The Years After Moneyball: ESPN Weighs in on Movie, Beane

i posted this article in a fanshot yesterday, before the DLD, but nobody saw it. this is why fanshots need to be given a more prominent space on the page

As for many on this website having drank the proverbial Beane Kool-Aid- I’d say that is probably correct. I would also say “So what?” . That’s what fan blogs are supposed to be about, wholeheartedly supporting a team no matter what obvious problems exist. I would also add that the level of attacks on Beane & Co. have been most pointed this year, some perhaps a little unfair and many a little unreasonable. I’m certainly don’t consider Billy any sort of baseball guru- he’s just another manager who has had considerable success (and failure) with shuffling players around in a small market atmosphere. This year his luck ran out more than most of us can accept and he get’s blasted regularly on these boards- but I guess that’s part of the game. I do think that he has allowed his personal friendships to cloud his judgement at times, especially with players like Giambi. Most teams would have sent Giambi packing back in late May, but I have a feeling he will be with us for the rest of the year.

For all of you out there who have jumped ship, I can assure you that the A’s have a very bright future. We have a unique molding of fine young pitchers that are really going to prove themselves over the next year or two. It won’t be that hard to pick up some bats along the way and this team is going to win! Hold on folks, the fun is just ahead.

And it probably is’nt worth that much. The Moneyball experiment has been neutralized and is not very effective anymore. I never thought the Balitimore Oriole “get two on and wait for the three run homer” works, sure they had good teams in the 60’s and 70’s but since 1966 the won two world series. The A’s with a balance of good pitching, great speed on the bases and some lumber did better. Arms, lumber and lightning win games. The ownership, needs to invest capital to put a good product on the field, and it will help attendance. ( I did that in my business and and finally seeing rewards) It is tough when you play baseball in a football stadium.

Since 1968, the Athletics have drawn more than the average American league team eight times. Those seasons were:

1981 where the team drew 30% more than the average AL team with a .587 win percentage.
1982 — 5% / .420% [Early season expectations and Ricky’s 130 SBs perhaps?]
1988 — 12% / .642%
1989 — 25% / .611%
1990 — 34% / .636%
1991 — 18% / .519% [but I wonder what the breakdowns were early season / mid season / late season]
1992 — 10% / .593%
2003 — 1% / .593%

Even in 2001 and 2002, when the team had winning percentages .630 and .636, the team still drew 9% and 2% less then the American league average. What is the saying in real estate (the one word repeated three times)?

Glad to see this on the fp. Nice little write-up by ESPN, too. Huh, they do know we exist.

I never understood what some people meant when they said Holliday looked miserable in Oakland. To me he just looked like a big lug w/o much personality playing left field. He doesn’t need persoanlity to play baseball.

I tuned into a Cardinals game the other day, saw Holliday up to bat and smack a double. Same unemotional mug, looks like the same demeanor to me.

That said, I’m sure he’s stoked to play for a contending team. If I was a ML baseball player – and in my fantasies I often am – I would much much rather play for a winning team that draws sell out crowds. How uninspiring it must be to play for a last place team before 10,000.

I already wax nostaglic for Holliday even though he didn’t inspire much love. I just want a marquee (offensive) player on the A’s again.

and I’m not entirely against the idea that the Moneyball book actually bought us a few extra years by confusing some of the clubs on what it really was about.

I have the hope that we can become more like the Red Sox, where we can use Moneyball principles to save some cash and use it to fill in the deficiencies in the lineup. And most importantly, resign our homegrown talent.

I think that due to the length of time that it takes for the metanarratives created by the GM’s acquisition of prospects and players in general, there is an inherent incongruity between the GM and the baseball fan.

No matter how much a fan of the game wants to tell themselves, “hey, these next couple years are rebuilding years. We’re going to be mediocre at best!” it’s just not quite possible when watching every game and experiencing the game at it’s most micro-level.

