 | |
The most famous GM in baseball
| |
After recently (and finally) reading Moneyball, I pondered just how successful this new “scientific”
method of drafting players really was. If
this was his perfect draft in which money was no object, it stands to reason
that for it to be considered a success a majority of the players on his list
should make it to the Majors. With four
years now gone, I wondered just how well the players on Beane’s imaginary list had
done.
Concentrating primarily on college players and, armed with
an unprecedented 7 first round draft choices, the A’s took 25 college players
with their first 28 picks. So how did
Beane and the A’s fare with their picks that year? Was their method truly revolutionary? And how does the A’s 2002 draft rate among
their contemporaries?
To try to answer these questions, we will take a closer look
at Beane’s imaginary wish list and see just how well the A’s did. Then we will look at the 19 High School
players selected in the first round of that year’s draft (picks Beane
considered “foolish”) and compare them with the A’s picks. Finally, we’ll examine how well all 29 other
teams did in the draft in comparison to the A’s 51
draft choices.
Are the results suggestive of an innovative way of looking
at and drafting players or do they suggest that the A’s scientific new method
was a little less revolutionary than Moneyball
leads us to believe?
We start our examination with Beane’s ultimate wish list.
The List

Obenchain...The Weakest Link?
|
Jeremy Guthrie
Joe Blanton
Jeff Francis
Luke Hagerty
Ben Fritz
Robert Brownlie
Stephen Obenchain
Bill Murphy
Nick Swisher
Russ Adams
Khalil Greene
John McCurdy
Mark Teahen
Jeremy Brown
Steve Stanley
John Baker
Mark Kiger
Brian Stavisky
Shaun Larkin
Brant Colamarino
We will separate these players into four categories; the
good, the average, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good
Joe Blanton, Russ Adams, Jeff Francis, Nick Swisher, Khalil
Greene and Mark Teahen.
Every player in the good category has reached the Majors and
is now contributing to some extent.
Blanton is in the A’s rotation and Francis is Colorado’s
top starter, Greene is the shortstop for San Diego
and Adams is the Blue Jays starting shortstop
while Teahen is the Royals’ everyday third baseman. Swisher, the man whom Beane said he would
have made the top pick in the draft, plays regularly in the A’s outfield.
While each has had their share of failures* as well as
successes, the fact that each is in the Majors qualifies them as a success in so
far as this analysis goes.
*[Greene was listed in John Dewan’s The Fielding Bible as the worst defensive SS in the NL last
year. Swisher hit just .236 last season. Jeff Francis’
ERA in the thin Colorado
air was 5.68 and Teahen (whom the A’s likened to the next Jason Giambi) hit
just 7 HR in 447 AB last season and has never had more than 8 in any pro
season. Adams
hit .256 as the Jays’ starter last year and Blanton’s K/9 has dropped to just
5.25 in the Majors]
The Average
Jeremy Brown, Robert Brownlie, Brant Colamarino, Jeremy
Guthrie, Bill Murphy, Steve Stanley and Brian Stavisky
Jeremy Guthrie is the only player in the average category to
have reached the Majors so far, and while you could argue that that would be
enough to place him in the good category, one can look at his mixed results
(only 7 games over two seasons at the big league level and a 31-31 record with
a 4.75 ERA in the minors), his current status (he will begin the ’06 season
with Triple A Buffalo) and his age (he turned 27 on April 8) and deduce that
his Major League contract status (negotiated by Scott Boras) played more of a
role in his quick rise to the Majors (he made just 9 minor league starts before
his debut) than did his performance. The
book may not be completely written on Guthrie, but time is quickly running out.
Robert Brownlie has just a .500 record in the minors (20-20)
but his ERA in 3.74 in over 300 innings.
