I knew I was going to have a problem with
Moneyball even before I went to see it this
past weekend. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s an entertaining movie.
Nevertheless I had a problem with the movie and the reason I had a
problem with the movie is because I have a problem with the book on
which the movie is based.
Moneyball was written by
Michael Lewis, a former bond trader who became a literary sensation
in 1989 with Liar’s Poker, an account of his
time on Wall Street. In Moneyball, Lewis
turns his attention to the economics of Major League Baseball. At
the time of its release in 2003, the Oakland Athletics were in the
midst of reaching the postseason for the fourth consecutive year
despite having a payroll of less than $40 million. The New York
Yankees by comparison had a payroll three times that size. Lewis
spent the 2002 season following the innerworkings of the Athletics
organization and in particular their general manager Billy
Beane.
Now when I think about the 2000-2003 Oakland
Athletics three names spring to mind — Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and
Barry Zito. This triumvirate was the mainstay of arguably the most
talented starting rotation in all of MLB. While they alone were not
responsible for the success of the Athletics during that period
they deserve a great deal of the credit. In 2001, the Athletics won
102 games. Hudson, Mulder and Zito won 56 of those games. The
following season, despite losing Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and
Jason Isiringhausen to free agency, Oakland won 102 games with
Hudson, Mulder and Zito winning 57 of those games. Yet they were
scarcely mentioned in the book.
I brought this up with Lewis when he made an
appearance in Cambridge at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square to
give a talk about Moneyball shortly after its
release. “Talking about the Oakland Athletics without discussing
Hudson, Mulder and Zito is like talking about the Atlanta Braves
without discussing Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz,” I
said. Needless to say, Lewis seemed rather annoyed with my
observation and yet could not come up with any adequate explanation
as to why he devoted so little attention to this trio. Well, they
get even less attention in the movie. In fact, aside from stock
footage of Hudson getting hit hard by the Kansas City Royals in
pursuit of their MLB record 20th consecutive win late in
the 2002 season, there is no acknowledgment of them at
all.
If you watched Moneyball this
weekend, you might be under the impression that the A’s won the
American League West in 2002 on the strength of Scott Hatteberg’s
ability to get on base. Hatteberg had been a backup catcher with
the Boston Red Sox but could not throw the ball after sustaining
nerve damage in his elbow. Following the 2001 season, the Red Sox
traded Hatteberg to the Colorado Rockies for infielder Pokey Reese.
But less than 48 hours later, the Rockies granted Hatteberg free
agency when he rejected a 50 percent pay cut. Hatteberg’s baseball
career appeared to be over. What team would want a catcher who
couldn’t throw? Well, it turned out the Athletics were very
interested in Hatteberg. Not as a catcher but as a first baseman —
even though Hatteberg had never played the position. The Athletics
weren’t interested in Hatteberg’s defensive skills at first base
(he had none) but rather his ability to get on
base.
You see, unlike every other organization in MLB at
the time, Billy Beane and the front office staff in Oakland
embraced the ideas espoused by Bill James, a onetime night watchman
at the Stokely Van Camp pork & beans factory in Lawrence,
Kansas whose interpretation of baseball statistics became known as
“sabermetrics” in honor of the Society of American Baseball
Research (SABR). In various editions of the The Bill
James Baseball Abstract which he first released in
mimeograph form in 1977, James argued that offensive statistics
like on-base percentage and slugging percentage were undervalued
while offensive statistics like batting average and stolen bases
were overvalued. Well, James’ work begat a generation of
“sabermetrician” organizations like Baseball Prospectus, Baseball
Think Factory and The Hardball Times.
On base percentage (OBP) statistics are to
sabermetricians what images of 38 DDs are to adolescent boys. As it
was put in the movie by Peter Brand (a fictional character based on
then Athletics assistant general manager Paul DePodesta, played by
Jonah Hill), “Your goal shouldn’t be to buy
players. Your goal should be to buy wins. In order buy wins, you
need to buy runs.” OBP was the currency the Athletics used to pay
for runs.
Yet just because you can get on base doesn’t mean
you are going to score runs. In 2002, Hatteberg had the
14th best OBP in the AL at .374. He finished one
percentage point
ahead of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. Yet Jeter
scored more than twice as many runs as Hatteberg (124 to 58) that
year. Now an argument can be made that Jeter had more opportunities
to score runs because he played in 21 more games and had 162 more
plate appearances than Hatteberg.
Indeed, Jeter reached base nearly sixty more times than did
Hatteberg (271 to 212). But if you divide the number of times each
player reached base (hits, walks and hit by pitch) by the number of
runs they scored then you find that Jeter scored nearly half the
time he was on base while Hatteberg scored just a little over one
quarter of his time on base. Translated into a percentage (runs
scored percentage or RSP), Jeter had a RSP in ‘02 of .458 compared
to .274 for Hatteberg. So what good is OBP if you can’t score runs?
It is but one of many reasons why I find
Moneyball to be off base.
