The recent trade of Nick Swisher from the A's to the Chicago White Sox caused me to revisit the concepts and premises put forth in the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.
Swisher along with fellow 1st round draft pick Jeremy Brown were a couple of the examples put forth by the author to document the superiority of the A's approach of identifying undervalued, college hitters based on statistical analysis.
As much as I admire the approach, and believe that it is a more efficient approach to drafting hitters, I did not think at the time that it was the proximate cause of the A's success. I believed then that the emergence of the "Big Three" Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito in fact were. Hindsight, I believe has proven that to be true.
An examination of the A's record:
Three years prior to Hudson-Mulder-Zito:
1996 78-84 .481
1997 65-97 .401
1998 74-88 .457
Basically, a 70-92 team, or the Devil Rays wildest dream year.
During the Big Three years
Year Record Pct Big Three Record Big 3 w/o Big Three Adj Wins Diff
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1999 87-75 .537 Huds 11-2 11-2 76-73 .510 83 Wins +4
2000 91-70 .565 Huds 20-6 Muld 9-10 Zito 7-4 36-20 55-50 .524 85 Wins +6
2001 102-60 .630 Huds 18-9 Muld 21-8 Zito 17-8 56-25 46-35 .568 91 Wins +11
2002 103-59 .636 Huds 15-9 Muld 19-7 Zito 23-5 57-21 46-38 .549 89 Wins +14
2003 96-66 .593 Huds 16-7 Muld 15-9 Zito 14-12 45-28 51-38 .573 93 Wins +3
2004 91-71 .562 Huds 12-6 Muld 17-8 Zito 11-11 40-25 51-46 .526 85 Wins +6
Notes on methodology
(Huds=Tim Hudson Muld=Mark Mulder Zito=Barry Zito)
If you compile the Big Three Record and show the teams record without them you get the adjusted record/winning percentage. If you were to replace them with an average starter (.500 record) you get the adjusted record without the big three and the difference they made in the teams success.
After the Big Three Years
2005 88-74 .543 Zito 14-13
2006 93-69 .574 Zito 16-10
2007 78-86 .469
Clearly the results show the team was built primarily on the success and development of the Big Three, but even more importantly, it shows that Beane and the A's failed to capitalize on the opportunity to rebuild the farm system using the Moneyball premises for the inevitable time when the franchise knew they would lose each of the Big Three piece by piece. They clearly had a six year time frame to rebuild and have failed to do so.
At the time the book was written I tracked the draftees identified and found that they did not appear to follow the premises the statistical analysis indicated the A's were looking for. Players who were dominant hitters in college and therefore developed high OPS (On Base Percentage + Slugging) develop those statistics due to the fact that they are great hitters, feared by the opponent and are pitched around, rather than possessors of a great eye and plate discipline. The stats that are believed to track these abilities melt like a glacier in Florida as hitters face higher levels of pitching. Granted, as they learn and develop and master the pitching, the statistics follow.
That is one of the fallacies I think the book propagated was that there was this innate ability that could be tracked and identified by these new statistical methods over the traditional scouting methods. I think this has been finally proven to be false. The A's did nothing more extraordinary or different than what the Twins have done in recent years, that is capitalize on some young, dominant pitcher rising to the major league level at approximately the same time, resulting in success over and above what the teams payroll would suggest.
I believe Michael Lewis wrote in the past that much of Warren Buffet's success could be attributable to luck or something to be expected within the basic laws of probability rather than an level of innate genius. If that is the case, along with the thoughts and premises expounded in the book Moneyball, in my mind that makes the count 0-2 on Mr. Lewis.
Below is an article I wrote after first reading of the book:
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Money Ball: Myths & Realities
By Charles Slavik, NSCA-CPT*D
President of Eagle Baseball Club
First let me start off by saying the book is a great baseball book. Not quite to the level of “Men at Work” by George Will or “The Game According to Syd” or even the recently released “Numbers Game” by Alan Schwarz as far as useful information regarding the game to the reader, but for the most part, a great read.
The inside information an “fly on the wall” perspective provided an interesting perspective of the issues big league teams face on a daily basis. Moneyball highlights a still somewhat controversial use of statistical evaluation applied to scouting, evaluating and procuring talent at the minor league and major league levels.
Although, as the book mentions (but “Numbers Game” does better), there is a rich history of the use of statistical data in baseball to improve team quality and fan understanding of the game, recently franchises have been almost handing the keys to the franchise over to stat gurus at the expense of traditional “baseball men” whether they be scouts, coaches, ex-players, etc.
