...comes the uplifting story of a tough as nails general manager who overcame the hardship of having the greatest baseball player to ever live on his squad, and went on to lead his franchise to three consecutive seasons of between 70 and 77 wins.
SABEANCatch it now in ballparks across America. Currently starring Brian Bocock, Jose Castillo and Jack Taschner.
Lowell Cohn, the man who thinks David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez suck balls, believes Brian Sabean is a great GM -- better than Billy Beane. Incredible, I know. But we have
evidence. He wrote it down himself and put it on the Internet, which I like to call "the world's refrigerator post-it note":
Sabean makes GM moves; Beane runs a clearinghouse
My kid and I write a blog together. I know. Boy, do I ever know. But this is your PRO-fessional stuff. I'm sure it's top-notch, not like those riff-raffy blogs out there.
In our latest offering, we argued who's a better general manager, Brian Sabean or Billy Beane, and I chose Sabean, although Beane is very good. Wow. Wow. Je-whoa. Ber-splurgh.
There you have it.
BEANE = VERY GOOD
and
SABEAN > BEANE
so by the transitive property of general manager excellentitude,
SABEAN = SCRUMTRILESCENTABULOUS!
I'm lucky no one caught up with me in person, because I would have been stoned to death for proposing such an unpopular ---- and wrong. Don't forget wrong --
opinion....Sabean got the Giants to the World Series in 2002, and Beane never got the A's to the World Series, and never will. Never is an exceedingly long time, Mr. Cohn. It's longer than forever. I think it goes never > forever > Lowell Cohn's age > eon > era > epoch. MATHEMATICAL INEQUALITY ZING!
In Billy Beane's first two years as GM, the A's finished last in their division. In the following eight years, the team finished 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd, and 1st. In the last two years, we've seen the Rockies go to the World Series and the mother-f-ing Cardinals win the damn thing. You're going to say with 100% confidence that the A's will never even get there with Beane at the helm?
I don't think Beane even cares about the Series. [
British accent] Yes. Yes, I do think you're right. He's a rather detached chap, isn't he? Hasn't the foggiest inclination toward winning 'tall. Hates to win. Likes to be buggered.
We're talking about Tony Blair, right? [
end British accent]
He wants to do pretty well, wants to keep up appearances, wants to claim he's a poor small-market GM and, gee, not arriving at the ultimate destination -- the Series -- isn't his fault even though he's brilliant. So please don't blame him or expect too much of him. He has a built-in excuse.I have to say, accusing Beane of actually
wanting to lose in the playoffs is a new one for me. Lowell Cohn is claiming such an intimate knowledge of Billy Beane's psyche here it's just retar-diculous. And fun. It's a lot of fun. Thanks, Lowell.
And hey, you know if the A's got to the World Series and lost, people would pillory Beane for "building a team just good enough to lose in the big moments." Can't wait for that one.
Now hold on. This is where it gets good.
Sabean made the daring, unpopular trade of Matt Williams for Jeff Kent, which set up the Giants for years. Beane never makes trades like that. Except for --
One reader pointed to Beane's Mark Mulder for Dan Haren, Daric Barton and Kiko Calero trade as proof Beane can deal like Sabean.A fantastic trade. As the Germans say, wunderbar. As the Chinese-high-school-students-taking-German say, wunderbar.
Please. Haren already is gone. For six -- six! -- minor leaguers! So for one Mark Mulder (who, since the trade, has posted one good season, one terrible half-season, and one even terribler twentieth-of-a-season), Billy Beane ultimately received
eight minor leaguers and three solid-to-outstanding years from Dan Haren.
You're right. Sabean's better.
All Beane's good young guys already are gone -- Tim Hudson, Nick Swisher, Miguel Tejada. I could go on.I bet he wanted to keep some or all of these guys, but there's that small payroll thing -- the thing that you apparently think is some sort of Billy Beane hallucination that makes him enjoy losing in the playoffs.
The A's aren't a baseball team. They're a baseball clearing house. In and out. In and out.SEX JOKE SEX JOKE SEX JOKE
As far as Daric Barton goes, well, in the first place, who the heck is Daric Barton? Daric Barton was one of the most highly-touted prospects in the nation. He placed 32nd and then 28th on Baseball America's list of top 100 prospects. In five minor league seasons, at ages ranging from 17 to 21, he had an OBP of .414.
Brian Sabean (angry): Throw him back. Bring me the corpse of Ryan Klesko!
