Movies / TV
Al's MLB Report for August 23
By Alan Keiper
Aug 22, 2004, 20:47

MONEYBALL

On Friday, Joe Morgan held his weekly MLB chat on ESPN.com. Once again, he addressed Billy Beane and Moneyball. Here are the relevant questions and answers.

Dan (Miami): Joe, I know you're tried of answering questions about Billy Beane, but two weeks ago you opened the chat with this: "Anyone that makes the postseason can make it to the WS, you just have to get hot at the right time in the short series. Getting to the playoffs is the priority." With that in mind, how you can not respect a man who has taken a team with a shoestring budget to the playoffs four (soon to be five) straight years?

Joe Morgan: Who said I didn't respect Billy Beane. I said we have a different philosophy on how to win in the postseason. They haven't won in the post season. We've had two teams in the last two years win the championship that were wild card teams. That tells me anyone in the playoffs can win. Just b/c I don't kneel down at Billy's feet, doesn't mean i don't like him. I like Billy personally very much, but until he can manufacture runs in the post season by playing some small ball and bunt and steal and hit and run -- produce and score runs -- I am not going to agree with his philosophy. Look at the history. There's only one way to win. I don't know what you want from me. You should think about how teams have won and realize THAT is the way to do it. SO for the final time. I don't dislike or disrespect Billy Beane, I disagree with his philosophy. .... Second, the Minnesota Twins have had a lower payroll and they've been in the playoffs 3-straight years. The Marlins have a low budget, they won a championship. THe Angles had a lower payroll at the time THEY won a championship. It's not about money. It's about other teams winning World Series and his falling short. Call me back when he wins the title playing with that philosophy and then I'll change my mind.

Ryan (Albany NY): It's ironic that you don't believe in Beane's theories when you were a perfect player for his system. Joe Morgan: Well, first of all, I'm not a perfect player in his system. I stole bases, I bunted, I did the little things -- and so did my teammates at the Big Red Machine -- to score runs. When you start with Zito, Mulder and Hudson and you lose in the post season time after time, that HAS to tell you something is wrong. I am not a perfect player in that system -- don't ever accuse me of that. I was a complete player, I did NOT wait for the three run homer. Now, Ken Macha has instituted some changes on the A's offense. I give him credit. But somebody has to do something to figure out why they have lost in the first round 5-straight years and more importantly how to change that. Bottom line of all this is I respect Billy Beane, I respect Billy Beane, I respect Billy Beane. I don't like his philosophy. End of discussion.

Joe Morgan: Let's understand one thing, what you do in the regular season, you are often playing against mediocre teams so you can walk and hit home runs. In the playoffs, good teams aren't going to walk you and they are not going to give up a lot of homers. If you are counting on that -- even if you have the best pitching in baseball -- you're going to lose. It's that simple. I can't see what's not to understand. The problem is obviously coming from the offensive side. You must make adjustments in October.

This is not a column to bash Joe Morgan. He is an intelligent analyst who misunderstands some things, but is generally knowledgeable. Clearly he is tired of fans criticizing his opinion of Moneyball, and that has caused him to lash out. I imagine he often has fans ask him question, and many times these fans are misinformed as well.

This leads me to the underlying problem of Moneyball. Announcers and columnists have bashed the book and the Oakland Athletics' philosophy as poppycock. It is sick in a way, that writers seeking independant thinking and analysis are dismissed because their thought contradicts the conventional wisdom. Unfortunately, fans adopt the position of these established commentators because they do not understand the concept themselves. It is not that the fans believe it is wrong. It is that they are unfamiliar with what the concept really entails. So here I seek to explain the Oakland Athletics and Moneyball, in plain English that readers can understand. Hopefully you will come away from this column with a better understanding of what Moneyball is all about.

