Brown was DFA’d after his brief MLB stint last year; no one picked him up, so the A’s kept him. Then, he was a NRI this year, but decided to “retire” instead. The telling quote from Beane: “This was pretty much out of the blue, it caught us a little bit by surprise, but I wouldn’t term it as shocking.” No kidding – he was already 27 years old, and was still 3rd on the depth chart at catcher.

the big blow-up came when a scout mentioned jeremy bonderman

Actually, the first blowup was when said scout drafted Bonderman; he was fired not long afterwards. And while everyone thinks Bonderman was rushed (he pitched 162 pretty poor innings as a 20 year old), he’s been neraly as effective as Blanton (93 ERA+ vs. 101).

I think statistical information is most useful for strategy and tactics during the course of an ongoing game and less useful in trying look into the distant future of a player’s career.

Beane & Co. were sooo much smarter than anyone else because they could be much more certain about a guy’s future. And yet, the guys they were so much smarter about weren’t that good.

seems like someone who’s succeeded despite the scouts. He was drafted in the fourth round even though he had a tremendous career at Georgia (as a SS, OPS’d over 1100 his last year). Then, the Pirates tried to change his swing in the minors because they didn’t think his style would adapt to MLB pitching. It’s taken him a while, but Keppinger has been able to stick as a ML regular because teams (well, us) could no longer dismiss his lack of physical tools or ignore his production.

I think there is stats and scouting involved at every level of decision making, even when it comes to figuring out the next great players. Any team that would completely depend on one aspect and not the other is putting themselves behind a step. There is insight to be drawn from all sorts of information and the only real mistake is assuming that any of it doesn’t matter without examining it first.

What Beane (apparently) did was completely throw out the scouting. There are guys that both scouts and statistical analysis agree on – guys like Swisher and Blanton. Then there are guys that only one side loves.

To me, I think you have to be careful of stats for amateur players, because there are so many more variables than with pros. McCurdy is a great example – he slugged .845 his senior year in college. As I posted earlier, that was almost double his SLG either of the two previous years, yet DePo (who apparently never saw the guy) was convinced that he’d turned the corner.

Go back to the chapter about the draft. Lewis says the list of 20 names were Beane’s wish list no matter the cost (“even if there weren’t 29 other teams drafting”, I think is the quote) – he (Beane) thought they were the best 20 players available (or 8 best pitchers and 12 best hitters; that isn’t 100% clear). Lewis is beside himself describing how of the 20 guys Beane most wanted, he was able to get 13 of them “and no one else could say that”.

They were paying less than “slot money” (before there was such a thing) because they convinced some of these kids (like Brown and McCurdy) that no one else was going to draft them as high, but it was clear (at least to me, rereading the chapter) that would have drafted these guys anyway because they fit the kind of players they wanted. If they were only trying to save money, they wouldn’t have taken Swisher or Blanton.

Nowhere did I say that the A’s were poorly run, or worse run than the Reds.

My beef is with the tone of the book, the hype around it, and the attitude of the principles in it:

• The almost gleeful description of how the scout that drafted Jeremy Bonderman (who’s had every bit the career every pitcher drafted by the stats guys in Oakland) was fired.
• The snide comments about the high school players the A’s were more than glad to let everyone else draft (guys who have become hugely successful in the bigs).
• The puffed-out chests bragging how smart the A’s drafted in ’02, when the only successful picks they had would have been drafted by anyone else in their spot.
• The fact that of the "perfect world" list Beane put together for the draft (which we are told, again gleefully, that Beane acquired 13 out of 20), with the only successes those same 3 players anyone would have taken.
• In particular, the crowing about drafting 2 guys ("NCAA slugging champ!" and "We don’t sell jeans") who are now out of baseball.
• The inference that they were so much smarter than anyone else, when the Dodgers (at least) had been using some of the same tools for decades.

I’d also like to comment on this statement:

Especially the Moneyball draft, which was clearly (as described in the book) meant to be largely symbolic of a changing of the guards

The "changing of the guards" has produced 5 players that played for the A’s at any point this season: Kurt Suzuki, Travis Buck, Houston Street, Joe Blanton, and Dallas Braden. The Reds have drafted 4 players who’ve played this year for their original team: Votto, Bruce, Janish, and Bailey. Which group of players would you rather have? Even if Janish washes out and Bailey only becomes a back of the rotation guy, I know which group I’d take. If you add in every player who’s been drafted by, and played for, each team since the ’02 draft, each team has drafted exactly 6 players who’ve made the big club (Swisher for the A’s, DeNorfia and Wagner for the Reds).

No doubt, the A’s have traded better than the Reds; the A’s have also never put as much money in one player as the Reds put into Jr or Dunn, which hampers what you can do. But there is no reason for the aura of the A’s drafting ability (which, despite what you infer, is all I addressed in my original post).