Amazin' Avenue Book Club: Moneyball, Chapter Six

Big market teams simply have way too big of an advantage in baseball. I know about all the different WS winners, and I realize many owners of the small market teams just pocket their money because of no salary floor….but the disparity in payrolls for some teams is just absurd.

How is a team like Toronto ever supposed to realistically compete with teams like Boston and NY when their payroll is less than half?

People will say the NFL is watered down….but aside from maybe the Bills, basically any team has a chance. The playing field is even.

As long as their is a salary cap, small market teams will have to work twice as hard to accomplish half as much as big market teams.

Oh, and as for the movie question… Anchorman, although I’m not sure that counts since everything in that movie is quotable.

1. I’m biased due to being a fan of a big market team, so I’m in favor of no salary cap, though you could create a harsher luxury tax threshold and penalty to act as a soft cap. I like a salary floor to prevent cheapskate teams from profiting just on luxury tax.
2. wOBA because it can be used to calculate runs above average, and it’s the most developed and accurate advanced stat, moreso than defense metrics and DIPS metrics
4. depends on how well the movie does at the box office, but I doubt it would
5. A lot of movies I watch have little to no dialogue. Do those count?

i agree with a salary floor. spend enough money to put a decent product out there. no cap. or maybe some kind of rule like “you can spend as much as you want as long as you don’t charge more than $6 for a beer”.

honestly, i think the “Sabremetrics and You” article was pretty spot on. just start with OBP. it’s easy to understand and makes sense. trying to get into wOBA and WAR right off the bat, no matter how open minded the person is, just confuses them.

i don’t think you can argue against the Isringhausen trade. nobody saw the value in Generation K at that point and everybody just wanted that chapter to be over.

i LOL’d when i read the “we’re not selling jeans here” line.

movies:
Ghostbusters
Stripes
Caddyshack
Johnny Dangerously
Real Genius
Star Wars
Spaceballs
Blazing Saddles
Death to Smoochy

of about $170 or million or so. It lessens the arms race between the Red Sox and the Yankees, though a Yankee friend argues that the idea is just a principle of my Yankee bias and only punishes them. He’s not wrong. They should have an advantage—$170 million is still a high number, and few teams can compete with that—but the advantage is too great.

A salary floor is probably a good idea, because the point of revenue sharing is to spread the wealth, and some small market owners just pocket the money. It defeats the point.

But if the playoff format is expanded, perhaps the need for salary regulation will be less necessary because more teams will have an opportunity to make the playoffs. (As a side note, I am hugely opposed to expanding the playoffs to more teams—the playoffs should be more exclusive than they are in basketball or hockey, for instance.)

It’s high enough that it allows teams with economic advantages and the willingness to use it the opportunity to do just that, but doesn’t allow them to abuse it (too much). As far as a salary floor, I think $40M isn’t unreasonable. The MLPA or someone complained about the Marlins last year and their Opening Day payroll was $35.8M.
2) WAR. Despite the complications involved with grading defense, I believe WAR is quite possible the best thing out there right now. Plus you can always just look at its offensive component if you want to stay away from defense.
3) I vaguely remember the trade ( I was 11 at the time) and being sad that a member of the fabled three was leaving.
4) The more I read Moneyball, the more I think it will be an enjoyable movie – and not only for SABR-minded people or stat-heads. It’s an interesting story involving America’s pastime and it has compelling characters. Brad Pitt being a good actor helps too. It’s quite possible it has a Major League type following.
5) The Matrix, Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight.

1. a cap and a floor would be nice

2. WAR.

3. i don’t remember the trade.. i only remember izzy as a met really from video games.

4. i bought moneyball a month or so ago, read it in like three sittings, enjoyed it thoroughly. i love the “jeans” quote

5. ferris bueller, forest gump, top gun, arthur, either of the first two austin powers movies, dumb and dumber, independence day.

One dramatic fact Will often used to incite alarm was that the ratio of the payrolls of the seven richest and
seven poorest teams in baseball was 4:1, while in pro basketball it was 1.75:1 and in
pro football 1.5:1.

He hadn’t the slightest interest in stopping the Blue Ribbon Panel from concluding that his life was unfair. He’d be delighted to see the cost of players constrained, or, even better, the Yankees made to give him some of their money.

Win with nobodies and the fans showed up, and the nobodies became stars; lose with stars and the fans stayed home, and the stars became nobodies.

