putting? How could this flight in Icarian (word?) fancy not result in a tragic fall?

RETARDO, B'lasher, and I were really historically inevitable. We wish we didn't have to do this, but we had no choice.

Was that worth the shot, or do you really believe that Dan Meyer is going to be Tom Glavine.

I did believe Meyer would become a solid MLB pitcher when he was with the Braves.

Tom "lock for hall of fame pitcher" Glavine was just Tom "unproven farm talent" Glavine once upon a time. Why are you CONSTANTLY writing the A's prospects off?

That is only true because Beane convinced you that was the choice. That certainly wasn't the choice for 2004.

Do you really think he'd let Tejada walk if he had the ability to keep him? The A's couldn't hand out 2 big contracts, they gave one to Chavy, and let Miggy walk. If you can come up with the 60 million dollars to keep Miggy, more power to you, you're clearly a better GM than Beane.

"lease don't judge Primer by Backlasher. There are a lot of people here who are willing to debate interesting topics sincerely"

How kick-a$$ is Billy Beane? Awesome or Mind-boggling? Is Joe Morgan stupid or is he dumb? Did Kenny Williams get beat with a dummy stick, or did the stupid tree fall on him? Steroids: like LASIK or like nanotechnology? If you could birth Barry Bonds's love-child, what would you name it? Steroids: should they be taken from Pez-dispensers or shot into the buttock Gump-style? Should salary-cap advocates be burned at the stake or tarred and feathered? Steroids hearings: Stalinist show trial or Spanish Inquisition?

the best part of Primer is clearly when Larry Bowa logs on drunk and starts ranting.

"If you want to feel like you're smarter than someone else for drinking the Kool-aid; keep it to yourself."

Hope you don't apply this to yourself or to your Union pals. I enjoy a lot of your work and have learned from it, and keeping references to or suggestions of being "smarter than someone else" to yourselves would reduce your collective post word-counts by about 50%.

This is, I daresay, the new gnosticism and like gnosticism it has its adherents and its secret knowledge

1) There was never any such thing as Gnosticism.

2) Gnosticism, as classically constructed, made its saving knowledge open only to the few. I guess you could say it's more the new evangelical Protestantism, if you want to wildly oversimplify. It's not that we gain the secret knowledge, but that the knowledge is now available to everybody, and the ones who used to claim they held that knowledge were mistaken. We all can know baseball equally and perfectly.

If you want to fight against that, go right ahead. You'll be basically right about a lot of it. There was a lot of excess in the 98-00 period, and there has been a lot of rollback.

I'm always a little confused by the rancor and the rhetoric, but, then, this isn't my game or my fight.

Backlasher,
Stupid. Just stupid. You're not attacking Beane. You're not even attacking Beane followers. You're attacking the very foundation of a principle that in ways you seem to defend when it's convenient to you. RE: Morgan. This is what I mean. Morgan had no knowledge about which he was speaking of, or at lest little-to-spotty knowledge. I'm beginning to get the impression that you're a Joe Morgan copy. Stupid. Just Stupid.



realnod,

Please don't judge Primer by Backlasher. There are a lot of people here who are willing to debate interesting topics sincerely.


See E-X, this is why you can't approach this topic with any type of real conversation. There hasn't been a BALCO moment with Beane that will make the intellectually challenged to find another cause. I expect the A's performance this year to shed some light on the situation.

I don't really see how you can ascribe to the GM's job function increasing the value of the team.

Shareholder value is how all officers are ultimately judged.

I don't really see how you can ascribe to the GM's job function increasing the value of the team. Presumably, Billy Beane doesn't get to make decisions as to the size of the payroll he has to spend, or whether investing more would result in further increases to the value of the A's.

I don't know when he is consulted and when he is not consulted. TwoAlous asked to go "macro". I did. At the highest level, the financial success of the A's compared to the league is not that stellar. The only thing the A's have done well is wins/operating cost. That is a function of the monopoly rents of players that all came from a previous organization.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that Beane is excelling because of finance, and claim he is failing because of finance. He either has influence in those decisions, in which case he can take credit for the Win/$, but fails on capital appreciation of the company (because everyone else has to live off his product). Alternatively, he has little or no influence. In which case he can't take credit for the mandated salaries that were negotatiated before he arrived.

