No, I'm Billy Beane!

battlefob for MLB commish...

Someone (not me) put it very well on the last Levitt thread: "Saying that Beane doesn't care about OBP because the A's don't have a great OBP is like saying that I don't care about money because I'm not a millionaire."

That said, battlefob's retort is far more profound than anything I, or anyone else here, could possibly say.

so to all the haters go suck som ####.

See, what makes this so great is that there are a bunch of words that could fit in the "####".

Is there anyone here who's considered the Bible as deeply as Moneyball has been considered by some people? While I think it was a fantastic book, and think I get what the point of it is, the discussion about it is just unbelievable.

Billy Beane's devotees (who have been quite vocal in response to my past postings) would have you think that the way Oakland's offense generate runs is very different from the way other teams generate runs.

In the original thread on this, someone got beat up for calling this guy stupid. I'll refine that comment by saying he clearly doesn't understand this debate, and when he comments on baseball, he comes off as stupid. I haven't heard anyone say that Oakland scores runs in a very different way than other teams. FWIW though, by my calculation from 1999-2002, OAK was third in the AL for runs, while at the same time being 10th in batting average, with .263. The only teams with worse batting averages were Tampa, Detroit and Baltimore. They scored 2850, 2869, and 2999 runs respectively. Every other team in the AL had an average of .270 or better, and yet Oakland's 3524 runs put them in third for runs scored.

It's pretty obvious to me that they were doing something that other teams weren't doing. They were first in walks in the AL for that time period.

He's still hung up on using data from 2003 and 2004 as well. It's been pointed out numerous times that Moneyball has nothing to do with those seasons.

I have to admit, I was intrigued by the idea of reading his book, because I enjoy reading different takes on conventional wisdom. Reading his commentary on something I know about is making me question whether I want to read what he has to say about subjects with which I'm less familiar. This guy is a jackass, on this subject at least.

Wow, disappointing from Levitt. I would suggest that he not put this in his next book.

Ignorance is bliss.

The A's aren't scoring runs differently than any other team. You score runs by making outs as rarely as possible and getting as many bases as you can. (This model includes stolen bases and caught stealing, which "Getting on base and hitting for power" doesn't)

Nowhere in Moneyball does it say the A's are running their offense differently. It says that while other teams are scoring runs like this, they don't know exactly why they're scoring runs like this. They don't know the value of the different things players do, they overvalue speed (which has too high a risk and too little reward), and undervalue walks. It doesn't mean that other teams are scoring while not walking and hitting for power, it says that (at the time Moneyball was concieved) walks and power were undervalued, and so Beane was able to get them for less than they were worth.

Yeah, they wouldn't have won without their pitching, but they wouldn't have won with their pitching if they hadn't found good values on offense and defense.

Is there anyone here who's considered the Bible as deeply as Moneyball has been considered by some people?

You mean they're two different books?

"My sh*t doesn’t work in the Apocalypse," said Jesus. "My job is to get us to the Apocalypse. What happens after that is f**king luck."

<i>You mean they're two different books?<i>

That does explain John 19:30. "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, We're not selling jeans here: and he bowed his head, and gave up his spirit.

You mean they're two different books?

But Jesus sacrificed.

That does explain John 19:30.

Or the time when God commanded Noah to build an ark, then threw a chair through humanity.

Collective Primey for posts 9 through 11. Brilliant.

The bible is also strongly against closer by committee.

Jesus Saves.

Nowhere in Moneyball does it say the A's are running their offense differently. It says that while other teams are scoring runs like this, they don't know exactly why they're scoring runs like this. They don't know the value of the different things players do, they overvalue speed (which has too high a risk and too little reward), and undervalue walks.

This should be in the past tense. There's no way OBP is undervalued nowadays, by any team.

The whole "Beane finds position players that other teams don't appreciate" thing is overblown, in my humble opinion.

Looking at the 2002 "Moneyball" A's, there are exactly two position players that fit the mold of the "Beane OBP discovery" players - Scott Hatteberg and Jeremy Giambi, and Giambi has actually turned out to be a bust in the long run.

The A's have developed some fine position players, but the only one out there especially good at drawing walks is Jason Giambi. Miguel Tejada, Ramon Hernandez, Eric Chavez - good hitters all, free swingers all.

Where the A's have shone is in their pitching staff. Beane does have the ability to find pitchers that other teams are overlooking, and turn them into stars.