However, that rose to 4.74 in 2005 when his BB/9 also rose to 3.62 and
he ended up in the Iowa
bullpen where the Cubs believe any future he might have lies. He got a look at camp this year with the Cubs,
pitching in 4 games and as a former 1st round pick, the Cubs will
give him every opportunity to make good, but like Guthrie (and in fact, all of
the Moneyball picks), his time is
running out.
Bill Murphy is with his fourth professional (organization
having spent one day as a Dodger as part of the Dodgers, Marlins and D’Backs
three-way deal involving, among others, Steve Finley, Paul LoDuca and Brad
Penny) and is also a career .500 pitcher (26-26) with a 4.36 ERA in 444 minor
league innings. Last season while
pitching for Triple-A Tucson, he posted a 5.65 ERA and he has a 5.86 mark over
his last 29 minor league appearances (27 starts). Possibly the one thing he has going for him is
that he throws the ball with his left arm.
He begins the season once again pitching for Tucson.
Perhaps the best of this bunch is OF Brian Stavisky, a 6th
round choice who had been drafted twice previously (as high as the 12th
round in ’99). Stavisky has a .313
career batting mark while logging a very Moneyball
like .403 OBP. However Stavisky, as
noted in the 2006 version of Baseball Prospectus, is terrible defensively and
has been used primarily as a designated hitter and one must wonder if a career
DH has much of a shot at making it to the Majors. He starts the ’06 season at Triple-A
Sacramento though and if he gets hot he could yet make it.
Brant Colamarino, a 7th round choice of whom DePodesta
said “might be the best hitter in the country,” hasn’t been quite that good but
has improved and advanced each season. He
got off to a great start last season at Double-A Midland
(.321/.377/.594) earning a promotion to Sacramento
though he stumbled there (.243/.297/.436).
He was ranked in 2006 by Baseball America as the A’s 28th
best prospect and called him “likely to be some teams rule V throwback.” Baseball
Prospectus called him the best defensive 1B in the A’s system, though with Dan
Johnson and Nick Swisher at the Major League Level and a younger Daric Barton
waiting in the wings at Sacramento,
he faces a tremendous uphill battle.
Steve Stanley is a fine defensive OF (.997 fielding
percentage at Double-A Midland last season with just 1 error) with no power offensively
but he nevertheless manages to get on base a lot (.374 lifetime OBP). At 5’8” and 155 pounds, he was considered by
scouts to be too small for pro ball. He
has excelled at the lower levels but slumped badly at Triple-A
in 2004 (.227 in 74 games after hitting .419 in 36 games at Midland).
Baseball Prospectus says of Stanley
that he has “lost his allure as a Moneyball
player” and he finds himself well back on the A’s organizational depth
charts. He will begin this year once
again in Double-A in what is likely his last chance to prove himself as a
legitimate prospect.
The Bad
Stephen Obenchain, Ben Fritz, Mark Kiger, Shaun Larkin, John
Baker and John McCurdy
Fritz, who was called the third best right handed pitcher in
the draft by Paul DePodesta, has made 53 starts in the minors, winning just 13
games (losing 15) with a 4.69 ERA. He
has walked nearly 4 batters per 9 innings (3.84) while averaging less than 5
innings per start (4.81). He will begin
this season in Double A.
Obenchain has appeared in 86 games (49 starts) while
compiling a 19-20 record with a 4.32 ERA.
However, he’s allowed 10.22 or more H/9 in each of his last four
stops. Last season in Double-A Midland
he allowed 11.67 H/9 while issuing walks at a rate of 5.05 per 9 innings.
Larkin was drafted by Cleveland
in the 9th round and has had a completely uninspired career thus
far. Although he has shown some power,
hitting double digits in home runs the last three years including 20 in Class A
ball in 2003, but his career average is just .258 and his on-base percentage is
only .348. Slated to begin the year at
Double-A Akron, he turns 27 this September and is unlikely to ever reach the
Majors.
