Moneyball Revisited

[GoNyMetsGo]

Yea, I agree. There's just a huge difference between whether a contract is good at the time the deal is made, and whether it's still a good deal at the end of the contract.

This would never happen, but say hypothetically Lackey wins 18 games next year with a sub 4 ERA. I doubt anyone would be saying a word about his contract like they are now. It's just the way the tide turns. It's really easy to look back on a deal and say "wow, that sucked", when the deal was in fact smart at the time.

If a player doesn't pan out, that's out of an organization's control. The Sox had someone literally tailing Crawford for months to make sure he was legitimate. NO ONE could have expected him to have this sort of a down year. At the time, the only criticism was "Hey, the Sox overpaid for Crawford, but he's a damn good player". Now it's "Wow, I cant believe they shelled out for that bum, what a bust".

Lackey was almost a sure thing as a bust. His stats showed a pitcher on the decline before he came to the AL East and became a batting practice pitcher, but as a Met fan I did not want him signed when he was a FA because he was already showing signs of decline. His deal was never smart.

[Dugmet]

I disagree on Drew. Drew for the Red Sox was paid $70M and delivered 13.4 WAR per fangraphs. That's $5.2M per win, about market rate for a big city team in free agency.

If you measure it that way, your point is fair enough. I certainly do not know the large market rates for the ratio of dollars to wins. If you say it's acceptable; I'll agree.

[GottaBelieve]

But what part of the Red Sox results do you have a problem with?

The end game is winning championships and having sustained success.

So I don't see how pointing to a few bad contracts changes the fact that the Red Sox do it right.

And I use them as a comparison (as opposed to Oakland in the early 2000s) simply because they have a market comparable to the Mets.

[NoQuarter]

So my Adam Dunn thread gets moved while this has 3 pages?

[Claymation]

Valid point.

[Sherlock]

The Moneyball concept has been overrated for a number of reasons. The teams that so called used "Moneyball" are teams that already had good players. The Athletics in the early 2000s had Eric Chavez when he was at his best. Miguel Tejada. And they had 3 top notch pitchers in their starting rotation(Zito was horribly overrated even in Oakland). Moneyball was used to maximize their potential in areas that needed improvement. It was not the reason they won anything. It was more of an insurance tactic.

The Red Sox, it was the same thing. And they had more money than the Athletics to use anyway. Moneyball is not nor will it ever be a way to win long term. It doesn't even pass for short term. How some people even could have thought that years ago is beyond me.

The only small market team that actually uses any way to compete with the big spenders consistently is the Rays. And I'm not entirely sure what the exact process is that they use but it's obviously working.

[Cheezombie]

The Moneyball concept has been overrated for a number of reasons. The teams that so called used "Moneyball" are teams that already had good players. The Athletics in the early 2000s had Eric Chavez when he was at his best. Miguel Tejada. And they had 3 top notch pitchers in their starting rotation(Zito was horribly overrated even in Oakland). Moneyball was used to maximize their potential in areas that needed improvement. It was not the reason they won anything. It was more of an insurance tactic.

The Red Sox, it was the same thing. And they had more money than the Athletics to use anyway. Moneyball is not nor will it ever be a way to win long term. It doesn't even pass for short term. How some people even could have thought that years ago is beyond me.

The only small market team that actually uses any way to compete with the big spenders consistently is the Rays. And I'm not entirely sure what the exact process is that they use but it's obviously working.

So they get no credit for acquiring those players?

Also, how do you know the Rays can keep it up forever? The Moneyball A's lasted longer than the Rays currently have.

[quade36]

So they get no credit for acquiring those players?

Also, how do you know the Rays can keep it up forever? The Moneyball A's lasted longer than the Rays currently have.

You should read this article at the beginning of the thread. Moneyball wasn't in effect when their studs were drafted and since only Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton have really prospered from the draft system they put in place.

[Jeffy25]

You should read this article at the beginning of the thread. Moneyball wasn't in effect when their studs were drafted and since only Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton have really prospered from the draft system they put in place.

'Moneyball' has been in effect since long before those players were drafted.

[Cheezombie]

You should read this article at the beginning of the thread. Moneyball wasn't in effect when their studs were drafted and since only Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton have really prospered from the draft system they put in place.

What are you talking about? Beane and even Sandy Alderson had always been looking at Bill James statistics. Moneyball didn't start with the book, it ended with it.

[Jeffy25]

What are you talking about? Beane and even Sandy Alderson had always been looking at Bill James statistics. Moneyball didn't start with the book, it ended with it.

Exactly, when Alderson took over in 83 he brought with him Bill James Abstracts to make front office decisions.

The book was 20 years after these decisions had already been in place.

McGwire was drafted because of the mathematical work by Eric Walker who wrote the Sinister First Basemen and was then hired as a consultant. His work is why they drafted guys like McGwire, traded back for Henderson etc.

Beane is glorified for being the inventor of sabr-metrics, but he is simply the first guy to have a book written about him while it was under it's utilization.

Behind the Seams - the stat story on MLB Network, if you get the chance to watch, is great. Gives a lot of good insight to it.

[Tragedy]

I think the fundamental concept behind Moneyball, or whatever you want to call it, is having an intelligent approach to acquiring talent so you maximize every dollar you spend.

No, it hasn't exactly brought major success to Oakland. But I think it's a bit harsh to call what Beane has done a failure. He still does more with less.

The Mets in the past few years have been the opposite of that. They have gotten very little value from the money they have invested. And that's the point of bringing in Alderson.

You want to see the philosophy of maximizing return on investment work? Look at the Red Sox. They have an intelligent approach to player moves, and they do it with a big budget.

I think bold is a great point. And while you speak kindly of my Red Sox, I think the point of "Moneyball" has to go back to what I bolded from your post - Maximizing your dollar. When the Red Sox have one of the leagues top payrolls, they're spending like crazy, but just TRYING to be wise about it (and often times, they're not).

I think in the case of the Athletics, they had an extremely low payroll when the theory came out, something around $30 million. The point is that they can not spend money on guys like Giambi and Tejada who they were losing to big money contracts, but that they could find guys on the market that had other skills that were undervalued, that the team could get a cheaper price. They were attempting to field the leftovers that no one wanted - Except for the Athletics - And they wanted those players because they found specific skills that these players did well (obviously the film talks a lot about Scott Hatteberg and that's a good example).

[Cheezombie]

That's exactly right. If you're the A's, a low payroll team, you can't afford to think like everyone else. It won't get you anywhere. Moneyball is about challenging conventional wisdom to find undervalued commodities.

[Reptar]

It wasn't AL MVP Miguel Tejada or Eric Chavez. Or the fact that they had 3 of the best pitchers in the league. It was all that number crunching sabermetrics that made the A's so good.

[Jeffy25]

^ not sure if being sarcastic or not, but sabermetrics is how they got those 5 players, and got them so cheap and for an extended period of time.