The 2012 Athletics Are A Great Story That Has Nothing To Do With Moneyball

Going to Michael Lewis for a quote about the 2012 Oakland Athletics because he wrote Moneyball as the author does in this NY Times article is like going to Stephen King for a quote on time travel and the Kennedy assassination because he wrote a novel about time travel and the Kennedy assassination. Lewis’s book was technically non-fiction and King’s is decidedly fiction, but the “facts” in Lewis’s book were designed to take everything Billy Beane was doing to take advantage of market inefficiencies and magnify them into an infallibility and new template that only a fool wouldn’t follow.

Lewis had an end in mind and crafted his story about the 2002 Athletics and baseball sabermetrics to meet that end. It’s not journalism, it’s creative non-fiction. Beane went along with it, became famous, and very rich. None of that validates the genesis of the puffery.

The intervening years from Moneyball’s publication to today were not kind to Beane or to the story…until 2012. The movie’s success notwithstanding, it was rife with inaccuracies, omissions, and outright fabrications such as:

• Art Howe’s casual dismissal of Beane’s demands as if it was Howe who was in charge and not Beane
• The portrayal of Jeremy Brown not as a chunky catcher, but an individual so close to morbidly obese that he needed to visit Richard Simmons, pronto
• The failure to mention the three pitchers Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito
• That Scott Hatteberg’s playing time was a point of contention and Beane traded Carlos Pena to force Howe’s hand to play Hatteberg—Hatteberg was still learning first base and wasn’t playing defense, but he was in the lineup almost every day as the DH from day one

There are other examples and it wasn’t a mistake. The book was absurd, the movie was exponentially absurd, and there are still people who refuse to look at the facts before replacing the genius hat on Beane’s head as “proof” of the veracity of Lewis’s tale.

This 2012 version of the Athletics is Beane’s rebuild/retool number five (by my count) since 2003. The Moneyball club was blown apart and quickly returned to contention by 2006 when they lost in the ALCS. That team too was ripped to shreds and the A’s traded for youngsters, signed veterans, traded veterans, signed veterans, traded for youngsters and finished far out of the money in the American League from 2007-2011.

Then they cleared out the house again and are now in the playoffs. It has no connection with Moneyball nor the concept of Beane finding undervalued talent. It has to do with the young players succeeding, as the article linked above says, and winning “in a hurry”.

Let’s look at the facts and assertions from the book/movie followed by the truth:

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The A’s, under Beane, were “card-counters” in the draft

The only players on this Athletics’ team that were acquired via the draft and have helped the club are Jemile Weeks, Cliff Pennington, Sean Doolittle (drafted as a first baseman and converted to the mound), Dan Straily, and A.J. Griffin. The A’s drafts since Moneyball have been mediocre at best and terrible at worst, so bad that Grady Fuson—along with Howe, one of the old-school “villains” in Moneyball—was brought back to the organization as special assistant to the GM.

The hidden truth about the draft is that the boss of the organization probably pays attention to the first 8-10 rounds at most. After that, it’s the scouts and cross-checkers who make the decisions and any player taken past the 10^th round who becomes a success is a matter of being lucky with late development, a position switch, a quirky pitch, or some other unquantifiable factor. Beane’s “new age” picks like Brown, Steve Stanley, and Ben Fritz, didn’t make it. The conventional selections Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton did make it, were paid normal bonuses of over $1 million, in line with what other players drafted in their slot area received. Brown received $350,000 as the 35^th pick in the first round and his signing was contingent on accepting it.

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Beane “fleeced” other clubs in trades

In retrospect, he took advantage of the Red Sox desperation to have a “proven” closer, Andrew Bailey, to replace the departed Jonathan Papelbon. Bailey got hurt and, last night, showed why it wasn’t his injury that ruined the Red Sox season. He’s not particularly good. Josh Reddick has 32 homers—power and inexpensive youthful exuberance the Red Sox could have used in 2012.

The other deals he made last winter? They were of mutual benefit. The A’s were looking to restart their rebuild and slash salary waiting out the decision on whether they’re going to get permission to build a new park in San Jose. They sent their erstwhile ace Trevor Cahill to the Diamondbacks for a large package of young talent with Collin Cowgill, Ryan Cook, and Jarrod Parker. They also traded Gio Gonzalez to the Nationals for even more young talent including Tommy Milone and Derek Norris. The Diamondbacks got 200 innings and good work (that hasn’t shown up in his 13-12 record) from Cahill and are also-rans; the Nationals got brilliance from Gonzalez and won their division. The A’s slashed payroll and their young players, as the article says, developed rapidly.

Sometimes it works as it did with this series of trades, sometimes it doesn’t as with the failed return on the Hudson trade to the Braves in 2004.

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They found undervalued talent

Yes. We know that Moneyball wasn’t strictly about on-base percentage. It was about “undervalued talent” and opportunity due to holes in the market. That argument has come and gone. Was Yoenis Cespedes “undervalued”? He was paid like a free agent and joined the A’s because they offered the most money and the longest contract. He was a supremely gifted risk whose raw skills have helped the A’s greatly and bode well for a bright future. The other signings/trades—Jonny Gomes, Bartolo Colon, Seth Smith, Brandon Inge, Brandon Moss—were prayerful maneuvers based on what was available for money the A’s could afford. They contributed to this club on and off the field.

Grant Balfour was signed before 2011 because the A’s again thought they were ready to contend and all they needed was to bolster the bullpen. They’d also signed Brian Fuentes to close. Fuentes was an expensive disaster whom they released earlier this year; Balfour was inconsistent, lost his closer’s job, wanted to be traded, regained the job, and is pitching well.