Kiger (.267/.365/.375) reached Sacramento in ’04 at the end of the season
(he played just 6 games there) but played the entire ’05 season in Double
A. His one endearing quality seems to be
his modestly high OBP. Labeled as too
small for pro ball and possessing little speed (31 SB in 47 attempts) and almost
no power (23 HR in 1,733 AB), he begins the year though at Sacramento with one final shot. Defensively he is likely more suited to
second base (.988 F% last season at 2B, .969 at SS), yet he is slated to
play SS for the River Cats. With Bobby
Crosby at the big league level Cliff Pennington coming up from behind, Kiger is
the epitome of a long shot.
Baker, though he has spent time on the A’s (released by the
A’s after the ’05 season he also spent time on the Marlins 40 man roster before
being released and resigned by Oakland), has been a resounding flop. Drafted in the fourth round, Baker has put up
completely uninspired numbers, hitting .234 this past season and .269 for his
career while striking out once every 3.81 AB.
Called a “a poor man’s Daric Barton” by Baseball America, he was once
high on the A’s depth charts, but is now no better than the A’s fourth best
catching prospect behind Brown, Kurt Suzuki and Landon Powell. Nevertheless he
will begin the season with Brown and Raul Casanova at Sacramento and despite his below average
numbers, could be just an injury away.
John McCurdy (selected number 26 overall in the draft) was referred
to by Beane as “the next Jeff Kent” and praised for having the highest slugging
percentage in the country (.828 with the University of Maryland in 2002), yet
he has never slugged higher than the .387 mark he posted last season with
Class-A Stockton. His
career batting average is just .256 and his OBP is only .307. Beane was concerned that San Francisco,
which had the only pick between his next two, might select McCurdy. “The Giants
won’t take McCurdy right? Take Blanton with 24 and
McCurdy with 26.” The Giants instead selected a high school pitcher
named Matt Cain, their current 4th starter. McCurdy, like Kiger
a shortstop, will start the season at Class-A Stockton but with Pennington
there, he will find playing time sparse.
In the end, when injuries are discounted, McCurdy is likely to be
considered the biggest bust of all of the A’s Moneyball picks.
The Ugly
Luke Hagerty
 | |
Dead Arm Luke | |
After an impressive first year in pro ball (1.13 ERA in 10
starts), the tall (6’7”) left hander has struggled since missing the 2003
season after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
In 2005 Hagerty pitched in 14 games for Class-A Boise,
logging only 6.2 innings pitched while allowing 14 hits and 26 earned runs for
a staggering 31.50 ERA. Yet as bad as
those numbers are, they aren’t nearly as bad as were his 30 (yes 30) walks and
9 wild pitches.
Hagerty pitched in one game for Florida in spring training after being
selected in the 2005 Rule V draft. He
did not make the cut, though, and was returned to the Cubs. He will have to prove not only that he is
healthy, but that he can once again find the strike zone before he regains the
prospect label. He starts the year once
again with Boise.
The Jeremy Brown Blue
Plate Special
Aside from Nick Swisher, perhaps the player who drew the
most focus in Moneyball was the
former University
of Alabama catcher Jeremy
Brown whom the A’s scouts, in no uncertain terms, called fat.
In 2002, Baseball
America listed its top 25 catchers in the draft. Brown was not among them. The A’s scouts called him “soft” and said
that a body like Brown’s can be “low energy”.
Behind the plate they said, he was “not mobile” and that his throws were
all “slingshot throws” which tend to tail off towards the 1st base side
of second.
To Billy Beane, he was an on-base machine with power
potential and a 1st round pick.
Selected with the 35th overall pick, Brown in his
first pro season was on his way towards making Beane look like a genius. He hit .306 with 10 HR and posted a .450 OBP
in 215 AB. His slugging percentage that
season was .516. The next two years
though at Double-A Midland, his average and OBP dipped (.275/.388 in ’03,
.256/.361 in ’04) while he hit just 11 HR combined in 679 AB. His slugging percentage also dipped to .391
in ’03 and .357 in ’04.
