FanPost

Eight Years Later, People Still Don't Get "Moneyball"

As little as 18 months ago, I thought i understood baseball. What I really understood was the version of baseball that was passed down to me by the talking heads on ESPN. I feel like I was a little bit more open-minded than most, but i mostly thought that the pitcher with the most wins was the best pitcher, and a video game had provided me with my most extensive experience in sabermetrics. In hindsight, none of it makes any sense to me because I had always believed myself to be well informed, and I was never openly averse to stats, but I was (eventually) able to recognize the fact that not all stats are created equal.

Now, over a year and a half after the Francoeur-Church trade, (a wash under the most optimistic of cirumstances,) I have read Moneyball (twice) and The Mets have become even more of laughing stock. Hindsight being 20/20, It is no surprise that they have been so futile. The whole "Alex Cora is a veteran, let's give him two million dollars" type of logic that wasn't working for them, and the process still didn't change, but at the same time, the very people who called into talk radio to criticize Omar are the same people who are unable to give the current front office a chance, despite the fact that they have no money.

Now to my point:

I recently read about another book that seeks to debunk Moneyball, and I realized that in all likelihood, the people who seek to debunk Moneyball and Billy Beane have a few defining characteristics.

The characteristics are as follows:

a) They never read the book.

b) They weren't intelligent enough to comprehend the book.

c) They're over 50.

d) They are incorrigible.

People who think that Moneyball is simply an endorsement of fat players with high on base percentages, an attack on base stealing, and a fun-stealing attempt to remove the fun from watching a baseball game simply don't get. These people do not understand that Billy Beane's philosophy was more of an ingenious economic strategy than an attempt to change the construct of front offices in baseball (I'm pretty sure that if he had his own way, he'd be the only person who sought undervalued players.) Maybe people will never get it, but hopefully it will get better when the people who were born after 1970 become the decision makers in baseball.

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any vetting or approval process.