David Wadler’s Assorted Thoughts

If there has been anything as controversial as the issue of steroids in baseball, it’s been the reception of Michael Lewis’s book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. It seems that many pundits and self-appointed experts continue to insist that Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane wrote the book. Joe Morgan, the veritable bane of the baseball analysis component of my existence had this to say in an ESPN.com chat:

“I read an excerpt in the NY Times. It’s typical if you write a book, you want to be the hero. That is apparently what Beane has done. According to what I read in the Times, Beane is smarter than anyone else.”

I’m apparently not the only one who noticed this frequent misattribution relating to Moneyball. It’s both frustrating and confounding that so many — writers included — can make such an obvious mistake. Beane’s name doesn’t even appear on the book jacket.

Of greater annoyance to me is what seems like a fundamental inability to understand the principles in Moneyball. Although the book focuses on baseball, the bigger issue of finding and eliminated systemic inefficiencies to establish a competitive advantage is something that could be applied to businesses, governments, school systems, etc. Essentially, systems become self-reinforcing and once accepted as the gospel, escape scrutiny. In baseball, this means players who hit .300 with on-base percentages of .330 will almost invariable be better paid than a player with comparable power numbers, an average of .275 and an on-base percentage of .400. Practically every statistical regression shows that on-base percentage is far more important than batting average in generating runs, but the institutional powers in baseball continue to reward the player with the flashy average.

Michael Lewis spends a good portion of the book focusing on how Billy Beane and the A’s front office exploit the difference in perceived value and real value of baseball players. Is this earth shattering? In baseball, it seems so, but in any free market, if all things are equal, those who make the best use of information will end up on top. As human beings, we are prone to viewing the world in a biased fashion. In particular, we tend to see and remember outcomes that support our preconceived notions. What the “Moneyball crowd” and sabrematicians have done is toss aside conventional wisdom and begin analyzing anew. Billy Beane has a big personality and it comes across in the book. There is no arguing that some people have been turned off by this, but the question is this: Does disliking Billy Beane render invalid his methods? I don’t think so.

Bob McCullough recently wrote a piece on the baseball steroid scandal for NBCSports.com. He writes, “If steroids have played as large a role as many believe in the home run binge during the last decade, a strict testing program could spell the death of Moneyball, the offensive success formula used by the likes of Billy Beane, Theo Epstein and a host of other young GMs. Here’s why: In addition to drafting college players with a track record of success, one of the key tenets of Moneyball is accumulating players with a high on-base percentage who can supply a modicum of power (i.e., 20 HR or more a year), whether or not they can also add speed or hit for average.”

Even writers outside of the baseball establishment don’t always get it. (Don’t get me started on Tracy Ringolsby.) The fundamental argument in Moneyball is not that high OBP players with some power are the best. In fact, it’s not a baseball issue at all, but rather an economic one. Market inefficiencies can be exploited to better one’s situations. That is the crux of Moneyball.

Were homeruns to drop by even 20%, would that change the rules of player evaluation? Not too dramatically. But the beauty of what Beane does (and likely what DePodesta, Epstein, and Ricciardi do) is that it’s not written in stone. The value of the system employed by this “new breed” of GM is the constant evaluation and reevaluation. Based on the information I have, I’m not inclined to believe that Billy Beane thinks he’s figured it all out. As baseball wises up around him, he’ll have to find new and interesting ways to gather and apply information to keep his team competitive.

Back to the McCullough article. The most important thing a hitter can do is get on base. This benefits the batting team in two ways. One, the batter moves closer to scoring. Two, the batter has saved a team an out. Since in a nine-inning game, a team has just 27 outs, therefore making them a precious commodity. McCullough goes on to talk about Seattle’s being a “little ball” club and the possibility that with drug testing, “bunting could come back into fashion.” Let’s look at Seattle’s recent run of excellence:

Year	Wins	 OBP	    SLG		RUNS
2000	91	.361 (2)   .442 (8)	907 (4)
2001	116	.360 (1)   .445 (4)	927 (1)
2002	93	.350 (2)   .419 (9)	814 (6)
2003	93	.344 (4)   .410 (10)	795 (7)

The Mariners have not been a slugging team, ranking generally near the middle of the pack. But they have done fairly well scoring runs and this is largely attributable to their consistently strong on-base percentage. Even if homeruns decline, players who are selective at the plate will get hits and draw walks. Base hits and bases-on-balls will result in scoring runs and that will hold true whether there is a league-wide homerun drought or not.