Last season, his third at Midland, he may have resurrected his career
with 20 HR and a .487 slugging percentage though he hit just .261 and saw his
OBP dip another two points to .359. Baseball
America
ranked him this year as the A’s 14th best prospect making him the
most likely of the bunch to become the 8th player on the list to
make it to the Majors.
According to Baseball Prospectus though, one scout they
spoke with admitted that Brown would “likely be taken more seriously if he
hadn’t been written up in Moneyball.”
Brown came to camp with the A’s this year as a member of the
40 man roster, but was unable to unseat the incumbent backup Adam Melhuse. At 26 years old, he will begin this season at
Triple-A Sacramento in what is likely to be a make or break season for the guy
with the “bad body who owns the Alabama
record books.”
Should starter Jason Kendall or Melhuse get hurt, or should
Melhuse struggle, this could be the year of the Blue Plate Special. If he
should struggle and slide further from the show, Beane’s perfect draft will be
looking less and less perfect.
Success
or Failure…or Push?
 | |
Nick Swisher: a rare success | |
Made it –
Adams, Blanton, Francis, Greene, Guthrie, Swisher and
Teahen
Still dreaming – Brown
and Brownlie
The dream is slipping
away–
Baker, Colamarino, Murphy, Stavisky and Stanley
Not likely – Fritz, Hagerty,
Kiger, Larkin, McCurdy and Obenchain
Four seasons gone and thus far 7 of 20 (35%) have made it to
the show. Two more are probable (for at
least a cup of coffee) and 5 others (possibly 6 if Hagerty gets healthy and
regains his control) still harbor a dream, though none of them are still listed
among their team’s top prospects and all are long shots to make it. The rest have virtually no shot.
With the average age of all 20 players already 25 ½ years
old, the very best case scenario at this point is that maybe 12 of the 20 make
it - a success rate of 60%. More likely
though a maximum of 10 (50%) will ever see the inside of a Major League
clubhouse.
But is that mark a success or a failure or just an even
push? One can assign an arbitrary number
like 75% as one to achieve but that is merely a subjective number. How then do we measure the success of this “revolutionary”
way of selecting players? There are
three methods I will use to measure the success of Beane’s “perfect
draft”.
1) Since in Beane’s perfect world these would all be 1st
round picks (and in fact if it were a perfect world and no other teams were
vying for them, it then figures that they would be the first 20 chosen), we can
rank his success rate against that of all 41 first round picks from 2002.
2) Beane’s number one criteria going into the 2002 draft was
to pick college players whom you could more accurately evaluate and project and
who would likely be ready quicker.
Therefore you can measure the success of the players on Beane’s list
against the success rate of the 19 high school players drafted in the first
round.
3) We can also compare the A’s success rate with that of the
other 29 teams in Baseball to see which team drafted more future Major
Leaguers.
The 41 against the
20
There were 41 first round draft choices in 2002. Of those 41 only one, John Mayberry, drafted
28th overall out of high school by Seattle, did not sign and instead
elected to go to college (he was drafted again by Texas in 2005, 19th
overall, and is now with the Indians organization). He can be counted, in terms of the 2002,
draft as a failed pick since the Mariners got nothing for that pick even if he
does eventually reach the big leagues.
So out of those 41, there are 19 (or 46%) who have thus far made
it to the Majors (by comparison, of the A’s 7 first round picks, 3 have reached
the Majors – 43%). In addition, of the
first 20 picks in the draft, 13 have so far made it while 7 others have not yet
(65%) though two (Hamels and Loewen) are likely to (raising the success rate to
75%).
Of those 22 picks that have not yet made it, 5 could be
deemed as likely to reach the show (including Brown) and another 6 could be
still seen as possibilities. That would
leave ten (discounting Mayberry) who would be considered unlikely to ever get
there (including Fritz, Obenchain and McCurdy).
