In This Economy... Even Moneyball Is Broke - Part III

The final part of the Moneyball Trilogy examines the A's most recent form. The year was 2006, genuis GM Billy Beane was at the top of his game once again, reinforcing himself as one of the brightest minds in the game. The A's were top contenders after a series of "shrewd" moves. However, just as fast as the A's were back on the scene, they were gone. Did the Mad Scientist of Moneyball spend too much time in the lab? Or did he actually blow up the building? RSS reports, you decide. (is that used by anyone?)

We begin Part III at the close of the 2006 season. The A's have actually won a playoff series but were swept in the ALCS by the Detroit Tigers. Beane was able to add vets such as Jason Kendall, Jay Payton, Milton Bradley and Frank Thomas to a lineup of young stars like Swisher, Crosby, Kotsay, and Ellis. Barry Zito was surrounded by a new emerging Big 3: Rich Harden, Dan Haren, and Joe Blanton. It seemed the A's were back in line for a run at the top of the AL West. However, after the 2006 season it fell apart again.

Zito left for free agency. Manager Ken Macha was fired. Beane traded away Kotsay, Swisher, and Kendall for a group I like to refer to as the Milk Carton Gang, because that's the only place you'll ever see them. Oh, and Billy also finished off any hopes of a second A's dynasty by trading away the Not As Big But Still Fairly Large 3 by dealing Haren to the D'Backs in Dec '07, and Blanton to the Phillies and Rich Harden to the Cubs respectively in the middle of the '08 season. Would you like to see the list of outstanding, promising, future All-Stars that the A's got for the NABBSFL 3? I knew you would.

Sean Gallagher, Matt Murton, Eric Patterson, Josh Donaldson, Adrian Cardenas, Josh Outman, Matthew Spencer, Brett Anderson, Dana Eveland, Greg Smith, Chris Carter, Aaron Cunningham, Carlos Gonzalez. (Go ahead tell me who is on the left, you can look it up too, I'll wait.)

Hmmm, so Billy Beane traded a dynamic pitching trio for a group of players that could best be described as journeyman, if it wasn't offensive to journeyman players, twice.

As a result of these moves the A's were underwhelming in '07 and '08 finishing under .500 both years. Why absolutely nuke a team that had just won the team's first playoff series since 1990 to oblivion, especially after you blew up the A's too soon 4 years earlier. Why quit on good young pitchers like Haren, Blanton, and Harden? Why trade away half your offense? Why give up on another established group of players after a couple of so-so years? Why do one of the hardest things in sports and rebuild... again?

The same questions can be asked this year. Why give up on Matt Holliday after 4 months in Oakland this season? Better yet, why bother trading for him in the first place?

And so here we are on July 27, 2009. The A's are in another rebuilding phase. Will they reach the playoffs anytime soon? No. Where have all the previous rebuilding projects got Oakland? Nowhere. Is one playoff series win worth all of the trades and tinkering? The constant building up and blowing up? If the A's do make a run, wouldn't A's fans just be waiting for Beane to dismantle another contender? Maybe he should just save A's fans the time and just stay in rebuilding mode - permanently.

If all of this analysis is just too much to digest, let's simplify it. Here is a list of players that have passed through Oakland during Billy Beane's tenure:

Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, Jason Isringhausen, Keith Foulke, Ted Lilly, Rich Harden, Dan Haren, Joe Blanton, Cory Lidle, Esteban Loaiza, Aaron Harang, Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, David Justice, Johnny Damon, Jermaine Dye, Eric Byrnes, Andre Ethier, Eric Chavez, Jason Kendall, Mike Piazza, Milton Bradley, Scott Hatteberg, Frank Thomas, Nick Swisher, Matt Holliday, etc.

These are just some of the names that have come and gone from Billy Beane's puppet strings. None of these great major leaguers left Oakland with a WS appearance, let alone a championship ring. Isn't that the biggest condemnation of Beane and Moneyball? That this massive number of extremely talented players could come and go from Oakland without sniffing a championship.