As for the possibility that bunting may return to prominence, it just might. But that wouldn’t make it a smart strategy, which is what McCullough implies. Pete Palmer and John Thorn demonstrated in The Hidden Game of Baseball that swapping an out in order to advance a base is a net negative. There are certain situations where sacrifice bunts may make sense, but in general the established probabilities demonstrate that it’s better to let guys go up to the plate hacking. A return to the glory days of “giving yourself up for the team” would mean that managers value conventional wisdom over mathematical analysis. And I would suggest that they go pick up a copy of Moneyball — it’s coming out in paperback next month.

INDIGESTION
I’ve seen some funny pictures online, but these pictures of 400+ pound competitive eater Eric “Badlands” Booker at the Second Annual Hebrew Institute of Riverdale Hamentashen Eating Contest were hysterical.

DREAM JOB
Making fun of the contestants from ESPN’s “Dream Job” is like shooting ducks in a barrel. Or are they sitting fish? Whatever your mixed metaphor, it�s easy to mock their stumbles and quirks. Dan Shanoff writes a weekly recap column about the show. He has spent the last few weeks apotheosizing Al Jaffe, a network vice president who oversees ESPN�s on-air hiring. On last night’s episode, Jaffe seemed particularly fixated on the contestants’ mispronunciation of several words, including Xavier on two occasions. He later said, “Mispronunciations are unacceptable. We would never hire someone who made the mispronunciations we heard tonight.” This was noteworthy (AND ironic) because the first couple of times he corrected a contestant, Jaffe actually mispronounced mispronunciation. (He said something that sounded like mis-pro-noun-see-ee-aye-shun.)

I also thought it amusing the Tony Kornheiser, a writer for The Washington Post and a real stickler for accuracy talked about people’s “get[ting] hung” for mistakes. The sportswriter cum television personality should have learned in class — he was an English major in college — that while clothing is hung, people are hanged.

Lastly, ESPN.com remains the best sports web site by leaps and bounds, but I am often surprised by a marked lack of editing. In the aforementioned Shanoff column, the word “necessarly” crept into a sentence. That’s no word at all, but rather a misspelling of necessarily. No, it’s not the end of the world, but an organization with ESPN’s resources should be able to pony up for a spellchecker.

BASEBALL NOTES
Baseball has an effect on me that none of the other major sports do. I find football more entertaining, think hockey games are a treat to see in person, and follow the NBA closely. But baseball’s mix of nostalgia and numbers, combined with its status as a harbinger of spring moves me in a way that the NFL, NBA, and NHL don’t…and can’t. I’ve liked baseball long enough to have seen the players transform from long-and-lean (think Keith Hernandez) and (ahem) “stocky” (think Greg Luzinski) into the muscle-bound athletes they are today. I would never argue against baseball�s position as a sporting contest, but I am sometimes reminded that most ballplayers aren�t the physical specimens that their counterparts in other sports are.

In Peter Gammons’s article today, Jose Guillen spoke frankly about having to play some games in centerfield. “I can play there, but I never realized how much running you do. Sometimes if I have to run a long way for a ball for the final out and I lead off the next inning, I’m a little tired. But I can handle it.” ‘Nuff said.

Another interesting thing about the Gammons column was his comment on THG. (I think Peter Gammons is a fantastic baseball guy, but no one is above reproach.) He claims not to understand the outrage over the use of THG, citing the fact that it wasn’t deemed illegal until after the 2003 World Series. If you want to check out my thoughts on baseball’s drug policy, click here or here. For the sake of brevity, I’m not going to rehash what I’ve already said, but rather hone in on a point. Players were advised that they shouldn’t be taking steroids after the last collective bargaining agreement in 2002. Was THG on the list? No. Why not? It�s quite likely that THG didn’t exist when the drug policy was drafted. For that matter, any new designer steroids will not be on a list until after they are discovered. That was the point of THG — to elude detection while providing a boost in strength and recovery time. The spirit of the rule dictates that THG and its ilk are out-of-bounds. No agency can proactively ban all steroids by name because to my knowledge, there are no psychics who can predict which molecules will be manipulated. Therefore, all known anabolic steroids and unknown variations thereof must be banned.

