September 27, 2011

"Moneyball"

From my review of the new Brad Pitt movie in Taki's Magazine:
When my son was ten, his baseball coach—inspired by Michael Lewis’s bestseller Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game—came up with a statistically brilliant team strategy: Don’t swing. Ever. 
Because few ten-year-olds can throw more strikes than balls, his team won the pennant by letting the little boy on the mound walk them around the bases until he dissolved into tears and had to be replaced by another doomed lad. 
The next spring, the parents got together and decided not to let that coach return. 
Moneyball the movie is, easily, the greatest feature film ever made about baseball statistics.

Read the whole thing there.

51 comments:

Anonymous said...

Off-topic, but 4 out of 12 Nation Medal of Science/Technology winners are immigrants. 1 Chinese, 2 South Indian Brahmins, 1 North Indian upper caste:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/09/twelve-researchers-take-home-top.html?ref=hp

1 is Hispanic (Mexican-American) and seems to have won his medal in large part because of outreach efforts.

Wes Who Watches said...

This actually sounds like a good movie. This is the second good one this year (Apes is good). It's a shame my coach didn't know that not swinging was good back when I was in little league, because I couldn't hit anything anyway.

Anonymous said...

Steve, you should put out a list of your favorite movies.
Robert Hume

albert magnus said...

Other baseball things Moneyball missed:
-Tejada, like you said, was MVP, but he is also famous for swinging at anything within a foot of the plate.
- The starting pitching (Hudson, Zito, Mulder, Harang) was first rate and barely mentioned in book and movie.
- The transition from catcher to first is the easiest in the game. Craig Biggio moved from catcher to second which was a much bigger deal, yet no movie about him (or the many other players who have done it).
- Theo Epstein recognized the need for good defensive players and traded Nomar and won the Red Sox first world series.

Yet, the movie is very entertaining.

Anonymous said...

Re: Latino ballplayers lack of walks.

Tony Fernandez, a Dominican who had an 18-year career, when asked about his lack of walks in the leadoff spot, said "You don't walk off the island!"

Anonymous said...

Malcolm Gladwell on the nba owners, he's actually kinda right:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/malcolm-gladwell-nba-lockout-psychic-benefits-ownership_n_934995.html

Anonymous said...

Were you that coach?

Whitey Whiteman III said...

"Moneyball the movie is, easily, the greatest feature film ever made about baseball statistics."


I don't know if this is, easily, your greatest line ever made about statistics and movies.

But, it is pretty great.

Anonymous said...

The trend toward quant-ball seems to coincide with a general decline in the national enthusiasm for baseball. Looking at it dispassionately, you can see why; there is just less to be excited about.

As the players have become increasingly Hispanic, why do you suppose that the fans haven't? Despite their many millions, they don't seem to be propping up our national pastime. Are they not embracing the sport for the same reasons that everyone else is staying home?

Not a Star Gazer said...

Fresh Air recently did an interview with Pitt about his career and the film Moneyball.

I was taken aback by how relatively unstupid, unvapid and almost normal Pitt seemed compared to the typical celebrity.

Certainly, the rarity of these traits help explain his exceptional longevity in Hollywood.

map said...

Off-topic, but 4 out of 12 Nation Medal of Science/Technology winners are immigrants. 1 Chinese, 2 South Indian Brahmins, 1 North Indian upper caste:

Uh huh...I see their parents did their science projects for them.

Anonymous said...

"Historically, Latins tended to wheedle fewer walks, although that gap has narrowed."

The Dominicans (not the friars) have a saying: "You don't walk off the island."

Anonymous said...

It's interesting that Moneyball is typically on the required reading list for investment professionals (my industry). Other than the fact that the A's aren't (and haven't been) competitive, it's a great story. Beane was rewarded with an ownership stake in 2005, so he certainly has a vested interest in keeping the payroll as low as possible....

And check out these attendance stats from ESPN: http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance

Book > Movie > Reality

Anonymous said...