Back to Cohn.
That's how I feel.Thank you. It's good to share. Particularly in an article about baseball GMing. Your feelings are especially important in that context.
But, I can't ignore reality -- no one defends Sabean, his reputation is in the dumper. It's in the dumper even though he was under orders from up above, I believe, to patch together a team around the grumpy power-hitting left fielder because while the grumpy power-hitting left fielder was here, fans would not accept young players and rebuilding.This is Lowell Cohn's only semi-legitimate argument. If, indeed, he was handcuffed by ownership, then yes, he was fucked from Day One.
But note, also, that this is pure speculation on Cohn's part.
You can question his guts -- interesting because his persona is Mr. Tough Guy. He could have fought back or even quit -- people do quit. He didn't show mondo guts allowing the Barry Bonds cronies and that one drug dealer to lurk in the clubhouse. Those are strikes against him.Fun game: keep track of how many strikes Lowell Cohn launches against Brian Sabean in this article -- an article written to praise Sabean for being better than the "very good" (Cohn's words, remember) Billy Beane.
Sabean has other strikes against him, lots of crummy free-agent signings -- Armando Benitez, Edgardo Alfonzo, Ray Durham, and yes, Barry Zito.So many strikes!
And Zito -- Jesus. Not enough strikes is more like it! Thank you.
He is notorious for one stinker of a lousy trade -- Joe Nathan, a terrific closer, and two other players for -- hold your nose -- A.J. Pierzynski.More strikes! A strike that's also a stinker! This one is up there as one of the worst trades of the baby millennium. Those anonymous "two other players," by the way, Lowell, were Francisco Liriano (was pretty good in 2006, remember?) and sort of serviceable Boof Bonser.
After Dusty Baker left, Sabean hired Felipe Alou, who was too old, a guy the players couldn't stand. And now he has Bruce Bochy, who's shown no aptitude to rebuild a team that desperately needs rebuilding.Strike strike strike strike strike strike strike. We're playing the "Strikes Against Brian Sabean in an Article Supporting Brian Sabean" Drinking Game, and everyone here has died of alcohol poisoning, had their ghosts rise from the dead and resume playing the game, and then had their ghosts die of alcohol poisoning.
The Giants' farm system has been a joke, nothing like the A's -- this is a positive Billy point here. The only productive player the Giants' farm system produced in the current century was Pedro Feliz, and he wasn't all that productive.Aaaaaaaaannnnnnd there's another strike.
Sure, these are lots of bad marks against Sabean. You have to love his restraint here.
Any team that depends heavily on Durham, Dave Roberts, Rich Aurilia and even Omar Vizquel is a team going nowhere. But -- but -- this is the team built by the guy you're defending. Lowell? Lowell? Oh god, he got into the bushes again. Get out of there! (Gets umbrella, beats bushes) Out!
He needs to find out if his young guys can play. Amend that. He'd better pray his young guys can play -- Eugenio Velez, Dan Ortmeier, Brian Bocock, Fred Lewis and Rajai Davis. Aside from Velez, I don't feel confident about any of those guys. Do you?Well, let's see here. Ortmeier OPSed .683 and .763 in the hitter-friendly PCL at ages 25 and 26. Bocock slugged .328 in A+ ball last year. Lewis and Davis have passable minor league résumés, but yeah. This is
rough.
Brian Sabean for Mayor!
To his credit, Sabean has strong starting pitching -- Hurray! [cue YouTube video of parade that KT posted the other day]
strong, not great. Cancel embedding of YouTube video. Cancel it now.
He has reasonable relief pitching."Reasonable Relief Pitching," the Brian Sabean Saga. An inspirational tale of love and loss, of Keiichi Yabus and Brad Hennesseys.
The batting order does not have power. It is a single/doubles club, not a home-run club, and that needs to change.I think of it as more of an outs/more outs club. Is that a thing? Is that, maybe, what Sabean was going for? You're the guy who can read people's minds, Lowell. Please tell me that's what Sabean was going for.
Now that he is free -- finally free -- to make a real team, Sabean has to show he has a vision for his club and knows how to bring that vision to life -- not this year, but certainly in 2009 and after. I have defended Sabean, but now it's up to him.I have defended him nobly! In this article where I outline, in exhaustive detail, the fourteen different ways in which he has utterly failed his team, his owners, and the city of San Francisco, I have defended him well. I defended him by mentioning Zito. I defended him by mentioning Bocock. I defended him by mentioning Pierzynski.
