Assorted Links and Thoughts on Moneyball and What the Astros should take away from it
by Stephen Higdon on Oct 23, 2008 11:48 PM CDT
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- Sabernomics confirms my assertion that there's no way Peavy makes sense for a team when you can sign a FA starter.
- There's a Rockets blog on the SBN network: The Dreamshake.
- If you enjoyed the odds I was posting down the stretch of the season, Playoff Odd's has a simple series forecaster in Excel format for the World Series. It's something that could be fun to play around with.
- Just as an inquiry: has anyone listened to, ""J.D. and Dave's Excellent Offseason Adventure"? If so, is it worth downloading and listening too?
Scott Kazmir is yet another high school pitcher in whom the A's haven't the slightest interest. Billy's so excited he doesn't even bother to say how foolish it is to take a high school pitcher with a first-round pick.
As much as Joe Morgan and a lot of others have loved to hate on the book, because it comes of as Billy Beane giving the middle finger to the rest of the baseball world, a close reading reveals that that couldn't be farther from what's actually going on. Although MVN's site redesign seems to have lost Seidman's liveblog of his rereading of the book after Jeremy Brown's retirement, this BBTF posting contains a snippet that pretty accurately dispels a lot of the myths about the book.
It boils down to this: Michael Lewis wrote a book that would be widely popular and sell, so he exaggerates, emphasizes, and sensationalizes a lot of points throughout the book to make it entertaining. Notice that the quote above makes it seems like the A's think that Kazmir was a joke to be taken at 15th, but the surrounding context in the book and anytime Billy Beane is quoted, reveals that their desire to find ways to exploit the market's inefficiencies and gamble on new strategies were because they had no money. Taking a high-ceiling high-school pitching prospect is expensive -- think Ross Seaton x 5 -- and the A's can't afford those kinds of monetary gambles. So for Beane, taking Kazmir 15th, a player who has the lowest odds of becoming a successful big league player, is insane. Is it for the Mets? No because they can absorb those kinds of blows.
What I got from reading the book -- besides the enjoyment of reading a well put together pop-science-esque book -- was that the A's were utilizing every bit of information they could to win on a budget. They couldn't run business as usual and succeed, so they employed a lot of atraditional methods with traditional scouting. They actually turned out to be quite successful in the long-run -- the 2004 draft withstanding.
It gets at something that every single organization in baseball should be asking themselves constantly: is there anything else we can be doing? It's definitely something Astros' front office needs to ask themselves before they re-sign someone like Randy Wolf and refuse to sign Ben Sheets. The Astros have been walking a very fine line between mediocrity with some luck and decade long slump since 2005, and business as usual will do nothing to increase the chances we don't become next years Seattle Mariners.
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JD and Dave
Who doesn’t love JD? It has been ok so far. I think they will get better as they go along.
My first mistake was assuming you knew what I was talking about.
My main concern about the Astros management's approach...
is that they seem to undervalue OBP for offensive players. The Astros’ management seems to exhibit a distinct preference for “contact” type hitters, with little concern about their patience and ability to take walks. As a practical matter, it is unrealistic to expect that the structure of the Astros’ offense will change in the near future. So, I will just have to cross my fingers and hope that our hitters have luck with their batting averages next season.
Vaguely, I recall that Bean recently shifted his draft approach toward more high school players than in the past. Some articles after the last draft suggested that he was changing his approach because so many other teams had shifted toward the “college player” route, which meant that there would be better bargain hunting among high school players. To some degree, recognizing market inefficiencies means being a market contrarian.
And he's able to take more risk these days
since the A’s are under a new management that is willing to spend some. People (most of whom, I suspect, never read the book) misinterpret Moneyball to be about not stealing bases and using players who walk a lot. As you say, it’s about conducting a bit of arbitrage in the market by evaluating players properly. And when you do that, you find out who is overvalued (speed) and who is undervalued (walks). That formula, however, has changed significantly over the past six years, and it’s more difficult to find out who is being overvalued and who is undervalued.
And it’s not that the Astros undervalue OBP (as I said, it’s difficult to find many managers who still say “clogging up the bases”), I think they just undervalue BB%. We seem to simply stumble across those type of players rather than develop them – Bagwell, Berkman, and that’s pretty much it (unless you include Biggio’s ability to take a pitch to the head).
But I would wait a season or two to judge the Astros’ current policy. The Astros’ front office was essentially overhauled last year, and it will take time for them to impact the organization. Ed Wade seems to value OBP – he drafted and developed Pat Burrell, and all he does is walk and hit home runs.
But from everything I’ve read, Wade blends both “traditional” evaluation and statistical evaluation, which should mean that given enough time, the Astros will improve. I know we Astros fans are eager to see immediate change (it’s why so many of us want to see Ben Sheets in an Astros uniform), but it’s going to take some time.
So true
I know we Astros fans are eager to see immediate change (it’s why so many of us want to see Ben Sheets in an Astros uniform), but it’s going to take some time.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Oct 24, 2008 3:01 PM CDT up reply actions
This article supports my point about the Astros' apparent approach to acquiring/developing...
offensive players. This fangraphs author took the admittedly simplistic approach of comparing team “O Swing%” (percentage of swings outside the strike zone) with common perceptions of sabermetric or non-sabermetric orientation of the front office. Generally teams with sabermetric oriented GMs had the best O Swing performance, while teams which are popularly viewed as least sabermetric, were worst. The Astros were 27th out of 30 (behind only Seattle, Anaheim, and SF), and the author viewed them among the teams which said “sabermetrics is not for us.”
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3 game series vs Dodgers @ Dodger Stadium
| Fri 05/25 |
WP: Lucas Harrell (4 - 3)
SV: Brett Myers LP: Clayton Kershaw (4 - 2) |
3 - 1 win |
| Sat 05/26 |
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Houston Astros
Sunday, May 27, 2012, 3:10 PM CDT Partly cloudy. Winds blowing out to right field at 10-15 m.p.h. Game time temperature around 75. |
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NL Central Standings
| W | L | PCT | GB | STRK | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cincinnati
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26 | 20 | .565 | 0 | Won 1 |
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St. Louis
|
25 | 22 | .531 | 1.5 | Lost 3 |
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Houston
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22 | 24 | .478 | 4 | Lost 1 |
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Pittsburgh
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22 | 24 | .478 | 4 | Won 2 |
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Milwaukee
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19 | 27 | .413 | 7 | Lost 1 |
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Chicago
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15 | 31 | .326 | 11 | Lost 11 |
(updated 5.27.2012 at 1:03 AM CDT)
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