"Latins tended to wheedle fewer walks, although that gap has narrowed."

Indeed, people seem to forget how many times Sammy Sosa struck out. It was embarrassing.

Anonymous said...

"Sure, stealing bases was dumb, but it was fun."

I think the case against stealing has been largely overstated. It does benefit if you make it ~80% of the time, and hurts if it's <70%. I forget who it is (possibly Boyd Nation?) who says that the "small-ball" tactics - bunting, stealing, hit-and-run - are basically a wash and something a manager does to keep himself occupied. Mostly because it is, as you say, fun. And that's why people still steal in the majors in the post-Moneyball era.

Side note: when Larry Dierker was manager of the Astros, his stated strategy was to try not to manage at all until the 7th. I still can't understand why they fired him.

Jacob Roberson said...

As a grown-up your anecdote is funny. But as a boy I would've been glad for...

The next spring, the parents got together and decided not to let that coach return.

I was a bit younger, soccer league. Some coach noticed you get your random team assignments and then can go recruit teammates' friends. So he goes and recruits not "your friends" but every boy he can find. Other teams were always short a boy or two because we weren't serious about showing up. They were full-manned and had endless rested replacements. Also they trained (and a lot) so they didn't just play mob-ball like the rest of us.

Championship game was my team versus The Super-Team. We pushed ourselves for the first time all season - used their disciplined play-style - while they had never lost so their discipline was slipping. Half-time they took their first "huddle" ever, having never needed one before. We kept pushing and barely beat them.

Moral? This math/rules-lawyering is fun to think about but then it ruins it. Bring back bunting - by making it work numbers-wise.

Soccer and baseball, my day is good.

JHB said...

A quarter-century before Billy Beane figured all of this out, I was a horrible but smart youth baseball player, barely able to play left field because of my inability to throw well, who realized that I could get walks about 80% of the time. I only swung the bat with two strikes, and I always aimed for a Texas-League single to right field. My split stats as a number nine hitter were about .500/.900/.500 before the umpires expanded the strike zone when I was at the plate to give the athletes a chance to get the nerd out.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like that Indian basketball coach that Malcolm Gladwell wrote about...he had his pre-teen girls use the full court press the whole game, and made it to the national championships using this confounding strategy....sleazy, but it works!

Anonymous said...

I don't get your Brad Pitt man-crush. I'm just glad he's doing more adopting than actual procreating. Jeez that guy's not aging well which I guess isn't saying much since I didn't like him 10 years ago either. You just like baseball, Sailer.

Anonymous said...

"Steve, you should put out a list of your favorite movies.
Robert Hume"

Come to think of it, next yr will be Sight and Sounds' list of 10 greatest films of all time.

helene edwards said...

I was taken aback by how relatively unstupid, unvapid and almost normal Pitt seemed ...

Terry Gross makes up for him.

not a hacker said...

Steve, how 'bout this Little League story? In 1968 I hit 2 home runs in a game off this hard-throwing kid who was way bigger than everyone else. Never knew him, never spoke to him. Late one night in 2004, a Safeway checker thanks me by name, and I walk out, only to sense I'm being followed by a manmountain, maybe 6'4"/240. I get to my car and the guy goes, "excuse me, are you ____?" 36years later and he still remembered. Turned out he became an offensive lineman in Div. II.

helene edwards said...

... these Latins for swinging at bad pitches

Steve, being in L.A. you're probably unaware that in '05 there was a media "Watsoning" in the Bay Area over just this subject. When the Giants were going badly, KNBR's nighttime sportstalk host derided the "carribeans" for "swinging at slop." Manager Felipe Alou insisted he be fired, and he was. After a 6-year banishment, he's been re-hired.

Anonymous said...

Don't know why I'm supposed to get excited about baseball any more, much less root for a particular team.

"Our Dominicans can beat your Dominicans"? Where's the joy in that.

The very existence of the word "moneyball" indicates that people have essentially lost sight of the purpose of the game.