He's been able to put together tremendous pitching staffs on the cheap, and that skill can NOT be overvalued in this day and age.

Whenever I post on baseball, people get very agitated.

Comments like this infuriate me. It is always implied that the people who are outraged about the subject are a group of crazies, anxiously waiting for the author to write more on the subject so they can jump all over it.

Maybe, just maybe, people jump all over you on this subject because you're wrong. Not even that, they probably jump all over you because they clearly know more about the question than you.

Basically, the thing that's annoying about this guy (and a bazillion people out there like him) is that they're condescending about subjects on which they're clearly not particularly well informed. His conclusion (Beane isn't all that) could very well be right, but the way he attempts to prove it just demonstrate that he doesn't have much of anything to contribute.

If he took the time to understand Beane, Moneyball, and general saber-principles, and then disagreed with those principles, that's fine. But to suggest that you've proven ANYTHING by pointing out that Oakland's offensive numbers look similar to some other teams is absurd.

Looking at the 2002 "Moneyball" A's, there are exactly two position players that fit the mold of the "Beane OBP discovery" players - Scott Hatteberg and Jeremy Giambi

*cough* Erubiel Durazo *cough*

Miguel Tejada, Ramon Hernandez, Eric Chavez - good hitters all, free swingers all.

Would that be the Eric Chavez who led the league in walks last year?

they overvalue speed (which has too high a risk and too little reward)

For, as the Ten Commandments say, "Thou shalt not steal...at less than a 75% success rate."

Looking at the 2002 "Moneyball" A's, there are exactly two position players that fit the mold of the "Beane OBP discovery" players - Scott Hatteberg and Jeremy Giambi

Oops, you meant just in 2002. So scratch Durazo. Though he does fit into the "position players that other teams don't appreciate" category.

Shortest sentence in the Bible:

Jesus walked.

Must....restrain....self....

Wouldn't the shortest sentence in the Bible be "Lo!"?

I agree, Baldrick. His analysis is incredible simplistic and he acts like he's doing something no one has every thought to do before.

I should point out that it's simplistic in the "not very well thoughout way" not the "simple but elegant" way he's known for.

Holy crap, Steven Levitt just plain has no clue what the hell he's talking about. Honestly, it's a little disheartening. For the most part, the truly intelligent people I've met have always been open to the idea that they're wrong, even after devoting their entire lives to one point of view. But an unwillingness to be wrong isn't what annoys me the most about Levitt. It's the fact that he's willing to offer an opinion, then attempts to defend that opinion, when it is blatantly obvious to everyone involved that his opinion is completely uninformed.

>"As usual, my view is that we should let the data speak."

You mean the data that suggests that OBP was mentioned in a few pages in a book that was more than two hundred pages long? Or the data that notes that, immediately following the passage on OBP and offensive statistics, there's an entire freaking section on fielding and how the A's went after a better model for finding its value?

Or was it the data on how to draft players? Because an entire chapter, and several chapter sections, was devoted to how you draft players, and OBP is only mentioned peripherally (and the most important, fundamental point is that the actual numbers put up by a player are far more important than how he looks).

Or was it the chapter on Chad Bradford? An undervalued pitcher who put up the right numbers (read: the pitching numbers that the A's thought were valuable) but didn't have the right "look," who was subsequently acquired by the A's and proceeded to become one of the better relievers in the majors? Oh, I forgot, that chapter revolved entirely around OBP, too.

No, wait, it must've been the chapter on how the A's signed former Red Sox catcher Scott Hatteberg and gave him a job as a first baseman. Sure, there's a little bit on OBP there. But there's a ton more on hitting approach and control of the strike zone. And even more on how the A's, because they understand Hatteberg's fundamental value (and the fielding value of a first baseman), were willing to convert him to a position that he never played beyond little league.

Or was it the chapter on how Billy Beane, armed with his new information and his own trading skills, was able to make deals with other GMs to acquire the talent he wanted in exchange for "talent" he felt was overvalued?

But wait, what about the section on how and why the A's drafted the Big Three in the first place? I mean, god forbid you should argue that Beane "got lucky" with drafting his pitchers and then completely ignore the pages detailing why Beane chose those pitchers instead of the dozen or so other pitchers, or dozens of other position players, he could have potentially chosen from? Wait, you mean when the Padres (and others) told Zito that he didn't have enough velocity to pitch in the majors, but the A's drafted him anyway, that somehow isn't part of how and why the franchise has been able to succeed? Oh, wait, I forgot. Moneyball doesn't mention that. It's totally and completely about OBP. Except it isn't.

