Moneyball

http://www.csfb.com/thoughtleaderforum/2003/depodesta_sidecolumn.shtml

http://www.csfb.com/thoughtleaderforum/2003/images/depodesta_b1.gif

Kevin Youkilis is the A's kind of player. So much so that he's mentioned in that tome of A's-ness, "Moneyball,'' which detailed how much Oakland general manager Billy Beane had coveted him in 2001.

"It's great to be in the book and to get that recognition, but it was a crazy year with all the questions about 'Moneyball,' '' the Red Sox rookie said. "It's nice to know that somebody sees me as an asset. Ever since college, (the A's) wanted to draft me, but something happened and the scouting department screwed up. It's all in the book.''

Not that Youkilis, who spent four years at the University of Cincinnati, read it all. "I'm not a big book guy,'' he said, grinning. "I read most of the parts with me in it.''

Here's one surprise for those familiar with the best-seller. The A's front office dubbed Youkilis "the Greek God of Walks'' for his on-base prowess -- but he's not Greek. The name is Greek, but it's one his Romanian grandfather adopted.

"I'm the non-Greek Romanian God of Walks,'' Youkilis said with a laugh.

Youkilis, 25, showed why he fits the A's way the past two days, reaching base six times. He's been on base in each of his eight big-league games.

Could he ever wind up in Oakland? (He nearly did once -- had Beane taken the Red Sox's GM job two winters ago, Youkilis would have been the compensation for him.) Youkilis loves playing in Boston, but he does have a Bay Area connection: Beane will be happy to learn that Youkilis' brother, Scott, lives in San Francisco and works at Sociale restaurant in Presidio Heights.

"I don't think Theo (Epstein, the Red Sox's GM) will let me leave here,'' Youkilis said. "But you never know, they've been fighting over me for a couple of years.''

That goes right into the recruitment mailings!

BTW, KY has been godlike (or, at least, very good) since coming up. That .440ish OBP is very sexy.

Billy Beane gave some pretty good needles while defending his former lieutenant DePo:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=3321

"I talked to Paul this morning and asked if he could acquire some chemistry from another GM whose team is out of the race. But I'm concerned chemistry might not clear waivers."

"The fact is, they appear, at least in early returns, to be a better team. They appear to have more flexibility to make themselves a better team next year. Maybe I've got this wrong, but getting better and creating flexibility would be my approach whatever market I'm in."

The secondary drumbeat has been the "defensively sound" post-Nomar Sox and their two new mediocre bats. I listened to Assface Brantley and STEVE FRIGGIN' PHILLIPS join in on ESPN during the Bosox-Tampa Bay game last night. "Theo Epstein is moving away from Moneyball strategy, relying more on steals and defense," said The Man Who Signed Fat Mo. "Where does leadership fit in the Moneyball world?" drawled Brantley. I really wanna see the Dodgers flourish and the Indians beat out the good-glove Crimson Cranks for the w.c. to let the Jurassic crowd stew all autmn and winter...

I wonder if Penny's injury will significantly affect LA down the stretch. I'd take either your scenario above or the A's actually winning a postseason series.

take a look at what mr. moneyball and the a's have done over the past couple years.

do keep up.

Valuing Cabrera/Minky defense over Nomar offense is anti-Moneyball.

>take a look at what mr. moneyball and the a's have done over the past couple years

Hmmm, not sure whatcha mean -- Mark Kotsay? Good CF glove, but a stud at the plate this year too...

how do you know? and might this be oversimplifying things somewhat fantastically?

kotsay, cameron (who beane made a hard charge at), ellis, chavez are all positively exceptional defensively (at least as judged by advanced defensive metrics such as UZR or the A's own metric, which seem to produce similar findings). there's also the acquisitions of pokey reese, orlando cabrera, and doug mienkiewicz from a team which i could've sworn was thought to be very much sabermetrically-inclined until they started going against the grain; now they're on the side of the infidels and not a fair benchmark by which to judge sabermetric achievement - on the contrary, their failure will prove the folly in "caving" to old-world baseball principles. don't be afraid to stick to your guns, theo: you're supposed to go after after fat, slow guys who can mash, remember? leave the athletic defense-and-speed types for the uninitiated.

as usual, the disparity in thought here can be pegged on a trifle: bp uses an outdated metric to evaluate defense and is too stubborn to admit it. but elsewhere in the stat-world, defense is the new obp.

either that was my point, or i don't understand what you're saying.

