Moneyball Revisited, Again

It's kind of hard not too when you are interviewing the author Michael Lewis, no Billy Beane did not write it Mr. Morgan:

Q: We’re six years removed from the publication of “Moneyball.” People are still talking about it, and it would appear that just about every team — to some degree — has adopted its principles. How would you assess its impact today?

A: It’s become conventional wisdom. The A’s have no intellectual advantage, as evidenced by their performance. There’s a shadow baseball team that would have been members of the Oakland A’s if “Moneyball” had never happened, but now those guys are more valued.

So now, it's less interesting to me. The interesting thing about the “Moneyball” idea is how it has now extended into other sports. And the concept gets richer and more complicated when it's a genuine team sport. Baseball is not a true team sport like basketball or soccer, cricket, rugby, football. Those sports are in virgin territory there. In baseball, from now on, the progress of understanding the game will be slower. The last holy grail is defense, but even for that, a lot of things have been learned.

But still, not every baseball team embraces it as fully as they could. [...]

Q: And I guess, since you point out that “Moneyball” contributed to the A’s losing their competitive advantage, the Rockets should be wary.

A: Right. The only reason the A's let me in is that they thought people [cared] so little ... about what they were doing. They couldn't imagine anyone would care about what I wrote.

On the other hand, this was leaking out already. The Red Sox were rapidly becoming what they are in terms of following Sabermetrics. On top of all that, enough of all the intellectual property that they seized upon was in the public domain. The Rockets have created a lot more intellectual property than the A’s ever created.

Sounds good, except to me the holy grail is health. We already have pretty significant defensive metrics like Lewis states, but I don't think there is nearly as much in the stats that help identify pitching injuries. Sure there is some, but to my knowledge nothing definitive, and with defense it's getting pretty definitive. It may not be perfect, but UZR and John Dewan's +/- will both tell you that Adam Dunn stinks and that JJ Hardy is great.

The holy grail to me would almost seem unattainable, and that's predicting injuries. I'm sure people will find something more significant than they have so far, but c'mon it's the holy grail we're talking about here.

Moneyball no doubt had an effect on baseball, but is Mr. Lewis patting himself on the back a little too much when he credit himself for the A's loss of a competitive advantage? The A's weren't the first team to put stock into OBP, and the point of the book was that the A's looked for the market definciencies. It's hard to believe that that's a big secret...look for what people are over looking, but alas a lot of "baseball insiders" are damn stupid. Some of those "insiders" voted Derek Jeter the best player in baseball- this year in the latest Sporting News.

I don't want to take credit away from Billy Beane or the A's because they certainly did a great job winning with less payroll, but look at them now, pretty unimpressive. With the movie coming out (which oddly looks very appealing) I hope the A's turn it around, it would be hard selling the movie with the A's in a 3 year long rebuilding phase. And I hope his new book "Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood" doesn't have Lewis lose his fathering competitive advantage. I heard some fathers in Boston are on to him, figuring out new ways to make your kids happier in less time.

h/t to BaseballMusings via Deadspin