A quick disclaimer before I continue. These are thoughts and opinions I have formed while viewing the Oakland Athletics over the last five seasons, the Toronto Blue Jays over the last two seasons, the Los Angeles Dodgers this season, and from reading Moneyball, many works of Bill James, Earl Weaver's Weaver On Strategy, Pete Palmer's The Hidden Game of Baseball, the last three years of Baseball Prospectus, many columns by ESPN's Rob Neyer, and several others that populate Baseball Primer. They are certainly not the complete actions of the Athletics, and they certainly have many research areas within their organization to which we are not privy. I simply hope this provides a good overview. In any case, here are five issues I believe form the core issues of Moneyball

1. Moneyball teams recognize the value of players. They recognize the price of talent, and how replaceable said talent is. They wait for the market to come to them, rather than vice versa.

Last week, I devoted a portion of my column to bashing the Phillies' acquisition of Cory Lidle. This is where many smart organizations stand apart from the rest. The Phillies made a panic move, and they traded too much talent for a mediocre pitcher. The Athletics last season found themselves in need of a rotation filler. In their case, they traded for Mark Redman, in return for reliever Mike Neu.

Talent in baseball, or any major sport for that matter, is distributed like a pyramid. Close to the top, you find players like Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Albert Pujols. There are few players as good as those three. As you move further down the talent ladder, you find players of similar skill become more common. How many pitchers are capable of posting 4.75 ERAs. Quite many of them. The idea is that if the going price for one is too high, you can move forward and acquire the next one. Or you could (god forbid) try a player from the minor leagues.

Talent has become more prevailent on the waiver wire as well. The Phillies traded Ryan Hancock to the Reds for Doug Jones. The Reds themselves picked up Doug Jones on the waiver wire. John Olerud, Rich Aurilia, Matt Kinney and John Olerud have all become available in this method. Relatively free talent. The idea is that you should not give up useful organizational pieces when you have talent like this readily available.

Another key is that the A's recognize how replaceable a player is. Miguel Tejada left via free agency over the offseason. While analysts fretted over the loss of a team leader and future MVP, the Athletics glanced at Triple A and saw a good prospect in Bobby Crosby. Is he as good as Tejada? Of course not, at least not yet. But Crosby allowed them to plug in a useful player at short and let them concentrate on improving other areas of their team.

One other area I should mention here is not really a Moneyball objective, but one to keep an eye on. Many fans and analysts view offseason acquistions and manuevers by viewing the star players. We forget that a baseball team MUST field nine players at a time, and each of these positions is responsible for 1/9th of a team's offense. A truly bad hitter is every bit as detrimental to your offense as a truly good hitter is positive. The Athletics were overlooked this offseason because they lost Miguel Tejada. The analysts missed that the A's recieved truly wretched hitting from their outfield, and simply getting average players improved the team in that area.

2. Moneyball teams believe in optimum strategy.

We all know that Moneyball teams dismiss "small ball" strategies, but why? They do not work, whether in the playoffs or otherwise. Step one of most smallball strategies is surrendering outs for the good of the team. This is unwise. Outs are your most potent offensive tool. They exist like the clock in other sports. Give up outs, and you are giving up opportunities to score runs. Numerous studies have shown that teams score less runs when there are more outs, regardless of whether there are runners on base.

That is not to say the sacrifice is always bad strategy. When there is a bad hitter at the plate, or you are advancing more than one runner, or on a suicide squeeze bunt, the sacrifice bunt can be a good strategy. What traditionalists miss is that there should be some evidence to back up the move, rather than just a gut feeling.

What about a good pitcher? Is a sacrifice a better move when a dominant pitcher is on the mound? No, because you still need a hit to get the runner across. You can not depend on a sacrifice fly, because if you can not place a ground ball between fielders, you can not trust your hitter to drive a ball to the outfield. Once again, outs take precedence over hits.

The stolen base is not a bad strategy. Moneyball teams realize this, and they are not adverse to stealing a base. There are a couple issues. First, you need to steal bases above a threshhold, which is usually around 70%. Steal at a lower percentage, and you are running yourself into more outs than you gain through taking the extra base. Second, speed is a secondary skill. It is a good skill, but it is not AS important as hitting. Controlling the batter/pitcher matchup is THE most important aspect of the game.

If you can find a player with an exceptional On Base Percentage AND speed, obviously you would like that player. Tim Raines, with his .385 OBP and 84% stolen base rate, would be an ideal player for the Athletics. But these players are rare, and unless they come from your farm system, expensive. Many point to the success of the Florida Marlins as evidence of the value of speed, but if you look at the statistics, the Marlins didn't win because they stole bases. They won because they REACHED BASE.