Look, I could go on and on and on and on, detailing every single page, every single statement, every single piece of minutiae that isn't about OBP in the book, but I'm not going to. It's pretty clear that either he didn't read the book, has a horrible memory, or has poor reading comprehension. Plenty of others have made a ton of valid points - that the A's were only offense oriented in the early years (2000-2001), and that the book details how, as the marketplace shifted, the A's moved on to other things. Or that Moneyball is fundamentally about finding undervalued talent and putting it to use, so regardless of what the talent is, as long as the A's think it's undervalued and are using it, they're following its tenets. Or, etc. etc. etc. blah blah blah.

But all of the above, all of it, no longer pertains to Levitt's point because he has shifted to another argument altogether (he presents several Straw Men in his posts, but I won't bother listing them). He first starts out by acknowledging that the point of the book was to detail how the A's take undervalued talent (specifically, good hitters, which already isn't true) and put it to use. Then, he goes off on a complete tangent, saying that the reason the A's supposedly generate more runs is that they do so differently. Of course, this ignores the point that runs are generated the exact same way everywhere. The rules of baseball don't suddenly change for a different team. Of course, that's not his "real" point. His real point is that the A's have a different "strategy" for gaining runs - one centered around OBP.

So then he lists a bunch of "hypothetical" teams, along with their numbers. The point, supposedly, is to argue that the A's were low in run production, and hence run production wasn't part of the reason they won (an argument which is vacuous at best - you have to score runs to win games).

But that's not the best part. The best part is when he ignores the entire argument he himself erroneously attributes to the book. Somehow, the A's being last in his "list" equate to them not generating runs differently. Except they did. The book points out in detail that the conventional "strategy" was to overvalue AVG and power. If you hit for high average and a bunch of home runs, then you were a better hitter than a a guy wih a lower AVG, even if the other guy had a much higher OBP with fewer home runs. So the A's understand the fundamental value of OBP as it relates to offense. Does this mean that they themselves overvalued it? No. But if other people undervalued it, then they could use that to their advantage. And the data he presents shows exactly that.

Barring the usual caveats of SSS and whatnot, all you need to do is look at the last three teams. Team C = 838 Runs, Team D = 829 Runs, Team E = 828 Runs. Look at their AVG's. Then look at their Home Run totals (something also overvalued, as detailed in the book). Teams C and D hit roughly 40 more Home Runs than Team E. And yet their differences in offensive output are only 10 and 1 runs, respectively. In fact, they were higher than Team E in SLG as well. If they hit more home runs and they had a higher SLG, then what gives? Gee, it couldn't be that the OBP of Team E was (oh-so-slightly) higher than the OBP of Teams C and D, could it? Nah.

An important point missed in all the data he presents is that, at the time, no one even took OPS seriously. Only baseball nerds did, and the A's didn't like OPS as much as they liked their own formulation, which put OBP as 2-3 times the value of SLG. I wouldn't have even bothered with all this crap if Levitt himself had bothered to look at the data he was presenting in respect to his argument. The fact that it directly refutes him just makes him look like even more of a horse's ass. I don't even personally agree with the formulation that has OBP as worth 2-3 times more than SLG. But if I was going to argue against it, I'd at least have the right data to back me up. As it stands, half of his (extremely small sample size) data appears to back him up (it doesn't) and the other half blatantly refutes him. Good job, Levitt!

I'm so disgusted I don't even know where I started with this. If you don't have a clue what you're talking about, have the good sense to shut the hell up. Otherwise, you just make yourself look like an even bigger fool than you already are.

anyone who reads his posts on baseball will be taking his book with a huge grain of salt.

his kung fu is weak.

Would that be the Eric Chavez who led the league in walks last year?

And in just 125 games. 10 were intentional, but still. Third on the list was Bellhorn (in just 138 games), another Oakland product. Even in 1994, 3 guys tied or topped Chavez's 95 walks. You have to go back to the strike year of 1981 to find an AL walk leader under 100 (85) and 1976. Colavito in 65 with 93 walks is the last full-season leader with fewer walks than Chavez. Did the whole AL start playing OzzieBall last year?

FYI, Ramon Hernandez's career walk rate is about 1 per 11 AB, which is hardly awful and I suspect is good for a C.