The defense rests, your honor.
He has to defend himself.From you, Mr. Cohn. At this point, you're like the defense attorney half of
Colin Ferguson and Sabean is the defendant half. You (Cohn/defense attorney Ferguson) are hurting your (Sabean/defendant Ferguson) own case.
But yeah, you're right. I'm convinced. Billy Beane blows.
Labels: billy beane, brian sabean, colin ferguson, lowell cohn
If you've been living under a rock or something and are like totally not hip to important things that are happening in the world, allow me to inform you that former mediocre New York Yankee Mike Pagliarulo
has some kind of scouting website.
It appears to be co-run by someone named Adam, but for the purposes of this blog entry, I am going to assume it is designed, written, and executed by Pags and Pags only. Because that is funnier.
Call us crazy, but where else in the world can you find an industry where a small market GM leads the large market companies?
1. You're crazy.
2. I would imagine there are a lot of them. Lots of large companies are influenced by, and steal ideas from, small companies. Apple's design team blows Microsoft's out of the water. JetBlue and Southwest were, for a while, running rings around much larger airlines. Most people refer to the product that allows you to record TV shows as "TiVo" and not "TimeWarner HD Cable DVR" or something. Sometimes Miramax and FineLine and Paramount Vantage and stuff win Oscars while Universal and Warner Bros. make clunkers. Should I keep going? Or do you want to talk about baseball?
Where else does a business with half the budget dictate protocol for the “super powers” except in the business of baseball?We're in troubs, here, Pags. This sentence is all over the linguistic map. I think what you mean to say is: in what other industry does a "company" (team) with half the budget of other companies (teams) with which is it competing, control the way business is conducted within that industry. Instead, you just wrote the word "business," and then wrote a bunch of phrases with no antecedents or referents ("half the budget," "super powers") and then wrote "business" again. Not make word-goods you wasn't.
(BTW: For the
answer to the question, see the answer to the previous question, because this is just a rephrasing of the previous question.)
In the case of the Oakland A’s and GM Billy Beane, quite a phenomenon exists throughout a majority of the monopoly consisting of major league baseball teams. This is painful. Pags, sweetheart -- have you ever read...anything? If you haven't, you should. If will help you communicate better with your audience. This sentence appears to have been first "written" in sign language by a Russian chimp, and then translated into English by a Chinese businessman who learned English from old soap operas.
It seems that what Pags
wants to say -- but tragically cannot, because he writes like a fifth grader trying to fake his way through an oral report on salamanders -- is: "What makes Billy Beane so great, anyway?!" Which is an excellent question. That has been answered many, many, many, many times.
Billy Beane is a great GM because he found a way to keep the A's competitive in MLB, despite a payroll far behind those of several other teams. He did this by using cutting-edge statistical analysis to find players with undervalued skills who had been overlooked by other teams. He drafted these players (or traded for them), paid them rock-bottom prices, and watched as his army of nerd robots won many division- and wild card titles. If this sounds familiar, it's because
everyone in the world has been talking about it for like six years (or more), and because it was chronicled in the book
Moneyball by Michael Lewis, which is very good, and really has nothing to do with anything that anybody now thinks it has to do with.
I sincerely doubt that anyone reading this blog has not read
Moneyball, but if you haven't, you should, because it's quite good. I am also going to go ahead and bet that Pags has never read
Moneyball. I might even...yes, yes I believe I am going to go ahead and guess that Pags has not completed an entire book since he polished off
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, when he was seventeen.
There are a few teams (Toronto, Boston, NY, and Texas) who rely on statistical formulas and hire knowledgeable front office personnel at a cost of $50K to $500K, who create and analyze – something!
They analyze baseball players. Did you really not know this?
We aren’t sure what that “something” is and they certainly aren’t talking about it, especially to the media.
That's because it's a crock! They're full of it! They aren't really doing anything, these nerds. They have like mob-style no-show jobs. Hang on...come to think of it...I never heard any generals give interviews explaining how we were going to attack Baghdad. They're crocks too! They should be explaining that to us in the media! Also, where is the explanation of the formula for Coke? That should be available to me, from the media, via some people who work for Coke. If it isn't, I will assume that the people who make Coke are frauds who are just taking money and not making any actual product. And to answer your next question, no, I will not be dissuaded by the purchasing and consuming of Coke.
