Monkeyball

Here’s an interesting featureby Howard Bryant, on Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane and the backlash against Moneyball. After all of Billy’s success winning the AL West, a few down years have brought naysayers out of the woodwork, people who insist that baseball needs few educated eggheads and more hungover “baseball men.”

“I like the whole bleeding pitch counts [thing], I think it’s effective, but at some point somebody’s gotta get a freakin’ hit!”
“Gotta swing the bat.”
“Gotta hit one in the outfield, Johnny.”
“That’s right.”
“Gotta hit one off the fence or over the wall.”
“That’s JD Drew’s problem. He takes a lot of pitches too, and he takes a lot of ’em for strikes. And then it’s 0-2. And then he, and a lot of times he takes a third one.”
.238/.358/.440/.798
76/33t/51t/50
54 runs, 32t
53 walks, 11t

Ted Williams, in his “Hitting whatever” book, said that he watched the first pitch go by 19 times out of 20. He’d swing at the first pitch only if it was a huge, juicy watermelon fastball, or occasionally just to keep the pitcher on his toes. It didn’t take the American League very long to notice this, and any pitcher who’s given better than 95% odds that a fastball down the middle is going to put you up 0-1 on Ted Williams is going to take them. And yet his lifetime batting average was .344, and his lifetime OBP was an unbelievable .482