To Steal or Not to Steal

For those interested in the value of speed and the stolen base (as per yesterday's discussion), click here. It's a little numbers-heavy but you should be able to understand it...Whether you remember the '85 Cardinals is another story altogether.

I will try to dig up an article explaining why the A's considered the stolen base a risk not worth taking.

The Baseball Club

Throughout Moneyball, references have been made that baseball is a "club" that is fairly unwilling to let outsiders in. It also has a tendency to cast away those that do not fit in. Pages 287-288 state,

"The greatest offense a Club member can commit is not ineptitude but disloyalty. Had he not been an indiscreet writer, Jim Bouton might have made a second career scouting and coaching big league prospects. But because he wrote Ball Four he was as good as banished from the Club."

After reading this particular passage, a host of thoughts emerged. First, was a recollection of listening to an interview with Jim Bouton and Bill "Spaceman" Lee on a local radio show in Boston. The two talked about many things, including the Club's reaction to Ball Four. As you can imagine, the Club did not appreciate Bouton's comments in the book. Also part of the show was Lee promoting his upcoming book, Have Glove Will Travel: Adventures of a Baseball Vagabond. He also promoted a documentary on him, Spaceman: A Baseball Odyssey. That leads me to my second recollection. After reading the above passage in Moneyball, I immediately thought of Lee's banishment from baseball as well. However, unlike Bouton, Lee may have been kicked out of the club before his playing days were truly over.

If you are interested in a good summer read, you should pick up Have Glove Will Travel. Part of the book talks about Lee being kicked out of the Club for throwing tirades against management for letting Bernie Carbo (Red Sox) and Rodney Scott (Expos) go, among other antics he pulled during his career. The book is full of his colorful and crazy adventures in baseball since "retiring". Funny, a man who has baseball running through his blood and an unlikely ambassador for the game in a way, will likely never be accepted into the Club just because he sees things a little differently. Who would have guessed?

Closers, the All-Star game and overrated stats

As you're finishing up Moneyball, pay special attention to the sections on how certain statistics are overrated. In almost any sport, there will be certain categories that announcers and "traditional" fans tend to think as more important than they really are. You'll recall that Billy Beane took advantage of the fact that other GMs believed saves to be the best measure of a closer. From page 126,

"Finding pitchers who could become successful closers wasn't all that difficult. To fill the hole at the back of the bullpen Billy had traded to the Toronto Blue Jays a minor league third baseman, Eric Hinske, for Billy Koch, another crude fireballer...Billy knew that barring some disaster, Koch would gain a lot of value as an asset. Koch would get his saves and be perceived by other teams to be a more critical piece of a successful team than he actually was, whereupon the A's would trade him for something cheaper, younger and possibly even better."

Yet five years later, players and managers still overrate stats like saves and wins (which often have little to do with the pitcher's ability). Look at this some of this year's All-Stars:

• Colorado Rockies relief pitcher Brian Fuentes, among the league leaders in saves, who was chosen for the team on the same day he was demoted from the closer's role.

• Cole Hamels, who leads the league in wins but whose ERA is almost twice as high as that of Chris Young (not on the original All-Star roster)?

• Ben Sheets, also tied for the league lead in wins but whose ERA is a run and a half higher than Chris Young's

Why do you think this is the case? There is empirical evidence which suggests that wins and saves are overrated stats, yet still this is how many players, announcers, etc measure performance. Why? Do you think it's mere stubbornness to accept a new way of viewing baseball?

Whatever happened to Paul?

Very good article here from the Hardball Times website updating what happened to Paul DePodesta since Moneyball. Once again, you'll see notice anti-statistic/computer dork sentiment that permeates Major League Baseball

Interesting links

Folks,
If you're enjoying Moneyball, here's an interesting link to a gentleman's Doctoral Dissertion. The topic? "Stats Geeks: The Production and Legitimation of Sports Knowledge through Advanced Statistics." Essentially he is interviewing anyone who considers him/herself a sabermetrician (i.e. devoting to analyzing baseball through statistics).

Check it out by clicking here.

Also, here is an interview with Mark Shapiro, who you'll recognize as one of the other GMs in Moneyball. Interesting how he, too, has been able to compete with a reduced payroll.

Lastly, read this article about a competing book whose entire goal, it seemed, was to dispove Moneyball. Remember the post-script, which listed some of the backlash to the book and to the Oakland A's? This article fits right in. It's amazing how antagonized people in "The Club" (to borrow Michael Lewis' term) felt after Moneyball was released.

One final thing: I'm at a coffee shop and some guy here is continually making weird eye contact with me.