Joe Morgan is slowly losing his grip on reality. The "not really thinking about winning" comment is pretty close to inexcusable for someone who claims to know something about baseball.

I think Morgan's just been doing what he's doing for too long. A decade or so ago, he used to have fresh insights occasionally. Now he's a bad parody of Abe Simpson, and doesn't even realize it.

Anyhow, reading Morgan's comments made me think, man these Nationals/Expos would be a heck of a team if they still had Vlad Guerrero and Javier Vasquez and Bartolo Colon and Urbina and Orlando Cabrera and Moises Alou and Cliff Floyd and Larry Walker and ... heck, weren't Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson Expos once? Boy, they sure must not care about winning letting all those guys go. (OK, I realize there are reasons maybe the expo's ownership hasn't cared only about winning for a while, but still.)

(kidding.)

And the LAPD thinks he looks like a drug dealer.

My buddy and I have always taken different opinions about what Moneyball really represents. He says it's all about constructing a team that, defense be damned, has the chance to score 1 run every inning.

My vote is that it is all about economic arbitrage, raising your margins (by lowering your costs), and, from a baseball standpoint, creating a team that will go 10 games over .500 ball-- enough so that the fans keep coming back, but not having to pump enough salary into the club in order to beat the Yankees/Sox. Profits first, championships second.

(For what it's worth, I semi-agree with Morgan about the Red Sox not being a Moneyball team. To me, the Sox are a different interpretation on whatever formula that Steinbrenner uses.)

Recently, a friend suggested I read Moneyball. Given my background in biostatistics, he was interested in getting my take on these revolutionary new concepts (cut him some slack...he's a Giants fan). Needless to say, the content of the book was fascinating and launched me down the digital rabbithole of sabermetrics, the Bill James baseball genealogy and Dodger Thoughts.

What does this have to do with Joe Morgan? Not much. Personally don't care for his brand of coverage but then again I can never forgive him for 1982. Overall, it seems that ESPN is doing a fair job covering the spectrum of baseball philosophies (Morgan to Phillips to Gammons to Neyer, etc.) in chats and columns. Those I don't like, I don't patronize...have a feeling that one of the factors influencing contract renewal as an analyst at ESPN is web hits to chats & columns.

He's comparing a strategy that is still in it's infancy to the entire history of baseball. No doubt, if the moneyball strategy is around for the next one hundred years, a team will win.

Plus, the A's won the AL West in 2000, 2002, 2003. That may not be the WS, but, hell, it's a successful season. Match it up against all the teams in those years who didn't win their division. If moneyball is "overrated," then what does he call all those losing team's strategies? Underrated? Not rated? Rated? Not yet rated?

Your buddy is wrong and you are closer to being right, though I'd still disagree with the idea that they're not trying to beat the big-spending clubs. It's the idea that you are as efficient as possible with your resources. You may well be efficient enough to win it all.

The idea that rich teams can't be Moneyball teams is a misunderstanding of the concept, in my opinion.

In an interview with Athletics Nation, Lewis said his original plan was to write a book about the careers of the A's first round picks 5 years or so after they were drafted; but in order to do so he needed a prolouge, and that prolouge is Moneyball.

The A's have had much better drafts, particularly last year's.

For example, my take on Moneyball is that you should never spend money to go get a big-name free agent. (eg, if my team can win 90 games without Alex Rodriguez, I have absolutely no incentive to ever consider signing him)

And I think this is part of what DePo's strategy is, especially as handed down to him from McCourt. McCourt clearly wants to lower the margins on giving Dodger fans a good (but not dynasty-worthy) team. The DHL sponsorships, the extra seats, the lowered payroll, this all speaks to increasing revenue and decreasing costs at the same time. That clearly points to Moneyball, I agree, and I think it's part of the reason why we won't see a Vladimir, Hudson, etc, coming to the Dodgers.

Don't forget about Teahen, who is KC's starting 3B (although he's on the DL at the moment).

I interpret it as capitalizing on market inefficiencies. On Primer I see all these articles about teams like the Pirates and the Rangers preaching patience. I think the market will adjust in a few years and pitchers will throw more strikes and great contact guys will become more valuable in the years to come. Right now tho, it's all about patience and plate discipline.

"DePodesta said, "unless you're the Yankees, you might be able to win once through free agency, but to sustain it is practically impossible financially." And even the Yankees are feeling the fiscal strain of not producing players.