Statistical analysis, when properly used, is usually better than the accuracy of subjective “gut feeling” methods of used by traditionalists. Emotional bias is removed from the equation. At least that is the hope and expectation. Moneyball details the way the cost-conscious Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane built a perennial playoff team by focusing on underappreciated player statistics, such as on-base percentage and the number of walks a player takes, qualities that most general managers tend to devalue.
My problems with the book are that some of the central premises that build the story are specious:
• Whether or not the A’s revolutionary approach is primarily responsible for their success as opposed to other factors (like lucking into the troika of Zito, Hudson, Mulder a big three starting rotation that is the envy of baseball) is ignored, glossed over or batted away in argument. I mean they hit three for three on college pitchers in short order. Subtract one of those guys or replace one or two of them with average starters, as I know SABR-cats have a ready made formula for figuring out and the A’s may be a .500 team. Ballpark though for each one of those guys that goes from producing 70% victories in each start to about 50% provided by an average starter and with 30 starts each, I don’t even need my pocket calculator to tell each stud is worth 5-7 extra wins per season. Enough to catapult a .500 team into a 95-100 win team each season they remain healthy and productive.
• The method of evaluating talent at the collegiate and major league level is primarily dependent on the use of statistical analysis to find players who are “undervalued and under appreciated” by the marketplace for their contribution to building a winning team. Due to the weakness of the systems ability to quantify and evaluate skills such as speed, fielding ability these traits in players are largely ignored. High School hitters are virtually ignored as a class due to the unreliability of the statistical data needed to evaluate them. This would leave Eric Chavez, currently the A’s most successful hitter and a High School draftee from the Sandy Alderson regime the preceded Beane’s, persona non grata under the new system.
• As we’ve seen by the recent retooling of the Red Sox, who under Theo Epstein, is also an advocate of the statistical analysis approach, albeit combined with a hefty checkbook. Hey, you need every weapon in the arsenal when you have to fight THE EVIL EMPIRE (Yankees) on a daily basis. The Sox recognized the importance of fielding as a necessary component of a winning team and went out and got two gloves to firm up the defense. The ripple effect will strengthen an already strong pitching staff.
• The premise and approach may work during the course of a long regular season where small, marginal advantages like focusing on artificially increasing team On Base Averages will produce marginal increases in Total Wins. The season is a marathon not a sprint. However, the playoffs are a sprint. And here the A’s and the approach have to answer to its historical futility. Opposing pitchers focus and control are sharper, more defined. What was the enduring image of the 2003 Playoffs for A’s fans? Not so much Derek Lowe’s fist pumping, jock thumping histrionics towards the A’s bench, although that by itself would be enough. Come on guys focus here. It was Terrance Long striking out looking at the last two strikes (that’s a backwards K if you’re scoring at home). Executing the A’s imposed philosophy to the bitter end. This from a middle of the order type guy, in a clutch, game winning situation. I’m sorry, SABR-cats also don’t believe in the ability of clutch hitting either since it can’t be proven statistically. Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy, who’s writing these endings, Hollywood?
• An apparent disdain for those skills whose impact cannot be accurately measured using statistics or which the A’s feel are overvalued by the market, such as speed and fielding, are ignored by the team. I believe this is done at their peril and ignores these skills ripple effect on the measurable stats of other players. So if you don’t have speedy, good fielding players you hurt your pitching staff and your other hitter who don’t benefit from the effect of the threat of the stolen base on opposing pitchers minds, catchers framing pitchers and infielders positioning to defense the steal giving succeeding hitters more holes to hit through. Look at the effect Dave Roberts being on base against Mariano Rivera and other Yankee pitchers. The mere threat of the stolen base rattled him right off the mound into an eventual blown save. And a sacrifice bunt the very next inning by the Red Sox to manufacture the go ahead run was pure anti-Money Ball behavior.
Anyway, back to our story. To be honest, I was almost lost at the beginning of the book by author Michael Lewis. The first line of the preface was “I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story”. It just conjured up images of the book “Love Story”. I’m not sure if we should begin to worry about Al Gore saying he was the original model for the Billy Beane character and that he actually invented SABR but I read on despite my fears.
The central premise of the book is that from the front office level to the clubhouse and onto the field, the A’s were unfit, undervalued, underdog players competing against the Yankees of the world. Isn’t that precious? They’re so cute at that age and everyone loves an underdog, so you have me back now. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games? Of course the Twins have done similar things recently with a more traditional approach and the Marlins have won two World Championships with two distinct approaches and yet have flown under the radar as far as Michael Lewis is concerned. Are they also doing something different that needs to looked at or glorified.
