Sunday, May 3, 2009

Moneyball


Do yourself a favor and read this book.

4 comments:

  1. Some of My Favorite Parts:

    1. It was recent enough that I knew most of the players mentioned in the book.

    2. It was at a macro- level, that is, puting a team togther.

    3. It gave strong empirical evidence to promote two things I believed, but was convinced otherwise in one case by "old baseball" types:

    A. Giving up outs, by bunting or stealing bases and therefore "manufacturing runs", is stupid.

    B. Closers are overrated. Billy Beane pumped up a relievers worth by puting them in a relatively safe situation, no guys on base and a 1-3 run lead, and letting them rack up saves. Then he would sell them off to other teams for there inflated value.

    4. Not so subtle jabs at Tony LaRussa. This argues that closers are overvalued, which LaRussa has played a strong part in and LaRussa bought Jason Isringhauson from Billy Beane. It also argues that the hit and run is stupid.

    5. Is written in the perspective of a former bond trader.

    6. Had a serious impact on baseball. For example, take the recent Tampa Bay Ray's success story, pure "Moneyball" managing.

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  2. Well, Jason Isringhausen was one of the best closers for several years. You are stupid to think he was overvalued. His career save percent is 84.4%, which was lowered by him sucking late in his career when he could no longer throw 97 mph. His first 4 seasons with the cardinals he saved 88%, while his era was over 2.5 only once in that span.


    The book sounds awesome, but I still need to read that tony larussa book first.

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  3. These are points that should be discussed over a nice fat sandwich.

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