Proceeds from the ads below will be donated to the
Bob Wuesthoff scholarship fund.
Thursday, May 19, 2005 |
A Recursive Debunking: Unibombing The A's
The A's long slump has made Blez say funny things, such as agreeing -- sort of -- with this piece in the Boston Globe by one Eric Wilbur, who recommends dynamiting the A's. In particular, Wilbur promotes the vigorous and better-now-than-later trade of Barry Zito as a defensive strategy for a scuffling Oakland team, but along the way, he can't resist a couple shots at Michael Lewis's magnum opus, Moneyball, and the A's generally:
This was supposed to be the A’s year to go away anyway. After four straight trips to the playoffs (2000-2003) on a shoestring budget and last year’s second-place finish, just a game behind the Anaheim Angels, Beane made drastic changes to his club, dealing staff ace Tim Hudson to Atlanta and lefty Mark Mulder to St. Louis, both with hefty raises due. He acquired Pittsburgh’s Jason Kendall, and let Jermaine Dye walk. The changes led many to write the A’s off in 2005, while others still held a flicker of hope in a pitching staff that boasted Barry Zito and Rich Harden."A dynasty of sorts has been dismantled out of monetary necessity", he intones, but then breaks out the whip with his crack thatWell, now we know better. Hudson is 4-2 with a 3.18 ERA for the Braves. Mulder is 5-1 with the Cardinals. Lefty pitcher Mark Redman, involved in the Kendall deal, is among the top 10 ERA leaders in the National League. Arthur Rhodes, also involved in the Pittsburgh deal, then traded to Cleveland, is 2-1 for the Tribe with a 0.98 ERA and seven holds.
That's not just called backfiring on Beane. We’re talking cartoon, ACME, charred mug explosion here.
We often forget how close this guy came to running the Red Sox, if not for an 11th hour decision to remain on the West Coast. Where would the Red Sox be right now? One thing’s for sure, Jason Varitek would be behind the plate for the Sox with the AL’s best pitching staff. In Chicago. One of Beane’s first lines of duty in Boston would have been to deal Varitek to the White Sox for Mark Johnson, we learned in the final pages of “Moneyball.”Huh? The Red Sox have the money to spend, and the A's do not; how does this not appear in his noggin when only a few sentences before, he noted the A's have financial constraints that the Sox do not? Concerned But Powerless ran a great little piece about the cluelessness pervading sports "journalism" the other day, featuring an interview with Michael Lewis regarding his next project in which he gives a roundhouse punch to both Bill Plaschke and T.J. Simers:
They're upset because [Paul DePodesta is] undoing things that they approved of in the first place. He takes them to the playoffs for the first time in what, 10 years? And there isn't a peep about that.Lewis may have popularized the notion that Statistics Are Good, but he's no more interested in an honest appraisal of the individuals involved in running the Dodgers (and their track records) than he was in Moneyball with Billy Beane. The 2004 team still predominantly consisted of players acquired by former GM Dan Evans, and in that regard stands as a testament to both Evans' and DePodesta's abilities. But only DePodesta appears in Lewis's Valhalla; Evans arrived neither in the index nor even a footnote, and so the Ministry of Truth closes for business. Lewis has a lot resting on Beane's 2002 draft, which he portrayed as the second coming of the Dodgers' 1968 draft -- possibly the most productive draft for any single team, ever. That, and Lewis's hagiographic tone when handling Beane, has in turn handed the pen-wielding idiots covering baseball a big fat club to swing at his every misstep. Expect to read more of this kind of tripe in the coming days; the world has an overstock of Bill Plaschkes.
Newer› ‹Older
 |
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.