How could A's fans expect success when so many All-Stars have been sent packing for what-ifs, could-bes, and never-weres? How long will it be until 2009 rookie All-Star pitcher Andrew Bailey is traded by Beane for a new wave of livestock on the Moneyball farm? For all of the praise that has been showered upon Billy Beane, there is one glaring wart about Moneyball:

None of these moves have worked!!!!!

Then again, maybe the Beane loyalists are content that he had the fanciest and nicest assets throughout the decade, and that winning titles isn't realistic. Sorry, but success is measured in championships, and sometimes those assets and stock portfolios don't always come through, especially in this economy.

One thing is clear when truly taking an in-depth look at Billy Beane. He has an itchy trigger finger. Maybe the hype and fame surrounding Moneyball went to his head. He's too concerned with moving pieces around on the chessboard that he forgets he's about to get checkmated. It's almost like trading pieces and players and prospects is a temptation Billy Beane can't resist. He's the kid playing Madden on XBox360 that has to build the perfect dynasty. Maybe he's too smart for his own good. Or maybe his system of Moneyball just doesn't work.

Ironically, over at ESPN.com, an in-depth story just went up today by Howard Bryant about Billy Beane and the Moneyball A's. I wasn't surprised to see a largely sympathetic view towards BB and the A's, considering how idolized Beane has been over the years.

Yes, he has been a revolutionary mind, yes he has changed the game of baseball, but what has Moneyball produced for Oakland A's fans? A famous, well-respected GM? A possible movie about their team? Not to cut down all the VORPies, but the Indians in Major League II got farther than Moneyball ever did, and they had to go through Jack Parkman.

Again, this is not a personal attack against Billy Beane. Bryant references folks around baseball taking pleasure in the recent struggles of the A's. I am not one of those guys. But, I do want to take a fair and balanced (whoops there I go again) account of the Moneyball Era and cut through the hype and fame that have hidden the true success or failure of Moneyball.

I'm sure that Billy is a nice guy, and perhaps he is a victim of his own brilliance, maybe he didn't ask for the burden that Moneyball has brought. But, one quote from Beane in 1999 got my attention about what is wrong about Beane and Moneyball:

"What I want," he told me that day 10 years ago, "is to be the baseball equivalent of Bill Walsh, where you have a tree of guys who worked for you, the same way I worked for Sandy, running teams all over the league. That to me is pretty cool."

Does he say he wants to win? No! Is this not a problem for warm-blooded American sports fans?? His main concern is his own legacy. A Billy Beane tree. Fame and fortune. Is winning a World Series ever in the discussion in Howard Bryant's article? No.

Maybe the legacy of Moneyball is that Billy Beane got what he wanted. He's the most famous GM in all of sports. He owns a share of the team. He gets paid to speak all over the world. His philosophies are now wide-spread among the major leagues. His disciples now run teams of their own. Brad Pitt was supposed to play him in a movie.

It's just a shame that for all the fame and adoration and legacies that Billy Beane and Moneyball have produced that Oakland A's fans never got what they wanted.

A championship.

In This Economy... Even Moneyball Is Broke - Part 2 of 3

Well... thankfully Part I did its job and stirred up quite the discussion didn't it. Of course, this isn't a personal attack against Moneyball, Billy Beane, or baseball's new wave of creatures from their mother's basements known as sabermetricians (sorry I just can't leave out that mother's basement line, it's solid gold). Thinking outside of the box and breaking the status quo is what we love best here at RSS. Emotions and loyalties may run high from progressive baseball minds when it comes to Moneyball, but will the facts about Mr. Beane and his A's persuade the VORPies? Without further adieu, Parts II and III addresses the specific moves Billy Beane has made, where the A's have been, where they are, and where they are going, thanks to Moneyball. (I didn't anticipate needing 3 parts, but consider this my masterpiece... or epic failure)

First off, give Billy Beane credit. He built a darn good ballclub in Oakland that competed consistently. From 1999-2006 their worst season was 12 games above .500. However, Beane's A's could never close the deal. The question that needs answered is did Beane's constant moving and shaking help or hurt the A's in the grand scheme of the Moneyball A's?

