The New York Times has a good article this morning re-evaluating the concept of Moneyball:
"Moneyball" extolled the talents of Beane, portraying him as superior to other teams' general managers. Lewis celebrated Beane for his ability to produce winning teams with small payrolls, but Terry Ryan has done the same thing with the Twins, a fact Lewis didn't acknowledge. As little as Beane might have thought of Howe, the Athletics reached the playoffs three straight seasons under him and have not been there the last two years with Ken Macha as their manager after making it in his first year.So many consultants' schemes and management theories turn out like the evil counsel to the king in bad movies set in the Middle Ages. They focus on the ends but not the means or the means but not the ends. Usually a lot of villages get flayed in the process. Moneyball seems to me like that, focusing on the average to get above average. It is like the trap in hockey - an intervention in the game from outside the game to win the game that loses the game. Focusing on Youkilis is like that. A cornerstone of not a lot.It has been three years since the publication of "Moneyball," and it is worth assessing other matters the book discusses. Several times, Lewis wrote about the Athletics' infatuation with Kevin Youkilis, a young player who had a high on-base percentage, the gold standard of Beane's player evaluation. In limited playing time with Boston the past two seasons, Youkilis has compiled a .376 on-base percentage but has yet to show the Red Sox he is ready to help them on a daily basis. They are planning to try Youkilis, a converted third baseman, as a platooned first baseman this year.
Comments
ry - February 9, 2006 12:03 PM
WHIP. RISP. Who cares. Give me a pitching staff that wins 65% of its games giving up less than 4 runs in seven innings. Give me that year after year and a team will likely contend for the pennant year after year.
"Clutch" hitting and such may be impossible to quantify, but I'll still take Jeter over A-Rod every day of the week.
Phil - February 9, 2006 4:44 PM
Good NYT article, but flawed. The #1 example of the success of Moneyball thinking is the Red Sox under Theo Epstein. Hard to argue with those results. Not hard to figure out why the NY Times doesn't want to admit that.
Moneyball was a meditation on applying statistical analysis to performance, identifying performance indicators that are undervalued by traditional baseball folks and then loading up on players with these attributes. This allows a team to perform at a consistent level, while avoiding the high prices that conventionally-valued (yet subjective) performance indicators fetch in the crazy free agent market.
All teams are going to be run this way eventually, at least if they are not the NY team from the American League. The irony is that the sleeper success of teams utilizing traditionally undervalued performance indicators will diminish when more teams adopt the same theories--you can make the argument that OBP and OPS are the new "conventionally valued" indicators--driving their prices up.
BTW, the whole Epstein "resignation" has been interpreted to be his fight to keep the club lined up behind Moneyball ideals. His return was conditioned on extracting assurances that the business side of the operation wouldn't impinge on making Moneyball-type decisions ie: not overspending to keep Johnny Damon rather than loading up with Coco Crisp and other younger players.
Alan - February 9, 2006 4:50 PM
I thought the NYT owned a bit of the Sox through an share of the entity that owns the Boston Globe?<p>I think it is all hooey. I look for guys who are good in the clubhouse.
portland - February 9, 2006 5:43 PM
i think moneyball and the guys good in the clubhouse are both hooey. over the long haul, it is so about pitching. remember how fearsome it was to face schilling one and day and pedro the next. did they like each other? how about them alanta braves. the a's haven't been in it? (though i admit they've done well)...... could have something to do with not having to face zito, muldar and that other guy one after the other anymore? i hate both bill james and moneyball. what nobody says are that both are about the 3 run homerun. it's about the acension of american league ball. crap. absolute crap. ozzie guillen is a god. throw your thunderbolt ozzie. moneyball is over, discredited.
and, oh yeah, i agree with larussa; give everybody the same team and felipe alou wins ten more games than anybody else.
Phil - February 9, 2006 8:31 PM
The NYT owns the Boston Globe outright. The Sox are owned by John Henry (investment firm) and Tom Werner (the guy who produced the Cosby Show and Roseanne tv shows.) Both of them owned clubs before--Marlins and Padres, respectively.
Moneyball is just a way to think substantively about baseball, rather than objectively. I love Bill James and his ilk, although I often lack the math to follow all of their arguments. They love baseball, its just a geek kind of love. Anyway, read some of Bill James' old abstracts, he writes with verve and passion.
Moneyball and "good in the clubhouse" doesn't have to be mutually exclusive--2004 Sox are a good example. Orlando Cabrera marvelled at the loose and happy clubhouse when he came over to replace Nomar--a far cry from the Sox teams of yore: 25 guys, 25 cabs was the line for their post-game plans.
Alan - February 9, 2006 8:48 PM
Hey, Phil! Have I ever noticed you were from Syracuse? I sure like Syracuse but I guess you might have noticed that.
Phil - February 9, 2006 11:35 PM
Yeah, I've noticed your Middle Ages & Blue Tusk raves over on the beer blog. I'm a lifelong resident, so of course I'm a little partisan--it's nice to know that some outlanders like our little burg. We have a bit of an inferiority complex I'm afraid.
My family has been spending the past few summer vacations in the Rideau Canal area, including at least one stop annually in Kingston.
PS: re your discovery of Texas Hots in Ogdensburg. Nothing compares to Heid's coneys (pork/veal mix) in Liverpool, the immediately adjacent suburb north of Syracuse.
portland - February 10, 2006 12:03 AM
i've been reading bill james for a hundred years so that i can definitively hate him. how can you defend a guy who would never have anybody steal a base ever if he had his way. guy is a geek and a fraud. baseball is so much more than about the numbers.
and careful alan - remember - they voted nomar the full share of the world series money. you just can't belive the boston press. except if it's about carl everett.
Marian - February 12, 2006 1:58 PM
I'm with Alan on this (and Portland, I guess). Sadly, this kind of statistical analysis appears to be the cornerstone of everything these days. Nobody makes a move in business unless its probabilities for success, failure, and ability to create pleasure, etc., have been calculated to the nth degree. And what's amazing is that very little of this is accurate. But it is self-perpetuating, and unfalsifiable. I mean, do they accurately predict what my future purchases will be at Amazon? No. But they must think they do. Does appealing to six different demographics/niche markets make an interesting film? No. Is a movie that's made this way successful in some abstract numbers way? Maybe, but not always. Anyway, it's a dismal failure as art. This may be why movies suck soooo much these days they're all concocted in a PR lab. This may also be why journalism and politics are sucking. It's all part of the panopticon. The simulacrum of risk taking is there, but there are no artists anywhere, and nobody takes any real risks.
Marian - February 12, 2006 2:14 PM
Wow, I'm about two days late with that comment. I thought the post was about baseball, so I didn't read it. Then I realised it was about statistics, which is so much more interesting...umm, yeah.