Whatever happens in the National League and American League Championship series unfolding over the next week or so, one outcome has already been decided--the effective end of the theories of Moneyball as a viable way to build a playoff-caliber baseball team when you don't have the money. That no doubt sounds like heresy to the millions who embraced Michael Lewis's 2003 book, but all you need to do is keep in mind one number this postseason: 528,620,438. That's the amount of money in payroll spent this season by the teams still in it--the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Angels, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Moneyball? You bet it's Moneyball, true Moneyball, like it always has been in baseball and always will be.
The Lewis book was vintage Lewis--smooth, glib, smart, and unfailing in never letting anything get in the way of his argument. The protagonist of the book, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, was hailed as a genius in a land of cave-dwelling front office men, managers, and scouts too stupid and stubborn to understand the statistical nuances of the game and what they truly reflected. The basic thesis of the book--the finding of inefficiencies in the marketplace through expert computer analysis--no doubt resonated. As Lewis told it, what Beane and his minions did was usher in the baseball equivalent of a new period of painting, the Age of On-Base Percentage.
The sabermetricians, unloved and unwanted for so long, scorned by the baseball men brotherhood for their nerdy obsessions, fell to their knees like attendees at a revival: Finally someone understood them. Looking largely at the narrow time frame of 2000 through 2002, Lewis attempted to explain the phenomenon of how the A's had done so well (they made the playoffs all three of those years) with such little dough. The explanation was dazzling, although Lewis barely mentioned the three reasons the A's had been so successful--pitchers Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson. The three won an astounding 149 games during that span. Each of them were 20-game winners in at least one of those seasons. The odds of three young pitchers coming together like that on one team was basically a matter of baseball luck, in the same vein at least of Beane saying success in the postseason was a matter of luck because of the limited number of games played (his teams during the 2000-02 period never got past the first round).
Lewis carefully and calculatedly stayed away from the pitching triumvirate. He concentrated on journeyman players like Chad Bradford and Scott Hatteburg as the key to the A's rise. He showed his greatest infatuation for Jeremy Brown, a Beane first-round draft pick in 2002. He was a fat and slow catcher from Alabama, but Beane was dying for him because his meticulous analysis had discovered something everyone else had missed: his statistically anomalous ability to draw walks. Of all the examples in the book, this by far was the most riveting because so many scouts had simply dismissed Brown. It certified Beane as a miracleworker, and Lewis further confirmed it with a memorable scene at the end in which Brown hits a home run.
Beane had seven first-round draft picks that year, each of them extolled by Lewis for their buried-treasure status. Three of them are still playing in the majors, none with anything close to superstar careers and all of them long gone from the A's. Three others were busts. Poor Jeremy Brown never stopped being fat and slow and finished with a grand total of 10 major league at-bats before retirement.
There is no question that Beane greatly advanced the game in terms of how front offices began to judge players on the basis of on-base percentage (although, ironically, the A's have generally been terrible in the category). But that wasn't the primary thrust of Moneyball: The key element was the ability of Beane to do it all on the cheap, and win by doing it all on the cheap. This is what made his innovativeness so exciting.
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COMMENTS (5)
Bissinger must be an old-timer who resents having his cherished misconceptions about baseball disconfirmed. In the same way that Michael Lewis avoiding talking too much about Mulder, Zito and Hudson, Bissinger has avoided mentioning that the main reason why Beane is having trouble finding unexploited inefficiencies is that others in baseball learned from him and now there are far fewer inefficiencies to exploit. To those familiar with Beane, baseball and statistical analysis, Bissinger comes off as someone desperate to say I told you so who doesn't realize that he's actually just reinforced the value of the 'Moneyball' strategy that he wishes to denigrate.
Bissinger must be an old-timer who resents having his cherished misconceptions about baseball disconfirmed. In the same way that Michael Lewis avoiding talking too much about Mulder, Zito and Hudson, Bissinger has avoided mentioning that the main reason why Beane is having trouble finding unexploited inefficiencies is that others in baseball learned from him and now there are far fewer inefficiencies to exploit. To those familiar with Beane, baseball and statistical analysis, Bissinger comes off as someone desperate to say I told you so who doesn't realize that he's actually just reinforced the value of the 'Moneyball' strategy that he wishes to denigrate.
TayMitSan, I was going to make essentially the same point -- although I remember thinking when reading "Moneyball" in the section where Lewis argues that Beane's analytic approach is more important than money, why can't Steinbrenner (or the Dodgers, Red Sox etc.) just hire someone who follows Beane's method then outspend the As for those players? The Red Sox did essentially that with Epstein and James, and it worked out well.
TayMitSan, I was going to make essentially the same point -- although I remember thinking when reading "Moneyball" in the section where Lewis argues that Beane's analytic approach is more important than money, why can't Steinbrenner (or the Dodgers, Red Sox etc.) just hire someone who follows Beane's method then outspend the As for those players? The Red Sox did essentially that with Epstein and James, and it worked out well.