If among the 11 in the likely and possible categories, only
the 5 most likely players make it, the success rate would stand at 58% (24 of
41). If those five plus half of the
other six were to make it, the success rate would then be 65% (27 of 41).
Some might say this is an unfair comparison in that Beane’s
selections were not the first 20, that in fact most were sandwich picks later
in the round and that they could not be expected to do as well as those picks,
however it must remembered that his list is that of the “twenty players they’d draft in a perfect world,” where “twenty-nine other teams were not also
vying to draft the best amateur players in the country.” Therefore, we can assume that in his perfect
world those would be the first 20 picks of the draft and this comparison is
therefore relevant.
Those “Foolish”
High School Picks
He clicks off and
turns to Paul. “He says if Kazmir gets
to him he’ll take him.” Scott Kazmir is
yet another high school pitcher in whom the A’s haven’t the slightest
interest. Billy’s so excited he doesn’t
even bother to say how foolish it is to take a high school pitcher with a
first-round pick.
Nineteen first round picks were “foolishly” used on high
school kids in Beane’s estimation of things.
But just how correct is that thinking?
Were teams really foolish to take high school players in the first
round? Let’s take a closer look at those
high school selections.
Already there
– Matt Cain, Prince Fielder (“too fat even for the A’s”), Jeff Francoeur, Zack
Greinke, Jeremy Hermida, Scott Kazmir, James Loney and B.J. Upton
Likely to get
there – Cole Hamels, Adam Loewen and Greg Miller
Windows still open
– Clinton Everts, Chris Gruler, Sergio Santos and Denard Span
Missed picks
– John Mayberry*, Scott Moore, Micah Schilling and Matthew Whitney (Schilling
and Whitney were both selected by Cleveland)
So that’s 8 out 19 who have already made it (42%) and if
Hamels, Loewen and Miller indeed get there that rate would rise to 58%. If two out of the four for whom the window of
opportunity is closing were to succeed, that rate would then be up to 68% and
in fact these players now have a distinct advantage over Beane’s picks in that
they are an average of 3+ years younger and have higher ceilings. For them, time is on their side.
*Including Mayberry as a success should he reach the Majors
(and if he does, one could argue the Mariners were right for thinking he would)
and putting him in the likely category would raise those numbers to 63% and
73%.
“We take fifty
guys and we celebrate if two of them make it”
“The draft has never
been anything but a f***ing
crapshoot,” Billy had taken to saying, “We take fifty guys and we celebrate if
two of them make it. In what other
business is two for fifty a success? If you did that
in the stock market you’d go broke.”
Two out of fifty is a success rate of 4%. How did Beane’s Athletics stack up against
that 4% figure and by comparison, how did the rest of Baseball stack up against
that arbitrary 4%?
1,484 players were selected in the 2002 amateur draft. No fewer than 64 of those have reached the
majors, a success rate of 4.3%. However,
those figures include four players who did not sign with the teams that drafted
them in 2002 and were instead re-drafted before eventually making it. Those players were:
Houston – Scott Feldman
(redrafted in 2003 by Texas)
Detroit – Anthony Reyes
(redrafted in 2003 by St. Louis)
Cincinnati – Nick Markakis
(redrafted in 2003 by Baltimore)
Oakland – Jonathan Papelbon
(redrafted in 2003 by Boston)
Three
of those players were drafted as college juniors and elected to remain in
school for their senior year. Markakis was
drafted twice previously by the Reds as a pitcher, first out of high school and
then out of Young Harris College, a two-year liberal arts school. He declined
to sign both times, and was then subsequently redrafted in 2003 by Baltimore,
this time as an outfielder, the position at which he reached the Majors this
April. Papelbon, another of those three, was a
throwaway pick by Oakland in the 40th
round who had informed clubs such as Philadelphia
that he would not sign and was going to return for his senior year in college.
If you exclude those four the overall success rate for the
’02 draft drops to 4.0%. So from those
numbers we see that Beane had it just right.