Anyway, E Hinske says pretty much everything I would say. But I'll add this -- the real test of "Moneyball" would have more to do with the players the A's have acquired via trade and FA. The A's, like all successful small market teams, derive most of their value from their young players -- players who are "market inefficiencies" that all teams get the advantage of thanks to the design of the system. It would be interesting to look at the A's FA signings vs. typical players at their position -- then you might well see a different profile.

Second, I had no problem at all picking the A's out of that list of teams. Why? Because they had a different profile -- low BA but still good OBP. And saying that a team with a BA of 264 over 5 years is "similar" to teams with a BA of 275 and 276 over 5 years is, well, a bit off. We're talking about roughly 28,000 PA. That's about 65 extra hits per year. Outwalking one team by 40 and out-ISOing another team by 30 points helps the A's make up that offensive gap.

Third, even if you buy that these are similar teams, the 2 teams the A's trail are the Yanks and Red Sox who, I dare say, spent a smidgen more on their offense than the A's. The #5 team is Seattle which, during most of this period, had a payroll about double the A's. The 4th team is Cleveland who are there mostly because of 2000 and 2001 when they were very good (and high-priced -- their top 5 salaries pretty much equaled the A's payroll).

Which brings us to point 4. At the end, he blithely claims that lots of GMs have success on a low payroll. Well, over these last several years, there have been 2 -- Beane and Terry Ryan. Jocketty and Hunsicker did nice jobs with "not real high" payrolls.

Regardless, over the last 5 years, Beane has built an offense that has posted numbers roughly equal to 4 substantially higher payroll offenses ... yet he's not taking advantage of market inefficiencies? No matter how you slice it, he was extremely more efficient from a $/run aspect than those teams.

Dodgerfan88, no need to restrain yourself. I'm too much in awe of the following response in Levitt's blog to comment on anything else:

Joe S. Sausage said...

What correlation exists between winning teams and wurst(sausage)sales?

You have to go back to the strike year of 1981 to find an AL walk leader under 100 (85) and 1976

That was supposed to be "and 1976 to find a full-season leader under 100."

Walt pointed out something that I intended to point out but completely forgot about amid my irritation-filled ramblings - that the A's have still managed to rank higher in run production than they rank in payroll. Gee...they score more runs than their payroll would indicate, they prevent more runs than their payroll would indicate, and they win a ton more games than their payroll would indicate... And this is not indicative of having a different "strategy" how?

because beane didn't draft the big 3!

*ducks*

Primey for #2

Levitt's posts remind me of Matt Taibbi's recent review of T. Friedman's new book:

<I>It's impossible to divorce The World Is Flat from its rhetorical approach. It's not for nothing that Thomas Friedman is called "the most important columnist in America today." That it's Friedman's own colleague at the New York Times (Walter Russell Mead) calling him this, on the back of Friedman's own book, is immaterial. Friedman is an important American. He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity. Like George Bush, he's in the reality-making business. In the new flat world, argument is no longer a two-way street for people like the president and the country's most important columnist. You no longer have to worry about actually convincing anyone; the process ends when you make the case.

Things are true because you say they are. The only thing that matters is how sure you sound when you say it. In politics, this allows America to invade a castrated Iraq in self-defense. In the intellectual world, Friedman is now probing the outer limits of this trick's potential, and it's absolutely perfect, a stroke of genius, that he's choosing to argue that the world is flat. The only thing that would have been better would be if he had chosen to argue that the moon was made of cheese. </em>

Levitt hasn't made any effort to engage any of the posters here or on his blog re Beane and Moneyball. Instead, he just makes these half-hearted, irrelevant arguments, and seems to think that the discussion has ended once he's made his case.

levitt would also have done well to disprove himself by putting in SB/CS and sacrifice bunt/bunt hit totals. last time i checked, those were popular offensive strategies, that the A's employ differently from both successful and unsuccesful teams.

plz god get rid of these haters i mean i could take it if a's were buyin chamoinships with 100 mill payroll but we are the underdogs, no one cares about us and dont expect nothin out of us and we still com bak every year better and stronger than year b4, so mayb it has to do some with the greatesr gm in the game, so to all the haters go suck som ####.


Exactly. Is this the only baseball topic this guy could think to write about????

And who the hell ever said the A's score runs differently than everybody else? I mean, they're not bunting guys over and stealing a bunch of bases, but they are also not using some secret technique to try and score.

Billy Beane didn't draft my uncle. My grandmother just had the wrong birthdate, so he signed up for the reserves even though he had one of the highest lottery numbers.