Let's initially look at the A's roster from their first run of playoff appearances from 2000-2003. Here, they won 3 AL West titles and made the playoffs each year, but failed to advance out of the first round.

The pitching staff was led by the Big 3 of Zito, Hudson, and Mulder throughout this run while Tejada and Giambi slugged their way to MVP awards before walking away in free agency. Even though the names changed, the lineup constantly produced enough to hold up their end of the bargain and get the team to the postseason.

But, with a stacked pitching staff and a loaded lineup, the A's could never get out of the first round. They lost twice to the Yankees including the memorable 2001 ALDS when Derek Jeter stole the show with his flip (left) and dive into the stands. In 2002 and 2003 they managed to lose the ALDS with homefield advantage to Minnesota and Boston respectively. However, its clear Beane was going for it. Good players like Damon, Dye, Justice, Lilly and others were added to the roster in this time frame and contributed. To this point, I would have been drinking the Billy Beane kool-aid with everyone else. However, things changed after the 2004 season when the A's missed the playoffs and the division crown by 1 game.

After the 2004 season Billy Beane did the unthinkable, he broke up the Big 3.

Within 3 days in December 2004, 2 of the Big 3 were dealt as Mark Mulder was sent to St. Louis and Tim Hudson was shipped to the Braves. I dare anyone to tell me one player of consequence the A's received in return besides Dan Haren from those deals. You know who else the A's got for 2/3 of one of the most vaunted pitching trios in history? Juan Cruz, Dan Meyer, Charles Thomas, Daric Barton, and Kiko Calero. (they aren't going into Cooperstown anytime soon)

Oh, and that one player of consequence, Dan Haren? He was traded in December 2007 for a ragtag group of hit or miss prospects from Arizona that have all fared about as well as Bob Uecker thus far in the bigs.

The 04-05 A's had restocked with good young players like Crosby, Ellis, Kotsay, Byrnes, and Swisher. While they had lost Giambi and Tejada, the lineup was still producing. So why did Billy Beane pull the plug on the A's incredible run in December of 2004? Why commit yourself to rebuilding by trading away Mulder and Hudson, especially in December? Why not try another run with a team that had made the playoffs 4 out of the last 5 years and missed the postseason by one game the year before? Surely, he could've seen where the team was at in July and got much more for his aces? Wasn't it too early to start over?

So what is the legacy of the Big 3 Era in Oakland? A lot of near misses, and a lot of promising prospects that fizzled out faster than Todd Van Poppel. Hudson, Mulder, and Zito are mere ghosts of Oakland's past and reminders of the glory days of Moneyball. Little did anyone know that the Big 3's time in Oakland would be as good as it would get for the rock star GM and his Moneyball A's. But hey, no one could see the economic collapse coming either, right?

The final part of the Moneyball Trilogy coming soon looks at the A's since their only playoff victory this decade in 2006. The A's were successfully rebuilt by that time, or were they? Were they only rebuilt for the demolition expert GM to be overanxious to start from scratch again? The 2006 A's stand as a symbol for what haunts Billy Beane and the Moneyball A's. In Part III we look at the A's most recent struggles and the fate and ultimate verdict of Billy Beane and the Moneyball A's.

Moneyball lives, as proven today

Silly Simple Mr. Yoder I, I know you’ve baited me into this.

Unfortunately I cannot allow you to try and attack a concept you don’t even understand. It’s unfair to the blog, it’s unfair to Billy Beane, it’s unfair to the English language, and most of all its unfair to the kids.

I’ll chose to ignore:

1. You’re statement “Moneyball is Broke,” as it makes no sense and is clearly just some ignorant buzz title that means nothing.
2. The fact that Moneyball isn’t designed to win a championship, but to compete yaer after year in an unfair market. It’s like a burger stand trying to stay afloat amongst a Wendys, a Burger King, and a Mcdonalds, the point isn’t to put the other guys out of business, but to stay in business.

Moneyball has, is, and will continue to be overwhelmingly successful.

Let’s first look at your assertion that while Moneyball builds winning ball clubs from 2000-2006 (the better half of a decade), that it can’t win championships.