I can live with either one. Its the Beane worshippers who are bastardizing this to give Beane all credit for winning at payroll and no resposibility for failing to win the big prize or increase the value of the organization.

I'm accused of being dishonest, but you really have to pick a pardigm here. If you go real macro and work down, you get:

(1) Failed to increase value of the organization.
(2) Failed to maximize short term revenues.
(3) Failed to win the world series.
(4) Failed to win a pennant.
(5) Failed to win a playoff series.
(6) Won 3 out of 7 division titles.
(7) Won the fifth most games in baseball.
(8) Failed to maintain his existing staff.
(9) Failed to maintain his existing players.
(10) Claimed all credit for successes onto himself.
(11) Heavily annoyed his peers in baseball.
(12) Heavily annoyed his subordinates.

So he gets credit for the items in 6 and 7. Regardless of your next paragraph, I've given him that credit. But the same way you want to adjust pitcher wins for the contributions of his teammates with an alphabet soup of stats, you should also do the same thing for Beane with the talent he inherited.

Instead you want to cherry pick what he did well without any adjustment, and then claim he did so with some hocus pocus. If you want to measure him, rightly measure him. Don't just assume the sun rises from his assshole. Don't give him credit for trades beyond what they actually produce. Don't assume everyone he drafts is the next Micky Mantle. Don't assume that every trade is him raping another organization. Don't assume every kid the organization is high on will be a star. The A's have overtaken the Mets and Yankees for overhyping prospects.

And Jesus Christ, talk about one thing at a time. If you want to prove he exploited market inefficiencies, prove it. Don't just rely on Michael Lewis' telling of events. If you want to prove that fatfukk softball players are the sh1t, prove it, don't just assume that one simplistic statistical model contains all truth. If you want to prove Beane has a superduper defensive system, show it to me. His having the best defense doesn't mean he has paid undervalue to get it.
Nobody should care about winning the Beane count. Nobody should care about an out of context WS/$ metric.

Can we agree on a fair way to evaluate DePodesta? What does he have to do to be considered a success? In the next 10 years how many divisions should he win? Pennants? World Series? How much of the teams' success should be attributed to Dan Evans? How much if any should be attributed to Kevin Malone?

That depends on many things that are presently unknown by me, and presently unknown by anybody. That is one of the problems with most saberists. You want to put together some type of model today, and then live with that model come he11 or high water. Its why I didn't even want to make the 180 games bet. The circumstances change dramatically if the A's fire Beane, or reduce his role internally.

DePo should be judged based on what the realistic expectations are of the Dodgers over any applicable term. I doubt the Dodgers even have a 10 year plan. I imagine somewhere over the next five years, the Dodgers have the goal of winning a World Championship. Barring some change in the market, I imagine they expect DePo to outpace the mean capital increase of MLB teams. Which most certainly means that you have to outperform the Angels at almost any reasonable cost. You can't let Moreno cut into your market. But feel free to set up your own criteria.

I venture that Joe Morgan knows much more about baseball than 95% of the posters at this site.

I wouldn't necessarily agree with this statement. I have no doubt that Joe Morgan has a ton of insight into what coaches and managers are thinking at any given moment, into the proper way to do something on the baseball field, what a pitcher should do in a given situation, etc etc.

I don't think that this necessarily means he knows jack about the bigger picture, what makes for a winning baseball team, or how to properly value the contribution that a baseball player makes to a team. If I want to know about that, there are a ton of guys around here I see as more reliable than him. That's not necessarily a slur on Joe Morgan-those aren't abilities required to be a HOF 2B. It does mean that I'm not going to be particularly deferential to his thoughts on these matters though, and if he says something stupid, he deserves to get ripped because of the position that he's in.

I don't think that this necessarily means he knows jack about the bigger picture, what makes for a winning baseball team, or how to properly value the contribution that a baseball player makes to a team. If I want to know about that, there are a ton of guys around here I see as more reliable than him.