"A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything."

*Snicker*

Hi, I'm here to free the hostage.

I would have passed over this latest nerd squeal if you hadn't abducted Matt Taibbi for the purposes of defending your dogma.

Dogmatists, talking out their asses with smug certainty, are the types that Taibbi bashes, and since Beanebags are the most blindly ideological people in baseball, I dont think you get to claim Taibbi as your own, nor do you get to abuse his excellent destruction of Tom Friedman in the service of slagging those like Levitt who sow the seeds of uncertainty into your precision-spreadsheeted fields.

Stop it.

Give him back.

"Comments like this infuriate me. It is always implied that the people who are outraged about the subject are a group of crazies, anxiously waiting for the author to write more on the subject so they can jump all over it."

Aren't they?

"If he took the time to understand Beane, Moneyball, and general saber-principles,"

How is this not condescending? If he would only see the one true light.... Then, although you say that would be fine, we both know that it wouldnt be.

Why I think Beanebags are crazies is that, again, you people see only one true way to build a baseball team, one true set of principles, and any deviation from them is "stupid". That roundly qualifies as True Believer crazy.

"While I think it was a fantastic book, and think I get what the point of it is, the discussion about it is just unbelievable."

What's unbelievable is that it's considered so "fanastic" by some people that it's not, actually, hyperbole to compare it to a religious document. Add to the general feeling about it among True Believers the observation that, like with all religious texts, "official" interpretations of it have varied and mutated through the years. Also, it has come to the point that its implied that there are secret messages in it which only the elect may know the true meaning and intent of (hence the nascent Cult of Beane, with attendant priests). Still also, like with any religious text, once the dogma, spittle and sheer intolerance of True Believers is pointed out, it is backtracked from by otherwise sane people in a fakey sort of way, in the same sense that moderate Christians when confronted with the awfulness of fundamentalists, back off from their own literal interpretations (at least in front of secular company) and say that, you know, The Book is just a template.

Now I'll go buy Taibbi a drink and we'll make jokes at your expense. Feel free to go back to being the neocons of baseball -- less cynical and devious, to be sure, but every bit as steamrollingly intolerant, self-congratulatory, self-pitying and dogmatic.

...in the service of slagging those like Levitt who sow the seeds of uncertainty into your precision-spreadsheeted fields.

Just so we're clear, you're onside with the analysis that Levitt is presenting? If you like the general idea of trashing Beane and his acolytes, that's one thing. If you suggest that Levitt has actually sown any doubt with his posts, or that he has had anything relevant to add the discussion, I think you're pushing it. I don't think that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is necessarily applicable here.

If he was posting here under the name "Richard Bachman" or something, the saber friendly types would be laughing at him openly (as we are anyway), and those of you who think Beane gets too much love would just ignore him. It's kind of ironic, but anyone who wants to take this guy's analysis seriously because of his economic credentials is committing the cardinal sin of Moneyball. You're overvaluing his analysis based on irrelevant factors.

plz god get rid of these haters i mean i could take it if a's were buyin chamoinships with 100 mill payroll but we are the underdogs, no one cares about us and dont expect nothin out of us and we still com bak every year better and stronger than year b4, so mayb it has to do some with the greatesr gm in the game, so to all the haters go suck som ####.

Exactly.

You should have ended the post right there. It would have been Primey material.


Basically, the thing that's annoying about this guy (and a bazillion people out there like him) is that they're condescending about subjects on which they're clearly not particularly well informed. His conclusion (Beane isn't all that) could very well be right, but the way he attempts to prove it just demonstrate that he doesn't have much of anything to contribute.

The most annoying thing about people like this is that they act as thought they're bravely making this argument against a world that is against them. This may just be how Levitt writes, but it's idiotic when it comes to Moneyball because the majority of the baseball-watching and baseball-writing world still doesn't really buy into "Moneyball." I loved one of his blog posts a few weeks ago where he basically started out, "Everyone loves Billy Beane and gets mad at me when I criticize him," and ended with something like, "The gambling line on the A's this year is 85 wins. I guess everyone doesn't really love Billy Beane afterall."

They're like

Why I think Beanebags are crazies is that, again, you people see only one true way to build a baseball team, one true set of principles, and any deviation from them is "stupid". That roundly qualifies as True Believer crazy.