I would note that these are not revolutionary ideas. Earl Weaver had a tremendous measure of success utilizing similar strategies in the 1970s. I may have stated it before in my column, but it bears repeating. Using similar strategies as found in Moneyball, Earl Weaver AVERAGED 94 wins a season. He won a World Series and four league championships. He finished 5-3 in Playoff series.

But what about the Playoffs? The charge is that the Oakland Athletics do not manufacture runs in the postseason. I do not believe this is the case. Once again, the team that scores more runs and wins games is the team that controls the batter/pitcher matchup. Is the pitching better? Of course. But smallball runs into the same problem in the postseason that it faces in the regular season. Giving up outs is not an optimum strategy, and when you give up opportunites to collect hits against good pitching, it magnifies the problem. There is simply no evidence that sacrifice bunting gives a team an advantage in the postseason.

And than there is clutch hitting. We all know Moneyball teams lack that heart and soul, that vital postseason experience, and the ability to come through in the clutch. Nonsense. Derek Jeter is the poster child for this kind of player. Again, I do not wish to demean Jeter, because he truly is a good hitter. But if you look at his stats, they do not indicate any kind of clutch ability. In the regular season, he has hit 313/384/459 over his career. In the postseason. he has hit 314/385/469. That is almost exactly the same. Is he a clutch hitter in the regular season? With runners in scoring position, Jeter has hit 302/398/422. With RISP and two outs, he hit 309/406/434. There is really no significant statistical evidence that Jeter is a special hitter in the clutch.

And that lack of evidence is the key. Was Reggie Jackson a clutch hitter? He hit 227/299/380 in 163 at bats in 11 League Championship series. You gain an advantage when you can replace superstition with hard data. There is no statistical evidence, or any real evidence, that clutch hitting exists as a skill. There are clutch hits, and clutch performances, and they should be credited to the players. But they do not indicate a predictable skill.

3. Moneyball teams exercise an intelligent drafting strategy.

In a recent column bashing Billy Beane, Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle made sure to bash Beane's preference towards drafting collegiate players. It is amusing when writers bash the NBA for drafting so many high school players, and bash the Oakland Athletics for doing the opposite. The key with drafting college players is minimizing risk. A Bill James study showed that collegiate draftees are twice as likely to reach the majors, and collegiate pitchers are FOUR TIMES more likely to reach the majors than high school pitchers.

This does not mean that high school pitchers will not succeed. Many high school pitchers, such as Ben Sheets and Josh Beckett, have performed admirably in the major leagues. But an extreme amount of risk is involved. Pitchers have a tendancy to suffer injuries on the way to the big show, and most pitching prospects have their careers ended by injuries before they get off the ground. Another reason collegiate players are better picks is because they have played against tougher competition, and thus it is easier to judge their skills.

Collegiate players are generally more mature. For those of you who think Moneyball is all about statistics and nothing to do with the human element, witness chapter two. The Athletics, along with most other teams, are quick to discard players with mental or emotional blocks. The Athletics realize that a drive to succeed is as important as ability, and that high school players are prone to emotional pitfalls. These traits are not as evident in college players.

Drafting high school players is always not a bad thing. But teams take a risk in taking them high in the draft. High school pitchers in particular are extremely risky, as fans of the Cincinnai Reds can attest. In 1994, five high school pitchers were taken in the first round. Just two, Scott Elarton and Jaret Wright, made the big leagues. The next season, seven high school pitchers were taken. Kerry Wood and Roy Halladay became stars, but the rest were duds.

Also, the Athletics prefer to draft players based on statistical evidence, rather than a scout's word. Some take this to mean the Athletics do not like scouts, but this is untrue. The Athetics know that you need to use each tool at your disposal, and use the advantages of one to counter-balance the biases in another. Drafting solely on tools is a dangerous strategy. Take for example Colt Griffin. A high school kid with a 100 mph fastball. If he could find the plate, he would be a prospect. Scouts are quick to identify players that look like ballplayers. The Athletics learned the error of this thinking, and know that its important to draft players that have a track record of success. It is always better to evaluate what a player has done, rather than assume what he might do.