You're right. I recall a discussion here once by a bunch of guys who claimed that Primates could be better than most active GMs. You're right. Lots of us know "big picture" stuff about winning ballgames. What's the "objective" proof for this? We're saberiffic!

RETARDO, B'lasher, and I were really historically inevitable. We wish we didn't have to do this, but we had no choice.

Don't forget kevin. You get him as well.

See? This is what people object to. I venture that Joe Morgan knows much more about baseball than 95% of the posters at this site.

Morgan only knows more about playing baseball, not the objective analysis of baseball events. There is a huge difference, and the traditionalists seem balky. Joe Morgan routinely says dumbass things. He's intentionally blinding himself. It's not as if the evidence is hidden; anyone can access the information, and manipulating it is easy enough for a computer illiterate like me. Guys like Morgan just don't care and they wear it as a badge of honor. That's pathetic. There isn't an industry in the world that would resist improvement like baseball does, unless you count politics as an industry, which it actually is at this point.

Why are you CONSTANTLY writing the A's prospects off?


I'm not. I legitimately expect some of them to pan out. But you've got Danny and the fanboys suggesting that all will hit All Star status. Miggy is on pace for a HOF career.

I didn't expect Tom Glavine to be Tom Glavine. I went through quite a few Tony Brizzolara's before I got a Tom Glavine. I've been through a few David Nieds waiting for another one, and its only been because of the historic greatness and longevity of Glavine, Maddux and Smoltz that I've been saved from more Tony Brizzolaras.

I saw Crosby play last year. If he gets healthy, I think he will be a major league regular. If he improves, he will be an All Star. He won't be Miggy Tejeda. I'm getting a look at Nick Whiffer, and he is not impressing. I haven't wrote him off as I did and do with Choi, but he is sinking. Harden does look pretty good.

I can be objective, up until Danny gives me a Treder list of prospects and talking about there stardom. Then I think about the Mets fans and their proclamations. For all those players who were the sh1t, from Bill Pulsipher through Huber, the Mets netted David Wright and Jose Reyes. That's pretty nice, but its not anything like a guarantee of coverage of a Miggy Tejeda.

I have long awaited players like Betamit, Mike Kelly, and Melvin Nieves. I just knew they weren't Chipper Jones.

Fair enough.

Just to let you know, I've already written of Jeremy Brown, and I have ZERO expectations for Joe Blanton with his asstastic peripherals.

I've got CFBPS on Rich Harden though, and I think Swisher would become decent, and Crosby an all-star.

Morgan only knows more about playing baseball, not the objective analysis of baseball events.

Do you not see how counter-intuitive and strange this statement is?

JC,

Does your Morgan comment also apply to Beane, then? Beane has been a player, a scout, and worked in various front-office capacities. Obviously, BL and RETARDO are not saying they are smarter than Beane per se, but they are saying he "sucks" in many categories.

Also, realnod's point is well-taken: "baseball" means a lot of things. If there were guys here saying that "Morgan doesn't know shitt about playing 2b and drawing walks in the majors" that would deserve criticism and perhaps even contempt. But they are not saying that. Morgan is now working as a media representative and should be dealt with on that basis. When I watch ESPN games, I notice that he always has interesting things to say about baserunning, situational hitting, and playing second base. These types of things are his areas of expertise. In other areas, he is weaker. It has little to do with being "smart" or "dumb." It has to do with a knowledge base and working off of that.

You're right. I recall a discussion here once by a bunch of guys who claimed that Primates could be better than most active GMs.

That was my buddy J.Cross who said Primates would be better than 80% of GMs.

I have no doubt that Joe Morgan has a ton of insight into what coaches and managers are thinking at any given moment, into the proper way to do something on the baseball field, what a pitcher should do in a given situation, etc etc.

That sounds an awful lot like the majority of baseball.

I don't think that this necessarily means he knows jack about the bigger picture, what makes for a winning baseball team, or how to properly value the contribution that a baseball player makes to a team.

What bigger picture? You mean the finance of the enterprise. I don't know if Joe knows anything about this. I have seen that most Primates don't know very much about this.