"You don't walk off the island"
And so, thus we see the grandest ambition of the Dominicans -- to get as far away from their homeland as possible... but only if they get to live among white folks.

Anonymous said...

I am brad pitt's age, i used to be good looking now i am losing my looks, fast.. and i am not married :(

Anonymous said...

What a bunch of lame umpires in your kid's league. Just start calling strikes. What I did when I umped little league and some batter tried to be a wiseguy.

ricpic said...

The best part about Moneyball is that there was a minimum of razzle dazzle in it. The problem Pitt (Beane) was up against was explained clearly, thoroughly and slowly enough that the average non-baseball obsessed viewer could get it and so was his, in combination with the Jonah Hill character's, solution. For example, the film slowed down enough to explain the importance of OBP (On Base Percentage) in picking up relatively undervalued players who had decent OBPs but were undervalued for reasons (age, appearance, social issues) irrelevant to their potential for contributing to winning games.
A thoroughly enjoyable film.

Truth said...

"I am brad pitt's age, i used to be good looking now i am losing my looks, fast.. and i am not married :("

Well hey, neither is Aniston.

Anonymous said...

" Other than the fact that the A's aren't (and haven't been) competitive, it's a great story"

The A's, like all teams at times, have had a really bad streak of injuries, but the major reason Moneyball stopped benefitting them is that the money-making, big market teams like the Red Sox started paying attention to Moneyball's precepts. Advantage lost.

Anonymous said...

"As Hobbes might have said, Bill James helped make baseball games intelligent, inelegant, and long."

I don't know about that. James said they try to get you out by throwing balls you can't hit, so don't swing at them. Might I suggest pitchers that pitchers can react to this, profitably, by throwing more strikes?

And stealing bases, and the restlessly attempts to catch them, waste much time, so that actually speeds the game up, considerably.

Inelegant? That's purely subjective. If you like hacking at bad pitches then you'll hate the new approach. Like I said above, pitchers can still throw strikes.

As far as steroids, that aint on people like James. It's on the guys who didn't want to test for steroids, for obvious reasons. The main steroid denier that I recall was George Will.

Usually Lurking said...

I am fairly familiar with SABRmetrics and why things like OBP are important but...

Why are stolen bases or attempting to steal bases a bad thing?

I was under the impression that modern baseball players actually steal bases at a better rate than, say, the 1950s. Or, is that irrelevant?

Also, if we want to add a slight bit more interest back into baseball, can we stop calling "Slugging + On Base %" OPS, and go back to calling it a SLOB (i.e. SLugging + On Base %)?

Guys would much rather say, "Wow, Pujols had a great SLOB last year!".

Anonymous said...

"I am brad pitt's age, i used to be good looking now i am losing my looks, fast.. and i am not married :("

I'm sure one of these guys can set you up with a Chinese chick considerably younger than you.

Anonymous said...

Anon 5:05, the Dominicans all live at home in the offseason (there are always a number of entry visa issues every spring) and most go back there to live like gods after their careers. Former Indians catcher and current Yankees coach Tony Pena owns half of the DR.

Anon 6:29 is absolutely correct. I officiate both youth baseball and basketball and have been faced with both the no-swing and the game-long press tactics. Needless to say the strike zone expands and contracts situationally, and in basketball calling a few phantom reach-ins usually makes the coaches understand how you're going to work the game. All the conduct contracts the coaches and parents have to sign now keep the idiotic behaviors to a minimum.

OPS, like everything in life, is situational. I read somewhere that Roger Clemens' ERA, like most good power pitchers,was over 4 in the first inning, but for the rest of the game was under 2. If you weren't up hacking in the first, you may not get another chance.

Whitey Whiteman III said...

You mentioned it, offhand, but androgens are such a confounding variable that the rest of the algorithm is likely useless.

It is like an economist, to whom n always = n, no matter how many, no matter what color, sex, or creed.

I'll probably still rent it.

Anonymous said...

