Billy Beane is a smart man

Billy Beane (left) is a legend that changed the game.

This post is for Keith, Ron, Gary, and for every other stodgy baseball guy that is "insulted" by the book Moneyball....

Listen, first, the book Moneyball was written by a reporter, not Billy Beane. Also, Moneyball was not about the perfect way to evaluate players, although it's close. Moneyball was about finding a baseball asset that was undervalued, and capitalizing on it. Billy Beane figured out, by using statistics, that OnBase% is one of the most valuable individual offensive statistics in baseball. He also figured out that players with high OB% weren't necessarily coveted by other ballclubs. So he began collecting cheap players who put up high OB% and built very successful teams.

Beane also figured out that college players were much more developed than high school kids, and therefore much closer to becoming major league players. Having college playing experience also gave Beane more sample size, which made them easier to evaluate, and therefore less of a gamble than high schools kids.

With Oakland's small budget, Beane needed cheap players, and he couldn't afford to make mistakes. So instead of relying on what his scouts "saw", he used anything he could to help himself, including statistics, data, and evidence. He thought the best way to field a good team was by capitalizing on the value provided in an offense built around OB%, and a pitching staff built around young, cheap, college arms.

His stategy obviously worked. First, his teams won. And now OB% is properly regarded as a valuable trait, and the college game has elevated dramatically. When everyone starts copying you, you know you're doing something right.

So to Keith and Ron and fucking Joe Morgan, all Beane did was break away from the same old, crusty, narrow-minded baseball strategy of years past, those same dated ideas that you hang onto about "how the game should be played". He found a new way that worked, because he was forced to by his budget, that is why it was called Moneyball, and not Statball.

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I never thought that Howard Johnson would get a coaching job, especially a Hitting Coach job. He was one of the most undisciplined players I can remember. He pulled everything, struck out a lot, had terrible defensive form, and played like a lunatic. Then on Wednesday he's doing a dugout interview during the game on SNY talking about how Delgado needs to hit to the opposite field and other shit. He was right, but I just thought, since when did you ever hit a ball the other way? Then I remembered what my college coach used to say, and what I assume HoJo must say to his players, "do as I say, don't do as I do".