MONEYBALM
When Newt Gingrich and John Kerry co-author an article, when Billy Beane is involved, when acronyms like VORP and WHIP make it into the New York Times . . . well, then, I feel I should provide a link: "How to Take American Health Care From Worst to First." [See also here.] Health care and baseball both require some human element; but that human element can benefit greatly from statistical analysis that is readily available. Strange that we are willing to apply it more to produce a World Series winner than to save millions of lives and trillions of dollars.
When Newt Gingrich and John Kerry co-author an article, when Billy Beane is involved, when acronyms like VORP and WHIP make it into the New York Times . . . well, then, I feel I should provide a link: "How to Take American Health Care From Worst to First." [See also here.] Health care and baseball both require some human element; but that human element can benefit greatly from statistical analysis that is readily available. Strange that we are willing to apply it more to produce a World Series winner than to save millions of lives and trillions of dollars.
Comments
The baseball analogy in the article set me off. See my response here.
OK, all kidding aside, you are somewhat correct when it comes to your assessment of sabermetrics, although Beane et al would also probably agree that it has its limits:
* Playoffs are too short a sample size, so throw sabermetrics out the window in a 5- or 7-game series.
* Money still matters, whether it means hiring more scouts or buying the best talent.
* Individual stats don't factor in that ever elusive intangible called "chemistry," whether that means teammates getting along, managers getting the most out of their players, or Jamie Moyer offering invaluable mentoring services to Cole Hamels.
However, the core of the Billy Beane approach is still sound - the use of data to determine which skills are undervalued relative to the market, and then to coolly buy low and sell high while others buy high and sell low:
* The ability to draw a walk used to be undervalued, so Beane loaded up on hitters with good eyes. (He almost got a minor leaguer named Kevin Youkilis for free because, when no one wanted him, Beane coveted his ability to draw walks.) Once the market caught up to that fact, stats told him defensive efficiency was where it was at, and he's drafted accordingly.
* Beane will never draft high-potential athletic-looking high school pitchers, who almost never pan out but are universally lusted after (goodbye, Todd Van Poppel!); he will always draft high-performance non-athletic-looking college pitchers, who often pan out but are often panned because scouts fear they have accumulated too much mileage (hello, Joe Blanton!).
* Closers are always overvalued, so Beane installs a no-name pitcher, knowing that anybody can earn 30+ saves if given the chance, and then trades him after he's had success. (See Koch, Billy; and Foulke, Keith.)
I grant you that missing the playoffs four out of the last five years is not a good track record. But an average of 90 wins a season over a decade is nothing to sneeze at. And, says this lifetime A's fan, there's always next year!