Shanks Follows Up On His Heyward Article

I'm not going to defend Bill (or "Scout's Honor"), but I think everyone needs to go back and read "Moneyball" again, because many of the more simplistic angles of slant in that book have also been proven wanting. Beane's "Moneyball" draft--which was supposed to herald a better way--turned out to be no more effective than other ways of assessing young talent. I don't know how much of the hubris in "Moneyball" is Beane and how much is Lewis (I have always contended more can be laid at the feet of Lewis who, while extremely intelligent has a contrarian streak a mile wide), but all glowing write-ups of unathletic guys who were going to succeed because they recognized the difference between a ball and a strike turned out to be fairly hollow. And if you look at the A's now, they barely resemble the group that Beane assembled in the late-1990s. Of course, Beane's ardent faithful will contend it's all about "market inefficiencies" and not about on-base percentage, but again, for those who contend that, read the book again.

I have nothing against the use of statistics and deep analysis. There are good baseball players and bad baseball players and a lot of guys in-between and they all fall into those categories for a lot of reasons, many of which aren't readily apparent. Solid statistical analysis can often unearth the less-recognizable qualities that define a player's value and that should be respected. But, has nsacpi has pointed out in the Copollella's interviews, scouts still have value, especially in the assessment of ceiling in younger players.
 
Gary82 said:
One of the guys from Talking Chop (formerly Capitol Avenue Club) writes a rebuttal to Bill's lousy excuse for an article.

http://www.talkingchop.com/2013/7/8/4504196/how-not-to-be-a-journalist

In all honesty, does Bill really think statheads hate him because he wrote Scout's Honor? I never read it. I think Neyer wrote a piece on hit and blasting it, but as far as I know, no one else has ever even mentioned the book.
Click to expand...

Scout's Honor was presented as some sort of counter to Moneyball, but that wasn't even the gist of the book. Yeah, it's doubtful that it got much attention, outside of Braves fans. It had some interesting anecdotes, like finding out that the Indians offered Brett Butler back to the Braves for Komminsk. Even for a diehard Braves fans, it's non-essential reading. The books that have to be read by Braves fans are Glavine's, Leo's & Schuerholz's. For the record Schuerholz broached the subject of scouting and statistical analysis. He wrote simply, "we use both." That was the end of the discussion to my mind. Bill kept up as if it had to be one or the other. Both have their uses.
 
Yeah. Moneyball did contain a certain amount of condescension toward scouts. I'm sure that sparked a backlash. And it has taken a while for the hurt feelings to be put aside. But I think most people in the business have moved beyond that. A few continue to find an axe to grind.

Btw it seems to me the main market inefficiency these days is that players for whom a big part of their value is defensive excellence or defensive versatility tend to get underpaid, in free agency and elsewhere.
 
I don't understand the concept of it's gotta be one or the other. Scouting has its place, and statistical analysis does as well.
 
nsacpi said:
Btw it seems to me the main market inefficiency these days is that players for whom a big part of their value is defensive excellence or defensive versatility tend to get underpaid, in free agency and elsewhere.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but I think people are becoming more aware of the value of a defensive wiz. The market will adjust accordingly.
 
50PoundHead said:
I'm not going to defend Bill (or "Scout's Honor"), but I think everyone needs to go back and read "Moneyball" again, because many of the more simplistic angles of slant in that book have also been proven wanting. Beane's "Moneyball" draft--which was supposed to herald a better way--turned out to be no more effective than other ways of assessing young talent. I don't know how much of the hubris in "Moneyball" is Beane and how much is Lewis (I have always contended more can be laid at the feet of Lewis who, while extremely intelligent has a contrarian streak a mile wide), but all glowing write-ups of unathletic guys who were going to succeed because they recognized the difference between a ball and a strike turned out to be fairly hollow. And if you look at the A's now, they barely resemble the group that Beane assembled in the late-1990s. Of course, Beane's ardent faithful will contend it's all about "market inefficiencies" and not about on-base percentage, but again, for those who contend that, read the book again.

I have nothing against the use of statistics and deep analysis. There are good baseball players and bad baseball players and a lot of guys in-between and they all fall into those categories for a lot of reasons, many of which aren't readily apparent. Solid statistical analysis can often unearth the less-recognizable qualities that define a player's value and that should be respected. But, has nsacpi has pointed out in the Copollella's interviews, scouts still have value, especially in the assessment of ceiling in younger players.
Click to expand...

Really the issue I run into with Moneyball is Lewis's style of writing he purposely creates controversy just because. If you read what it's saying, from quotes from Beane. He's talking about using statistics to exploit market inefficiencies. Beane as a low budget guy has to figure out where he can find bargains. He couldn't afford to keep Jason Giambi so he had to try and replace him. So on so forth. He was onto something at that time. As far as the draft goes, we all know the draft is effectively a crap shoot. If you had to bet who would have been a better first round pick, Minor or Lipka most people would have said Lipka he was young, toolsy, etc. But Minor obviously is better. And reading into the quptes on Moneyball you'd realize that Beane has a different team. I forget if it was a direct quote, but essentially Beane or DePo said that teams were valuing average, RBIs, homers, and stolen bases as the bible and ignoring OBP. After the book came out everyone paid attention to OBP. Heck dozens of teams picked up stat guys after Moneyball.