Sincerely,
Pags
Quite possibly, the statistical masterminds are creating retirement accounts and special offshore businesses for these highly paid decision makers.
I have said this before, but it's worth reiterating. Jokes definitely work best when they are formed as long, drawn-out sentences with lots and lots of extra words.
Example:
Bad Joke: Take my wife -- please!
Good Joke: For one example, why don't you take my wife -- although, my wife is so annoying and vexing and irritating that when I say "take my wife" what I actually should be saying is, "Sir -- if you are going somewhere far away, take my wife...please!"
Let’s take a closer look at the genius whose numerical formula positions his team 14 games behind in the American League West and without the ability to muster a .500 record.
Yes, let us. And to do so, I will quote from one of the comments found below this post on Pags's site. (And I will add, in bold, the payroll of the team.)
2000: 91-70 (division title) (32,121,833)
2001: 102-60 (wild card) (33,810,750)
2002: 103-59 (division title) (40,004,167)
2003: 96-66 (division title) (50,260,834)
2004: 91-71 (59,425,667)
2005: 88-74 (55,425,762)
2006: 93-69 (division title) (62,242,079)
2007: 69-72 (79,366,940)
You know what the Yankees' payroll was in 2006? $194,663,079. You know how many more games they won than the A's? Four. You know what the Yankees' payroll was in 2001? $112,287,143. You know how many more games they won than the A's that year? Negative seven more. That's how many more.
Now, a sentient human with a central nervous system and the ability to process information and engage with his fellow man might look at this data and say, "Billy Beane appears to be a talented GM." Here is what Pags gets from it:
The A’s are bad!
Just to clarify, he's talking about this year. Which: yes, they are, pretty bad. They have also sustained injuries to 41 of the 40 men on their roster. It's kind of a wash, really, 2007. But Pags seems to want to forget all of the years referenced above in order to "prove" his "point," which he evidences with the following fun PowerPoint-style bullets:
- They cannot “contend” in a four- team division, resulting in a sorry state of affairs.
- They fired a manager from 2006 who carried them to the playoffs because their genius (Beane) felt a new manager would help enhance team communication. This piece of information was reported in spring training.
- They use assistant GM David Forst to critique and interrogate manager Bob Geren to second guess the lineups both before and after games.
- Forst uses OPS, OBP, LLBean, FYI, and SOB as a system of analysis. Astoundingly, no one else uses this championship formula.
- Other general manager disciples such as Epstein, Cashman, Daniels, and Richardi have larger money blankets than Billy Beane, but they don’t use their blankets to warm Billy when he flounders and produces a product void of luster.
I know I say this a lot, but I think this is the shittiest writing I have come across in my 54 years of deconstructing sports journalism. I just described it to Mrs. Tremendous as "a treasure trove," and she rolled her eyes and kept on doing exactly what she was doing. But I could tell she was more into it than usual.
Let's go PagsPoint™ by PagsPoint™.
They cannot “contend” in a four- team division, resulting in a sorry state of affairs.
They are not contending this year. Correct. Is this the only year you have heard of? Do you not know that there have been other years? In four of the last seven, they won the division. What a sorry state of affairs. And who are you to use the phrase "sorry state of affairs" anyway? Fucking T.E. Lawrence?
They fired a manager from 2006 who carried them to the playoffs because their genius (Beane) felt a new manager would help enhance team communication. This piece of information was reported in spring training.
I'll say right now that dealing with managers has never really seemed like Billy's strong point. That weird "Macha out, Macha talking to Pittsburgh, Macha back in" thing from 2005 was painful to watch, and I don't know how anybody thought that was going to work out. So, I guess: Beane: not great with managers. Point Pags.
They use assistant GM David Forst to critique and interrogate manager Bob Geren to second guess the lineups both before and after games.
Man. I just...this isn't English sentence construction, man. Get an editor. Or, just, maybe hire a high school kid to rewrite your stuff or something. You've got back-to-back infinitives, for god's sake.
Look. This is the way Billy Beane runs his team. He wants certain guys playing in certain situations. If you take the A's managing job, you play by his rules. You know what allows him to wield that kind of power? Four division titles in seven years.
Forst uses OPS, OBP, LLBean, FYI, and SOB as a system of analysis. Astoundingly, no one else uses this championship formula.