I believe Bill James has not a single time mentioned steroids, which amazes me. You'd think any sabermetrician would wonder, "what effect have steroids have had on the game?" Not James, nosirreee.

travis said...

Moneyball the movie is, easily, the greatest feature film ever made about baseball statistics.

Baseball statistics are a metaphor for the masculine values of aggressiveness, rationality, competitiveness, and analysis. Pitt's daughter represents the feminine values of relatedness, emotionality, beauty, and fluidity. So I would suggest the movie is about the need for balance between the two. I won't spoil the ending for those who haven't seen it, but consider the similiarities between the endings of Moneyball and The Social Network.

"The eternal feminine draws us ever onward and upward" -- Goethe

Glaivester said...

I agree with those who suggest that the best way to deal with this is to change the rules to make good-but-boring strategy bad; just increase the number of balls needed for a walk, decrease the number of strikes required to get out, or expand the strike zone.

Steve Sailer said...

"The problem Pitt (Beane) was up against was explained clearly, thoroughly and slowly enough that the average non-baseball obsessed viewer could get it"

It's kind of like how the Coen Brothers were able to make No Country for Old Men so it captured some of the appeal of first person shooter video games by sloooooowing down, allowing the the viewer to think along with Josh Brolin's character. The usual assumption is that since smart people are quicker, fast movies are smarter, but that often doesn't turn out to be true. Speed reduces viewers to mental passivity more often than not.

JHB said...

It's interesting that two different posters have made the moral decision that choosing a winning tactic of strike zone discipline is an "idiotic behavior" performed by "wiseguys," and that it justifies dishonest game-calling by the umpire. As I mentioned, I was a kid who used that strategy, and although I encountered that reaction from umpires, too, I never got criticized for it by my peers: they just saw me as a hitter of high IQ and marginal athletic talent who really wanted to do something to help his team win.

From my perspective the posts offer insight about the ethics and values of youth sports officials.

***

On page 105 of the Bill James Gold Mine 2008, he strongly implies that Kirby Puckett and Gary Gaetti, and possibly others on the Minnesota Twins around that time, used steroids. The amount of abuse he took for that demonstrates why he, and other sportswriters, scrupulously avoid speculation about PED use.

What the sabermetric types don't want to admit, though, is that the widespread, long-term use of steroids in baseball has seriously influenced the study of career trajectories. "Everybody" knows that MLB after the end of WWII is and was different than baseball before that war. What's less well understood is that there's evidence of steroid abuse as far back as the 1961 Yankees, and that almost the entire data set of players' aging tendencies is tainted by players' use of steroids. Suddenly it seems that players are aging less gracefully than stats nerds are predicting. There's a reason for that: effective* steroid testing just started in 2007.

* The 2005-2006 tests were rapidly made ineffective by testers' advance request for parking passes giving away testing dates.

TGGP said...

I didn't see any connection between No Country and first-person shooters. I don't think Brolin's character even kills anybody.

Anonymous said...

Virtually all the statheads have their heads in the sand on the steroid issue, and have completely dismissed the possibility of steroids being any kind of factor in the offensive explosion of the 90's. Most of them dream of being hired by a big league team one day, so they're careful to toe the party line.

Reg Cæsar said...

I believe Bill James has not a single time mentioned steroids, which amazes me. --anonymous 3pm

No, but he did mention narcotics at least once, in relation to performance, proposing that their effect would be a valid area of study. Particularly if they turned out, in some cases, to improve that performance.

Perhaps he caught so much hell for that little suggestion that he decided to leave questions of chemistry to the scientists.

Anonymous said...

JHB, youth sports are about learning the game. These days most kids don't play outside the organized leagues. They are fundamentally unsound and mostly unwilling or unable to put in the time to correct this, never mind their abysmal work ethic. The few that are talented and driven don't play in the city leagues, but follow the AAU or other elite path.