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The manager is an irrelevant figurehead

Howe was slandered in Moneyball the book as an incompetent buffoon along for the ride and slaughtered in the movie as an arrogant, insubordinate jerk. What’s ironic is that the manager hired at mid-season 2011, Bob Melvin, is essentially the same personality as Howe!!! An experienced manager who’d had success in his past, Melvin replaced the overmatched Bob Geren, who just so happened to be one of Beane’s closest friends and was fired, according to Beane, not because of poor results, managing and communication skills, but because speculation about his job security had become a distraction.

Melvin and Howe share the common trait of a laid back, easygoing personality that won’t scare young players into making mistakes. Melvin’s calm demeanor and solid skills of handling players and game situations was exactly what the A’s needed and precisely what Moneyball said was meaningless.

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The 2012 Athletics are a great story; Moneyball was an interesting story, but they only intersect when Beane’s “genius” from the book and movie melds with this season’s confluence of events and produces another convenient storyline that, in fact, has nothing at all to do with reality.

The A’s are going to the playoffs and might win the division over the Rangers and Angels, two teams that spent a combined $170 million more in player salaries than the A’s did. It’s a terrific life-lesson that it’s not always about money, but it has zero to do with Moneyball and Michael Lewis is an unwanted interloper as the Beane chronicler since he knows nothing about baseball and is a callous opportunist who took advantage of a situation for his own benefit.

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This Is Not A Review Of Moneyball

I went to see Moneyball yesterday. This is not a recommendation nor is it a condemnation of the film, merely facts as I see them regarding Billy Beane, what happened in Michael Lewis’s twisted narrative and the movie adaptation.

Take it or leave it, but know that I’m telling the truth.

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The Art Howe portrayal.

I don’t care whether it’s Tony LaRussa, Mike Scioscia or Joe Torre, if any manager was as insubordinate, selfish and blatantly disrespectful as the “Art Howe” character in the film was, he’d be fired immediately.

That character is not the Art Howe who’s liked and respected as a dedicated baseball man throughout the industry.

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Jeremy Brown was chubby, not bordering on obese.

Jeremy Brown is listed at 5’10”, 226 pounds on his Baseball-Reference page.

That may or may not have been accurate—sometimes they are, sometimes they’re not.

But the actor they had playing Brown in the movie was bordering on obese. In fact, he made Prince Fielder or CC Sabathia look like The Rock.

Artistic license? Okay.

A patently ridiculous bit of casting for affect? Not okay.

The real Jeremy Brown wouldn’t “sell jeans” unless it was for a big-n-tall store; the character Jeremy Brown almost needed to have his clothes custom made because that’s how fat he was.

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Scott Hatteberg and Carlos Pena.

One of the main conflicts in the film is a struggle between Beane and Howe as to whether Hatteberg should be playing first base instead of Carlos Pena.

The implication is that Hatteberg is glued to the bench because Howe insists on having Pena—perceived as a better hitter and most definitely a better fielder than Hatteberg—in the lineup.

The penultimate scene in which Howe finally relents and sends Hatteberg to pinch hit in an 11-11 tie (as the A’s are going for their 21st straight win) is a Roy Hobbs-style moment for the unwanted misfit and Hatteberg homers to win the game.

Here’s the problem: Hatteberg and Pena were both in the lineup almost every single day before Pena was traded—2002 A’s batting orders. Hatteberg was the DH and Pena was playing first base, which made perfect sense because Hatteberg was still a neophyte first baseman and Pena could, y’know, field; and the day in question, September 4th, was a scheduled day off for Hatteberg who’d been playing almost every day anyway. (That story? It’s in Moneyball the book.)

Hatteberg eventually developed into a pretty good fielding first baseman; Pena into a Gold Glover. But the absence of fact in the interest of drama—as they’re taking a book that was supposed to be a “true” story—is glaring.

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The tired-and-true formula.

Yes. I did mean “tired-and-true”.

The movie was a half-hour too long for one reason and one reason only: because they jammed the family aspect into the story with the interaction between Beane and his daughter; said interaction is about as painful as listening to Joe Buck.

What was the purpose other than to clumsily tug at the heartstrings and take a character that was relatively unlikable (an impressive feat considering the likability of Brad Pitt) and make him appear human? To say, “look, he’s just like you; he went through a divorce, life dumped on him as he struggled in what was supposed to be his calling and found another calling instead”?

It…was…too…long.

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The reality.

During the scene in the 2002 draft room, Lewis wrote in the book that “this almost isn’t fair” as Beane was nabbing each and every one of the players that Paul DePodesta’s computer spit out; that fit into his “new” template of drafting “ballplayers” and not Abercrombie and Fitch models.

But it was fair.

We didn’t learn exactly how fair until years later, but we’ve learned.

It was fair because life has self-correcting mechanism that no amount of flexibility with the truth is going to eclipse.

Lewis had a planned sequel to Moneyball; it was set to detail the rise of the players who were drafted in 2002.

The sequel went away when the draft was proven to be a failure.

But there was a sequel to the book; just as there will be a sequel to the movie. You won’t see it in bookstores nor on-screen. You’ll see it in the standings; you’ll see it in the baseball record books; and you’ll see it if you really look for it.

It’s called reality.

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If people are looking for a point-by-point, in depth refutation of the nonsense in Moneyball without facts pretzelized to suit the agendas of those who cling to it being seen as accurate, trust me, it’s coming.

And hell’s coming with it.

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