Billy Beane constructed a team that was built to win between 2000 and 2003. Personally, I think that Beane’s greatest feats as a GM were his ability to create a winning team in 2004, 2005, and 2006 while his original core had mostly moved on.

However, these three smoke and mirror years came at the expense of the minor league system, and thus Beane had to rebuild. And so for the last 3 years, we’ve been rebuilding. Now the minor leagues are replenished, the young pitching is arrived and we seem poised for another dominant stretch.

But it’s hard to watch every single play and still understand the larger picture, even for Beane himself, as I think he probably had the same problem when he decided to go out and trade for Matt Holliday last offseason.

But unemotionally and as far as I can tell, Beane’s plan has yet to have been altered or deterred. The A’s were good for 7 years, we’ve rebuilt for almost three, and we will be good again, either next year or the year after. Despite many questionable moves within the broader picture, the plan has never wavered.

I think that having big-market teams to compare to increases this problem as well, because we have to see them play year after year and see them always be good. When the A’s compare themselves to the Red Sox in a game, we of course compare them too, and it’s hard not to complain, because we’re just not as good.

But the thing is, we’re also not the same type of animal. The Red Sox don’t need to cycle like small market teams.

What will really be the test of Beane’s last few years will the be the next few. If the A’s aren’t good in the coming years, that will be a failure. And as far as I can tell, that will be the first overarching failure of Beane’s tenure.

is that he’s been scouting and drafting too many players like himself. Position prospects who turn out to be nothing but AAAA players: Pennington, Buck, Crosby, Putnam.

here. The vid is classic — Papelbon in compleat shell-shock. BTW, his name is EVERIDGE, and he blew you up, Clown.

And the comments tend to be in the nature of the familiar refrain: WAGD!

IMO the success of 2000-2003 was due mainly in part because of 3 potential/actual MVP position players (Giambi, Tejada, Chavez) and “The Big 3” that solidified the rotation.

Other important pieces came and went, but that core was the foundation for all those playoff appearances.

It seems realistic to hope that, of Anderson, Cahill, Braden, Outman, Mazzaro, Gonzalez, Simmons, etc., the A’s can assemble a solid core of excellent starters for the next few years.

It is less likely that the same can be said of putting together a similar caliber infield, but, of Carter, Cardenas, Weeks, Wallace, Doolittle, Green, Cunningham, etc. is there a possibility that at least 2 or 3 of them meet/exceed expectations and turn into potential all-star/MVP types?

With a solid bullpen and good players like Suzuki and the Cust/Hairston types, even if some of the positional prospects perform well, yet don’t become all-stars or MVPs, and maybe a couple key signings, I think we can repeat a similar 3 or 4 year playoff run, and hope for better luck in the short series’.

maybe the most interesting one of the year thusfar.

That scout, saying there’s a pitfall with OPS where the guys can get more concerned with seeing the pitch than hitting it, oh man that guy said it all IMO.

What this used to be, this team, a few years ago (before everyone caught on)…. it was a scientific approach to winning as the underdog; Moneyball at the start could be termed The Science of the Upset and clearly it changed the sports world, not just baseball. The idea that in fantasy ball all you ever hear about is OPS now, that says a lot.

But this isn’t fantasy baseball… that’s purely a speculative statistical formula for a set of results parallel to the real MLB results and folks just have fun with it for entertainment purposes only. Real baseball, between the white lines, is not purely a statistical application, and if it boils down to a point where the philosophy becomes an end in itself and no longer the means to an end, you stand to be in for some awfully hideous baseball that reinforces every negative “baseball is boring” stereotype. In the process, you lose casual fans who aren’t hip to exactly what the new Jack Cust single season all time record for 3-2 counts is this week and who just come to see wood meet ball. In the process of losing those customers (the Jack Customers? LOL), you ensure you won’t have the resources to keep up with the rest of the league’s adjustments to what you’re doing.

And the spiral continues, down, down, down.