I don't know if I qualify as a "Beanebag" ... I'm pretty sure I qualify as a Lesser Primate ... but one of the things that impressed me the most about the Billy Beane A's was when they ditched the softball style for a more speed and defense oriented team. That shows me that the front office is willing to be a little bit self-critical.

Now I know you say that the problem is the spreadsheet-head-ness of the A's, but I think it's likely that that's a creation of the actual spreadsheet weilding fanboys and Michael Lewis and the people that don't like how Beane is showing them up.

Taibbi's smackdown of Friedman was outstanding. ... and I'd like to second Battlefob for commish.

I wish this stupid fukking book had never been written.

I wish this stupid fukking book had never been written.

Shall we organize a burning?

Georgia's leftover science textbook warning stickers should be affixed to the covers.

I'm Billy Beany, yes I'm the real Beany
All you other Beany babies are just imitating
So won't the real Billy Beany please stand up,
Please stand up, please stand up?

I wish this stupid fukking book had never been written.

Shall we organize a burning?

Farenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, produced by Lewis Allen...Fireman Fabian...

We have a worker!

How is this not condescending? If he would only see the one true light.... Then, although you say that would be fine, we both know that it wouldnt be.

Why I think Beanebags are crazies is that, again, you people see only one true way to build a baseball team, one true set of principles, and any deviation from them is "stupid". That roundly qualifies as True Believer crazy.

I know you are, but what am I?

But seriously, did you read what I wrote? I said that anti-Beane folks might have legitimate arguments. I have seen them detailed endlessly by Backlasher, for example. I don't always agree with him, but he's got some stuff to contribute. This guy, however, does not have anything to contribute apart from smugness and an air of credibility due to his status as an economist that is wholly undeserved.

He doesn't have to see the light and agree with Moneyball, sabermetrics, etc. In fact, he's welcome to disagree and add something to the discussion. But to do that would require a good-faith attempt to understand what sabermetric principles are, and to understand the point of Moneyball.

I see nothing to indicate he has done so. That is why he's infuriating. His statement at the beginning, basically an admission that he is trolling, makes this pretty clear.

I don't deny that some of the comments here have passed beyond pointing out the failures of the linked article and have moved into the saber-dogma you don't like. Fine, criticize those people. Don't get angry at me for saying that this guy isn't making a good-faith effort to engage these questions.

When does Dan Meyer get the call?

"Why I think Beanebags are crazies is that, again, you people see only one true way to build a baseball team, one true set of principles, and any deviation from them is "stupid". That roundly qualifies as True Believer crazy."

say hello to mah lil frien!*

*mr. strawman.

"Why I think Beanebags are crazies is that, again, you people see only one true way to build a baseball team, one true set of principles, and any deviation from them is "stupid". That roundly qualifies as True Believer crazy."

say hello to mah lil frien!*

*mr. strawman.

it is good fun:

matt taibbi on freidman

BOO @ x2POST!

pee ess: matt taibbi is the ####.

But to do that would require a good-faith attempt to understand what sabermetric principles are, and to understand the point of Moneyball.

Why exactly does he not deserve his status as an economist?

Oh my. Some people can tell a joke, and some can't.

This guy, however, does not have anything to contribute apart from smugness and an air of credibility due to his status as an economist that is wholly undeserved.

...would be the sentence I meant to quote. G'night.

That review is pretty damn funny.

i read it as his noted abilities as an economist lends him undeserved credence as a critic of billy beane.

Kinda of topc here, but I was reading moneyball the other day and noticed that there's a whole big part of the book, that never gets brought up, about picking players who are mentally ready for baseball, and how some just aren't cut-out to play pro ball. Beane it seemed was really into this part, while DePodesta followed more closeley to the laptopand spreadsheet theory.

Dogmatists, talking out their asses with smug certainty, are the types that Taibbi bashes, and since Beanebags are the most blindly ideological people in baseball, I dont think you get to claim Taibbi as your own, nor do you get to abuse his excellent destruction of Tom Friedman in the service of slagging those like Levitt who sow the seeds of uncertainty into your precision-spreadsheeted fields.

How droll. Good show RETARDO.

Any battlefob post is automatically Primey worthy.

When does Dan Meyer get the call?

As soon as his #### works in Sacramento.

Tossed a good game last night.

I thought you were going to say he tossed a good salad last night.

"...in the service of slagging those like Levitt who sow the seeds of uncertainty into your precision-spreadsheeted fields."