I'm of the opinion that you have to balance stats and scouting. Stats tell the results, scouting judges the talent. A guy like McCann is a great example against pure scouting. He doesn't look the part of a major league catcher and his raw numbers while good aren't amazing, but you look statistically and realize he's a very special player.
 
Actually, the biggest arguments against Moneyball come right from the A's of that season. The big 3 (Mulder, Hudson & Zito) + Tejada had more to do with their success than some new way of talent evaluation.
 
Runnin said:
I bought and read Scout's Honor. I enjoyed the stories but I was expecting a more cohesive book, not a few random stories from Braves scouts with very little connecting thread. It seemed underdone and under-edited, like it was rushed before the writer had a clear idea of what he was trying to say.

For Braves fans it's still a good read but it doesn't hold up as an important baseball book, or a thorough and well thought out counter argument to Moneyball, and that's the way it was presented at Scout.com.
Click to expand...

This is exactly how I felt about it. It was marketed (by Bill) as giving you the same insight into a Scouting Mindset as Moneyball did for a Stathead mindset, but it fell pretty short of that. The stories were mostly interesting (except for the Moneyball chapter at the end; that was a waste of trees so egregious the Lorax held a protest), but there was no unifying idea beyond an incredibly nebulous account of "makeup." Reading that book was essentially what made me realize that while Bill might be a decent minor league reporter, he was a terrible analyst. Up to that point, I thought maybe he had some kind of inside knowledge and understanding of Braves' operations that let him understand something critical, but... no.
 
Knucksie said:
Actually, the biggest arguments against Moneyball come right from the A's of that season. The big 3 (Mulder, Hudson & Zito) + Tejada had more to do with their success than some new way of talent evaluation.
Click to expand...

Just like Maddux, Smoltz and Glavine made JS look a lot smarter than he really was.
 
Metaphysicist said:
This is exactly how I felt about it. It was marketed (by Bill) as giving you the same insight into a Scouting Mindset as Moneyball did for a Stathead mindset, but it fell pretty short of that. The stories were mostly interesting (except for the Moneyball chapter at the end; that was a waste of trees so egregious the Lorax held a protest), but there was no unifying idea beyond an incredibly nebulous account of "makeup." Reading that book was essentially what made me realize that while Bill might be a decent minor league reporter, he was a terrible analyst. Up to that point, I thought maybe he had some kind of inside knowledge and understanding of Braves' operations that let him understand something critical, but... no.
Click to expand...

Joe Simpson also brought up the book (and the concluding chapter I think, in a braves broadcast), I felt bad for him.
 
thethe said:
Its silly to ignore stats at this point. Every front office in the game have a few guys who are analytical. Bill needs to get into the modern times.
Click to expand...

Depends what the stats are, I agree with Bill that some are just too much. I really don't pay any attention to most of them but I am big on OBP, OPS, and BABIP. I don't think I'll ever be big on the others that people use. I'm still very traditional in my thinking and like to look at a players AVG, OBP, RBI (how they hit with RISP), AND HR. Those numbers still matter to me. The stathead community wants to shove them out the door and replace them with new stats. I'm not ready for that and I doubt I ever will be.

I obviously don't agree with Bill on a lot but this is one of the few things I'm with him on.
 
I read Scout's Honor. I think Bill is upset that his book didn't sell for ****. It's why he's still plugging it 10 years down the road. I thought the book had some good stories and some good background on some players, but the book has to the useful life of a couple years tops. No one would buy the book now to read about how the Braves scouted Marcus Giles.

I'm a stathead and at times feel statheads are ape****. I've also been critical of Heyward at times bc I think he's more of an athlete than a baseball player. (though that was true of Kemp and then all of a sudden a light turned on)

Bill would have a more successful career if he just stuck with following the Braves instead of making it his life's crusade to bash statheads when the popularity of statistics throughout baseball is growing fast.
 
ChapelHillMatt said:
Depends what the stats are, I agree with Bill that some are just too much. I really don't pay any attention to most of them but I am big on OBP, OPS, and BABIP. I don't think I'll ever be big on the others that people use. I'm still very traditional in my thinking and like to look at a players AVG, OBP, RBI (how they hit with RISP), AND HR. Those numbers still matter to me. The stathead community wants to shove them out the door and replace them with new stats. I'm not ready for that and I doubt I ever will be.

I obviously don't agree with Bill on a lot but this is one of the few things I'm with him on.
Click to expand...

