MoneyBall

If you look at who ends up making the big leagues, although there are some notable exceptions, the players selected in the first few rounds make it the most often so the scouts must be doing something right.

Moneyball makes some interesting and to some degree valid points but it has to be taken in the context of being written to sell books not to provide an absolutely accurate account.

True that some drama and exaggeration is probably added, but the basic premise of what the A's are doing is noteworthy and mostly true.

I enjoyed the book very much and thought it makes some valid points. At the bottom line there probably needs to be balance between assessing players based on what are viewed by the book as the scout's subjective standards as opposed to more "objective" stats pursued by the Moneyball advocates.

However, with that said, I now see my home town Dodgers being run (into the ground) by a Moneyball desciple, and the more I see certain intangibles and other subjective assessments being ignored, I'm not so certain that the Moneyball approach is superior.

IMO the Dodgers have been turned into a joke through the laptop and stat crunching of its new Moneyball GM. Computers aren't real good at assessing desire, personality, loyalty, teamwork etc. etc. Personally, I'll take the Dodgers "pre-computer Moneyball" roster over what they presently have going.

Don't confuse the inability of the disciple to make the concept work with the wrongness of the concept. The Red Sox won with a Moneyball disciple in charge.
The best comment is that stats/objective facts point out the players to be looked at in more detail by the scouts. There is no crystal ball. The most you can hope for is a best quess based on careful perusal of all the available facts.

The Red Sox won with the second highest payroll in Baseball.

Hardly a True moneyball deciple.

I, too, enjoyed the book. However, don't criticize the scouts (or anybody else) because most players drafted don't make the bigs. Of course they don't! Many players are drafted for two reasons: First and most important, to provide competition for those prospects the club is enthused about; second, just in case. These players are similar to the old taxi squad in pro football.

just got this book today and am looking forward to reading it..but did anyone see this debated on espn.com - scouts vs. stats...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=schwarz_alan&id=1963830

Long but a very interesting round table discussion.

quote:

---

Originally posted by KellerDad:
The Red Sox won with the second highest payroll in Baseball.

Hardly a True moneyball deciple.

---

KellerDad - True statement, to a point...the current sox management inherited Manny's salary, which they tried to dump as well as Pedro's...the sox will pay a lot for the players they want, but not a dollar more than they think they are worth - a modified money ball I guess...Bellhorn was a MoneyBall player...not sure you can win on this philosophy alone, you need a guy like Shilling for a lot of reasons to put you on top...

You make a good point. The sox are willing to spend, but I think they use certain forumlas to drive a lot of those decisions...

quote:

---

Originally posted by HeyBatter:
IMO the Dodgers have been turned into a joke through the laptop and stat crunching of its new Moneyball GM. Computers aren't real good at assessing desire, personality, loyalty, teamwork etc. etc. Personally, I'll take the Dodgers "pre-computer Moneyball" roster over what they presently have going.

---

HeyBatter -- Hello from a long-time and for some time now long-suffering Dodger fan (thus DodgerBlues) on the east coast. With all due respect for a fellow Dodger fan, but as a big moneyball and DePodesta fan, too (look what he accomplished in Oakland --give him a little time in LA), I have two questions -- (1) the one playoff game we won last year was the first post-season win we've had in how long? (that one is so very, very painful, especially living with Braves fans and working with Yankee fans --painful enough even if we were winning) AND (2)given the answer to no. 1, how could you possibly long for the results achieved with the "reputation" players over the prior decade -- I would have gone along with ANY change -- at least this one makes sense and has proven results, so it is certainly worth a try.

Of course, as more and more teams move in this direction, the ability to find the undervalued performer lacking some of the traditional tools and the accepted "look" will become more difficult -- at least some of the A's success was because they were the only ones doing it their way, and therefore had no competition for the undervalued and overlooked Moneyball players their computers told them they should go after.

For others making comments about the Red Sox salaries, Moneyball never says you shouldn't pay players if you can afford to -- it simply changes the way you value players and prospects relative to one another. Sure, that can allow a team to save money if it chooses to because of supply and demand -- it is less expensive to go after two-tool players who project to perform based on what they have done, rather than to bid for five-tool players based on what they might become... The Red Sox offense had lots of MoneyBall-type players -- you can start with Ortiz, who can hit and hit with power and ??? ....

The real key to the A's will be how their system produces big league players in the near future. They have had 17 first round picks in the last 4 years. If a team does a good job, they should have a bunch of players showing up that really help the team and they will be making very little cash for a few years.

bbscout - in reading the first few chapters that seems to be the #1 benefit of using this style of scouting and drafting players...finding success (novel huh?) drafting it...and having a 7 year window where the roof will not get blown off the house financially...the desire to draft college kids makes sense in this light, they are closer to the pro's than a HS kid is, thus the big league team can take advantage of that 7 year window vetter than if they draft a HS player who takes 5-6 years to develop.The big league club never gets to see the benefits before the player goes to the highest bidder...

Is my understanding accurate...or am I missing something.

advisor, You are on the right track. There are a couple of problems with this plan of attack.....1. You don't get the extra draft choices unless you offer the player arbitration first. 2.They A's have done a good job on this, because the players that left turned down their offer of arbitration. 3. If they accepted, then the club would be at the mercy of the arbitrator and they might get stuck paying a player a lot of money that they really wanted to get rid of.4. If you don't offer arbitration, you don't get the extra 1st round pick.