What about a winning baseball team? Isn't that pitchers making pitchers; players executing at the plate, all those kind of things.

Or do you mean roster construction? Well, I'd be willing to wager that if Joe Morgan called any GM this side of Billy Beane and gave him advice that GM would listen. They may not heed Joe's advice, but I bet they would consider it.

You can be damn sure that any enterprise that I am running, I'm going to listen to my head of accounting, my head of marketing, my head of engineering, my head of sales. You can be damn sure that if Arnie Blanck calls me up and gives me advice on business, I'm going to listen. You can be damn sure that if someone like Kevin calls up and gives me advice on my virology product I'm going to listen. If Caprizzi gives me advice on ethics, I'm going to listen. I may not always make the decision they endorsed, but I'm going to incorporate their advice into my decision making process.

And I have no idea whether Morgan know about how to figure up WARP factor, and I really don't care. Nor do I think the ability to perform simplistic arithmetic functions has anything to do with analysis. About the only job where I even think that this is even important is being somebody's clerk. You better learn how to put the numbers in context and use other analytics if you really want to improve your intelligence function.

Do you not see how counter-intuitive and strange this statement is?
Have you listened to Morgan? He's a devoted anti-revolutionist. Just because he thought doing this or that was a good idea doesn't mean he was right or wrong, just that he doesn't understand why he may have been right or wrong, because he doesn't get it. He has no respect for math. That's a problem. There's nothing counter-intuitive about a baseball event having a different mathematical value than the value a retired player may attribute to it. In fact, this is the bottom of the discussion and I would've thought we'd move past that point by now. Joe Morgan doesn't get credit for having played the game, any more than Bill James gets credit for having studied the game.

<objective analysis of baseball events.</i>

I think this needs a little clarification. Morgan has a ton more knowledge about playing 2nd base at the major league level than ANYONE here at BTF.

If he wants to tell the viewers about proper positioning at 2B, how to go out on a pop fly to short right field, turning a double play, covering 1st on a bunt, and everything else that goes along with being a great 2B, I'm willing to listen.

If he wants to tell us about situational hitting, how he stole bases successfully, hitting home runs, and all the other skills he possessed at being a potent offensive player, I'm willing to listen.

So basically you are saying DePodesta needs to win a world series and prevent LAA from capturing market share in the next 5 years. The first goal seems fair but difficult to acheive (probably every team has this goal and at a maximum only 1/6 can acheive it) the second goal seems both fair and realistically acheivable.

Is he a success if he acheives the economic goals and wins 1 pennant? 1 playoff series?

"Do you not see how strange and counter-intuitive this statement is?"

It's neither strange nor counter-intuitive. After Bill James was hired by the Red Sox, a blogger asked him about Garciaparra's hitting style and whether NG should take more pitches. James's answer was: "If you were Nomar Garciaparra, would you want Bill James telling you how to *play* baseball? Let's not go there." (emphasis mine)

But, of course, just as clearly, as Theo Epstein and others understand, there is a place for outsiders who have never played if they can bring certain skills and knowledge to the table. If I want to know if Mark Bellhorn could improve his footwork on the pivot, I go to the videotape, and I ask Joe Morgan, not Bill James. If I want to know what the Red Sox expected DPs should have been given their number of baserunners allowed on 1st base with 2 or fewer outs,I go to the spreadsheet, and I ask Bill James, not Joe Morgan.

That sounds an awful lot like the majority of baseball.

And I don't see people here ripping him when he says something about it. If they do, I wouldn't endorse it. I think any sane person would have to concede Morgan's superiority in this area.

You can be damn sure that if someone like Kevin calls up and gives me advice on my virology product I'm going to listen.

And if Kevin calls you up and says that he wants a meeting to discuss the legal disclaimer on the back of the packaging, you're going to listen to him too? It's the same thing.

JC,

Does your Morgan comment also apply to Beane, then? Beane has been a player, a scout, and worked in various front-office capacities. Obviously, BL and RETARDO are not saying they are smarter than Beane per se, but they are saying he "sucks" in many categories.