Quote from the book - “Geek numbers show, no prove, that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed”. That’s strong stuff. I’m always a little suspicious when someone uses this type of hyperbole. So everyone’s been wrong all these years and the boy-wonder genius is going to show them the error of their ways, is that it. No wonder the establishment hates him; I’m starting to get a little uncomfortable myself. Look, nobody is reinventing the wheel here; the wheel was a pretty darn good invention. Oh there may be some marginal improvements here and there in design and performance enhancements of the wheel by tire companies, but nobody is reinventing the wheel.
After reading the book, I’m not sure that even the title “Money Ball” is accurate. Money Ball is what the Yankees, Red Sox and now the Angels are playing. The A’s approach is more like “Flea Market Ball”. Not sexy enough I guess and you need a sexy title to sell books and befit the “sexiest General Manager in the Big Leagues”. I actually felt dirty enough when I read that quote to take an immediate shower. That was the kind of inside information about the A’s and Billy Beane I didn’t need. And the fact that he referred to himself by that title in playful banter with another GM’s secretary, Yuck.
For review I’ll summarize some of the key features of the A’s approach and compare and contrast it to another low-budget team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays:
A’s Red Sox
GM: Billy Beane / Theo Esptein
Budget: Low-Budget
Draft Approach: Older, Collegiate Performance, Stat Based SABR approach (WYSIWYG), Non-Athletic
Players: Non-Athletic, Plow Horse type players (we’re not selling jeans here) Jeremy Brown, Nick Swisher, Khalil Greene, et al
Devil Rays
GM: Chuck Lamar
Budget: Low
Draft Approach: Young High Ceiling, Projectable Athletic, Combine type players
Players: Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, BJ Upton, Delmon Young
Both systems can and do work to develop low budget teams into competitive teams. So to does International scouting and development of players in places like the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Anyway back to our hero, Billy Beane:
There are several "holes" in the book that could be seen as Lewis embellished some things in order to make the story read better. Hey, love is blind, right. Also, there are aspects of the book that are open to debate, whether those are related specifically to Billy Beane, more generally about the A's organization as a whole, or simply about the way things and people are portrayed in the book.
For balance, here are the positives from of the book were as follows:
• It’s a great story with great characters, the under appreciated hitter, Scott Hattieberg, the draftee Jeremy Brown and the chapter about pitcher Chad Bradford should almost become required reading for pitching coaches and scouts who think you need to have picture-perfect mechanics with a howitzer attached to your throwing arm.
• The success of the A's is an interesting story. Good vs. Evil, David vs. Goliath, Anybody vs. the Yankees makes for an interesting storyline. The reactions of traditionalists to the A’s methodology are an interesting story. And Michael Lewis can tell a good story. Moneyball is perfect for those of us who have ever dreamt of running a franchise, because of it’s of fly-on-the-wall moments. You are in the war room prior to and during the draft. How do they evaluate and decide on players and the teams overall draft strategy? What interaction do scouts, owners have on decision making? Who makes the final call? Trades and late-season roster moves, you are there hanging around A's front office, so to speak.
• The A’s Philosophy itself is a story. This is really the star of the book and has garnered the most attention from the media and baseball types, but it should’t be. Most people recognize the A's are a low-budget team that has a somewhat different organizational philosophy from other low-budget teams, of which there are many. Moneyball examines why they do all the things they do. The key is finding said valuable players on the cheap. The A's simply cannot afford to acquire players that have all the skills a baseball player can have. They have discovered that there are some skills that are at the same time disproportionately valuable and disproportionately cheap. Plate discipline is one of the skills that are undervalued.
• Speed costs money. Defense costs money. Power costs money. Batting average costs money. Athleticism costs money. The one thing that the A's believe doesn't cost as much as all the other things is a player with the ability to see lots of pitches, work lots of counts, draw lots of walks and get on-base. The A's succeed because they are able to identify players that other teams do not value highly, simply because of what those players cannot do and the A's recognize that there is value in what they can do.
• Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher, whom the A's drafted in the first round of the 2001 draft, as everyone laughed at them. Baseball America, one of the most respected baseball publications out there, one of the leading "draft experts" and one of the only magazines that I subscribe to, did not have Jeremy Brown ranked among the top 25 catching prospects in the 2002 draft. Not the top 25 overall prospects, the top 25 catching prospects. BA also did not list Jeremy Brown among their "Top 250 Prospects" in the 2002 draft. 250! Heck, BA had Brown ranked as the 12th best player from the state of Alabama. And yet, Billy Beane and the Oakland A's selected Jeremy Brown, the fat catcher from the U of Alabama that no one was even paying attention to and that most people probably didn't even have on their draft list, with the 35th pick in the entire draft. They then signed Brown for $350,000. The guy picked directly in front of him signed for $1,000,000 and the guy picked directly behind him signed for $1,050,000.
Many other teams employ this type of pre-draft agreement to get players on the cheap. I’m still not sold on the fact that they didn’t overpay for Jeremy Brown anyway. They could have drafted him in the tenth round and signed him for less than $100,000 guaranteed. How is that not a waste of $250,000? "Brown's short, squat body turned off many scouts and doesn't fit the mold of the more athletic modern big league catcher. But the A's general manager Billy Beane said, 'We're not selling jeans here.' If [Brown] continues to perform well, he'll be on the fast track to the majors." In the span of less than a year, Brown went from a guy they didn't think deserved to be picked in the first 10 rounds of a draft, to a guy "on the fast track to the majors." And that's no knock against Baseball America, it just tells you a little bit about Billy Beane and the A's. Again here in most organizations, where you’re drafted determines and the signing bonus delivered determines whether player is on the fast-track or slow track to through the system, many times at the expense of performance. Oakland says they can't afford to go after the 5-tool hitters with blazing speed and the ability to fill out a uniform in a way that scouts like. Instead, they go after guys that have been overlooked because of their body or their foot speed or their lack whatever it is that most scouts are looking for.
• The A’s can't afford to take a risk on an 18 year old high school pitcher that is 6 foot 5 and throws 99 miles per hour. Instead, they take a smallish RHP from Auburn (Hudson) and a LHP from USC (Zito), that some scouts project as a #4 or #5 starter, because he doesn't throw hard, and make him the 9th overall pick in the 1999 draft. Then they add another collegiate LHP from Michigan State (Mulder) and all three picks hit big. Now if you can find the story behind how they did that you could right a book that will break the bank in terms of sales.
In a few years, I wonder what the A's will be like without Zito (that lefty from Southern Cal) and Mulder and Hudson (the short righty from Auburn). Some say it won't matter, as long as Billy Beane is running things. I’m not sure they will be able to replace those players cheaply and efficiently.
There's a clear prejudice against many players Beane likes (ie: players who are fat or slow or who can't throw very hard). But books like "Moneyball" should convince enough teams to re-examine and abandon those prejudices, especially when they understand just how much money they can save doing so.
I don’t have a problem with this in theory. I just don’t see that many examples of slow, fat players who can perform in a sport that athletically is a ballistic, fast-speed sport. Heck, you can train a monkey to stand up there with a bat and take pitches, he’ll never hit well enough to progress. It’s one of those wonderful baseball paradoxes, a hitter has to be patiently-aggressive, a pitcher has to have speed and control even though there is inherently a trade-off between these qualities. I don’t believe the A’s approach has solved for this dilemma.
Then, you have to eventually worry about copy-cats within the industry cannibalizing the available number of players who suit their criteria. As other teams take players the A’s like off the unemployment line the value of those players eventually go up. The A’s will eventually have to push some chips to the center of the table. They may believe that for the guys who don’t understand or believe, no to fad-like change will make a difference, at least not for a generation or so. Then, folks will be off in search of the next “big thing”
The last major fundamental change in player procurement began in the late 1940s, when the Dodgers became the first team to sign black players. Most other teams overcame that entrenched prejudice within a decade. Latin American players were next as the cost to sign and develop players are still cheaper than in the good old USA. Currently a higher proportion of players are coming from Latin American countries than ever before.
In both examples however, ultimately the player has to perform well on the field for the success of the “system” to be hailed. If the players stats indicate that he will perform well at the next level, so be it, you draft him. But to draft players simply because they are less expensive than others and have gaudy stats that may not be reliable, well sometimes you get what you pay for.
The other weakness seems to be that the approach looks at stats that are generated which may beg the caveat “past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance”. At some point, skills diminish. One would think a case could be made that the next revolution in player development will be made in player evaluation metrics that are reliable predictors of future performance, as the NFL does in the draft combine. In that case you would evaluate and draft those players that meet these metrics, draft them and rely on your coaching staffs to develop them, as the NFL does.
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