Lets start by clearing one thing up, the Major League baseball playoff system is absolutely absurd, and in no way crowns the best team in baseball as the ‘World Champion.’ Instead, Major League baseball awards the eight best teams through a process that includes 162 contests, to compete in a miniature tournament that at the absolute most see’s them play 19 games.

One undeniable truth is that in baseball, small sample sizes tell us absolutely nothing. It is a game of percentages where failure is an inevitable part of the game…this is why it takes 162 games to decide who is the best team in baseball, not less than 20.

For years before the Wild Card the most important title in baseball was the pennant, not the World Series. The World Series was a bonus, a novelty.

After all, how could you decide who was the best team in such an absurdly small sample size?

Seven games…One week.

In the last week the two best hitters in baseball have been Miguel Montero, a catcher for the Diamondbacks, and Garret Jones, a utility player for the Pirates.

Montero: .440 4 HR 9 RBI 1.462 OPS
Jones: .379 4 HR 6RBI 1.369 OPS

Compare that to two superstars, Josh Hamilton and Evan Longoria.

Hamilton: .200 1 HR 4 RBI .5600 OPS
Longoria: .120, 2 HR 6 RBI .6180 OPS.

In the last week, or seven games, Hamilton and Longoria have been far worse players than Montero and Jones, however it is clear that Montero and Jones are not better players. This is because it is a small and random sample size.

So to talk about the Oakland Athletics performance in the playoffs is absurd. That would be like trying to figure out the 2008 presidential election by polling only Wasilla, Alaska.

One however might question if the team was built to be good enough to win a championship. Lets review the accolades.

They had the pitching. Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, and Tim Hudson all led the league in wins once. Zito won the Cy Young one year, and Mulder and Hudson were both runner ups to the Cy Young in various years as well. Keith Foulke, the A’s closer, led the league in saves once. Clearly looking at this the A’s had the pitching staff to build a championship team around. If there is one way to win a small sample, short playoff series, it’s to try and have the best pitching possible. The A’s, for years, had dominant pitching.

The A’s also had a potent line up. Centered around plus players and premium positions, the A’s rallied around their stars Eric Chavez and Miguel Tejada. Chavez of course provided great defense as a perennial Gold Glover, and Tejada won an MVP and led the league in RBI. Not to mention, Moneyball itself manufactured a line up that was incredibly potent for the amount of money spent on it. So the teams had the bats and the gloves to win a championship.

Oh…and they were lead by manager Art Howe, who won manager of the year, so they had the leadership.

Quite simply, the A’s lack of World Series is what it is, a fluke. It was unlucky. They were not the first team ever to have a competitive team for a series of straight years without winning a World Series.

In fact their counterpart, the New York Yankees have had high-level winning seasons from a period of 2001-2008. They won 0 World Series in that time frame. Were they bad teams? No, they were very very good teams that got very very unlucky. Same leadership, same stars as the team that won four straight World Series the four years leading up to those dates.

Mr. Yoder I references the Marlins  as a team who is more successful than the A’s because they do not use Moneyball. If trading away your best players, getting top dollar prospects for them, and coordinating and raising those prospects until they are in a position to compete for a championship isn’t Moneyball than I’m not exactly sure what is.  At least the A’s made it last the better part of the decade where the Marlins have always been a one-year flash in the pan.

So what’s been going wrong the last two/three years for the A’s?

Well let’s look at their plan. Amass a great deal of cheap talent, and go on a run where they are continually competitive while being at a disadvantage in the market place. Well they did that. Their talent grew up though, and while they whiffed at their shot at the title they got a hell of an output from their cast of characters.

Now the A’s are again rebuilding but being extremely competitive while doing it. Ten games below .500 is incredibly good for a team that is ‘rebuilding,’ just ask the Padres or the Nationals. But think how much better they would be if their calculated decisions hadn’t taken the unlikely turn they did.

The A’s decided to invest in Chavez instead of Miguel Tejada. It was the smart choice, Chavez was younger, got on base at a much higher rate, and played stellar defense. However, inexplicably, and against the percentages,  Eric Chavez has had an impossibly bad last two years.

