Comments on FIRE JOE MORGAN: Hey, Murray Chass Wrote Something! And I'm Feelin...

The funniest thing to me about this kind of "Money...

2006-02-08T19:17:00.000-05:00

The funniest thing to me about this kind of "Moneyball" criticism (I've been up for a while now, and am more clear-headed) is that, as we all know, "Moneyball" basically means: "finding untapped value and inefficiency in a competitive market and using it to your advantage." Thus, saying "'Moneyball' no longer pays off" is tantamount to saying "intelligence no longer pays off," or "it's no longer good to be good at something," or "buy stocks high and sell them low," or "you should throw more cash into that sewer" or "you should buy stamps and not use them" or "sure, I'll melt some gold bars and pour them into the ocean" or "I would like to invest in Murray Chass's future as a sportswriter."

One thing about that article,compositionally, is t...

2006-02-08T13:38:00.000-05:00

One thing about that article,compositionally, is that it ends so abruptly that I literally had to reload the site two times just to make sure I was logged into NYT.com correctly and was being allowed to see the whole thing. Maybe there was some copyediting going on, but at this point, I assume Murray Chass just fell asleep in his rocking chair, afghan pulled up to his chin, with a slowly-warming unfinished can of Ensure by his side.

When you go back in time to Kill Michael Lewis's p...

2006-02-08T11:03:00.000-05:00

When you go back in time to Kill Michael Lewis's parents so he can't write "Moneyball," you should totaly kill Hitler, too! Then, if we espouse unpopular theories about how baseball works and people are screaming at us, we can go, "Hey man -- take it easy -- we're the ones who killed Hitler." And you know what they'll say? This is going to blow your mind. They'll say...

"Who is Hitler?"

What is my point? Unclear. I just woke up and I'm a little groggy.

It's no longer suprising to me that sportswriters ...

2006-02-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

It's no longer suprising to me that sportswriters like Murray Chass still fundamentally misunderstand "Moneyball" as "OBP-ball." To suggest that Billy Beane feels that OBP is the best metric for measuring ballplayers is wrong, and the Paper of Record should do its research. Beane thought, back in 2001, that OBP was the most undervalued stat. Then he shaded toward defense. Now, he seems to believe its a stockpile of young arms and Frank Thomas. The point is that basbeall can be viewed as a market, and no market stays static for 5 years. Why can't baseball writers understand this point? Because they still like to say that Tony Perez is a Hall of Famer because he smiled and collected 1600 RBI over like 25 seasons, that's why.

I feel that if Michael Lewis had titled his book "Basemarkets," or "Cheap Player-Ball," or "Art Howe Sucks" all of this confusion would be cleared up.