The most memorable scene of “Moneyball,” the recently released Brad Pitt flick on Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s efforts to build a winning team with a small budget, was when a plethora of “old school” A’s scouts gathered around a table with an exasperated Beane to talk about how to build the next season’s team.
The A’s had just lost stars Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen to free agency because they could not afford them. As the conversation went around the table, one scout opined about one particular player, “He has an ugly girlfriend. Ugly girlfriend means no confidence.”
While the line got big laughs in the theater, Beane, played by Pitt, did not appreciate it as much.
Indeed, not much of anybody appreciates this line of thinking any longer. All teams, to an extent, incorporate statistical analysis of the game of baseball, sabermetrics, in evaluating players.
Traditional stats like batting average, runs batted in and wins were replaced by acronyms like WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched) and OBP (on-base percentage), which were replaced by even more convoluted acronyms like VORP (value over replacement player), FIP (fielding independent pitching) and WAR (wins above replacement).
Sabermetrics’ reign on major league baseball was made official when Seattle Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez won the American League Cy Young award with only 13 wins.
Though the theories pushed in “Moneyball” have revolutionized the art of putting together teams, managing has been a different story.
In fact, baseball managers have done their best to flout these theories.
“Moneyball” gives a good representation of this dynamic. In the movie, A’s manager Art Howe, played superbly by the consummate Hollywood professional Philip Seymour Hoffman, has a hard time accepting Beane’s philosophy, telling the GM to let him manage his own team.
In order for Beane to get the team to play baseball in the style he built it to play, he had to trade the first baseman and send a reliever to the minors.
Things haven’t changed much. Sabermetrics teaches that stolen bases and sacrifice bunts, long fixtures of the game of baseball, actually, over the long run, do more harm than good. However, small-ball managers who routinely extol the virtues of the stolen base and sac bunt, such as the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Scoscia, Florida Marlins’ Ozzie Guillen and St. Louis Cardinals’ Tony LaRussa, are often praised by fans and the media for their managing methods.
A recent example of this is from the Sept. 28 Philadelphia Phillies-Atlanta Braves game. In the bottom of the third, the Braves had men on first and second base with no outs. According to “Moneyball,” the smart play would be to let the upcoming hitters drive in those runs.
However, Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez called for a double steal.
The man on second was thrown out, and the hitter struck out. The next hitter hit a two-run home run. The double steal cost the Braves one run. And the Braves lost by one in extra innings.
If this were the movie version, Gonzalez would be the “old school” scout who lists “girlfriend’s attractiveness” next to “home runs” on his stat sheet. Only here, there was no Billy Beane to criticize him.
The “Moneyball” revolution will not be complete until it has affected baseball managing. And it clearly hasn’t.