In the pantheon of smugly ignorant acronym use, this takes the cake. LLBean is a terrible "nerdy acronym" joke for many reasons: like, that it's not an acronym. And that it appears in an article attacking Billy Beane, which gives one the impression the author is too dumb to think of two different things at the same time. FYI is boring. SOB is a term not heard much by people under fifty. And the whole thing -- the collection of five acronyms; two real, three unfunny and fake -- is referred to as a "system of analysis." Pags, seriously bro, if you had any idea how sophisticated their actual systems of analysis were...dude. Bro. Your effing head would explode.
Other general manager disciples such as Epstein, Cashman, Daniels, and Richardi have larger money blankets than Billy Beane, but they don’t use their blankets to warm Billy when he flounders and produces a product void of luster.
This may be the most wonderful sentence I have ever read. This sentence holds the English language by the throat, pushes it against a wall, and slashes it across the face with a broken beer bottle.
"Other general manager disciples"
Disciples of what? Or whom? Epstein came from San Diego. Cash has always been a Yankee. Jon Daniels worked in Colorado and then for Jon Hart in Texas. Ricciardi -- that's how you spell his name, BTW -- is the only one you could actually call a Beane "disciple." But you didn't call them Billy Beane disciples, I guess -- you just called them "disciples." Sort of covering all your bases there. Nice work.
"have larger money blankets than Billy Beane"
It's time to play: "Has Anyone Ever Heard This Phrase?" I have not. Please write in if you have, and let me know where. This is what I imagine. But I'm willing to listen to other explanations.
"but they don’t use their blankets to warm Billy"
Excellent. Just excellent. You make up a term, and then one second later you use the term in a different metaphorical context -- an extremely tortured metaphorical context, mind you, because: how could these "money blankets" be used to 'warm" Billy Beane by other GMs? Are you saying that they don't like loan him money? Or something? Or are you saying that they don't metaphorically "warm" him with praise? This is fucking gibberish.
"when he flounders and produces a product void of luster."
My favorite part. What a finish. When he flounders and produces a product void of luster. Void of luster. Billy Beane has produced a product void of luster! Is this product...a watch fob? A set of plus-fours or spats? Perhaps an improperly polished saddle for tomorrow's hunt? No -- it's a baseball team! Surprise!
The fact is that the A’s will never win a World Series relying upon their current statistical formulas. The Oakland franchise is not structured to win a World Series.
Pags! Guns blazing! Prove it.
Sadly, Billy Beane doesn’t know this nor do his disciples.
That is sad. Those guys are just toiling away on their sophisticated mathematical modeling projects, working as hard or harder than anyone else in baseball, trying to level the playing field by outsmarting the other teams (many of whom have adopted and co-opted their methods) to compensate for (in some cases) their severely limited resources. And all that time, they don't know that they're doomed to go championshipless...forever. And they're being told this by Pags, who wrote this article from the stern of his 22-foot fishing boat ("The Yank Pags"), off the Gulf Coast, while pounding his eleventh Miller Lite.
Fundamental baseball wins championships and fundamentals aren’t found in the statistical formulas used when signing players for the Oakland franchise. They don’t get it, yet the “disciples” will revel in the notion that Billy B. says, “Joba Chamberlain is going to be a star”…………Now there’s a big time prediction!
I had to read this four or five times to understand it. I believe what PagsBone is saying: Oakland's mathematical modeling doesn't take "fundamentals" into account. Then there is a missing chunk where he would say that Beane is stupid for using these formulas, currently represented by the near non-sequitur "They don't get it." Then he adds that Beane's disciples think he's so great and point to predictions that Beane makes -- like that Joba is going to be good -- as evidence of his genius, when in fact, argues Pags, anyone in the world could have seen that!
Everything about this paragraph is wrong. The ideas behind it: wrong. The execution: virtuosically bad. A new bar has been set.
So, we ask, who will get fired this year? Will it be Bob Geren, Bob Schaefer, or David Forst? We know it won’t be Beane.
Toronto has a formula for drafting college pitchers who are unable to throw above 90 mph. Boston has Bill James-500K, the best fantasy baseball statistician in the game. He consulted in the JD Drew deal, totaling $70 million, but won’t admit it.
This makes it sound like Toronto has a specific desire to draft pitchers who cannot throw hard. I don't think that's true. I think they probably use a different set of criteria for guys who throw below 90 -- a formula involving K/BB rates, and BABIP, and the kinds of things you would want to know about a soft-tosser.
