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Deadspin dancing about architecture
June 19th, 2009, 2:39 pm · 6 Comments · posted by Sam Miller, The Orange County Register
Tommy Craggs writes for Deadspin about the Big A’s flaws. It’s pretty thin gruel, considering the rats, the falling concrete, the manslaughters, Build Me Up Buttercup in the seventh, etc.
The best Craggs can come up with is that the stadium is constantly adapting to the needs of its owners and the culture of its citizens:
“It has been an open-outfield stadium, an enclosed stadium, and now it is open once more. It has been known variously as Anaheim Stadium, Edison International Field of Anaheim and now Angel Stadium of Anaheim. The stadium — and the franchise — has retained so little of the character and history of the region it’s inhabited for nearly 50 years that it feels compelled to remind you with autistic repetition just where it’s located. Which is in Anaheim. The place doesn’t need a renovation. It needs a shrink.”
Meh. But if you want to read one of the smartest, funniest pieces about baseball this decade, check out what happened a few years back when Craggs asked Joe Morgan why he won’t read Moneyball.
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Yeah Sam it was a great read, if you like six clicks worth of character assassination.
Not a big fan of Morgan’s broadcast style either, but that was over-the-top, worthy-of-a-punch-in-the-nose extreme. I find it interesting the “Moneyball” needs to be so staunchly defended — perhaps because so far it has produced exactly ZERO World Series teams — calling the spend-crazy Red Sox a Moneyball team is absurd.
I did watch the Rays win the AL and play in a World Series last year, stealing bases like crazy, but also living on defense and pitching.
This year, they lead the league in runs scored, but their defense and relief pitching has slipped, so they haven’t been much of AL East factor yet.
If you guys want to see some bang for your buck, why not embrace Maddonball? At least I know it worked once.
Oh, in case you’re wondering, I played Strat-O-Matic for the first time in 1970 (our latest game is 2005), and I knew who Bill James was before many of you were born.
I view all baseball evaluation methods as useful tools, but none of them are the end-all for all arguments.
Maddonball? So lose for 10 years straight, collect great draft picks, and wait for them to blossom into a strong nucleus? Sounds like what the draft was intended to do all along. The Rays are just one of the few bottom dwelling franchises to actually make the most of it. I love Joe Maddon, but to say that the style of play is the reason for their recent success is pretty misleading.
I agree its absurd to call the Red Sox a “Moneyball” team (whatever that means) but you have to admit that using those resources intelligently (with the exception of 2 bad shortstop contracts) has allowed them to win a couple titles and generally be baseball’s best team the last half of this decade. The Mets, Dodgers and of course the Yankees have had absurd payrolls over that same period but it has amounted to nothing thanks to poor personnel decisions.
Sam,
I just read the first page of that story in the SF Weekly and I’m wondering why you think it’s “one of the smartest, funniest,” pieces about baseball ever written.
It didn’t exactly put me in mind of “The Boys of Summer.”
It didn’t even seem to be about baseball, more about what a jerk Joe Morgan is. A lot of people wouldn’t argue with that, but why bother to do a story on it?
Morgan said in the article:
“I have a better understanding about why things happen than the computer, because the computer only tells you what you put in it. I could make that computer say what I wanted it to say, if I put the right things in there. … The computer is only as good as what you put in it. ”
Sounds truthful to me.
I did read “Moneyball,” and I thought it was a joke because the author pretended that what Billy Beane was doing was unique. It really wasn’t. He made a big deal about Chad Bradford, but the Angels had their own Bradford — Scot Shields. Other organizations use statistical analysis too. The Angels have had a contract service for years. Again, the author never bothered to find out. He just assumed.
A more truthful answer would have been that perhaps the A’s drew different conclusions from statistical analysis than other organizations. But to spin it like it’s Beane and his computer against a bunch of fat old school scouts is just … well, either clueless or fibbing.
In any case, Moneyball has pretty much turned out to be a flop, just as I wrote years ago — and took a lot of heat for it from the stathead zealots. (I’m not including Sam in that category.) Beane himself said after the book was published that parts were untrue, e.g. the chair-throwing incident. But some people treat it like the third testament of the Holy Bible, leaving critical thinking at the church door.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again — I’m more than happy to have Beane running the A’s for a very long time, because that’s one less threat to us in the division.
Let’s be fair, Stephen. The A’s have had more good years under Beane than bad. While he has gone 0-3 with this past winter’s offseason moves, most of the blame for the team struggling the last couple years should be laid on the shoulders of cheap ownership. I don’t bow to the alter of Moneyball (though I found it to be an entertaining read) and am not in the Billy-Beane-is-a-genius camp, but overall the guy is a very good general manager, and I’m glad he’s running the A’s because I like the idea of the Angels playing in a competitive division (usually), rather than taking advantage of the competitions’ incompetence.
I heard they’re making Moneyball into a movie with Brad Pitt playing Billy Beane. I read Moneyball and found it interesting and depressing. Could someone please explain how that book is going to become a movie. What is the plot. Whose gonna watch that? Not me.