People Do Not Know Moneyball

Okay, I have a bone to pick with a guy named Pevey. No, not Jake - Marty Pevey, Peoria (Cubs’ Low-A) Manager…

Baseball America has a fantastic daily article called, “Daily Dish.” In Wednesday’s Dish, BA profiled Josh Vitters, Cubs’ 3B prospect (and the main player the Padres were reportedly getting if Peavy was traded to the Cubs), and his hot start (.371/.400/.598).

In the article, Pevey said,

"I spent 16 years with Toronto, who was the epitome of "Moneyball." They found out that didn’t really work, so they’re back to normal baseball, getting a good pitch to hit and hitting it hard.”

How many people are going either not read or not understand and yet continue to opine regarding the content thereof and then go further and misrepresent the facts anyway?

Moneyball has one philosophy: find inefficiencies and exploit them. In the late 90’s and early this decade that was on-base percentage…

So let’s get back to Pevey’s idiotic quote. “They found that didn’t really work…” “That,” is clearly Moneyball philosophies as he understands them. And by looking at previous comments in the article, we can tell Pevey is defending Vitters’ lack of walks (3).

The author, Jim Shonerd, wrote, “The only offensive category Vitters has really been lagging behind in is walks…”

So if we use basic logic here we can see that Pevey is deriding walks as an end-goal (I’ve got no problem with that). But he also said that Toronto is having success because they’ve gone away from that.

Now let’s look at some stats:

In Moneyball Billy Beane said strikeouts are the worst outs you can make. He also said that on-base percentages were more accurate predictors of success than batting averages. Walks are just one component of an on-base percentage. Ergo the more walks, the higher the on-base rate (In a perfect world a hitter bats .400 and doesn’t need to take a walk but what happens when the pitcher stops throwing strikes?).

So, based on Pevey’s comments Toronto shouldn’t be anywhere near top-of-the-pack in walks… Guess what, Boston leads the AL with 168 walks (yeah, that’s clearly not working), Toronto has 158 (the top 6 AL teams: Boston 168, Cleveland 161, New York 161, Tampa 160, Toronto 158, and Minnesota 156 – there’s 20-walk drop-off after the Twins).

Toronto’s current philosophies align perfectly with those perceived Moneyball ideals. Sorry Pevey.

The old-guard feels pushed aside (and rightly so) and is lashing out against the new way of doing things. But you can’t push guys like Pevey completely aside because their in-game management is critical to players’ development. Look, I cannot tell you how generate more power in your swing. I can’t watch you pitch and fix your mechanics. Guys like Pevey can. So I’m not saying Marty is a complete moron. If he was he wouldn’t have the job he does. He just needs to make sure he’s aware of the facts before he shoots his mouth off…