“The variance between the best and worst fielders on the outcome of a game is a lot smaller than the variance between the best hitters and the worst hitters.”

When, in 2001, for the second year in a row, they lost to the Yankees in the fifth and deciding game of the play-offs, the Oakland front office was certain that theirs had been the better team and that it was the Yankees who had gotten lucky—and that
the Yankees front office knew it. And that some fraction of the $120 million the Yankees had paid Jason Giambi after the 2001 play-offs to lure him away from the Oakland A’s was to prevent him from ever again playing for the Oakland A’s..

Now to the discussion questions:

1. I think a salary cap would be best, although I feel that the limit before the luxury tax kicks in effectively serves the same purpose. I think small market teams will have a chance in the long run& teams like Oakland & Tampa Bay are a testament to that. They don’t have Yankee dollars, but with excellent management, razor sharp player evaluation skills & ruthless efficiency they’ll always be in contention. Of course, if you gave Billy Beane the Yankee payroll, his teams would have been even better. Contrast that with Kansas City, who has a general manager who really doesn’t do much to help his team win ballgames nor is a particularly great evaluator of major-league talent.

2. If I had to choose one saber stat to teach to the traditional baseball fan, I’d go with wOBA. I mean, it’s perfect when you really think about it. As a fan, you’d want the hitters who are really good at reaching & advancing on the bases & wOBA captures that perfectly.

3. Technically I can’t answer that question because I became a Mets fan in May 2000. But, my 10 year old self would’ve probably cosigned the trade because I ain’t know shit about prospects to begin with & the fact that Taylor was a proven major-leaguer would’ve sealed it.

4. There’s a chance it could. If the movie does really well, & the writers use some of the better lines in the book, it could catch on & respark interest in the book. The potential downside(for us saber types) is that it might reignite the dry “stats vs. MY EYEZ” debate again.

5. This one:

I’ve seen it like a million times & never get tired of it.
“How do I look? Like shit boss. Your mama.”

And some general thoughts about the chapter:

I understand Beane’s viewpoint perfectly. If teams wanna be dumb, spend foolishly & mis-evaluate talent, let them. He thought he could game the system & prey on other management team’s weakness & he did that more times than not.

Along with Beane shitting on his scouts earlier in the book, I’m almost positive this chapter is referenced whenever Moneyball is described as some sabermetric manifesto or whatever pejorative you can think of.

You’d think that teams & analysts would’ve figured out by now that “saves” are a meaningless stat & savvy teams will screw you over by letting inferior pitchers pitch the 9th, pile up the saves, artificially inflate his value & flip him for more than he’s worth.

And I think the Tampa Bay Rays are sorta similar to the 2002 Athletics. I say that because the Rays are heading into the season without their big gun(Crawford) & other key pieces(Soriano, Pena, etc) much like the A’s lost their big gun(Giambi) & secondary pieces(Damon, Izzy). I think they’ll end up being better than most experts will predict them to be.

But some sort of cap which is flexible depending on your own revenue. (More cap for teams with more revenue)
While some teams can’t spend as much, it doesn’t make the league into a coin flip, which wouldn’t be that fun.

2. wOBA. It’s on an OBP scale, it’s not hard to understand.
3. Don’t remember.
4. As a sports meme, it can definitely catch on. I’m not sure about as a general meme though

1. No salary cap. I want the Mets to have an advantage.
2. wOBA, in my opinion, is the best sabery stat to emerge to date. It accomplishes what it sets out to do, and it easily understood by most baseball fans.
3. I didn’t care back then because I was in my fair-weather fan years.
4. If the Moneyball movie uses it, then I think that “we’re not selling jeans here” will make its way into popular culture.
5. Blazing Saddles, Office Space, Spinal Tap

1. I think they should Cap Players Salaries like they do in the NBA for example a player could only make up to 5 mil the first 5 years, then 12 mil from year 6 to 10 then no more than 20 mil after that. And a team cap of 150 mil

2. I need someone to explain TO ME what any of these saber stats mean.

3. I liked the trade.

4. I think Moneyball the movie will fail because chicks won’t be into it.

5. Rocky 1 2 3, Goodfellas, Scarface, The Departed

I remember giving a stamp of approval

Really? Well, at least you are brave enough to admit it.

Re Moneyball quotes – I think Not Selling Jeans Here is already part of pop culture and is often quoted, at least in my circles.

There wasn’t revenue sharing either. Just like teams like Pittsburgh now dont spend cause they dont want to and keep the Steinbrenner money as profit.