Also, realnod's point is well-taken: "baseball" means a lot of things. If there were guys here saying that "Morgan doesn't know shitt about playing 2b and drawing walks in the majors" that would deserve criticism and perhaps even contempt. But they are not saying that. Morgan is now working as a media representative and should be dealt with on that basis. When I watch ESPN games, I notice that he always has interesting things to say about baserunning, situational hitting, and playing second base. These types of things are his areas of expertise. In other areas, he is weaker. It has little to do with being "smart" or "dumb." It has to do with a knowledge base and working off of that.

Sorry for the 255/262 double. Not sure how it happened.

Does your Morgan comment also apply to Beane, then? Beane has been a player, a scout, and worked in various front-office capacities. Obviously, BL and RETARDO are not saying they are smarter than Beane per se, but they are saying he "sucks" in many categories.


robinred,

I'm afraid you just aren't understanding what we are saying. Of course, I'm not as good a GM as Billy Beane. I'm not as good a GM as Allard Baird. I doubt Joe Morgan is as good a GM as Billy Beane. I doubt Joe Morgan is as good a GM as Allard Baird. I'm pretty sure that Danny is worse than both of us and that nodhead would be worse than us all.

If Naomili would call me tomorrow and offer me the GM job, I don't expect I'd pack up my spreadsheet (or my observational skills) walk into Tampa and set the world on fire. I'd make a ton of mistakes. Nevertheless, if my career objective had been to be a major league GM, I would expect that at my present age, I would be skilled enough to perform my craft well.

As much as its not all about how to play 2b, its also not all about reading a spreadsheet. Most companies that take this approach with market analytics tend to divorce themselves from their customers and then not understand what went wrong. I've met plenty of second generation or young executives that expected product to sell itself, or expected product to sell just by throwing marketing dollars at the situation.

Joe Morgan isn't trying to be a major league GM. He is presently an analyst, and he does perform his craft well. He just relies on different intelligence than most at this board, and probably has a higher rate of being rate. He certainly has a higher rate of entertainment. You usually enjoy reading or listening to his POV.

Beane has done some things well. He has also done some things poorly. There is no reason that he can't be judged on the entirety of his performance. Its never really happened.

You see even now, even here, nobody will take up Beane's cause on the economics, yet they will praise him for economic accomplishments he hasn't made. They will also call any detractor an "economic illiterate #####"

If you could get the Beane lovers to stay on point it would be worthwhile conversation. It can't be done. None of your better thinkers out here will take up the Beane cause. Some will come close, E-X will take up the value of introducing performance measures. Nieporent is just convinced I'm beating up on the dimmer faction. You just want to berate me for being mean. Waterloo took a nice stab at the Hernandez trade. In a huge surprise, Wok actually engaged me on the subject matter.

But my union mates aren't taking the other side. Werr won't argue anymore. Field isn't in this cause. Sam M. will cameo at best. Dial has no interest. mgl, tango, emeigh, et. al. don't care. I'm sure there are other absentees that I'm not thinking about at the moment.

In a huge surprise, Wok actually engaged me on the subject matter.

I find my biggest strength in baseball to be the discussion and assessment of trades.

Hey, I admit my weaknesses in baseball analysis. I have a huge bias for speedy fielding players that get on base (Kotsay, Damon, Ichiro).

BL, my biggest beef with you has always been the "you guys all like fat guys like Youkilis, Cust, and Choi." Out of that list, I like Youkilis because he gets on base AND I think he's an above average fielder, and Choi I like from a pure statistical point of view. Ironically, both minorities.

I DON'T like fat guys. If I wanted to see fat guys struggle in the field all I have to do is watch somebody tape me play corner OF. however, fat guys DO have their value, and that value most of the time comes from getting on base, which taems need (and comes cheap).

Also, I sometimes sympathize with Choi because he's like me when I play. An "ugly swing", terrible batting average, but I get on base by
1) not swinging
2) Ridiculous amounts of HBPs pour moi.

You're right. I recall a discussion here once by a bunch of guys who claimed that Primates could be better than most active GMs.

That was my buddy J.Cross who said Primates would be better than 80% of GMs.

