Jason Whitlock on sabermetrics, the forecast calls for a strong chance of facepalm.

[NAHSTE]

Completely forgot about Tejada. The A's actually had a pretty good team.

He won the AL MVP that year, but his character isn't mentioned at all in the movie. Funnily enough he's mentioned scarcely in the book too, only time I remember is when Beane scoffed at one of his at bats and called him "Mr. Swing at Everything."

I guess having the MVP of the league on your side doesn't quite fit into the "scrappy ball club makes good" narrative.

 

[FedEx227]

And that's probably more Michael Lewis than Beane (love how people act like Beane wrote this as an autobiography). As you mentioned it doesn't fit into Lewis' narrative because he wasn't really the doesn't look like a ballplayer but who cares thing or the undervalued. He was a pure baseball player in the most truest sense.

With that being said Tejada was a bad MVP winner. He had no business winning that year over Rodriguez.

 

[FirstTimer]

He won the AL MVP that year, but his character isn't mentioned at all in the movie. Funnily enough he's mentioned scarcely in the book too, only time I remember is when Beane scoffed at one of his at bats and called him "Mr. Swing at Everything."

I guess having the MVP of the league on your side doesn't quite fit into the "scrappy ball club makes good" narrative.

And this is the dirty little secret about "Moneyball". It didn't really work. Those A's teams that were really successful were driven by roided up monsters:Giambi's/Tejada's and crazy awesome starting pitching that the A's drafted..and those drafts weren't really "SABR influenced" picks. Sure Beane and his guys plugged in some guys like Hatteberg etc to fill out the team but glorifying hatteberg when ignoring Tejada and Giambi isdisingenuous to what was actually occurring. OBP is great but when the A's quit mashing and quit having filhty pitching Moneyball wasn't doing shit.

 

[FedEx227]

And that's the point I mentioned with Whitlock. Beane may be seen as the grandfather of using saber in the front office but he's far from the best at it.

Honestly, he's not very good at it. He found value to fill out his roster but he hasn't really drafted well, developed all that great, made any great trades, etc.

 

[NAHSTE]

Barry Petchesky with a rather humorous response.

http://deadspin.com/5842987/statistics-are-ruining-baseball

 

[FedEx227]

I used to spend many long summer evenings arguing with my school chums over who was better. What do kids do now? One says Matt Kemp is better. The other says Rick Ankiel's better. They log on to their Gateway computer, and that says that Kemp has 100 more hits than Ankiel, and the argument's over? Where's the magic? No wonder baseball is dying. It's only for the stat geeks.

That's good stuff. That was the stupidest thing about Whitlock's argument that now all of a sudden logic in arguments is ridiculous.

 

[FirstTimer]

So Ankiel isn't better?

WTF?!

 

[FedEx227]

I know, DAMN YOU NERDS!