A lot of coaches look to the gimmicky quick fix to get results; though today's parent pays lip service to the fair play and scores don't matter mantra, heaven forbid that Junior doesn't get to win. Better to scam your way to victory than work at improving you team to its optimum. Meanwhile, the dirt-poor kid in the Dominican is playing 14 hours a day in the most Darwinian atmosphere imaginable. Conversely, the talented AAU kid is suffering from burnout and quitting, complaining about a workload that would barely be a warmup to the Dominican kid. Ditto the suburban white kid playing basketball; his natural disadvantage is exacerbated by the fact that the urban black kid is hoopin' all day. Any Dominican baseball or urban hoop coaches pulling the sort of crap being discussed would be knifed after the first game.

Did you ever play a sport? Do you understand that any pressing basketball player could be whistled almost every play? Do you understand that different umpires call balls and strikes differently, and pitchers and hitters know this and plan accordingly? Oh, wait, you're the "nerd" #9 hitter who blames the more talented kids for being more talented! I'll bet you were one of those kids forever missing practices because of Hebrew school...

And thank you, Albert Magnus, for pointing out the fatal flaw in Moneyball. Hudson, Zito and Mulder were probably the best front three in the league. Nomar, on the other hand, was traded as much because he was a clubhouse cancer as for his lack of defense. This year's Red $ox were assembled with no regard to clubhouse cohesion, and Boy Wonder Theo could be paying for it with his job.

JHB said...

"Did you ever play a sport? Do you understand that any pressing basketball player could be whistled almost every play? Do you understand that different umpires call balls and strikes differently, and pitchers and hitters know this and plan accordingly? Oh, wait, you're the "nerd" #9 hitter who blames the more talented kids for being more talented! I'll bet you were one of those kids forever missing practices because of Hebrew school..."

First, good to know that you caught my response. I'll address your questions:

1) Why would you ask if I ever played a sport in a post where I described playing a sport? I find it fascinating that you assume I'm a liar.

2) I understand basketball. It's not the subject of anything I've posted in this thread, though.

3) I understand VERY well that different umpires call pitches differently. I've been keeping track of MLB umpires since before Pitch f/x and before umpires stats started being made available at sites such as Baseball Reference and Baseball Prospectus. But my point was different: two posters acknowledged that they were umpires who called balls and strikes DIFFERENTLY FOR DIFFERENT PLAYERS based upon the players' tendency to use strike zone discipline. That's not "part of the game;" that's dishonest and unethical umpiring.

4) I never "blamed" anybody. You're projecting: I acknowledged my personal shortcomings as a youth baseball player. I was bad at football too, but my old friends always remember how hard I tried. I had thought, and I think, that effort and teamwork was what those sports were all about.

5)I find it bizarre that you'd end your remarks with an anti-Semitic comment. This had been a thread about Moneyball and strike zone discipline at the amateur and professional levels. But thank you--this only improves my education regarding the morals and ethics of youth baseball umpires.

Bill said...

The disagreement between JHB and everyone else is just awesome and illustrative of the very different ethics of (cultural) WASPs and not-WASPs.

To us cultural WASPs it is obvious that the coaches in Sailer's story and Gladwell's story, JHB, parents who send their children to SAT cram schools, and parents who "hold" their kids in order to improve their athletic/academic performance are unethical. Furthermore, it is obvious that sanctions are appropriate against them (a thumb of some sort on the scales by officials, a punch in the mouth, etc).

The not-WASP POV is the exact opposite. From that POV, the "game" should have clear rules which are mechanically and neutrally enforced and any complaints about people "gaming" the rules is sour grapes. The only ethical redress, for them, is to change the rules of the game (again in a transparent way) to eliminate whatever the undesirable gaming behavior is.

Now, I'm a cultural WASP, so I have no sympathy for the latter view. It seems as if the not-WASPs simply don't get it. Winning is not the point of youth sports or the SAT. The game exits for a purpose outside the game, and fucking with people who are subverting this purpose is obviously good.

JHB said...