Just to be clear, I was referring only to members of the genus Homo and not to the entire primate family.

I also think that Joe Morgan would be a better manager than 100% of primer posters. Morgan's a pretty smart guy and for some reason gets a lot of criticism. Criticism that would be better directed at the real idiots of the baseball world like Steve Phillips.

I haven't read all of the posts here but I think it's worth directing your attention to a recent article by Alan Schwarz who calculates that player's who originated in the A's farm syste (within the last 12 years) have produced more win shares than players from any other organization. Would we agree that this is the largest component of the A's success? The question then becomes, how many of this players did Beane inherent and how many did he draft/sign himself? I'll leave that question for another time or another poster.

You see even now, even here, nobody will take up Beane's cause on the economics, yet they will praise him for economic accomplishments he hasn't made.

I raised it above, but for all your ######## about Billy Beane not raising the value of the A's enough (you also fail to give him credit for the lack of earthquakes in the Bay area since he took over), you've ignored the stadium point. Other teams have been handed new stadiums by their municipalities with which to generate revenues. The A's haven't.

I don't know whether Beane is good or bad from the perspective of increased value. I'm not willing to say so based on the failure of the A's to appreciate in value compared to other teams in their division. I still think that this is a bad metric by which to judge someone responsible for the on-field performance of the team.

Moreover, if I was looking at the team, and asking myself what has held back the value of the club, the baseball operations department is not the first place I'd point. You made the point above that all officers are judged by the change in corporate value. Fair enough. You'd have to be a ####### idiot to blame your marketing department for the lack of increase in corporate value if the product handed to them was a book entitled "Stopping Morning Sickness through the use of Thalidomide". Blaming the GM of a team that's won 90+ games five years in a row for the failure of the value of the team to increase at a rate proportionate to that of major league baseball is similarly foolish, absent something like taking advantage of a market inefficiency related to signing pedophiles or something.

If you can't show in some way that Beane's decisions are related to this failure, this is a foolish track to go down.

So basically you are saying DePodesta needs to win a world series and prevent LAA from capturing market share in the next 5 years. The first goal seems fair but difficult to acheive (probably every team has this goal and at a maximum only 1/6 can acheive it) the second goal seems both fair and realistically acheivable.

Is he a success if he acheives the economic goals and wins 1 pennant? 1 playoff series?


No, I'm saying that what matters the most is what McCourt's expectations are for DePo. At the next level what matters is what Enders and his pals reasonable expectations are for someone in the Dodgers position.

And no, I don't think that is what every team's expectation is for the upcoming season. I think every team will try to achieve that goal, but many will consider it a good campaign if they make a step toward that progress. I doubt the Pirates feel that they are WS contenders this year. If they find themselves in a position to achieve this goal, they may alter expectations.

I think he has to achieve the baseball goals to achieve the economic goals. If the Angels become dynastic and the Dodgers fade, it will give Moreno everything he is trying to acheive.

As I have mentioned, I like DePo. I have only mentioned the lack of wisdom involved in the Choi trade. Unless a large group start radically misrepresenting his accomplishments, I doubt I will pay much attention to him individually.

If I want to know what the Red Sox expected DPs should have been given their number of baserunners allowed on 1st base with 2 or fewer outs,I go to the spreadsheet, and I ask Bill James, not Joe Morgan.


And if I want to know what a player's prospects are for future success, at some point I ask people with baseball knowledge who have watched him play and watched other people play. If I want to know if my pitcher is going to recover, I go to the doctor.

If I want to know the value that a certain person has to my organization, I ask multiple people.

I don't get the complaint here robin. Morgan has not said that WARP factor uses the wrong denonominator in step 3. He has said that Beane's statements will cause him problems in the baseball community. That is something that Morgan would know more about than Bill James. He hasn't said that Jeter's expected walks are 20 instead of 55; he has said that Jeter provides value by being a leader. That is something Morgan would know that Danny would not know. He hasn't said that getting a caught stealing reduces your win probility by 8% rather than 12%; he has said that having a basestealer can create tension for the pitcher. That is something he would know more about than nodhead.

