With all that said, I'd like to post a rebuttal to Mike's "Moneyball" comments, but since I don't think I'll have enough room in the comments section, I'll just take a whole post instead since Mike provided a whole lot to chew on, and I'll need to systematically go through certain excerpts.
1. "The job of a GM is to get the team in that position in the first place.": No, the job of a GM is to build a team that wins the World Series, period. GM's have no other expectations whatsoever. Everything they do is designed to achieve the goal of a World Championship. Any GM that's happy or satisfied with anything less than that, will be let go/terminated by any self-respecting organization, and being happy with just going to the playoffs from a fan perspective is nothing but Loser Talk, plain and simple. You can ask your heroes Boers & Bernstein if you don't believe me.
2. "Hudson, Mulder, and Zito were part of Beane's pitching evaluation." : That's perfectly fine, but I would ask you this. Are you aware of where Hudson, Mulder, and Zito went in their respective drafts? Don't worry I'll spare you having to look it up. Hudson was drafted in the 6th round from some small, no-name school called AUBURN. Hudson represents the lowest picked of the three. Mark Mulder was taken #2 overall in the 1998 Draft...number 2. Barry Zito was selected #9 overall in the 1999 Draft. So what's more believable? That Billy Beane scoured the earth using every available resource he had to find these three pitchers that nobody had ever heard of and they turned out to be 3 of the best pitchers in the league because Beane believed in them, or that those 3 were very well known and highly evaluated pitchers going into their respective drafts and the A's were just plain lucky enough to be in position to draft them? I think the latter part is more accurate, so let's not act like Billy Beane's genius evaluation skills were responsible for their success when it's more likely they were going to be successful no matter what.
3. "It's unfair to judge Beane's efforts based on the playoffs. He admits his system applies only to the regular season where the sample size is large enough to evaluate what's going on." : OK, well what's been the problem lately then? I hate to bring this to your attention but his wonderful system hasn't worked too well. In the past three seasons since their last playoff appearance they've finished at least 10 games under .500 each season, and the best part is, their pitching has been pretty good the entire time. Check out this breakdown:
2007 A's AL Rankings : Team ERA (6th out of 14); Team Runs Scored Per Game (11th out of 14)
2008 A's AL Rankings : Team ERA (5th out of 14); Team Runs Scored Per Game (14th out of 14)
2009 A's AL Rankings : Team ERA (3rd out of 14); Team Runs Scored Per Game (9th out of 14)
2010 A's AL Rankings : Team ERA (2nd out of 14); Teams Runs Scored Per Game (11th out of 14)
So while they may not have The Big 3 anymore, it's not like they haven't gotten any solid pitching since they've finished in the top half of the American League in Team ERA the entire time, wouldn't you agree? Assuming you do, you also have to concede that the A's Offense has been terrible the past 3-4 seasons. When you have a book written about how brilliant you are for valuing On-Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage above all other offensive metrics, and your team that YOU put together still finish in the bottom half - including a last in the league ranking one season - in Runs Scored Per Game, that is a HUGE Indictment of your ability and effectiveness as a General Manager. Or is the sample size not big enough?
In closing Mike, I would also ask you these questions. I had heard from an anonymous source, that you place a tremendous over-emphasis on regular season win totals in baseball. Is this true? If so I would like to ask you where the 1993 San Francisco Giants rank in your "greatest baseball teams of all time"? That team won 103 games and didn't make the playoffs. Since I'm one of these people that believes Championships are the best way to rank the greatest teams of all time, the 93 Giants don't really come up much in that conversation, but I'm curious to see if they come up in your conversations?
I can't wait for your comments buddy!
Haha ok, I'll do my best to respond to these points, although I don't think our perspectives are that far off.
