It seems to have become popular to rip A’s GM Billy Beane. I can see why he’s an easy target. He’s more recognizable than 99% of GM’s, he’s had a book written about him (Moneyball) and soon it will be a motion picture. Stats in baseball, more so than other sports, seem to be polarizing. There seems to be very little in between either you are a SABERmatrcian or you are a fan of outdated illogical baseball (less than subtle jab.) But the argument against Beane and Moneyball (as highlighted by Howard Bryant on the front page of ESPN) seems to be missing a few key things. Moneyballs subtitle was “the art of winning at unfair game.” What Billy Beane set out to do was exploit baseball by finding players that were undervalued by using statistics like on base percentage and slugging percentage. Remember 10 years ago talking about a pitchers BABIP would have made no sense. It’s why Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford were such valuable pieces of the A’s machine. They were effective, cheap and no one else wanted them. However part of Beanes problem was how influential he was. Moneyball, and Bill James work in general, launched a statistical revolution in baseball. Teams like the Padres, Red Sox, Indians, Yankees, Blue Jays, Rays, Giants all rely heavily on statistical analysis now. Beane let the secrets out of the cookie jar and it hurt him in the long nru. Now Beane can’t exploit the draft like he use to because everyone is doing the same thing.  Hell, even the big boys like the Yankees and Red Sox understand the value of draft picks. When teams all started to value these diamond in Continue reading In Defense Of The Genre