Wellll... that's crazytalk! Offense for most individual players is X times as important as defense. Paul Blair isn't in the HOF, Reggie Jackson is.

Remember the Moneyball chapter where the A's studied how many outs letting Johnny Damon leave would cost them in CF? They got a number, and concluded they could more than make it up with offense. Nothing wrong with valuing defense highly -- it helps win games -- but there is with OVERvaluing it, which the littleball / oldskool guys do by rote.

i think it's become pretty clear lately that this isn't always the case.

over at redbird nation they quote a for-pay sheehan article on pitchers:

"Whether it's the physical toll, the mental strain or just the way the world spins, the vast majority of pitchers are completely unpredictable. They get good, and they get bad, and they get to all points in between, and they do so randomly. This is why, when it comes to building a team, I don't see any need to spend money on the middle of the pitching bell curve. If you can invest in the top tier, then you should do so. Get Johnson or Greg Maddux or Roger Clemens. Money spent on the Sidney Ponson class is money thrown away, because the chances of getting three straight good years from a guy like that is tiny. So you build a staff around the very best, then fill in around it with low-risk gambles and guys you develop."

this is sooo right. unless you're the yankees, spending 12M on a guy like millwood, colon, ponson or pettitte is generally a pretty dumb thing to do.

Is this the closest thing to a SABR-coach?

LIVE PERFORMANCES BY:
The Vice
&
The Peels
plus DJ Cliff Huxtable

Should I bring my 1st edition of Moneyball?

Headshot
Logo

A's general manager Billy Beane, a master at building winning teams on shoestring budgets, spoke with Insider Ken Rosenthal in an interview that will air for the first time Sunday on FOX Sports Net Across America.

TSN: Compare this year's A's team to the past four that made it to the postseason.
BB: This is probably the most resilient team we've had since I've been here. It's probably been the most consistent one. We've had more injuries this year than we've had in previous years. But yet these guys have been very consistent. They haven't had the great runs, nor have they had the times where they've struggled for two or three weeks.

TSN: Strong second halves have been the hallmark of your A's teams. How have they come about?
BB: It always starts with having good starting pitching, and we've had good, young starting pitching. We've always made adjustments in the middle of the season, and I think youth helps a lot. I remember in 2000 we made the playoffs, and people were saying the team wouldn't make the playoffs because the starting pitching was too young. We took the reverse approach, thinking, wouldn't you rather have young starting pitching so you'd maintain their health and they'd get better as the season went along?

We made the playoffs in 2000 on the last pitch of the last game of the season. When you're out by eight games in August and you overtake a team, you understand what a 162-game season means. There's really no panic in these guys. It's a pretty battle-tough group.

TSN: Some thought the fallout from last year's book Moneyball would make it difficult for you to make trades. Has that been true?
BB: No. We've probably made as many trades as anybody. This is a business where people are trying to improve themselves. There's only 29 people we can deal with, and that's the same as every other G.M. If you start eliminating possibilities for improving your team, you're probably doing your franchise and the city you represent a disservice.

TSN: For many, the way you run the A's boils down to statistical analysis vs. traditional scouting. Is it that cut-and-dried?
BB: I don't spend a lot of time trying to decide. J.P. Ricciardi (now the Blue Jays' G.M.) was my righthand guy, he was my scout. One of the best scouts in the industry. The idea that we don't rely on that in Oakland is foolish. To not take advantage of every piece of information is foolish, and for us, it's all about risk management and probabilistic decision-making.

TSN: For all the talk of stressing on-base percentage, the A's wouldn't be the A's if you hadn't drafted Hudson, Mulder and Zito. How much luck is involved when three such draft picks become your foundation?
BB: Any time you're dealing with the amateur draft, you're going to need some luck. Understand, too, they're college pitchers from high-profile programs, which is what we do draft. Is there luck? No question, but understand that's our approach.