ReplyDelete1. Role of the GM and the regular season
You're obviously right that no one is happy without a championship. That's not what I'm saying either. As fans, we clearly evaluate teams and eras based on who won titles. But franchises hoping to win future titles have a pretty simple view: Building a long-term winning teams give you the best chance to eventually win a championship. It's the difference between the way the Sox and Cubs have been run since the mid-90s. Trib Co. hoped to catch lightning in a bottle once every 5 years. The White Sox stayed competitive as much as possible. The nature of the the MLB schedule dictates that it's much harder to qualify for the post-season tournament than it is to actually win the post-season tournament, especially with a best of 5 format in the first round. It's not like the NBA, which is hinges on playoff match-ups, where front office guys can target a certain player to beat a certain team for a likely playoff series ten months later. The baseball season is too long and unpredictable to plan in that way. You bring up the Yankees. I think they add strength to the point that you cannot necessarily plan for the playoffs, even if you have virtually unlimited resources as they did from 2001 - 2008. The only thing a GM can do is build a team that can clinch a playoff berth and maybe add something at the deadline to strengthen a team for the stretch run. What playoff-specific trait can a team acquire in the offseason that would not also be effective in the regular season? So, if these guys are building teams that can do well in the regular season, I think regular season results are a fair -- although not perfect -- method of estimating who knows what they are doing. Do I think Billy Beane was better than Jim Hendry? Yes. Do I think he was better than Kenny Williams? No, you can't say that since Kenny has a ring. Do I think Kenny is infinitely better because he won a title? No, I think that opinion would come from someone who doesn't understand the MLB regular season - playoff system. Do you view the 90s Marlins as equals to the 90s Braves because they both have one ring? Of course not. You have to consider the post-season consistency -- and therefore regular season success -- in comparing those teams.
2. Drafting pitchers.
ReplyDeleteI think you simplifying how tough it is to make the right call even in selected the most highly touted pitchers in the draft. There are so many busts in pitching that landing all three like he did was pretty amazing, albeit lucky. Still, he did it. You can't take that away from him. (Also, he amassed draft picks in the late 90s and early 2000s, the same strategy used by the Rays later in the decade to build a pennant-winning team.)
3. Why the A's have sucked the last few years.
For one, you're proving my point about Beane's pitching evaluation by showing that it's remained strong post-Big Three. That means those guys weren't only gotten with luck. The larger point, I think, is not that Beane was a genius at figuring out baseball as much as he was a the first to actively identify inefficiencies and undervalued assets in baseball. OBP and SLG happened to be those areas, but they could have been anything else. Beane and his SABR brethren were eventually mimicked throughout the league such that the market corrected itself and those stats started being valued properly. Everyone else eventually noticed what he was doing and adjusted. While Oakland was the forerunner in smart baseball management, I think the Red Sox took their model to the next level by not only accounting for deeper statistical analysis, but also implementing the Twins model for developing players. Combine that with a massive payroll and you have two World Series titles in the 2000s. Beane's system was exposed, and he hasn't really recovered since everyone else started catching on. However, he built a consistent winner with gawdy win totals over a decent amount of time. Very few baseball execs can attest to that.
Joe Crawford > LBJ. Laughs all around.
ReplyDelete1. Yeah it's SOOOO much harder to qualify for the postseason in Major League Baseball when the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals make it after winning 83 stinking games. Intersting that you bring up the Braves. Do you think their fans are happy with all those division championships, or do you think they're kind of disappointed they didn't win more than one World Series? I'm telling you this one last time, and if you don't want to accept it, then you just never will. The Job...of any General Manager...is to build a team...that WINS...the World Series. No matter how you try to spin it, at the end of the day that's what they are paid to do. If a GM who builds teams that are only good at getting to the postseason is all it takes to impress you, fine. Thankfully, owners and most fans feel differently about a GM's job description than you do, and want their organization to try and win the world series every season, bar none.
ReplyDelete2. I never said Beane couldn't evaluate pitchers, so please stop insinuating that I did. I only bring up the Big 3 because Beane's evaluation of pitchers, was NOT what Moneyball was about. It was about how OBP, and Slugging % are the most important metrics, and that you can field a winning team by favoring players stong in those metrics above the traditional metrics like Batting Average and RBI's. You could argue that his methods had been duplicated/exposed but I think you're missing a WHOPPER of a Puzzle Piece that better explains why it doesn't work as well today. It's called "Testing". Beane's teams included Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Randy Velarde, David Justice, Adam Piatt, Jose Guillen and whole slew of other juicehead gorillas during the Moneyball Prime. All of those players owe a bulk of their success to steroids and HGH. I would argue that Beane can't be as fast and loose as he once was when signing a bunch of players that are roided up to the gills, and that makes it very difficult to find guys that fit a system that's dependent upon sluggers being in the lineup 1 through 9.