"Without the money necessary to compete, all Beane can really do now is churn. It is a terrible position to be in no matter how astute you are. Market inefficiences are harder and harder to find, one of the ironies of Beane's brief but successful reliance on on-base percentage from 2000 to 2002 is that it has made players with such skill far too expensive for his pocketbook. The real moneyball of baseball also makes it impossible for Beane to hold on to the quality players that he does discover. As a result, he ends up trading a superb pitcher such as Dan Haren and a potential superstar such as Matt Holliday for questionable players and prospects."
Tay and Pete: He does make you ... view full comment
"Without the money necessary to compete, all Beane can really do now is churn. It is a terrible position to be in no matter how astute you are. Market inefficiences are harder and harder to find, one of the ironies of Beane's brief but successful reliance on on-base percentage from 2000 to 2002 is that it has made players with such skill far too expensive for his pocketbook. The real moneyball of baseball also makes it impossible for Beane to hold on to the quality players that he does discover. As a result, he ends up trading a superb pitcher such as Dan Haren and a potential superstar such as Matt Holliday for questionable players and prospects."
Tay and Pete: He does make your point, it's just on the second page. I think Bissinger looks at Moneyball as something of a failure or a mixed bag, and is critical of the story the book presented. Those A's teams saw some success from Moneyball, and also from having a triumverate of Cy Young valuable pitchers. And Bissinger's criticisms of Moneyball not quite working in the playoffs, where valuable closers who can shorten the game are important and a blown save, while statistically insignificant in a 162 game season can be catastrophic in a best of five series (note all four losers of the Division Series had a blown save). The 2004 and 2007 Red Sox, somewhat considered "Moneyball teams, both had dominant closers (Foulke, Papelbon). This year's Red Sox team was full of good OPS guys, but lacked a feared, clutch power hitter that Manny Ramirez (pre-Moneyball pickup) and David Ortiz (junk waiver pickup that probably had some "help" along the way to stardom) had provided. Bay, Youklis, and co. were great from a stat perspective, but the team had no personality and ended with a whimper. Moneyball is good, but as Bissinger points out a) It hasn't rendered the money issue of big market teams obsolete, b) proved relatively unsuccessful in the post-season, and c) to a degree unremarked upon in the book, success still needs big stars, whether Zito, Mulder and Hudson, or in the Red Sox case Manny, Papi, Pedro, Schilling, and later Beckett. Moneyball has had some success, but they didn't change the world nearly as much as they think they did.
I really enjoyed this article because it pointed out the fatal flaw in Moneyball (and the difference between markets and baseball). Moneyball may well prescribe a way to choose baseball players who perform better than they are supposed to. However, that is not the ultimate goal of baseball which, after all, is to WIN. So Moneyball predicts performance but not winning. Indeed, Moneyball may be a good strategy for small market teams who may hope at best to be competitive (and to be in the position to let lightening strike every once in a while). But as a strategy it doesn't make sense for the Yankees or Red Sox who can afford to pay big bucks which in the short run could lead to some seri ... view full comment
I really enjoyed this article because it pointed out the fatal flaw in Moneyball (and the difference between markets and baseball). Moneyball may well prescribe a way to choose baseball players who perform better than they are supposed to. However, that is not the ultimate goal of baseball which, after all, is to WIN. So Moneyball predicts performance but not winning. Indeed, Moneyball may be a good strategy for small market teams who may hope at best to be competitive (and to be in the position to let lightening strike every once in a while). But as a strategy it doesn't make sense for the Yankees or Red Sox who can afford to pay big bucks which in the short run could lead to some serious mistakes but in the long run can lead to more championships.
I really enjoyed this article because it pointed out the fatal flaw in Moneyball (and the difference between markets and baseball). Moneyball may well prescribe a way to choose baseball players who perform better than they are supposed to. However, that is not the ultimate goal of baseball which, after all, is to WIN. So Moneyball predicts performance but not winning. Indeed, Moneyball may be a good strategy for small market teams who may hope at best to be competitive (and to be in the position to let lightening strike every once in a while). But as a strategy it doesn't make sense for the Yankees or Red Sox who can afford to pay big bucks which in the short run could lead to some serious m ... view full comment
I really enjoyed this article because it pointed out the fatal flaw in Moneyball (and the difference between markets and baseball). Moneyball may well prescribe a way to choose baseball players who perform better than they are supposed to. However, that is not the ultimate goal of baseball which, after all, is to WIN. So Moneyball predicts performance but not winning. Indeed, Moneyball may be a good strategy for small market teams who may hope at best to be competitive (and to be in the position to let lightening strike every once in a while). But as a strategy it doesn't make sense for the Yankees or Red Sox who can afford to pay big bucks which in the short run could lead to some serious mistakes but in the long run can lead to more championships.