Chavez 2007: 90 Games, .240/.306/.446, 15 HR, 46 RBI
Oakland 2007: 76-86

Chavez 2008: 23 Games, .247/.295/.393, 2 HR, 14 RBI
Oakland 2008: 75-86

Hmm…Weird

The Moneyball tradition continued today as the A’s managed to trade Holliday, a player who was gone after the end of the season anyways, for the Cardinals number one and number five prospects. Wow, what a steal. 

In This Economy... Even Moneyball Is Broke - Part I

Mr. Yoder II inspired me to take an in-depth, out of the box view at sports with his look at why the Cleveland Cavaliers are better off without LeBron James. For my part, I'll take on one of the golden calves of professional sports - Moneyball. For all of the praise of this new age of baseball thinking, is it worth its weight in gold? Or does a critically acclaimed GM and a best selling book hide the true facts about the A's and Moneyball?

The big news out of baseball today is the trade of Matt Holliday from Oakland to St. Louis for three prospects. While most of the focus will be on the Cardinals successfully finding a guy to protect Albert Pujols in the lineup and make them an NL pennant contender, let's take a look at the flip side of this trade and view it from the Oakland A's perspective.

Moneyball is broke.

Now, before all of the stat-crazed, VORP loving, Bill James worshipping, more sophisticated baseball fans of today start writing in the hate mail from their mother's basements (ok the mother's basements joke is just too easy, I apologize), lets analyze the facts. The new wave of baseball thinking which focuses on higher on base percentages, and enough new stat acronyms to make the IRS jealous might be trendy and progressive, but what has it produced on the field for the team that made it so popular?

This is not a discussion about the viability of "Moneyball principles" and teams like Boston who have succeeded while applying scary new ideas like Sabermetrics. I don't recall being able to shell out $50 million dollars to TALK to Dice-K as a "Moneyball principle." I'm not writing this on my typewriter from the Baseball Old School, nor am I a curmudgeon afraid of change. This needs to be a discussion about the man who started a baseball phenomenon - Billy Beane (right), and an honest assessment of his results.

The book Moneyball is a detailed view of how a team with an inferior payroll (Oakland) can compete with teams that are able to outspend them to a much greater degree. Of course, Beane and the A's experienced a good deal of success from 2000-2006 winning 3 AL West titles and making 4 playoff appearances. But, with all of the praise that the A's and Moneyball have received over the years how many championships have the A's won?

None.

How many World Series have the A's appeared in?

None.

How many playoff series have the A's managed to win in Beane's tenure?

One.

Compare this record to less fancied, low payroll teams who have accomplished more than Beane's Athletics. Franchises like Florida, Colorado, Houston, and Tampa Bay have all either won a World Series, or a league pennant, without having to write the book on Moneyball, something the A's have not accomplished.

Additionally, since 2007 the A's haven't exactly been lighting up the American League. They had almost identical records of 76-86 and 75-86 (don't know where that 162nd game went) the last two years. This year, the A's sit in the cellar of the AL West at 40-56, 16 games out of first place. These three seasons have come right after the A's most successful season when they were swept in the 2006 ALCS by the Detroit Tigers.

Moneyball has brought the Oakland A's and Billy Beane a lot of things. Publicity, notoriety, a model for other franchises, the respect of sabermetricians and progressive baseball minds, and even a possible movie with Brad Pitt starring as Billy Beane are just a few. (By the way, how is the A's story compelling? Scrappy underdog franchise fights for their livelihood against Evil Empire and gets swept by the above average Tigers? Heroic GM continually trades his best players to avoid slipping beneath mediocrity? Are these compelling?! It's going to take a lot of Hollywood's creativity to craft a riveting motion picture out of the Moneyball A's.)

Anyways, outside of all of these accomplishments and plaudits Beane has received there is one thing that Moneyball hasn't brought the A's.

A championship.

In Part II we'll analyze the actual transactions that Billy Beane has made over the years. With the A's in the midst of a 3 year slump, will the aura of Beane and moneyball ever lose its shine? When looking at the moves Beane has made over the past several seasons it's obvious that the Moneyball approach of the A's front office is going the way of the rest of the economy - in the tank.