I think you also have to look at LD% and zone swinging percentages because they really give you a better indicator of what will happen in the future.
 
zito, I get what you are saying, but I've always thought the market inefficiency stuff is a bunch of bunk used by Lewis to justify this new approach that devalued tools over skills. I would only say that Beane and DePodesta valued on-base skills more than other franchises "at the margins," but Lewis makes it sound like those two invented the concept. Voros McCracken and others have tried to claim that on-base skills are a "tool" when they are more a "skill." I don't buy that. If a guy can't hit the ball, he's not going to get the opportunity to walk because pitchers are going to throw him nothing but strikes. In other words, it all fits together.

Other than that, I always thought Beane's approach had to do more with "time" than anything else. A small market team can't afford to wait for guys to develop and then become too expensive when their arbitration years hit. Beane wanted guys who were more "ready made" to contribute when they hit the bigs to get production more immediately and then trade that production for packages of younger players.

And I don't know about McCann. He's probably had a perfect swing since he was five years old and there's no question the kid played at a high level in the heralded Atlanta-area summer leagues. Scouts knew all about him. He may look like a lump, but he's a lump with great hitting mechanics.

As for Lipka versus Minor, one is/was pretty much a finished product and everyone and their mother in the Braves system knew that Lipka was a football player who was going to have to learn how to play baseball. It all depends on where you are as a franchise and how much time and budget you can throw into a guy. You can take high-ceiling guys who may develop more slowly if you can afford to sign them and have the time to watch them develop. I'm not going to single out Lipka, but with the Braves taking a far different approach to the draft in the Liberty ownership era, the need to go out and over-pay for B.J. Upton was readily apparent. It would have been nice to have someone internally who could have slid into the CF position. The problem I see with the Braves under Liberty (and to some extent Wren) is that they are neither fish nor fowl in their approach.
 
I used to think that his constant chiding of the stat kids to get off his lawn was more posturing than anything, but I'm less sure of that now.

Still, I think that he just played the anti-moneyball angle up to try to sell books. Just as he continues to do so in order to get clicks. That's fine, but I think that he has little to offer as a columnist, and less as a journalist. When he was actively running the board I mostly kept my mouth shut, because I appreciated the effort he put into the site, even though I disagreed with him most of the time and thought he was not particularly well-suited to that gig, either.

His thing with Heyward gets under my skin, though. Jason is a better player than most of the guys that Bill jocked unmercifully, but beyond that, he seems to be underappreciated for doing all of the things that traditionalists like Bill supposedly love: he works hard off the field, sells out on every play, plays smart, and says all the right things. People still pat Francoeur on the back for this stuff—"Hey, he stinks, but he plays hard and is a nice guy."

Other guys who demonstrate these qualities? They play the game the right way. They have a high baseball IQ. Jason does it night in and night out . . . crickets.
 
50PoundHead said:
If a guy can't hit the ball, he's not going to get the opportunity to walk because pitchers are going to throw him nothing but strikes. In other words, it all fits together.
Click to expand...

But this assumes pitchers can throw strikes when they want to. Look at some of the walk leaders. Duda, Uggla, Carlos Pena, \

Heck there are a couple pitchers with walk rates over 10% (Pettibone, Lynn)
 
To be fair to Bill he was a HUGE supporter of Heyward as soon as he was drafted. He constantly talked about how special he was going ot be. It was only till his performance at the major league level was not up to his expectation that he started to waiver.
 
50PoundHead said:
Beane's "Moneyball" draft--which was supposed to herald a better way--turned out to be no more effective than other ways of assessing young talent. I don't know how much of the hubris in "Moneyball" is Beane and how much is Lewis (I have always contended more can be laid at the feet of Lewis who, while extremely intelligent has a contrarian streak a mile wide)
Click to expand...

True, Moneyball was a very simplistic book in retrospect (and at the time, if you knew what you were looking for), and Lewis dialed a number of the aspects up to 11 to make to story seem better (and the movie, while entertaining, dialed them up to 15). But I think this description misses a fundamental goal of that draft for the A's: they needed to save money. It wasn't just about being the best (though obviously that was a big goal, especially in the story as Lewis framed it), but about finding a way to draft guys that wasn't as expensive. So I think getting average results while cheaping out on some guys has to be credited as a success, even if it didn't turn the world upside down.
 
thethe said:
To be fair to Bill he was a HUGE supporter of Heyward as soon as he was drafted. He constantly talked about how special he was going ot be. It was only till his performance at the major league level was not up to his expectation that he started to waiver.
Click to expand...

But why doesn't he want to be patient with him since he's such a young player and still going through a developmental stage? Why does he expect him to be Albert Pujols anyway? He's said himself many times it's ok for a player to go through some adversity and that development doesn't end once you get to the majors. He basically has contradicted everything he's ever said by changing his opinion so quickly on Heyward. Also it's not like we are talking about a player here who has been bad. He's had a pretty solid career thus far imo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top