The True Raiders Of The OBA Ark

[Crash Course]

In his recent SI piece, Moneyball author Michael Lewis gets a little defensive towards those who question him on Billy Beane's focus on batters with a good OBA. According to Lewis, in the piece, many in the SABR-like ranks have claimed that they tracked OBA years before Beane, etc.

To this, Lewis offers the defense that he never claimed that Beane invented the OBA stat - more so, his point was that Beane was the 1st to realize that it was a huge part of winning teams and that you could get OBA cheap - - therefore, that was the reason why Beane focused on having players with a good OBA.

This is a bill of goods, IMHO. The statistics clearly show that the Red Sox of the 1980's (or more precisely, the 1981-89 Sox) and the Yankees of the 1990's (or more precisely, the 1994-99 Yanks) were offenses that were built around getting on base. Check the OBA totals of those teams versus the averages for the league. They are among the all-time high marks (post 1900).

Beane may not have been aware of the Sox of the 1980's. (He was beating the bushes back in those days.) But, Beane clearly had a ring side seat to what the Yankees were doing in the 1990's offensively, and, he just copied off their model. Oh, yes, and, he had a book written about him where he came off like he was the one to discover the lost ark of OBA.

Should not Buck Showalter, Gene Michael, Bob Watson and Joe Torre be the ones to wear the OBA crown?

[Crash Course]

Add on: The Indians from 1996 to 2000 were on to the OBA game as well, before Beane.

[cubfan33]

Were those teams by design?

The lesson of Moneyball wasn't OBP is king - it's that there are advantages to be had. Arbitrage opportunities, if you will. The A's of last year were clearly NOT built on OBP, but DePo's measures on defense (which were wrong.)

If you're getting "OBP is life" from Moneyball, you're not reading it right.

If you want to give the "OBP Crown" to someone, I'd suggest Allan Roth. Again, mentioned in the book.

[Skip]

From http://www.netshrine.com/vbulletin2/...ad.php?t=14050 ...

Originally Posted by Crash Course

Cashman, ah, yes, the old, make this a Yankees thing trick.........

[SmedIndy]

OBP is life, and the A's never claimed to invent it. I always recognized the Yanks had superior OBP skills when they started their run, applauded them for it, and realized that they sure as shootin' better have if they were spending all that money.

And the key, again is to do it cheaply, which you fail to even recognize as the whole point of the book!

Cheap! Maximize your available cash.

You should applaud the A's for setting up the new paradigm and not turning into Pittsburgh or Milwaukee or waiting for the lightning to strike in a weak division like Kansas City. That, I don't get.

[Crash Course]

Originally Posted by cubfan33

Were those teams by design?

I'm sure Billy Beane would say that the Red Sox and Yankees built teams with high OBA just out of luck.

[Crash Course]

Originally Posted by Skip

From http://www.netshrine.com/vbulletin2/...ad.php?t=14050 ...

Little unfair Skip. It's not my fault that the stats ID the Yankees. If they had listed the Atlanta Braves of the 1990's, I would have said that John S. and Booby Cox deserve the credit. What do you want me to do, ignore the stats just because it points to the Yankees?

[Crash Course]

Originally Posted by SmedIndy

And the key, again is to do it cheaply, which you fail to even recognize as the whole point of the book!

Cheap! Maximize your available cash.

You should applaud the A's for setting up the new paradigm and not turning into Pittsburgh or Milwaukee or waiting for the lightning to strike in a weak division like Kansas City. That, I don't get.

Oh, yeah, those contracts to Jermaine Dye and Terrance Long sure were cheap and a way to maximize your cash. Great job Billy.

[Skip]

Originally Posted by Crash Course

Little unfair Skip. It's not my fault that the stats ID the Yankees. If they had listed the Atlanta Braves of the 1990's, I would have said that John S. and Booby Cox deserve the credit. What do you want me to do, ignore the stats just because it points to the Yankees?

Perhaps Crash, perhaps, but it seems that the argument goes both ways. When others use a Yankee related argument to rebut your statements (maybe just because it includes people or issues that you have better knowledge of or can better relate to) you seem to pull out the old 'it's just Yankee-bashing' response awfully quickly.

[SmedIndy]

Until you show that you don't have an axe to grind against this - it's fruitless to even discuss this with you.

Long was a mistake - Dye got injured and never came back. But he fixed the Long problem already - and tell me a couple years ago didn't everyone want Dye.

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by Crash Course

I'm sure Billy Beane would say that the Red Sox and Yankees built teams with high OBA just out of luck.

Can you either--

1) wait until Beane actually says that or
2) document some comments that would lead us to believe that such a comment would be in line with Beane's belief

Until that happens, which I don't expect, you're putting words that don't belong into Beane's mouth.