As far as the high school players go, the A's best position players the past few years have been Chavez and Tejada, who were both signed when they were 18, so the college thing in the book is not correct. They also signed Ben Greive out of high school, and he has gone downhill, but he was Rookie of the Year at one time too. Ramon Hernandez was signed as an 18 year old, and they got Kotsay for him in a trade, so the A's have signed the young kids too.

As far as I am concerned, any team that "just drafts" high school or "just drafts" college players is foolish. Draft the best player available every round, be it a high schooler or college player. The Mariners had the first pick about 12 years ago and they took a young high school player named Alex Rodriguez, when many teams thought that the college player (Darren Dreifort) was the surest thing and would get there faster.

DodgerBlues- gotta respectfully disagree with your assessment of our Dodgers.

First, I wasn't really looking at too much history in making my comments, just the last season or so and I'd note that Depodesta is NOT the architect of the A's, He's more of a Kevin Malone in Moneyball clothing. Malone's mark of "success" was dismantling the Expos and new Dodger ownership has confused the concept of moneyball with nothing other than payroll reduction, IMO, and Depodesta's job is to turn L.A. into a small market team.

the pre and post computer lineups I was referring to were simply my preference to have Paul LoDuca, rather than no catcher (I believe a Depodesta favorite David Ross was cut by the Dominican winter team he played for after going 4 for 30 this winter).

Their big trade for the Yankee prospect is suspect at best. Over the last two years that youngman has reported to camp overweight, has dropped in the Baseball America ratings from the Yankees #1 prospect to about #5 or #6. LoDuca was a vital member of the Dodgers IMO, traded away essentially for Brad Penney, who pitched one game, has a history of injury and has now been rewarded with 5+ million dollar contract and has yet to pass a physical.

Meanwhile, they let a vital member of the staff in Lima go and he signs for relative chump change with the Royals. Dodger negoitiations with Lima were a joke.

Green is gone, to be replaced by Depodesta favorite Choi. Even the Cubs gave up on Choi. He has one of the most pathetic swings of any major leaguer I've ever seen.

They breakup one of the best middle infields going, releasing lifetime Dodger Cora to sign the notorious clubhouse disruption known as Jeff Kent. Kent is such a pain he made Bonds likeable when he was with the Giants. that type of thing doesn't show up in computer stats.

The handling of Beltre and so now an infield of Green, Cora, Izturis and Beltre is
Choi, Kent, Izturis and Jose Valentin. I'll take the pre-computer team of LoDuca, Lima, Beltre, Green, Cora etc.

The solution to Beltre was to sign JD Drew. The Braves passed on Drew at a couple million a year and the Dodgers give him a ton (give him Beltre's money). Drew is oft injured, Beltre played with his side literally open from his botched surgery a few years ago. Drew is several years older and his stats match amazingly to another Dodger mistake-Kal Daniels (if you remember him).

But Depodesta is certain that Kent, Ross, Choi Valentin and Jayson Werth are superior to having Loduca, Lima, Beltre, Cora, Green etc. I personally can't buy that, especially with ticket and parking prices going up almost double.

And as far as Jayson Werth, he's why they could go after Drew and dump Steve Finley . Without Finley and perhaps Lima, the Dodgers don't get to win that first playoff since '88. they didn't even negotiate with finley.

I also notice that their 2 top prospects Thurston and Fein have been dropped from the 40 man roster.

With Frank McCourt at the helm and Depodesta at his side I think you're lucky to be suffering from a distance and if you haven't been to Dodger Stadium in recent years, the atmosphere their new marketing people have created there is one more reason to stay away.

The biggest mystery to me is why didn't Billy Beane go to the Red Sox, after all it's all a business? Take the money and run. He would then have a larger payroll plus all the strategies he had learned. It seems that when making decisions about himself he always does the wrong thing.

I believe we are all missing the point here.

Whoever is making the decision, whether his information primarily comes from a human source of data collection (scouts) or from a computer (with information keyed in by human sources making judgements - hits versus reached on error), it is finally a human being make a judgement and a decision.

Regardless of his/her primary source of information, once you have seen or heard the information coming from the other source, it becomes part of the "subjective" decision-making process.

Unless the decision-maker is living in a vacuum, pure "money-ball" has never been tried.

quote:

---

Originally posted by PhoenixDad:
I believe we are all missing the point here.

Whoever is making the decision, whether his information primarily comes from a human source of data collection (scouts) or from a computer (with information keyed in by human sources making judgements - hits versus reached on error), it is finally a human being make a judgement and a decision.

Regardless of his/her primary source of information, once you have seen or heard the information coming from the other source, it becomes part of the "subjective" decision-making process.

Unless the decision-maker is living in a vacuum, pure "money-ball" has never been tried.

---

You're right, Budda didn't make the decisions for them. You've got to look at the big picture. In the case of moneyball, the A's decisions were made using a philosophy that was imbedded with constraints when the other more prosperous teams had unlimited constraints (funds). Not exactly an equal matchup for doing business.