I have just finished reading "Moneyball" and found it to be a great book. However, can relying on stats alone win a club the World Series? There is surely an undefinable quality in all athletes, including baseball players, that seperates the great from the good. That is usually seen when the pressure is on. Derek Jeter is a good example of this.
2007-09-18 03:01:52 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Sports ➔ Baseball
There is a quote by Beane in the book, which I have to sanitize here for the kids, which goes "my stuff doesn't work in the postseason". He builds teams to GET to the playoffs -- trash the weak teams and hold your own against the other powerhouses. Over 162 games, there's enough time to have this work.
October is different. Teams face the other good teams, and in short, elimination series. There is no reason a Beane-type team could not win, but the edge gained in the regular season is largely negated by circumstances, and the role of uncontrollable luck is magnified.
Until someone devises a reliable way to distinguish clutch hitting from choke pitching (or vice-versa), I won't put much stock into "intangibles" mythology or other such drivel.
2007-09-18 03:34:50 · answer #1 · answered by Chipmaker Authentic 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
"Moneyball stats" actually go a long way to explaining the Yankees 4 WS wins in recent years as well the Sox a couple of years back. It hasn't done it all the way for Beane, but he also didn't invent the stats themselves. He used stats to try to figure out ways to be competitive on a budget.
The "undefinable quality" is actually usually quite definable. It's being able to hit or field or pitch.
Please check out Baseball Prospectus to see what a crock of [Billy Beane's stuff which doesn't work in the play-offs] "clutch" performance is. (Great players are great in and out of the clutch. That's why they're great. There is nobody tracked in the analysis in MLB history who performs better "in the clutch" than in normal situations over the course of a career. Season to season is influenced by small sample sizes.)
2007-09-18 08:52:38 · answer #2 · answered by Bucky 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If it can get you to the playoffs, it can win you the world series.
You can never know about "undefinable qualities" in any athlete until they prove themselves. Putting good players on the field is a start.
That being said, I remember when Jeter came up, the scout who signed him, who was a very experiences guy, put in his scouting report that Jeter had some kind of quality to him he couldn't define. He thought it started with his parents and the way his family was so solid and how totally respectful Jeter was. The scout said that it was the first time in a long career that he ever remembered saying anything about a player's family in his evaluation but that is how much it impressed him.
2007-09-18 04:09:00 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
The Moneyball book is already outdated. When it came out Beane had Mulder, Zito and Hudson pitching for him. I have always felt Moneyball is a sham anyway. Beane had proven run producers like Tejada, Giambi, Chavez and last year Frank Thomas to put in the middle of the order to generate runs. He replaced those guys with guys like Kielty, Kotsay and Milton Bradley, who don't produce runs but have high OBP. While that looks good on the surface you take proven run producers out for guys with high OBP and you see where the A's are now, even with a pretty solid rotation.
2007-09-18 04:46:14 · answer #4 · answered by hurricanes 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I thought moneyball was the concept that drove the RedSox and Yankees. Pay out a lot of money for the ballplayers.
2007-09-18 08:01:17 · answer #5 · answered by dCon 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