[gyb13]

Originally Posted by Crash Course

The statistics clearly show that the Red Sox of the 1980's (or more precisely, the 1981-89 Sox) and the Yankees of the 1990's (or more precisely, the 1994-99 Yanks) were offenses that were built around getting on base. Check the OBA totals of those teams versus the averages for the league. They are among the all-time high marks (post 1900).

there are two different things here - there is the philosophy around which one builds a team and the actual results that they achieve on the field.

your argument is results-driven -> "because Bos/Ny had great OBP teams, their philosophy was getting on base." This isn't necessarily the case.

Conversely, a team may want to focus primarily on OBP (or on a bullpen by committee), but not have the horses to do so.

...and earl weaver has to be a part of this discussion too...

[nyy26wc]

Originally Posted by gyb13

there are two different things here - there is the philosophy around which one builds a team and the actual results that they achieve on the field.

your argument is results-driven -> "because Bos/Ny had great OBP teams, their philosophy was getting on base." This isn't necessarily the case.

Conversely, a team may want to focus primarily on OBP (or on a bullpen by committee), but not have the horses to do so.

Gene Michael has made repeated comments over the years about the Yankees emphasizing getting on base. So, while I agree with you that results and philosophy may not always be the same thing, the Yankees aren't an example of that.

[SmedIndy]

The 1890's Orioles were all about getting on base as well.

[Rajah]

Also, the A's focus on OBA was set by Sandy Alderson during the 1980's. Their system stressed oba at every level. The problem was, as Billy saw it (and the book in question documents), that they were often obtaining young players without plate discipline skills and trying to force such skills upon them. This lead to an atmosphere that caused guys to purposely not swing in order to attempt to draw walks so they could advance. They really weren't learning pitch recognition. When they weren't being watched, they would revert to a hacker mentality. Also, Billy realized its not always walks, just that thats the easiest way to measure it. Its plate discipline and OBA. It wasn't a new thing, he just identified something Alderson had missed. Therefore, they decided that plate discipline could not be taught (by and large) at a late age (can't teach an old dog new tricks), but rather it was learned at a young age. They identified that College players had a more reliable track record. They knew this track record could be exploited by increasing the focus on college players. They also realized that money could be saved by focusing on college players. High schoolers have options. They can go to college. College players rarely have options unless they can play football too. Therefore, collge players are cheaper. Its also saves money when you aren't employing scouts to beat the bushes of every high school in the country.
This is also where a logical flaw is introduced by those who have argued against moneyball (BA in particular). BA ran some numbers on which players make the majors and have an impact a while back. They found that High School position players have produced the highest rate of impact players, but College and High School players turned into ML'ers at a similar rate overall (college pitchers were, not surprisingly, more reliable than HS'ers. This is the conventional wisdom and is rarely questioned to my knowledge). The problem is that the A's are trying to identify college players by which ones have statistical indicators showing future success. They aren't randomly drafting colllege guys. We won't know the results of the Experiment for a while still (BA's A's writer himself says that the A's system is weird-great performances, but scouts don't like the guys. Thus, that writer says that its hard to draw a conclusion about the guys in the system). Oops, sorry-tangent there--They believe they can save money and get good players by identifying the right players based on their performances.

They Yankees are certainly a good on base average team. A team that is successful hitting has a high on base percentage. Alderson identified this in the 80's. Weaver understood this in the 60's and 70's. Rickey understood this even earlier. and in the 1800's, they understood this on some level. The Yankees though, were built with a general philosophy of good players. Good players usually have high on base averages. Once in a while you get a freak like Soriano, but most have good OBA's. If they Yankees were designed around on base average though, would Soriano have led off? I think Jeter would have, and Soriano would have been further down in the order. A guy like Earl Weaver would have probably batted him around 6th, to maximize his RBI opportunities. Overall, I'm sure that the Yankees realized high on base percentage is good. Unless you have a freak, guys with poor on base averages would have been run out of town and replaced with a better player.

Finally, the A's have always preferred college players. Connie Mack always like well educated young men.

As was mentioned earlier, the A's are really about finding players who are undervalued in order to win at a cheaper rate. OBA is becoming more expensive. Thus the A's have shifted focus to undervalued defensive guys. Mark Kotsay and Bobby Kielty are better than what the A's had last year in the outfield. Jermaine Dye was a good sign, but he got hurt. Terrance Long had a career year in 2000, at the age of 24. He hit .288/18/80 as a rookie (o RCAA). His peripherals were pretty decent. The A's couldn't have predicted a free fall from there. The mantra of signing them long term at a young age was followed. That way they could avoid arbitration. That turned out to be an error. Thats the risk you take with signing young players in order to avoid arbitration.

And they are trying to improve on base averages. I think that Scott Hatteberg will end up on the bench this year with Ruby at First and Graham Koonce at DH. Kotsay, when healthy, is over .350. Bobby Crosby's minor league OBA is near .400. Kielty's career OBA is about .360.
Damian Miller will hurt them, as will Ellis, but both are good glove men, and Damian has a tremendous reputation for working with young pitchers. Seeing as how I think Zito will be traded this yearif his K rate doesn't improve, he'll have the opportunity to work with Rich Harden and Joe Blanton(also assuming Blanton doesn't suddenly blow up) this year.