Lately I have been reading a lot more. In the past month I've read Exile on Main St. by Robert Greenfield, Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam, Dynasty by Tony Massarotti, and my all-time favorite book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.
I actually finished Moneyball tonight only hours before the start of the Red Sox game where they were actually facing the Oakland A's.
As I watched Josh Beckett shut down the A's for 7 innings I of course started to wonder about how far the A's of today have come from the teams described by Lewis in Moneyball. I mean there isn't one good player on the entire A's team. There is no one in their line up that I was worried about hitting a homer, or even getting a hit for that matter, and at no point was I worried about getting into their bullpen.
To put it plainly the A's suck. Their best player was Matt Holiday who they just traded this week for a new load of prospects who will then be traded for better prospects who will eventually win a World Series in 7 years, or so A's GM Billy Beane and avid Moneyball fans would have you believe.
The fact of the matter is that the Oakland A's are not a competitive team and for all of the praise for Beane and his new way of doing things the A's as an organization haven't been very successful during his tenure.
Beane was hired in 1998 after serving the A's as an advanced scout for almost 10 years. Then 36 he was the youngest GM in baseball history. Not only did he bring youth to the job but he also brought about a new way of doing things. Beane and his new staff of "nerds" changed the way people analysed baseball players and introduced the world to sabermetrics. This is merely a fancy way of saying analysis of baseball through objective evidence.
Beane and the Oakland A's front office were determined to have a low pay roll but still be competitive.
Beane found almost instant success as for the first 8 seasons as GM the A's had a winning record and even won 100+ games in 2001 and 2002. The A's made the playoffs 4 years in a row from 2000-2003 and were the talk of baseball. However for all their success their was one problem: they hadn't won a single playoff series. They never made it out of the first round.
Baseball purists were able to look at Moneyball and laugh as no matter how many games the A's won in the regular season they couldn't win in the playoffs.
That changed in 2006 when the A's swept the Minnesota Twins in the 1st round only to be swept themselves in the 2nd round by the Detroit Tigers.
Since that last defeat to the Tigers the A's have gone 192-229 and have failed to make the playoffs.
This season the A's are off to their worst start since Beane took over as they are 41-57 and currently sit 17.5 games back of the division leading LA Angels.
People are no longer referring to Beane as a genius and have simply written off the A's and the Moneyball strategy altogether and it is not hard to see why. Beyond the failings of Beane and the A's there is the evidence supporting the theory that large payrolls lead to World Series titles.
Since 1998, when Beane took over as GM of the A's, only the Florida Marlins and the Arizona Diamondbacks have won the World Series with a payroll ranking in the bottom 10 teams in baseball. This is in sharp contrast to teams like the Yankees, Red Sox, White Sox, Angels, and Cardinals who all have budgets greater than $100 million and have all won the World Series titles.
The facts are plain. Moneyball is proving to be an ineffective strategy over the long term. To prove this one need look no further than Beane and the A's. Since he took over the team in 1998 the A's have gone 976-804, made the playoffs 5 out of 11 years, won a total of 11 playoff games, won 1 playoff series, and have won 0 titles.
Many people will obviously debate this by pointing out the success of the Tampa Bay Rays last season and their minuscule payroll. To them I need only point out that the majority of players on that team were playing under rookie contracts which will inflate greatly over the next few seasons giving Tampa the opportunity to remain a small market team or join the rank of big budget contenders.
Moneyball as a strategy worked for Beane for a time because he was doing something that no one else knew about. His team valued stats like OBP and wanted different kinds of players than any other team. This allowed Beane and the A's to get the players they wanted with little opposition.
Now that Moneyball has been written every team in the majors have brought in stat guys and have begun to take from what Beane and the A's created. This does not mean that Moneyball has evolved but rather that sabermetrics have become more predominant in baseball and the teams with more money are able to outbid the A's.
Beane and his staff in Oakland created something ingenious that eventually would prove to be impossible to maintain. Once the winning formula was taken all that remains is yet another small market team that doesn't have the wallet to compete with the big boys.
Unfortunately for Beane because of this his legacy is being tarnished with every game Trevor Cahill pitches and every catch Eric Patterson fails to make. Every time he trades away a star for a group of players that no one has ever heard of he is second guessed.
The lack of new superstars currently playing for the A's have only served to hurt Beane and made people question whether his methods are successful or not. Common sense seems to be winning out over creativity. If you trade away your best players for players who one day may be good your product is going to suffer. If you continue to do this your product will continue to suffer.
Could it be that Beane has gone too far and has ruined the very creature he created? Or is that he is lulling everyone into a false sense of security so that the A's can drop another 100 win season on MLB and produce some more Rookies of the Year and Cy Young winners?
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