umm....what?

Gabe Hammad's blog. Gabe was a member between 2002-2015 and again in 2017. During his tenure, Gabe won the NL East in 2005-06 and the 2006 IBC Championship.

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Royals
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Post by Royals »

Cardinals wrote:Jake, the Creation story is in Genesis, which is in the Old Testament
Said the Christian to the Jewish Reverend... holy crap that comment almost made me piss myself laughing....
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Royals
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Post by Royals »

Athletics wrote:
Cardinals wrote:Jake, the Creation story is in Genesis, which is in the Old Testament
Aaron, that's precisely my point. Bren judged Moneyball on the chapter discussing Billy Beane's playing career, a chapter which has little to no bearing on the rest of the book except that its on the first page, kind of like how the Creation story has little to no bearing on the New Testament.
Except for the fact it wasn't well written, thus, not getting much past the first chapter.
then there's the premise the Beane was doing something impressive. he wasn't. he was playing in a largely low-budget division, the concept that he was competing against the Yankees was a fallacy except in the context of the playoffs, when his teams failed. moneyball came out in 03, Beane had built a perennial 'contender' in a soft division that had failed in the playoffs against the Yankees AND the megabucks wielding twins.
Bavasi has been bad for so long, it's easy to forget there was a time the Mariners didn't suck.
That said, outside of 02, scioscia's Angels were a sub .500 team with 2 3rd place finishes. Not impressive.
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Post by Giants »

First of all, regardless of the level of resources a team has and regardless of divisional context putting together a winning team is an accomplishment and more difficult than it looks. Second of all , people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and all that, the AL East in that era had 3.5 cupcakes in the era when that book was written; Baltimore and Tampa Bay were perennial 100 loss teams, Toronto was no more mediocre than Texas and probably less dangerous, and the Red Sox could only get it together to sniff the wild card every couple of years throughout the Duquette era (remember when they tried so hard to sign Billy Beane? Anyone think this conversation would be happening if Beane had been the Red Sox GM in 2004?). But don't listen to me, let's look at the divisional winning percentages from 2000-2003 (the Moneyball era if you will).

2000
AL East: .491
AL Central: .506
AL West: .518 (A's win)

2001
AL East: .471
AL Central: .481
AL West: .564 (Only division in any of the 4 years with 2 100+ win teams)

2002
AL East: .488
AL Central: .451
AL West: .566 (Only division in any of the 4 years with 3 90+ win teams)

2003
AL East: .513
AL Central: .456
AL West: .520

So actually Billy Beane's A's, on a shoestring budget, were winning what was consistently the toughest division in baseball by a good bit. The AL West was the only division never to have a 100 loss team, and the only one to have three 90 win teams. Also, in all four of those years the MVP came from an AL West team, as it had the previous four years (take that East Coast bias). The cellar dwelling Rangers lineup featured A-Rod, Pudge, Raffy Palmeiro, and Michael Young, the bottom of any other division feature anything like that?
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Post by Yankees »

Rangers wrote:It's rare that a non-fiction sports book is written about a team that never won a championship under this strategy, and many of the players hailed as great finds had yet to be proven. While it's an interesting strategy that has no doubt changed the face of baseball, Billy Beane's success was not what I would say is deserving of a 300 page biopic/praise of the job he's done in Oakland
Ugh - once again...it really wasn't a baseball book as much as it was a business book.
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