You're better than Friedman with the similes, but you're just as wrong as Levitt here. Levitt is trying to "sow uncertainty" by introducing bad info into the discussion and drawing mistaken conclusions from it, just like if he'd said that Beane isn't as efficient as he seems because he's been bribing other GMs to make bad trades with bars from his secret stash of Nazi gold.

You mean Sunday night? Here's his line thus far:

18.0 IP, 26 H, 14 R, 12 ER, 3 HR, 9 BB, 11 K, 6.00 ERA

I think I might pick him up anyway.

As for your accusation of being a "dogmatist", well, if demanding that people who represent themselves as experts have at least some idea of what the hell they're talking about qualifies as dogmatism, I guess I'm a dogmatist.

Levitt isn't being attacked for failing to genuflect to some illusory altar, he's being attacked because he's erroneously claiming that Beane hasn't been unusually efficient about building good teams, when it should be patently obvious that he has. If he'd said the same thing about Terry Ryan, it would've been just as stupid, and just as deserving of scorn.

Does anyone else find Levitt's website kind of weird? ("first B+ since high school"?).

I have to admit, I had every intention of buying the book when I first heard about it -- he sounds kind of like Bill James for real life -- but his comments about Beane and the general tone of the site have really turned me off.

The A's have been successful because of Hudson, Muldaur and Zito. Period. Give Beane some credit for them but let's not deify Scott Hatteberg or Mark Kotsay..they are nice role players but they are no Derek Jeters

Meyer's last start: 5 IP, 1 ER, 2 w, 5 k.

Its his first good start of the year including spring training. I'd have to see another before I give him a shot.

A's are doing OK with the new pitching anyway, its the offense that needs work.

In our sim league's, any time my brother had an offense that looked like the 2005 A's, he started stealing 2nd and 3rd every chance he got, figured there was no cost of a CS since the batter wasn't going to drive him in anyway. Something tells me the A's won't go there.

Muldaur

It's a commonly misspelled name, but that's got to be the strangest spelling I've seen.

Meyer's last start: 5 IP, 1 ER, 2 w, 5 k.

it was so good he got 2 wins!

A's are doing OK with the new pitching anyway, its the offense that needs work.

Aren't they hitting something like .205 with runners in scoring position? Won't regression to the mean bring that # up quite a bit and solve most of their problems on offense?

Well, the A's are hitting .229/.299/.338 overall, so it's not just RISP that's causing them problems. That said, they should rebound considerably.

wow...didn't realize it was that bad.

There's no such thing as moneyball.

There's no such thing as moneyball.

Mine have been called money.

Posted by Paul Wolfowitz on April 26, 2005

Feel free to go back to being the neocons of baseball -- less cynical and devious, to be sure, but every bit as steamrollingly intolerant, self-congratulatory, self-pitying and dogmatic.

SCOREBOARD, BIYATCH!

The thing is, the As do score runs differently and I can't believe you all miss it. It's right there in front of your noses every game of the year, and you're so wrapped up in stats you can't see it.

The As, to a player, touch home plate with their left foot. Whole team. The only time they don't is when they touch home with their right foot. And occasionally both feet, when they do that cute little hop usually after a HR. Tejeda did lots of those and that's why he's gone.

Get your noses out of those books!

Toolsy, I despise you and 11 otherp eople for tooling me in the Primer Yahoo FB.

F!@# my team sucks.

Free Nomar!

By the by, I've been proposed a Clemens for Giambi deal. Maybe he'll throw in the little G if I say yes.

Nobody wants to trade with me

You obviously need more Giambis.

Muldaur

It's a commonly misspelled name, but that's got to be the strangest spelling I've seen.

When it gets late, say around midnight at the oasis, and we've sent the camels to bed, we think about posting comments on Moneyball, and our spelling goes bad.

The A's have been successful because of Hudson, Muldaur and Zito. Period.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Period.

michael lewis q & a (this point has been posted multiple times at levitt's site, but he ignores it)

"Having said that, defense has become far more important to the Oakland front office in the past few years, for two reasons. 1) Offense has become more fairly priced — that is, it's harder to find cheap run producing ability. 2) Defense is much harder to value — and they think they have found better ways to value it, thus giving them an advantage when they go out to buy it."

and

"If you asked the Oakland front office, they'd probably say that there are still inefficiencies in the market for baseball players. And that may be true. But, with a possible exception, they aren't as great as they were before Oakland began to systematically exploit them."




http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/readersopinions/questions-lewis.html?

that is, it's harder to find cheap run producing ability. 2) Defense is much harder to value — and they think they have found better ways to value it, thus giving them an advantage when they go out to buy it.