The disagreement between JHB and everyone else is just awesome and illustrative of the very different ethics of (cultural) WASPs and not-WASPs.

To us cultural WASPs it is obvious that the coaches in Sailer's story and Gladwell's story, JHB, parents who send their children to SAT cram schools, and parents who "hold" their kids in order to improve their athletic/academic performance are unethical. Furthermore, it is obvious that sanctions are appropriate against them (a thumb of some sort on the scales by officials, a punch in the mouth, etc).



Bill, thanks for your perspective.

As an aside, you've decided that I'm not a cultural WASP. Pray tell, then, given that you know my socioeconomic and ethnic heritage, what is it?

If you can't answer that definitively, pardon if I regard your perspective as, if not bigoted, certainly prejudicial. Your entire point is the prejudice of yourself and fellow WASPs and why you believe that playing other than by the rules - cheating - is morally correct and justified against those who "game the system." But somewhere in that you decided that I wasn't a WASP because I didn't share that prejudice. What was I when, as a boy, I decided to use strike zone discipline (independent of my coach) to try to help the team? Was I a wealthy African-American? Was I middle-class Hispanic? Was I an underprivileged Aleut? You seem to know: enlighten me.

Ceska said...

This book is a fascinating look at a front office that, because of economic limitations, developed a new way of running a baseball team.Billy Beane is the main focus but other characters including players, scouts, and statisticians populate the pages. I wish the book had been longer and gave an in-depth history of Beane's tenure with Oakland. He was not the first original thinker in that organization. The book does highlight the tradition bound thinking that has caused baseball to relinquish its place as America's number one sport to the NFL and lose many prospects to other sports.

Belgie said...

The one huge misstep was Hoffman as Art Howe. A rude, shallow and un-nuanced portrayal. They should have used Art Howe instead. It's like they needed an antagonist to propel the story and opted for a mean caricature.

For baseball fans only.

Anonymous said...

"Peña was involved in a three team deal on July 6, 2002. The Athletics sent Peña, a player to be named later (later named as Jeremy Bonderman), and Franklyn Germán to the Detroit Tigers. The New York Yankees sent Ted Lilly, John-Ford Griffin, and Jason Arnold to the Athletics. The Tigers sent Jeff Weaver to the Yankees and cash to the Athletics."

Theodore Roosevelt Lilly III does not feature in the film. Also the trade happened later than suggested in the film because they wanted to show Beane and his assistant getting their way with the non-believing manager.

In the book Billy Beane won a foot race over 180 feet and the scouts sent the players back to run again because it was against accepted wisdom that a white player could outrun any black player.

Did that showing of the conventional wisdom of scouts lead him to be open to sabremetrics as used by his boss Sandy Alderson to search for objective knowledge about baseball players?

Beane in the book says that his job is to assemble a team to get to the play offs and then it is up to the manager to win the games.

As play-off games are different does the refusal to steal bases in the regular season come up to haunt them in the post season in that runs achieve a greater price than the outs needed to achieve them?

Are we straying into William Goldman Nobody Knows Anything territory?

Anonymous said...

The sixth inning turns out to be very important in play off baseball.
The second most number of runs, first has the most, are scored in this inning as it is typically when the batters are facing the pitcher for the third time so they have seen a lot of his pitches.
The fourth hitter of one team had 80 bats in the 5th 97 in the 6th and back to 80 in the 7th.
Most batters who bat fourth will have a similar spike.

Well worth watching in the play offs.

Anonymous said...

Interesting that the yankees showed us their anti-moneyball nature this season after the All Star break.

Not signing a player is not bad in itself but signing a player that you should not have is very bad.

ARod was benched and at $30 million a year with 5 more years to go they have a very expensive third baseman whereas at $7.5 million a player or less you could get more runs for less money.

They scored the most home runs per team which was fine when all the bats were hot but they were not getting on base to score enough runs. Moneyball taught us that getting on base was the most important thing a player could do. That is why they were a .500 team since the All Star break.