"Bill James-500K" sounds like a robot. Learn the difference between dashes and hyphens, dummy. Also, he is the opposite of a "fantasy" statistician. A "fantasy" statistician cares about things like RBI, runs, wins (for a pitcher) and stuff. Bill James does not. And yes, I am sure he did consult on the JD Drew deal, and I'm sure if you asked him he would admit it. On what basis are you saying he will not admit it? Did you ask him? Has anyone asked him? Is he publicly throwing other people under the bus for that deal? No, Pags, my man, he is not, I don't think. I could be wrong, but I don't think he is. I think that everyone in the Red Sox organization would say the same thing about that deal: disappointing so far, but it's a five-year deal, and you can't judge the success or failure of anything based on 15% of its eventual total.
The Yankees have two confidential statistical guys who are well dressed and very quiet. They both share an office near the PA announcer and are capable of telling the GM how many changeups Edwar Ramirez has thrown at AAA.
What does any of this have to do with anything, positively or negatively?
Daniels isn’t sure which part of the hierarchy is on his side.
What hierarchy? And why is this relevant? And what does it mean? And what point are you making?
Put quite simply, this is MONEY HAUL, the worst-spent dollars in major league baseball. This economic virus tows the leaders of the industry, the envious fans and executives in love with our national pastime.
This is the end of the blog entry. Fantastic. Economic virus? Envious fans? (Of what, one might ask.) And how is anyone's love of our national pasttime affected by this? And why is this money ill-spent? The Yankees, Red Sox, and A's have phenomenal records of success in the past decade. If the Pirates, Royals, and Orioles were using these methods, attack away, friend.
Sometimes -- and I know this is crazy -- I feel like Mike Pagliarulo isn't the smartest guy in the world.
Labels: a's, billy beane, mike pagliarulo
Brendan (Cleveland, OH): Joe, Does it bother you that the A's are playing so well? It seems the Billy Beane detractors were waiting for a poor season with 2/3 of the Big 3 gone. Alas, it isn't going to happen. Haren has been a steal. Harden looks like an ace. It's only going to get better from here. Billy Beane truly looks like a maestro. What are your thoughts? Joe Morgan: (1:41 PM ET ) I think Harden can be an ace, he is excellent, and they stole Thomas from Atlanta by giving up Hudson. The A's are playing great right now, the young pitching is their key, but, I would think that if Mulder, Hudson and Zito were still there, they'd be doing the same thing. For the record, I don't know why you would call me a Billy Beane detractor ... I just disagree with his philosophy. Are you a Joe Morgan detractor because you disagree with my philosophy? I don't think so. Testy, testy! Sounds like somebody has been reading FJM. (Or, perhaps he is just testy, and ignorant. Who knows.) In any case, I have two things to say about this exchange.
1. The sentence "...they stole Thomas from Atlanta by giving up Hudson" is ipso facto ridiculous. Where I come from, which is earth, "stealing" means getting something for nothing. You don't steal money from a bank by depositing a check and then making a withdrawal.
2. If Mulder and Hudson were there, they might still be a good team but the freaking point is that they traded those guys because they had to, because they have no money. They were brilliant trades, because, as you admit, Joe, they are performing as well as anyone could have imagined them performing if those other, higher-priced players, who were going to be free agents at the end of the year, were still there. See how it's better that they have younger, cheaper players who aren't going to be free agents? Do you get it? Hello? Joe?
3. Turns out I have three things to say about this exchange. Look at this section again:
"For the record, I don't know why you would call me a Billy Beane detractor ... I just disagree with his philosophy. Are you a Joe Morgan detractor because you disagree with my philosophy? I don't think so."First of all, he didn't even call you a "Billy Beane detractor." What he said was: "It seems the Billy Beane detractors were waiting for a poor season with 2/3 of the Big 3 gone." He did not name you, or attack you, despite having every reason to do so.
Second of all...Joe. Friend. Where I come from, which is, again, earth, a "detractor" is exactly defined as someone who disagrees with someone else's philosophy. So, the reason he called you a Billy Beane detractor is because you disagree with his philosophy. And, also, yes, I certainly am a Joe Morgan detractor because I disagree with your philosophy.
What do you think a "detractor" is? I'm serious. What could a "detractor" possibly be, if not someone who disagrees with someone else's philosophy -- i.e., someone who thinks that someone else is wrong about stuff, and thus thinks/speaks ill of him? Joe Morgan is the very definition of "Billy Beane detractor."
Help?
Labels: billy beane, joe morgan, joechat
