OT: Moneyball

[moofs]

Who owns it or has read it or used it to prop up a chair? What was your opinion/takeaway of/from it?

[jove9]

Umm... at the risk of sounding like a moron, let me ask this quick question:

What is moneyball?

[moofs]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball

From what I've heard (no idea if it's factual), Morey's system ports, at least in part, several of the book's principles to basketball.

[tha_rock220]

I never bothered reading it, but then again I'm no fan of Billy Beane or his way of running things. Anyway, the idea behind moneyball is advanced, sometimes "voodoo math", statisitics to find good players that are undervalued on the market and thus save money while fielding a good team. IMO the premise is flawed because those bargain players become big money guys so you only keep them around for a couple years. So yeah you can compete with bigger market teams despite spending less money, but you can't compete with them every season.

Morey uses in depth statistics, but I don't really know if he takes the moneyball approach to things. It's also worth noting that no team has ever actually won anything by using this approach.

[BaYBaller]

It applies more to baseball far more than it does to basketball since baseball has a much better farm system and stats more accurately reflect a player's worth in baseball. It has been effective for the A's, but in basketball it's mostly uncharted territory (at least to that extent).

So yeah, Morey is a "stat-guy," but that's not his only calling card. He seems to know the business well and IMO has done a so far excellent job as GM.

[tisbee]

Read it. Eh.
Once you get past the author's deification of Beane it does give a diff perspective on baseball. One of the keys to moneyball is the walk. In moneyball a walk is better than a single,and since guys who walk a fair amount don't put up huge hitting numbers,they come cheap.(Walks require more pitches,so you tire out the pitcher much quicker. Tired pitchers make mistakes that even mediocre hitters can take advantage of. Plus you also get into the other team's middle relief pitching fairly regularly and those are generally the worst pitchers on the staff.)
The theory behind moneyball is trying to find the right statistics that explain what happened on the field. The reality is trying to find an otherwise average player who does something special that helps his team win,but is so ordinary that he can't justify asking for big dollars. It's interesting that of all the moneyball stats that have come into common acceptance,none of the defensive stats are worth a d***.
Morey is of the new generation of NBA Execs who are using the digital revolution to break down players and games into data that can be compared in all sorts of new ways.(For a hypothetical example-say McGrady shoots better % coming off a screen on the right side. The team is looking at getting a back-up SG and there are 2 candidates who are very similar. But one shoots much better coming off a screen on the left side and the other shoots about the same either way. All else equal the team would go after the second player,because the first would require the other players running the play do opposite of what they normally do,leading to more blown assignments.)

[jove9]

Read it. Eh.
Once you get past the author's deification of Beane it does give a diff perspective on baseball. One of the keys to moneyball is the walk. In moneyball a walk is better than a single,and since guys who walk a fair amount don't put up huge hitting numbers,they come cheap.(Walks require more pitches,so you tire out the pitcher much quicker. Tired pitchers make mistakes that even mediocre hitters can take advantage of. Plus you also get into the other team's middle relief pitching fairly regularly and those are generally the worst pitchers on the staff.)
The theory behind moneyball is trying to find the right statistics that explain what happened on the field. The reality is trying to find an otherwise average player who does something special that helps his team win,but is so ordinary that he can't justify asking for big dollars. It's interesting that of all the moneyball stats that have come into common acceptance,none of the defensive stats are worth a d***.
Morey is of the new generation of NBA Execs who are using the digital revolution to break down players and games into data that can be compared in all sorts of new ways.(For a hypothetical example-say McGrady shoots better % coming off a screen on the right side. The team is looking at getting a back-up SG and there are 2 candidates who are very similar. But one shoots much better coming off a screen on the left side and the other shoots about the same either way. All else equal the team would go after the second player,because the first would require the other players running the play do opposite of what they normally do,leading to more blown assignments.)

You just explained why Battier is the perfect player for Morey, and probably why we won't be trading him any time soon.

[moofs]

Almost done reading it right now, pretty damn good book.

IMO the premise is flawed because those bargain players become big money guys so you only keep them around for a couple years. So yeah you can compete with bigger market teams despite spending less money, but you can't compete with them every season.

How is that a flawed premise? Given that you're set onto an even playing field with a very uneven starting condition, how is regularly being competitive to very good not a major accomplishment? You lost me.

Morey uses in depth statistics, but I don't really know if he takes the moneyball approach to things. It's also worth noting that no team has ever actually won anything by using this approach.

Morey's or Beane's? Explaining away Morey's I won't bother with, but winning in sports is all about odds maximization. No matter how good your odds, they're always just odds, you're still capable of failure. You seem to be looking at it and saying he didn't win a pennant, I'd look at it and say he managed them into winning hundreds of games they probably shouldn't have.

Once you get past the author's deification of Beane it does give a diff perspective on baseball

Haha yeah, I noticed that the man can do no wrong in this book. It's obvious that a lot of his moves failed, but the failures were glossed over instead of critiqued and analyzed, or at the very least, cataloged. The author, ironically, understood the methods being used but didn't apply them to his book. One of the inadvertently funnier parts of the book is how Depodesta's laptop is described almost like it's some kind of magic deus ex machina.

"Paul sat down and told his computer '5', 'ShortStop'. After analyzing a list of 18,000 known major and minor league ballplayers, the laptop suddenly exploded in a blinding flash of light, leaving behind a 12 foot tall hologram of Steng McElroy (future all-star). Words began booming from the walls 'you can get him from the Orioles for $660,000 and 3 bags of Southwest Airline peanuts'."

All the same, some of the moves they're able to pull off are pretty amazing. The only thing I wonder is the same thing I wonder with Morey - if you're constantly beating guys down with deals that end up being ridiculously good for you, don't you quickly lose your edge as they get move reluctant to deal with you? I don't know enough historical GMs to know if you can do this sort of thing on a regular basis, or if you should throw in some low-collateral bad trades on your side just to keep guys off the scent of your bigger deals.