Chapter 12: The Speed of the Idea

This is part 12 of the blog for Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis. Feel free to join in the discussion of the book.

As Lewis wraps up Moneyball he attempts to come back to his theme . . . but oddly so. He has not been consistent with the theme throughout the book. He has taken full chapters off to go away on a tangent. While the reading has been fun, it has not provided evidence of what the Oakland A’s actually do to win. There’s been some quirky fascination with Billy Beane, but no meat. No understanding of what Beane truly does to field a competitive team. This chapter is no different.

We hear again that small ball doesn’t work. For someone like me who is willing to question what he truly understands about the game, there could have been so much more exploration into this and how the A’s flaunt this specific strategy.

We see Beane at the end of the 2002 season not uptight as they lose to the lesser Twins. As Beane explains it,

My shit doesn’t work in the play-offs. My job is to get us to the play-offs. What happens after that is fucking luck.

Luck? This is what it all boils down to for Billy Beane? Luck? This cannot be. Moneyball was to show us how a reasoned plan of finding under valued talent was turned into a winning ball club. It is anti-climatic to say everything now is luck.

I found the attack of ESPN announcer Joe Morgan interesting. I know many folks who dislike Morgan. For me, Morgan is all right. I think he explains some things that I hadn’t thought through. But like any person who is paid to talk, he stumbles. Morgan’s description of the K-Zone is laughable when he rambles on endlessly. Lewis does a good job of pointing out how ol’ Joe contradicted himself in chiding Oakland for not manufacturing runs in the off-season as the games are close, yet the facts of the series ran directly opposite of what he said.

What Beane has done with Oakland certainly has caught some attention. Not only did Michael Lewis come knocking, but a few new owners in MLB caught the bug. Beane was offered the general manager’s position for the Boston Red Sox. The Sox were taking a huge turn in philosophy. Not only was Beane offered the GM’s job, but Voros McCracken was hired and the esteemed Bill James himself. I was reminded of Field of Ignorance when Lewis took a chapter off to pay homage to James. James was portrayed as being sullen that MLB had not taken it upon himself to look more closely at what it did. The dichotomy between the baseball purists and the new stat guys had been drawn. And we were left with that James felt as though MLB felt there was no need for his work. But it occurs to me that MLB just didn’t know what to do with it. The old baseball guard was too entrenched to adopt it. And even with the data available, what was one to do? No, MLB was listening. It just needed to hire James himself to explain it. That is what the Red Sox did. And the new ownership of the Toronto Blue Jays decided to do with hiring J.P. Ricciardi, the A’s player development director. Although later, DePodesta left for the Dodger’s GM position. As for Beane, he turned down the Red Sox in the end. His ego had been served by the offer, but he knew if he accepted the job, it would have only been for the money, and that is something Billy Beane said he would never do again. The Red Sox hired Theo Epstein, a stat guy who had never played the game.

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