Quote:
Originally Posted by ChinoCoug
I finished Moneyball recently. And ever since, it's been painful listening to baseball announcers spew their bogus conventional baseball wisdom ("They're not getting hits in the clutch," "This is the playoffs, you need to manufacture runs in the playoffs")
It's so funny to read about how Billy Beane takes advantage of other's using traditionally important statistics that are in fact useless. E.g., numbers like a pitcher's W-L record, RBIs, and saves are completely worthless in evaluating a player. So Beane takes a mediocre reliever, piles a bunch of saves on him to make his value go up, and then trades him. Suckers!
Only drawback about Moneyball is that there's enough profanity to make one vomit.
I took a look current standings and this how Moneyball teams fare:
Red Sox and Blue Jays are atop the AL East.
Padres are atop the NL West.
A's are afloat .500 and they're always a better team after the trade deadline.
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I am an A's fan, and a Billy Beane and Moneyball fan. However, I think in the playoffs there is such thing as needing to manufacture a run and playing small ball. Over the course of a long season moneyball produces. But in a short series I am not sure that it does and the A's post-season success is indicative of that. Things like team speed and moving runners on the base paths become very important in tight games.
I don't consider Boston a moneyball team though they may subscribe to the theory since they have the means to go after any player they want unlike Toronto and Oakland. Same with the Dodgers when DePodesta was GM.