Postseason Thread

thewupk said:
Also I'm pretty sure the Billy Beane philosophy is looking at inefficiencies in certain markets and trying to exploit them. At one time it was OBP. Recently it was defense.
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That was Lewis' construction, but I simply don't see it. A's had a set of marvelous drafts and had a really good set of cost-controlled players when Moneyball was written and Beane deserves credit as farm director and subsequently GM for a lot of that, but he's been pretty much like everyone else (except for the Hawaiian shirts) since.

I've read Moneyball three times. First time was for interest. Second time (about five years later) was for critical interpretation. Third time (last year) was for laughs. Still can't believe Beane traded Carlos Pena and somehow is credited with making a great move by then converting Scott Hatteberg into a first baseman (no offense to Hatteberg who was a pretty good baseball player).
 
50PoundHead said:
That was Lewis' construction, but I simply don't see it. A's had a set of marvelous drafts and had a really good set of cost-controlled players when Moneyball was written and Beane deserves credit as farm director and subsequently GM for a lot of that, but he's been pretty much like everyone else (except for the Hawaiian shirts) since.

I've read Moneyball three times. First time was for interest. Second time (about five years later) was for critical interpretation. Third time (last year) was for laughs. Still can't believe Beane traded Carlos Pena and somehow is credited with making a great move by then converting Scott Hatteberg into a first baseman (no offense to Hatteberg who was a pretty good baseball player).
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I also think that since the book has been out that it's a lot harder to find those types of inefficiencies in the market. No doubt that someone like a Justin Upton would get a bigger contract than a Jason Heyward at that time even if the latter was a better player. With the way analytics have evolved in the last 15+ years teams pretty much know how to value MLB players and determine what they are worth. I think most recently it was the Cuban market which Beane did get Cespedes from but even that is starting to close.
 
thewupk said:
I also think that since the book has been out that it's a lot harder to find those types of inefficiencies in the market. No doubt that someone like a Justin Upton would get a bigger contract than a Jason Heyward at that time even if the latter was a better player. With the way analytics have evolved in the last 15+ years teams pretty much know how to value MLB players and determine what they are worth. I think most recently it was the Cuban market which Beane did get Cespedes from but even that is starting to close.
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I think that's true to an extent, but I think Lewis' agenda was much more strident than Beane's. You need to read more of Lewis' baseball oeuvre, especially when he took aim at the A's for seemingly abandoning the approach supposedly advocated in the famous "Moneyball" draft. I think a lot of Beane's decisions were dictated by economics while Lewis had a very strong anti-tools mentality. Beane wanted to win games. Lewis wanted to sell books.

For me, good players are good players. Analytics can help at the margins, but most everyone in baseball knows who the good players are. You still get a GM or two (or five) that make boneheaded decisions, but I see those decisions as being driven more by the idiocy of the GM in question as opposed to whether or not they are heavy on tools or analytics.
 
"Never in more than 100 years of World Series history has a player made his major-league debut on the game's grandest stage. That could change this year if Kansas City Royals phenom Raul Mondesi Jr. gets into a game."

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-b...layer-to-debut-in-world-series-165923933.html

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