Tuesday, October 19, 2004 |
Pickoff Moves
Which Game Is He Watching?
Continuing the series of dialogues between team-oriented bloggers on all-baseball.com is this exchange from Bronx Banter's Alex Belth to Bambino's Curse's Edward Cossette:I think Schilling will be impressive tonight. Maybe not dominant, but 6 innings, less than 3 runs good. That’s why it’s crucial that Lieber match him. Since both are compulsive strike-throwers, perhaps the first two-thirds of the game will move at a more manageable pace. Of course the last couple of innings will drag on and on.... if they don't also go into extra innings. Note for the Sox and Yanks: entertaining as all this has been, can we please have a game in nine innings? Losing in extra innings twice can't feel good for the Yanks, and especially not for their badly depleted pen. Fearless yet altogether fallible prediction: the Sox will win tonight, and Mariano Rivera will get a day off... which will lead to his successful defense of a tight Yankee lead in Game 7.
Pundit Says, "Pundits Will Say, 'Moneyball Doesn't Work'"
Steven Goldman mutters darkly thatYou'll hear a lot about the Moneyball philosophy failing the A's, but organizational philosophy had nothing to do with the pitching staff doing a nosedive worthy of the Day the Music Died. Starters in September:This, of course, is slightly ridiculous; if the A's rotation holds together, we aren't having this discussion. A failing pen forced the A's to run their starters harder all year, and that is what caused their collapse, not Mark Ellis' absence.Hudson: 6 GS, 6.23 ERA Redman: 6 GS, 5.29 ERA Zito: 6 GS, 4.54 ERA Mulder: 5 GS, 8.10 ERA Harden: 5 GS, 5.52 ERA Aggregate: 5.83Even then, the A's came within one game of winning it. The root cause, the thing that made the biggest difference, wasn't the weakness of the outfield, which was only sporadically productive, or the absence of Eric Chavez with a broken bone, although that certainly hurt. You have to go back before opening day, when Mark Ellis was lost for the season. PECOTA's 60th-percentile projection for Ellis showed a VORP of 17.4, or 1.7 wins added. Given their weaknesses at other positions, the A's needed Ellis to have a chance to reach this projection or exceed it, as he did in 2002. Instead, they got Marco Scutaro, VORP 12.6. Now add the huge defensive difference between the two players, and you easily surpass the slim margin by which the Angels won the West.
I've been firmly in the camp that says Moneyball is vastly overrated; extract Zito, Mulder, and Hudson from their lineup and the A's are in deep trouble. Which, in September, is exactly what happened. I'm not against statistical measures of player performance, not by a long shot, but Moneyball brought a kind of arrogance to the table -- hubris, I would call it -- that richly deserves to be slapped down. Whether that's just Michael Lewis casting shadows over the A's front office with the same klieg lights he used in Liar's Poker or the A's believing their own press releases, 2004 brought one thing to the surface in a big hurry: a smart GM with a big budget will outperform a smart GM with a small budget nearly every time. Brian Cashman vs. J. P. Ricciardi? No contest. The playing field is a lot more even with Bill "Is Rafael Palmiero Still Available?" Stoneman running the Angels and Bill "I can make bad moves on my own" Bavasi atop the Mariners, but the shrill cries that "Moneyball does work" are beginning to sound a trifle desperate as the Blue Jays -- the forgotten children of the sabermetric revolution -- and the A's sink into the quicksand that only money can extract them from.
A Rich Field Of Thought
Rich Lederer asks:Does anyone else have the feeling that the Astros are this year’s Angels or Marlins? All three teams were wild card entries and came into the postseason as the hottest team in baseball. The Marlins and Astros also changed managers during the season. The Angels and Astros were expansion teams in 1961 and 1962, respectively. Just as it took Anaheim 42 years to make an appearance in the World Series, it will have been 43 years in the making should Houston get there.I might, except the Astros have a dumber manager and nobody named Francisco Rodriguez.
And Brad Lidge, I might add, is doing a pretty fair imitation of the Francisco Kid.
--Rich
: 10/19/2004 02:18:00 PM
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