But how well did he and the A’s do against this figure and how did the other
29 teams do in comparison?
The A’s selected 51 players in the 2002 draft. Of those 51, (including Papelbon whom they
knew full well would not sign with them) 4 have thus far made it to the
Majors. That is a success rate of
7.8%. Without Papelbon, that rate drops
to 5.9% (or 3 out of 51), not quite as good but still above the league average
though only 11th best in the Majors and only marginally better than
2 for 50.
But is it the best in the Majors? If Beane’s method is truly revolutionary, it
stands to reason that the A’s should have bested their competition. But that is not quite the case. Four teams (San Francisco
– 8%, Florida – 8.8%, Colorado – 9.8%, Chicago White Sox – 10%)
have better success rates and that rate includes Papelbon. If you exclude Papelbon then all four of
those teams have had more successes thus far (SF – 4 out of 50, Fla – 5 out of
57, Col – 5 out of 51, Chi – 5 out of 50).
However those numbers do not take into account players who
might still make it to the show. The A’s
drafted four players that year that could be considered as still having a
legitimate chance to make it (Brown, Baker, Murphy and Shane Komine who was a 9th
round pick that year). In a best case
scenario where all four were to make it, their percentage would rise to
13.7%. Is that enough to make their
draft the best? Possibly so, but only if
other teams have already maxed out their potential successful picks.
However the White Sox have had 5 players reach the Majors so
far (Royce Ring, Jeremy Reed, Josh Rupe, Brandon McCarthy and this year’s
spring sensation Boone Logan) and selected three others who still have
legitimate a shot at making it (Sean Tracey, Christopher Getz and Daniel
Haigwood who was traded to Philadelphia
in the deal for Jim Thome). If all three
of those players are successful in their bid to ascend to the majors, the White
Sox success rate would rise to 16%.
The following chart reflects the success rate and projected
success rates of all 30 teams from the 2002 draft*.
Ch White
Sox
|
5
|
50
|
4
|
0.100
|
0.180
|
LA
Dodgers
|
2
|
52
|
4
|
0.038
|
0.115
|
Colorado
|
5
|
51
|
0
|
0.098
|
0.098
|
Chicago Cubs
|
2
|
56
|
4
|
0.036
|
0.107
|
Florida
|
5
|
57
|
0
|
0.088
|
0.088
|
Texas
|
1
|
46
|
0
|
0.022
|
0.022
|
San Francisco
|
4
|
50
|
2
|
0.080
|
0.120
|
NY Mets
|
1
|
48
|
0
|
0.021
|
0.021
|
Toronto
|
3
|
40
|
0
|
0.075
|
0.075
|
Tampa Bay
|
1
|
50
|
0
|
0.020
|
0.020
|
Milwaukee
|
3
|
42
|
0
|
0.071
|
0.071
|
Minnesota
|
1
|
50
|
4
|
0.020
|
0.100
|
Pittsburgh
|
3
|
43
|
0
|
0.070
|
0.070
|
LA Angels
|
1
|
50
|
1
|
0.020
|
0.040
|
Baltimore
|
3
|
49
|
3
|
0.061
|
0.122
|
Cleveland
|
1
|
54
|
0
|
0.019
|
0.019
|
Kansas City
|
3
|
50
|
0
|
0.060
|
0.060
|
Cincinnati
|
1
|
57
|
3
|
0.018
|
0.070
|
Arizona
|
3
|
50
|
1
|
0.060
|
0.080
|
Boston
|
0
|
49
|
0
|
0.000
|
0.000
|
Oakland
|
3
|
51
|
4
|
0.059
|
0.137
|
NY
Yankees
|
0
|
48
|
0
|
0.000
|
0.000
|
Atlanta
|
3
|
52
|
2
|
0.058
|
0.096
|
Philadelphia
|
0
|
48
|
1
|
0.000
|
0.021
|
Detroit
|
2
|
45
|
2
|
0.044
|
0.089
|
Houston
|
0
|
48
|
2
|
0.000
|
0.042
|
Expos
|
2
|
50
|
0
|
0.040
|
0.040
|
St. Louis
|
0
|
48
|
1
|
0.000
|
0.021
|
San Diego
|
2
|
50
|
3
|
0.040
|
0.100
|
Seattle
|
0
|
50
|
3
|
0.000
|
0.060
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
60
|
1484
|
44
|
0.040
|
0.070
|
* Does not include draftees (like Papelbon) who did not
sign.