Theo Epstein agrees with DePodesta. "We have put a lot of emphasis into building our farm system while trying to compete," Epstein said. "You have to have $300,000 players to practically afford the star-level players." The Red Sox figure it is not out of the realm of possibility that sometime in 2006 they could have Kevin Youkilis at third, Dustin Pedroia at second, Hanley Ramirez in center, Jon Papelbon in the rotation and Cla Meredith and Abe Alvarez setting up in the bullpen."

I think another reason you may not see a Hudson (or a Beltre) is that the Dodgers have a minor league system that is going to produce major league talent on its own. I know we've been disappointed for...oh...10 years or so, but we have a lot of kids who appear to have the ability to play baseball.

He was also, IMHO, the game's smartest player. And he is today without a doubt the most deluded and reactionary broadcaster on the national scene. I can no longer argue with people who say Joe Morgan was dumb.

You can spend money on big-time free-agents if you're saving money at other positions (and if you have a good sized budget). It seems to me that the moneyball/sabermetric approach led Epstein to go get folks like Millar, Mueller, Bellhorn, Ortiz, Walker...etc. for undervalue, which then allows him to have room for a Manny Ramirez and his 20 mil salary. They also looked like they were more than willing to take on ARod's contract before that deal fell through.

The specific theory of the A's is that they identified OBP as being undervalued and defense, SBs (especially without regard to CSs), and physical tools/looks as being overvalued. They also noticed that college players were less of a risk and often cost less than high school players in the draft.

The general theory has nothing to do with OBP (or even baseball, technically). Recently, OBP has become overvalued, along with established starting pitchers, so Beane has found new market inefficiencies. Namely, he seems to be focusing on more advanced defensive metrics and young, unproven pitchers.

Joe Morgan is a moron.

Dave Roberts 2004: 38 SBs, 3 CSs. Best base stealer this side of Carlos Beltran, bar none. And Epstein got him cheap.

The Dodgers really didn't lower payroll all that much from '04 to '05. There is no doubt that the Dodgers are trying to increase revenue.

I do think that the recent moves the Dodgers have made is towards building a dynasty type thing when the prospects start fullfilling their potential.

At the end of the day, two things are prevening Joe Morgan from "getting it." One, frankly, he isn't well educated. Sorry. That may sound harsh, but it's true. I'm not saying he's a dumb guy, but having certain stores of knowledge make it a lot easier to "get" what Moneyball is about.

Second, he has a congnitive bias. He's threatened by what is written in Moneyball because it challenges his preconceived notions about baseball. Without these notions to cling to, Morgan would lose his ability to interact in and with the only universe he has ever known. So, he's scared.

It's sad.

there's a third thing that prevents joe morgan from "getting" moneyball: he hasn't read moneyball. or at least, he hadn't read it as of last year, and he was quite proud of that. presumably, anything he knows about "the moneyball way of doing things" is what he heard from other people, who may or may not have read the book themselves. in fact, i'd go further: because he's shown such a persistant closed-mindedness about the strategy described in moneyball, i think it's probably likely that anything he knows about moneyball he learned from other people who also don't like moneyball.

in other words, he doesn't know what he's talking about.

the weird thing is, i think there's plenty of room to argue against the moneyball approach. i mean, it describes one way of doing things, not the only way. billy beane himself would agree with that. that's why it's so silly that people like joe morgan feel it's necessary to attack straw dogs (e.g. "moneyballers sure do hate the stolen base!").

in other words, what a dope.

1) Morgan has totally forgotten what made him good back in the 1970s and now lives in some narrow-minded world of his own making.

2) Or, he never KNEW what skills and talents he had as a player in the first place. This is kind of an interesting thought. Morgan was a great player at the time and everyone certainly knew it then. Since then the statheads have made the case that he was even better than that, but there was no way to measure it until recently. But is it possible that Morgan had a misunderstanding of WHY he was great? That his belief (and most others' at the time) of why he was good was wrong, but it didn't matter since everyone agreed on the conclusion? That's pretty strange, but maybe my imagination is getting the better of me.

Because I like to argue:

Again, depending on how you interpret the book, if you have ANY sort of budget there is only one way to build a baseball team (assuming you make the rational choice to win as many games as possible).

1. Find out what wins ball games.
2. Buy as much of these "traits" as possible per marginal dollar.

And that's it. Otherwise, you are spending money inefficiently even if it's in small amounts. This works whether your budget is $20 million or $200 million. Now, this is simplistic. In the real world the objective is "make money", and the best way to do so is to "win games". But intangibles can also be valuable. Brian Giles may have been a sabermetric machine at the beginning of this decade but I'll bet he didn't put people in the seats lick Ichiro!. But if you are aware of the finances, starpower can also be quantified.

It's all about efficiency...