4. Moneyball teams place emphasis on different statistics.

Within the realm of mainstream baseball writing, several statistics exist which we use to evaluate a player's performance, such as batting average, runs batted in, earned run average, and saves. These statistics vary in usefulness, but what they generally fail to do is accurately predict future performance. Smart teams identify the statistics that do a better job of identifying future performance.

Let us start with hitters. The three statistics we usually see on broadcasts are batting average, home runs, and runs batted in. However, RBIs are usually little more than opportunity, and are not a good predictor of success. Batting average is useful to an extent, but it flucuates more than we would like. For hitters, OBP and slugging percentage are better indicators of future success. Plate disciple (best measured by BB/PA) is also a good indicator of true hitting ability. A player with good plate discipline is more likely to succeed than a player with bad plate discipline.

Pitching is slightly more complicated. Earned run average is a good measure of what happened. It is a less than accurate measure of what will happen in the future. ERAs tend to flucuate as well, and they are dependant on team defense. In order to truly measure a pitcher's ability, it is helpful to separate the contributions of the pitcher from his defense. The best way to do this is Defensive Independant Pitching Statistics. These are home runs, walks, and strikeouts. 90-95% of the time, a pitcher with good peripherals will pitch well in the future, while a pitcher with bad peripherals will struggle. Witness Damian Moss for an example of the latter.

When looking for talent, it is important to indentify skills which translate well into runs scored and runs allowed. Baseball has been played for 125+ years, and we have statistical data for most of that. Most often, the offensive stat which correlates most into runs is On Base Percentage. Teams that lead in steals don't often score many runs, and teams that lead in batting average do not often lead in runs, but teams that lead in On Base Percentage lead the league in runs more often than any other statistical category.

5. Moneyball teams recognize value patterns

You may have heard the phrase "28-32 is prime, then you decline," or some variation. The truth is that prime is between 27 and 30, and players decline afterward. There are two points here. First off, most players have their peak years within their first six years in the majors. Carlos Beltran is a free agent after this season, and while he is a great player, he is not LIKELY to get better. The important knowledge earned here is that the best players are not acquired via the free agency market, but via drafting and development. We will touch upon this in a moment.

Second, value patterns are important when evaluating who to sign to a long term contract. A player after the age of 32 is a risky proposition. As Yankee fans have seen with Jason Giambi, players can decline quickly and significantly. When the Athletics signed a player to a long term deal, they chose Eric Chavez, who will be 32 at the END of his six year contract. He is less likely to decline significantly during the length of his contract.

6. Moneyball teams view draft picks as a significant asset.

A draft pick could turn into a star player a team controls inexpensively for six years of his major league career. That is a significant asset, and the more draft picks you have, the better chance you have of finding a stud player. When a team loses a player via free agency, it has the opportunity to acquire up to two first round draft picks. For example, next season we will see Mark Teahan, Nick Swisher, and Joe Blanton in the majors. All were drafted by the A's after they lost Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen. The Athletics gained four more draft picks in return for Miguel Tejada and Keith Foulke. This constant infusion of talent into the minors insures the Athletics can remain a viable franchise even after their big three pitchers reach free agency.

Teams such as the Yankees lose draft picks as the result of signing big name free agents. When the player is a star such as Alex Rodriguez, the player is worth the loss of a pick. But when a draft pick is surrendered for a mid-level player, let's say David Bell, the acquisition harms the franchise long term more than helps it. The Yankees dynasty of the late 90s was built on a solid foundation of draftees such as Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada. Four years later, the farm system is barren, and the Yankees are no better off. Clearly, even for a big market club, the farm system is important, and burning off draft picks is a risky proposition.

Hopefully, this provides you with a better understanding of the philosophy of the Oakland Athletics. Rather than reject new ideas, it is important to study them. Success partly depends on overthrowing the conventional wisdom in favor of a more efficient strategy. While that has not led to postseason glory, the A's are one of only three teams to reach the playoffs each of the last four years, and they remain in position to win the division once again this season.

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