Moneyball

Re-signing Bartolo Colon after his 50 game suspension kinda said it all.

not really

http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/A-s-exec-GM-Farhan-Zaidi-takes-old-and-5205023.php

Zaidi wowed Beane and Forst. A 2 1/2-inch binder full of projections for the 2005 A's didn't hurt, nor did Zaidi's affinity for Oasis, a British band that Beane also likes. Zaidi had been embarrassed to list "Britpop" as an interest on his resume, but it wound up helping seal the deal.

"David and I looked at each other when he left and said, 'That's the guy,' " Beane said. "It wasn't just his analytical skills, it was his incredible personality. It was important to us to find someone to fit into a very fraternal group."

Chemistry! RIP, Moneyball.

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.