NEYER
Rob Neyer makes a bunch of assertions about Eric Chavez today that range from specious to bizarre. Chavez is a good hitter whom Neyer thinks is a consensus “great hitter.” The problem is that the same writer would argue that Garret Anderson is overrated — certainly from a sabermetric standpoint. As I see it, Chavez’s big advantages over Anderson relate to his age (Neyer appropriately does cite age) and his defensive position. Not only is it harder to find a run-producing third baseman than it is an outfielder, an elite defensive third baseman is much more valuable than a good defensive outfielder. Neyer seems to make a habit of discarding information that doesn’t jive with his preconceived notions. I strongly doubt that he would classify Garret Anderson as a great of “near great” hitter.

One other peeve regarding the article in question. (I have many more peeves, but my fingers are tiring.) Neyer writes, “Let’s run a short thought experiment … Suppose you had an outfielder who hit a home run every time he faced a right-handed pitcher (intentional walks notwithstanding), but batted just .100 against left-handers. Wouldn’t you still be thrilled to have that player, and pay him top dollar?”

Huh? How is this an experiment? I don’t necessarily need a control group for his example, but this is just ridiculous. Neyer asserts (by way of question) that Chavez’s struggles with left-handers don’t substantially diminish his value or his perceived value according to his overall numbers. I would agree with that. But the “experiment” is both strange and terribly unconvincing. The simple argument is this: Chavez murders right-handed pitching. Most pitchers are righties. Chavez will perform at a very high level against most pitchers. Q.E.D.

(If you’re interested, take a look at statistical comparison tool that my friend whipped up recently: http://www.intap.net/cgi-bin/drw/bball-test.pl.

THOSE GOSSIP PAGES
Lloyd Grove wrote about how students “brown-nosed” when dealing with fellow student John F. Kennedy Jr. at Brown University in the 1980s. These comments were related by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during a “48 Hours Investigates” interview with Leslie Stahl. That may or may not be true, but Grove’s claim that Amanpour attended school with Kennedy is certainly not. Amanpour went to the University of Rhode Island, where she graduated summa cum laude. Take a look at her bio. George Rush, a gossip columnist and Brown graduate at the same paper, is likely readying is evil eye for his colleague. I suppose fact-checking belies the whole business of reporting gossip, eh?

(Much of what you see here was taken from an excellent article in The Washington Post.)

Then: roughly one year ago.
Now: the present day — 1 year after the invasion of Iraq.

Then: The Iraqis will welcome us with open arms.
Now: Many, and probably most, Iraqis are happy to be rid of Saddam Hussein. Despite this, the American presence does not appear to be regarded with any fondness.

Then: Andrew S. Natsios, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said, “The American part of this will be $1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.”
Now: Oops. In this year alone, reconstruction costs looks to be close to $75 billion — an error of 97.8%.

Then: Paul Wolfowitz said that Iraq “can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
Now: The administration is looking for an allocation of $150 billion for Iraqi reconstruction.

The news isn’t all bad. The Iraqi economy is picking up and the people are enjoying greater freedom. However, with all of the talk about the specious justifications for war pushed by the Bush administration, it’s particularly interesting to see that much of what was projected has not come to fruition.

It surprised me to see Ken Pollack’s criticism of the administration, though I agree with him. I saw Pollack speak last year at The Yale Club about his book, The Threatening Storm. While he never allied himself with the Bush camp (he actually specifically stated the he did not speak for the administration), he seemed to have drawn many of the same conclusions about WMD and the need to remove Saddam from power. Punditry is an interesting racket, ain’t it?

Kudos to President Ruth Simmons. Simmons, who has the top post at my alma mater, Brown University, has cast a skeptical eye on the pre-orientation Third World Transition Program (TWTP). For those of you who aren’t in the know, “Third world” is Brown’s word for minority. When I was a student there in the politically-correct charged atmosphere of the 90s, I was told that minority was a loaded world. Third world didn’t have the political baggage that minority does…. Huh?

When I found out about the choice in terminology, I was stunned. More shocking still was the explanation. For me, minority conjures up a Benetton advertisement. Third world, on the other hand, makes me think of shantytowns and of people with dentition issues. I thought it offensive to call U.S. citizens — many of whose families have been in this country longer than mine — third world. Not just offensive, but confusing.

In any case, I’m thrilled to hear that Brown is investigating the mission and legality of TWTP. Although it�s clear that racism is still an issue, I’m not inclined to believe that omitting whites and finger-pointing in their absence is a step in the right direction. This purported bastion of Ivy League liberalism has systematically — and thoughtlessly — thwarted the open-minded spirit of the students. I hope that the university, which was mostly great to me, enters an age of cultural pluralism where dialogue is encouraged and facilitated.