Book review: Moneyball

Baseball is heading into its prime time of pennant races so a couple baseball book reviews are in order.

Moneyball: this is about 10 years old but I just found it. Didn’t know there was a book (by Michael Lewis), just a movie.

The subject, of course, is about the Oakland A’s achieving success with a low payroll by emphasizing lesser valued stats such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage in evaluating players. That and specifically looking for under-valued players while getting rid of high-priced ones that aren’t proportionately better at getting on base and avoiding outs.

Some examples:

Saves – a slightly above average pitcher can come in for the ninth with bases empty and succeed most of the time. Once established as a “closer,” he’s worth millions. Then it pays to sell/trade him for something of value, and develop another one.

Given the minimum salary requirements and assuming at least 49 victories by even the worst of major league clubs, how much money is spent on each victory above that threshold? Doug Pappas calculated in the three years prior to the book, the A’s paid only about $500,000 per win while teams like Baltimore and Texas paid nearly $3 million for each victory. Not surprising, the only other team in six figures was the Twins at about $675,000 per win.

Voros McCracken took on pitchers’ worth by looking at what pitchers can control: preventing home runs, preventing walks, and preventing balls in play by striking out batters. Once the ball is hit, he proved, there is quite little the pitcher can do about it – measured over a long period, the stats bear out that there’s lot of luck involved (the scorching line drive right at the shortshop vs. the broken bat bloop that falls just inside the foul line). Sort of puts a damper on the Twins’ pitch-to-contact approach.

AVM Systems also dove into the aspect of measuring luck and players’ actual performance in each event on the field. Example: bloop to left field with known-to-be-slow left fielder with runner on second and two out. Knowing the fielder is slow, the runner takes off and scores. The record shows the batter succeeded, the pitcher failed, and the runner and left fielder were present. More fairly, the pitcher (who made a great pitch) and runner (who used the situation to score) succeeded while the batter (should-have-been-an-out hit) and the left fielder (didn’t get to the ball) failed.

Over the length of a 162-game major league season, stats can predict general outcomes. In a short series of a few games, “the playoffs are a crapshoot.”

Side note: A’s general manager Billy Beane, who was and is the decision-maker based on his staff’s detailed analysis, was a member of the Twins ‘87 championship team as well as the A’s ‘89 World Series winners.

Next up: Three Nights in August