TSN: Ever dream about a $183 million payroll?
BB: That might be too much. I might tell them to keep a little bit. The perfect amount of money to work with, it's not the top and it's not the bottom. If you took the major league average, that would be the ideal payroll to deal with. It keeps you disciplined, and you do get to make great decisions. Look at a club like St. Louis. To me, that's the perfect situation to deal with.

La Russa's response to 'Moneyball'

By Bill Kolb

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

It's about a three-game series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago Cubs in the heat of an August pennant race. It's about the distillation of one man's 40-plus year career in baseball into a series, a season, and 270 potent pages.

It's not a response to Michael Lewis' "Moneyball". It offers glaring counterpoints to "Moneyball", directly and indirectly, at almost every turn.

Buzz Bissinger's latest offering, "Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager," can accurately be described in two words: delightfully contradictory.

Or contradictorily delightful. You pick.

"Three Nights," a Houghton Mifflin publication scheduled to hit stores April 4, is the product of a collaboration between longtime major league manager Tony La Russa and Bissinger, author of the critically acclaimed "Friday Night Lights" and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Let's start with the title: "Three Nights in August." Yes, the three-game Cardinals-Cubs series comprises the underlying framework of the book. No, it is not really about that series.

Bissinger uses the trials and tribulations experienced by La Russa and the Cardinals in the course of that series to extrapolate larger, more general observations about the game and life from a man who has managed almost continuously in the major leagues for over 25 seasons with the White Sox, A's and Cardinals, and has won one World Series and five Manager of the Year awards.

Despite his exhortation in the book's prologue that, "This book is not conceived as a response to 'Moneyball,'" Bissinger, ostensibly with La Russa's approval, goes on to mitigate some of the supposed absolutes extolled by Billy Beane in Lewis' work.

"La Russa appreciated the information generated by computers," Bissinger writes. "He studied the rows and columns. But he also knew they could take you only so far in baseball, maybe even confuse you in a fog of overanalysis."

La Russa embraces the humanity of the players for whom he is responsible, asserts that they are more than just statistical sets to be plugged into the grand equation of the game.

Chances are you will walk away from the book with a handful of new insights into the mind of a successful major league manager, and a fresh look at some of the opportunity costs of living the life of a "baseball man" -- things like family and a personal life.

You'll re-examine the hit-and-run through La Russa's eyes, maybe start to think about pitchers, pitching and the starting rotation in a new light.

You'll also have a new grasp on some of the non-baseball issues modern managers have to deal with, and how they handle baseball's archetypal problem children like the pouting bench player and the nonchalant superstar.

Your distaste for Jose Canseco -- whom La Russa calls "the most talented player he has ever managed" -- if it hasn't already hit rock bottom, likely will deepen. Your appreciation for the work ethic and drive of "The Great" Albert Pujols -- "the best player (La Russa) has ever managed" -- will soar, even if La Russa's likening of Pujols' battles against Mark Prior to DiMaggio-Feller, Mays-Gibson and Aaron-Drysdale might be a bit premature.

You might even find yourself rooting for a player, Cal Eldred, to whom you had never given a second thought.

And if the section of the book on the passing of Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile, entitled simply "D.K.," doesn't choke you up a little bit, there's a good chance you're not human.

what other front-office metrics do you have?

(Jokes.)

Some customers, of course, maybe 15-20% of them, loved the competitive chutzpah it took for Beane to trade his best player. For them, winning is all that matters.

Others, such as the author of this essay, were appalled. We other 80-85%, perhaps we are evolutionary dead ends, the kind of people who let our emotions get in the way of us pulling the trigger. Perhaps we are the kind of people who, in the end, will lose, and thus fail to pass on our genes to the generations of people 200 million years from now. We are freeloaders, parasites feeding off the efforts of the 15-20% of the population who actually accomplish something.

So be it. I am what evolution has produced to this point, a person who does not believe that winning is the highest value. These emotions that group-level selection has instilled in me–the feelings of loyalty, betrayal, belonging, loneliness, embarrassment, forgiveness, shame, remorse, gratitude, sympathy, rejection, acceptance that drive us to compete in groups and for groups–these are the things that drive me to be an Oakland Athletics customer. I value these things more than winning itself. For if I didn’t, it would be very easy to just cross the bay and join hands with the team that has won three of the last five World Series, the team that has actually won, the San Francisco Giants....

http://ken.arneson.name/2014/12/the-long-long-history-of-why-i-do-not-like-the-josh-donaldson-trade/

That is a seriously long history.

i thought the first 4/5ths was excellent and then it collapsed into a prolonged reddit aspie rant when he should connected his master argument together.