Then that is just dumb. I don't think I am getting any value with heating oil. That doesn't mean I can just choose to not heat my house. It doesn't mean that I can transfer heating oil money to telephony (which is very cheap) now because its not a discretionary item .

If the result of the A's buying defense is going to a .600 OPS team, then who the #### cares.

"If you asked the Oakland front office, they'd probably say that there are still inefficiencies in the market for baseball players. And that may be true. But, with a possible exception, they aren't as great as they were before Oakland began to systematically exploit them."


Yep, everybody went out and got themselves a Terrence Long to follow Billy Beane's lead.

And everybody, everywhere is drafting fat catchers.

But, its true that everybody is looking to have three great young pitchers. I'm sure they found this inefficiency from Beane.

Meanwhile, how is that Hudson trade holding up for Beane.

Charles Thomas - 1 for April
Juan Cruz - ERA larger than most primate's ages
Dan Meyer - Walking people in Sacramento

Charles Thomas - 1 for April
Juan Cruz - ERA larger than most primate's ages
Dan Meyer - Walking people in Sacramento

So is it safe to assume you're now a card-carrying member of the Octavio Dotel Fan Club?

Hey BL, what do you think of the Mulder trade?

The way I see it Billy is 1 for 2 in getting value for his aces.

Hudson would have walked anyway. Are Thomas, Cruz, and Meyer + not having to pay Hudson this year better than one year of Tim Hudson + 2 draft picks?

Charles Thomas = SSS

Juan Cruz = SSS + Recovering From Back Injury

Dan Meyer = SSS + 23 Years Old (will be 24 in July) + Still A Prospect + The A's Know What They're Doing With Young Pitchers

In the ridiculously short period of a month, the Mulder trade looks pretty good (Calero+Haren is about=Mulder so far) and the Hudson trade looks reasonably bad (Hudson has been awesome and Cruz has been bad).

But I don't think he was doing the trade for the first month of 2005. That doesn't mean it was a good trade, but understanding what he was thinking, it's hard to tell whether that will work out yet.

I personally believe all trades should be evaluated solely on how the players perform over a one-month period.

I personally believe all trades should be evaluated solely on how the players perform over a one-month period.

You probably want to know that Daric Barton's hitting 265/380/380 at A+ Stockton.

You probably want to know that Daric Barton's hitting 265/380/380 at A+ Stockton.

Bum. Release him and Meyer. Right now. Please?

anyone think it was funny that an economist was talking about baseball, more accurately talking about a book which is somewhat based or dedicated to economics of baseball and he focus's not on the economics aspect of the game, but on one method that they employed to take advantage of the then current market inefficiencies??(sp)

name of the book I thought was "Moneyball, the art of winning an unfair game" doesn't this imply that the book is about money and baseball and the inbalance in the economic structure? yet here is an economist that is focusing on basically one concept in baseball, that is already accepted as fact by such radical new wing thinkers like Whitey Herzog, Leo Durocher, Casey Stengal and Earl Weaver that OBP is the most important way to score runs in baseball. (mind you he did throw out a strawman in the slugging aspect because ops has taken off in popularity, and that the people that like it also follow Beane...although I really don't remember Moneyball talking about slugging as undervalued, in fact I seem to remember a comment about obp being 4 times more valuable...)

Backlasher, Shuerholtz has his brain farts just like Beane. For instance, how's Danny Kolb looking?

also, I'm willing to bet that the A's are an above median offensive team this year.

btw, RP, I agree with you about Levitt's website. I was very eager to buy the book but the website has really cooled my enthusiasm. I'll still read it though.

in fact I seem to remember a comment about obp being 4 times more valuable...

My take on what the book said was that OBP was 3 times more IMPORTANT in the run scoring process, not necessarily 3 times MORE VALUABLE (as in monetary value).

Backlasher, Shuerholtz has his brain farts just like Beane. For instance, how's Danny Kolb looking?


He is looking like he had a few bad outings.

So is it safe to assume you're now a card-carrying member of the Octavio Dotel Fan Club?

No.

I personally believe all trades should be evaluated solely on how the players perform over a one-month period.


Good. Those that thought it should be evaluated on "present information," already declared Beane a genius even when they were shown it was wrong. You can revisit at the end of the year if you like. Maybe we should wait 30 years. It doesn't matter.