February 18, 200521 yr so Im reading it for the 3rd time and it keeps getting better whats your guys favorite chapter? Chapters 5-7 of Moneyball are my favorite parts of the book. The 2002 draft is interesting in hindsight since the two draft choices that Lewis/Beane ridicule most are of Prince Fielder and Scott Kazmir. Nick Swisher may turn out to be better than either of those two, but that is hardly certain at this point. And there is not a single GM in baseball that would take anybody from the DePodesta list - all the other guys drafted by Oakland other than Swisher and Blanton who were liked by scouts and wanted by other teams - over Kazmir. Maybe some Gms would prefer Teahan to Fielder, but I think quite a few would prefer Prince and would prefer him to anyone else in the As draft. Maybe Jeremy Brown will have a career in the majors, but given the As traded for Jason Kendall (and wunderkind Barton from the Cards), it doesn?t seem like Beane thinks Brown is the answer at catcher. Or maybe he is stockpiling catchers, I don?t know. As I said before, its not wise to gloat about drafts, as the Beane boys seem to be doing in chapter 5, since no one will know for years who really picked well.
February 18, 200521 yr Author Never read it...What's the premise? 689154[/snapback] its about how the Oakland A's run their team
February 18, 200521 yr Never read it...What's the premise? 689154[/snapback] its about how the Oakland A's run their team 689156[/snapback] Oh...Interesting read, or just a few good parts?
February 18, 200521 yr Author Never read it...What's the premise? 689154[/snapback] its about how the Oakland A's run their team 689156[/snapback] Oh...Interesting read, or just a few good parts? 689158[/snapback] its an great read
February 18, 200521 yr Never read it...What's the premise? 689154[/snapback] its about how the Oakland A's run their team 689156[/snapback] Oh...Interesting read, or just a few good parts? 689158[/snapback] its an great read 689159[/snapback] Oo, use of an improper article...Must be fantastic!
February 18, 200521 yr Well, the A's traded Teahan to the Royals so that they could get Octavio Dotel in that three-way Beltran deal, and they got a much better minor-league catcher than Jeremy Brown from the Cardinals (Daric Barton). I'm not sure where Beane plans to fit Brown in the lineup, when they have Ramon Hernandez as the current catcher, and Barton as the future catcher in a couple of years.
February 18, 200521 yr i read it in august, would definitely recommend to anyone whose interested enough in baseball to join this site... i'm kind of predisposed against his arguments, just because i find small-ball more exciting to watch than the get-walks-and-hit-home-runs style that beane favors. overall though it gives great insight into the business of baseball, and how entrenched the conventional wisdom is, or at least was at the time of writing. 2 main lines of criticism: 1. beane's teams, as great as they have been in the regular season, have routinely come up flat in the postseason. 2 small-ball teams, the marlins and angels, have won world series in recent years. the author dismisses this, arguing that the playoffs are statistically insignificant and thus basically a crap shoot. i think that it's more likely that different things go into winning in the playoffs than in the regular season - if that wasn't the case, then wild-card teams wouldn't be so successful in the playoffs, and the braves would have one more than 1 WS. oh, and as for the fact that the 2004 sox were a moneyball-style team, the fact that they had a $120 million payroll means you can't compare what they're doing to the A's, in which the reality of a shoestring budget is the context of the whole technique. 2. the A's success is more due to the Big 3 than any hot-shot management techniques; the twins are an example of comparable small-market success without anything like moneyball to glamorize them. i guess we'll find out this year if this criticism holds water.
February 18, 200521 yr I'm not sure where Beane plans to fit Brown in the lineup, when they have Ramon Hernandez as the current catcher, and Barton as the future catcher in a couple of years. 689189[/snapback] They traded Hernandez before the '04 season started. He's a Padre now. Then they traded for Jason Kendall this off-season.
February 18, 200521 yr I'm not sure where Beane plans to fit Brown in the lineup, when they have Ramon Hernandez as the current catcher, and Barton as the future catcher in a couple of years. 689189[/snapback] They traded Hernandez before the '04 season started. He's a Padre now. Then they traded for Jason Kendall this off-season. 689203[/snapback] Yeah, forgot about that, but you can basically replace the same Ramon Hernandez with Jason Kendall, and my point remains the same.
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