In 2002, A's general manager Billy Beane crafted a new kind of major league baseball draft class. For the next 12 years, Tabitha Soren, who is married to Michael Lewis, followed the class made famous by Moneyball, chronicling with her camera the vagaries of the players' lives on and off the field. These are 10 of those players, from 2002 to 2014.

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12347245/faces-revolution

BP is doing a free article on each team's 'version' of moneyball for this season. Here's the Yankees':

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=25828

Beane and James discuss big data, open-source vs proprietary analytics, etc.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-discussion-with-baseball-revolutionaries-billy-beane-and-bill-james-1442854375

let us discuss the status of billy beane's genius, because his recent moves seem pretty fuckin disastrous

donaldson trade: brutal
butler signing: doesn't even make any sense
dealing pomeranz for yonder alonso: what

i can't really blame the a's for going all-in two years ago, and if that wild card game turns out differently then maybe it's all worthwhile. but i don't think they needed to give up addison russell to get samardzija

this is what the A's got for AL MVP Josh Donaldson, who was under contract for four more years at the time:

- LHP Sean Nolin posted a 5.28 ERA in six starts in 2015 and was waived in the offseason
- RHP Kendall Graveman is a not-quite-league-average starter
- SS Franklin Barreto is scuffling in the Texas League (he might be the youngest player in it, though)
- INF Brett Lawrie for one year with a 94 WRC+

Lawrie has since turned into:

- LHP Zack Erwin, who has a 6.12 ERA in 16 starts at high-A (yeah it's the Cal League, but he doesn't have the strikeouts either)
- RHP J.B. Wendelkin, who has a 4.55 ERA as a Triple-A reliever (does have the Ks at least)

Barreto is a legit prospect and might well become a solid big league shortstop. That is not enough for four years of the second-best player in the league.

The book was released 15 years ago today.

http://www.thecommunitypaper.com/images/chuckle.jpg

Does Beane still brag about his s*** not working in the playoffs? Since 2000, the A's are 1-15 in games where they could have advanced.

Everyone accepts that the Braves only won one WS during the 90's-'00's because of real tangible things like not having decent bullpens and Bobby Cox managing the playoffs like the regular season. What is Beane missing?

i don't think beane was bragging

Ya, it was more like a warning label.

Maybe not bragging, but he was saying that the playoffs are dominated by luck (small sample sizes) and are therefore beyond the GM's job description. Does anyone still believe that?

i don't think he was saying it's beyond the GM's job description either. he was saying that it's tough.

the a's won 97 games this year; unfortunately that was still 10 games worse than a historically good astros team. if you want to call their season (or their executives) a failure for losing a one-game playoff, i think that's overly harsh.

and what beane is missing is a number one starter (although he might now have one in either luzardo or puk), which is nice to have in a wild card game.

"secret sauce" for the postseason is even more elusive given the huge reliever usage evolution in PS

The secret sauce changes every year depending on who is winning. Whatever it is, Beane's teams never seem to have it.

Beane had great starters in the past (the Big Three in the early 2000's, Lester in the WC game in 2014), they never seem to get over the hump. At some point, it has to be more than just bad luck/the PS is tough.

There’s was enough bang in that A’s lineup to overcome a 4 runs deficit, especially with the juiced ball. A’s also lost because they could only get singles.

Another promising regular season ended in disappointment for the A's, but there's still plenty to celebrate about their year. @CraigBrown_BP discusses the good and the bad for our ongoing Hindsight 2020 series.https://t.co/gJ5M2GDfEO pic.twitter.com/rKKOiMgiBh

— Baseball Prospectus (@baseballpro) October 3, 2019

I’m just wondering if the A’s ‘shit that doesn’t work in the playoff’ is simply lacking an extra 50 millions players worth of salary.

That I think, in part... I'm agnostic on whether there are other tangible reasons, but on the surface level, the Oakland teams that failed to advance had different strengths. This year's was more power-heavy (adjusted for environment) than usual.