The vitriol comes not from his conclusions, but a few premises that just aren't articulated fully, but have no bearing on the conclusion. It doesn't matter if Billy Beane wrote the book or not.

And then the most famous is "clogging the bases" I see very little problem in the conclusion. Some players are more difficult to score. If you take it at its value, I'm still not sure its incorrect. If you have a player like Vince Coleman, does his expected scoring rate diminish if he has Hatteberg on at second. Does the expected rate of scoring at least 1 run increase or diminsh. I doubt it diminishes, but as far as I know, nobody has ever crunched the numbers on a player basis. We have recently seen more evidence that "ability to score" is a skill.

So what Morgan does is point out that a certain number is not the whole story. Its wise to listen to the message, and why he thinks it is so, and try to see if there is an analytical method to correspond to his decades of wisdom. Instead, most would rather ridicule in a bad attempt to promote their own intellectual superiority.

I think it also depends on how the Oakland Organization is structured. In the Mets "organization" there are different people responsible for making the baseball, marketing, and business decisions (not that the Wilpons don't dabble in all deparments)

But in the end, are you better locking up a complete catcher and seeking to upgrade the outfield on the open market, or are you better locking up a complete center fielder and looking for a catcher on the open market. The A's spent more money to do the latter, and that doesn't conform to what the market was offering. This is especially true when an absolute star is available. The Miller experiment was scrapped for Kendall.

As for the catcher vs. CF decision, I don't know that there is one absolute answer in all circumstances.

Miller wasn't really an experiment that was abandoned. He was a free agent allowed to depart and was replaced by a better player. Kendall should be about three wins better than Miller and costs roughly $5M (if I'm remembering correctly how much Pittsburgh is picking up from his contract) -- a price that was mostly defrayed by dispatching Rhodes and Redman and replacing them with Blanton and Street, each at the league minimum. Whether or not that latter tradeoff will work remains to be seen, of course ...

... the opportunity costs and such you describe, BL, are of course very real and complicated. I think Beane has a grasp of these questions, much moreso than many other GMs. Does he always make correct calcuations? Of course not, no one does. I don't know that switching out Long and Hernandez for Miller and Kotsay was a good move, and I don't know that it was a bad one, either. I don't think it made that big an impact on the team, actually, in 2004. I don't think that deal lost the division for them by any means. They got over a win out of it, at least. They likely would have been worse, though just barely.

Of course, the trade has life beyond 2004. Maybe Hernandez and Kotsay will move in vastly different directions this year and in the years to come. We don't know the longterm implications yet.

I'd just like to add that by letting Miller walk Beane picked up either one or two more draft picks.

He hasn't said that getting a caught stealing reduces your win probility by 8% rather than 12%; he has said that having a basestealer can create tension for the pitcher. That is something he would know more about than nodhead.

BPro looked at the actual data on this recently, and concluded that the effect was minimal, in terms of having it translate into OBP and SLG if I remember correctly. I can't get their website up right now, or I'd check. Who are you going to believe, the recorded data of what's actually happened, or Joe Morgan's subjective views? Even if Morgan is right and it makes the pitcher tense, but there's no impact in terms of offence, does it matter?

As far as the value of the franchise goes, I went and grabbed the data from Forbes. It basically breaks into large market teams enjoying astronomical increases, then teams who've built new stadiums, and then the rest. Interestingly, Atlanta is well below Oakland. The franchise value has increased only 28% since 1998 to Oakland's 57%. Both teams are behind MIL at 64%. Can I assume that you think MIL is the best run club of the three?

Maybe I've misunderstood you're position on DePodesta. I've seen you give him quite a bit of flak for the Penny/Choi trade (and maybe the Lowe signing) and I haven't seen you say anything nice about other moves he has made. You also seem to reserve a special form of disdain for Choi, who is having a nice start by the way.

I just wanted to get you on the record for what you considered to be reasonable goals for the Dodgers in the next few years. I think if someone were to have asked you similar questions in 1997, or whenever it was that Beane started, that your expectations for the A's from '97-'04 would have been well under their level of performance during the same time frame.