A) Number
of successful picks so far
B) Total
number of draft choices
C) Estimated
number of picks who could potentially still reach the Majors
D) Success
rate
E) Potential
success rate
Now it must be pointed out that this is not a perfect world,
as Beane and the A’s simply did not have the same
kind of money available to them that other teams had. Thus, they were unable to
match up with other teams with regards to money and being able to afford whomever
they wanted. Therefore one could argue
that this type of comparison is unfair and that they should have been grateful
to have done so well.
Yet Oakland’s first 13 selections that year were all players
on Beane’s preferred list (Colamarino being the last of those choices, taken in
the 7th round with the 218th overall pick) meaning that
they were successful in drafting almost exactly who they wanted to up to that
point. And since he considered those
picks to be the 20 best in the country, the 13 players they did take in that
regard could be looked at as first-round picks (as they were in Beane’s estimation). Therefore one could reasonably expect (if the
A’s evaluation was correct) the success rate of those players to be better than
those of players taken after the first-round.
Meanwhile, 3/4ths* of the players that were
selected before Colamarino have so far reached the big leagues, which means
that anyone chosen after him that succeeded in making it was defying the odds to
begin with. What that means is that no
team, the A’s included, could reasonably expect picks taken after that point to
pan out and therefore, the A’s lack of money should not be used as an excuse
for why other teams did better.
Granted this world is not a perfect world, and with money
and other teams being involved, Beane was not able to draft every player he
coveted. So to a small extent, I will
admit that this comparison is not completely accurate and that Beane and the
A’s should be given credit for doing as well as they did on a limited budget. However, it can also likely be assumed that money
or not, every team had players on their wish lists that they did not get, in which
case the A’s possibly did better than the other teams; their first 13 picks
were all on their wish list.
The Inevitable
Conclusion
So what conclusion can we draw from this analysis? We have compared the rate of success of the
players on Beane’s list against that of all 41 first-round picks from 2002 and
found that so far at least, Beane’s choices are lagging behind. Further analysis tells us that they are not
likely to surpass that rate either even with the most generous projection.
We have also compared Beane’s picks against the top high school
picks from the first round and found that again, Beane’s choices do not compare
favorably and with the A’s draft picks an average of 3 ½ years older than the
high school draftees they are not likely to catch up either.
And finally, we compared the entire Athletics 2002 draft
against those of the other 29 Major League teams and found that while overall
it is better than the 4% success rate that Beane correctly predicted, it is not
the top rate in the league. Nor when all
is said and done and the book on the ’02 draft is finally closed, can we expect
it to be.
So was this new “scientific method” truly innovative and revolutionary,
or does it fail to live up to the hype?
Taken alone, without the buildup of Moneyball, the A’s 2002 draft was successful. Their success rate was above the league
average. But was it revolutionary? The inescapable answer to that is no.
I need to stress, though, that in no way whatsoever am I suggesting that Billy Beane is not a good general
manager. In fact I consider him among
the very best in the game, and the A’s record during his tenure (799-660)
proves it. But good does not represent anything
revolutionary.
Billy Beane may have gone about things in a different manner
and ended up with above average results, but at the same time he too has had
his share of failures and setbacks. In no
category that we looked at did the A’s achieve the best results and in that
regard, I must conclude that the hype was just that, hype.
Beane’s top 20