I'd never read this 3-way interview between Billy Beane + Johnny Ramone.

http://athleticsfarm.com/2012/02/26/when-billy-met-johnny/

CM: Johnny, meet Billy…Billy, meet Johnny…

Billy Beane: Johnny, they might have given you a heads up that I might turn into a crazy fan here and just gush for a few minutes. But I went out and got the “Rocket To Russia” 8-track when I was 16. And I got into the Ramones, the Dead Boys and everybody else for the same reason that you started playing it. I got so sick of hearing “Kashmir,” and “Roundabout” by Yes, and all these synthesizers on the radio. So when I first heard you I went, “Oh my God!” It was like I was enlightened! So I said, “Johnny’s just gonna have to put up with me for a few minutes because I’m gonna turn into like some crazy Trekkie guy here.”

Johnny Ramone: Hey, and I wanted to be a baseball player…I just fell into this!

Kevin Youkilis owns a brewery/coffeehouse near my in-laws and I have never WALKED in there.

Watched this for the first time since it came out and really liked it. (It plays a lot on one cable network here. I'd always stop on the last scene--where Jonah Hill talks about the catcher who's afraid to run to second--and think "I should watch that again." Great scene.)

The biggest problem, as many have pointed out, is how it bends or disregards facts, the timeline, etc. That they don't mention Zito/Mulder/Hudson (and barely mention Chavez; Tejada really only shows up in actual game footage) is too obvious to ignore. If you can look past that, somehow, I think almost everything else is good.

The goopy daughter stuff didn't take up nearly as much time as I remembered (5-10 minutes?). I like all the performances, including Johan Hill (NoTime above thought he was awful). Philip Seymour Hoffman is excellent, although again, supposedly not much like the real Art Howe.

There are some really funny lines. Probably my favourite:

Chad Bradford: "Sir, I just want to let you know I'm going to be praying for you and your family."
Billy Beane: (long pause) "No problem."

I dislike so many baseball films...This might be my favourite non-documentary.

Two-time Cy Young winner, Johan Hill.

Haven't watched this in a while, but I'm sure it still holds up. I didn't mind that so many details were left out, I wasn't expecting a menu of sabermetric terms to show up in a Hollywood dramatization. Distilling the message down to "he gets on base!" and repeating it 100 times was good enough for me.

PSH was great as Art Howe, although as you mentioned, he's not like the real person (supposedly) but that's OK because the character he plays is compelling. I can't say the same for Jonah Hill. De Podesta in the book is a confident, ego-driven hotshot, Jonah Hill in the movie is a bumbling loser who is impossible to take seriously (I know that he's a composite character and not the full embodiment of PdP, the point still stands).

Best scene in the movie is Beane and Ron Washington going to Hatteberg's house. Love how the humour (Wash: it's incredibly hard, the absurdity of showing up without notice during the holidays) and the seriousness are blended together.

That scene has my second favourite line (paraphrase):

Beane: "Playing first is incredibly easy--tell him, Wash."
Washington: "It's incredibly difficult."

It's been so long since I read the book--this was even true the first time I saw it--I have no recollection at all of how anyone was in real life, so I'm probably a little generous there.

So many great lines in this and I’m only about a third of the way in (tbf I did start it this afternoon).

He’d been on the receiving end of the dreams of older men and he knew what they were worth. Over and over the old scouts will say, “The guy has a great body,” or, “This guy may be the best body in the draft.” And every time they do, Billy will say, “We’re not selling jeans here,”

And that face! Beneath an unruly mop of dark brown hair the boy had the sharp features the scouts loved. Some of the scouts still believed they could tell by the structure of a young man’s face not only his character but his future in pro ball. They had a phrase they used: “the Good Face.”

my friend and i still find reasons to use “we’re not selling jeans here” all the time

It’s such a great line! And it’s true as well, baseball is really lookist even to this day.

Now ofc thinking of the bit in the Zito book when he gets picked up for a jeans ad by an ad executive who saw him in an inflight magazine.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbgqvm/good-face-high-ass-the-baseball-scouting-glossary

And Billy Beane now attempts to do what he has done so many times in the past: insert himself in the middle of a deal that is none of his business.