Film based on book about Beane's use of stats to shape Oakland A's stirs debate anew

Sep 22 2011 - 6:51pm

LOS ANGELES -- The champagne flowed easily, and so did the toasts. The San Francisco Giants had just won the World Series, and the shouts came from all corners of the clubhouse.

To Willie Mays! To Tim Lincecum! To Aubrey Huff's rally thong!

And this, from around a corner, from Giants executive Tony Siegle: "So much for 'Moneyball."'

The book that polarized an industry hits the big screen on Friday, with Brad Pitt starring as Billy Beane, the maverick general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

The book was published in 2003, as the Oakland Athletics made their fourth consecutive playoff appearance. The movie comes out as the Athletics hover uncomfortably close to last place in the American League West, en route to their fifth consecutive season without a winning record.

Those recent struggles are met with barely concealed glee in some clubhouses and front offices, in an industry that did not appreciate the perception that Beane was a Space Age genius among Stone Age thinkers.

"Everybody is a good general manager when you have (bleeping) (Tim) Hudson, (Barry) Zito and (Mark) Mulder," Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen said. "It's easy to be a GM like that. It's not a (bleeping) secret."

What offended veteran baseball types took away from the book was that Beane had somehow invented a championship roster out of computer printouts, on-base percentage and bargain shopping.

That was a caricature, but what were the old-school baseball men supposed to think? The book jacket included this tease: "Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base on balls. This information has been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane."

Let's just say that Gene Mauch did not use Brian Downing as the Angels' leadoff hitter three decades ago because of Downing's speed.

"The book overplayed the statistical analysis side of things. It underplayed the scouting side of things," said Bill Stoneman, the former Angels general manager whose team won the World Series in 2002, in the heyday of the "Moneyball" era.

"What you're looking for in a player isn't just what he's done. We can all measure what he's done or how he's trending. The most important question is, what is he going to do? That's a scout's job."

Stoneman is not talking about how a minor league performance might translate at the major league level, or how batting average on balls in play can suggest whether a hitter or pitcher is successful at an unsustainable level.

He is talking about the ability to project a lanky teenager as a beefy slugger, or to determine if a kid with a 95-mph fastball can master the two or three other pitches necessary to start in the major leagues.

Stoneman read the book. Siegle, the Giants' executive, said he did not read it but heard more than enough about what he perceived as its worship of numbers.

"Statistics are very important. They're not the be-all and end-all," said Siegle, who has worked for 23 general managers in his five decades as a major league executive.

"Nothing is going to supplant good scouting, good player development and a good general manager."

It would be unfortunate if the release of the "Moneyball" movie were to spawn a revival of the statistics-versus-scouts debate, since no team uses one to the exclusion of the other.

Beane declined to comment for this story.

Toronto Blue Jays General Manager Alex Anthopoulos leans toward the statistical end of the spectrum, but he is trying to topple the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees in part by hiring more scouts. The Angels lean toward scouting -- so do the Giants -- but Manager Mike Scioscia said he gets more statistical data than ever from the front office.

"Moneyball" was not about a computer spitting out the Athletics' roster. It was not about constructing an offense around on-base percentage. It was about zigging when the Athletics could not afford to zag.

When the Oakland budget did not allow for a slugger at every position, the Athletics opted for creativity over surrender. The on-base guys tended to come more cheaply. When the market price went up for guys who walked a lot, the Athletics zagged again, trying to cobble a winner out of superior defenders.

Scioscia also said the Athletics now use strategies they never did in their "Moneyball" glory days. They might try dropping a sacrifice bunt, or stealing second base, or scooting from first base to third on a single, plays that were regarded as anathema in Oakland a decade ago.

"They would never give away outs," Scioscia said.

The core of baseball lifers, skeptical of the reverence with which Beane was portrayed in the book, point to the scoreboard. And, yes, the Athletics never have won the World Series under Beane.

On the other hand, in an eight-year span ending in 2006, the Athletics advanced to the playoffs five times and had a winning record every year. The Yankees were the only other major league club to do so.

No, what "Moneyball" really symbolized was the democratization of statistical information.

When Tony La Russa managed the Athletics two decades ago, he would not let the team publicist share Mark McGwire's batting averages against left-handers and right-handers. What was then proprietary information is now available to all, just a click away.

For a substantial number of fans, "Moneyball" validated the concept that baseball insiders did not hold a monopoly on the ability to build a contender.

By using a raft of new and refined statistics, anyone with Internet access could offer sophisticated evaluation of a trade or signing -- or a front office.

The statistical analysts were not kind to the Giants' front office last season, for assembling a roster made up of what Manager Bruce Bochy called "castoffs and misfits." The championship apparently did not immunize the front office from allegations of ignorance, supported by statistics.

"We still get that every now and then," Siegle said. "I have to go back and make sure we still won the World Series."

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