Author of 'Moneyball', Michael Lewis sits down with Tyler Blez' for a chat. It's a pretty cool interview:
Lewis: That will be a good deal for the A's. Right now, if you look
at how the regular season started, you would say that neither one of those
trades look great. But whenever you're dealing with young players and
minor leaguers, you just can't predict right away and you just don't know.
Blez: That's just the thing. 27 or so games into the season, ESPN.com had a story evaluating the Hudson and Mulder deals. Let me say that again, 27 games in!
Lewis: The news just can't be intelligent about baseball because news by definition is small samples. Because it's daily, right? The most typical opinion in sports is the opinion about something that just happened. If you listen to them, they are always
rationalizing the most recent events. If someone hits a home run, it becomes a reflection of that person's whole career. And they make these vast generalizations about the home run. If someone walks in the game winning run, it's a reflection of that player's character. So it's always taking some event that just happened and trying to make it signify more than it does. There's an inherent idiocy in baseball commentary. It's particularly idiotic in baseball commentary because you do have this pool of data that's available from which you can actually make some pretty intelligent statements which is just being ignored in that moment because you want to explain that moment. So you go from the announcer's booth to the ESPN studio and ESPN may not just go on that day alone, but there's always an attempt to be the first to say it. My goal with the second book is to be the last to say it. You have to wait until you have enough information to make judgments about something.Blez: But that goes against our society's desires where there is a demand for immediate gratification. I completely agree with you. Our society's desire for immediate gratification is in opposition with the ability to make intelligent statements about baseball because it's something that plays out over 162 games and six months. And I feel it because the fan part of me wants those immediate results and wishes we had Hudson and Mulder right now.
Lewis: (Laughing)
Blez: But sometimes I have to step back and be rational and realize there's a long-term plan. In all likelihood, this will be better for the organization. But we're all impatient because we want to be associated with a winner today.
Lewis: I would still say that it is not clear whether or not those trades would make this team less likely to win this year. Based on what's happened already, I would still say that the A's are not necessarily worse off, even this year, from those trades. Nevermind the future. It's funny how people want to rush to opinion instead of observation. But that is the nature of the sports fan. The sports fan kind of lives for his opinion. That's nice and it's fun for sports fans. But if you're running the team, you have to be oblivious to that. The truth is that most people who run teams are not oblivious to it. A lot of deals are done because they will look good in the newspaper the next day. And those that earn them praise. There's a certain logic to that. If you do the things that sportswriters praise you for, the sportswriter having praised you is sort of stuck a little bit the next time he wants to bash you. He liked what you did, so how can he complain when it doesn't work out? The situation in Los Angeles with the Dodgers is very, very telling. Paul DePodesta comes in with his Moneyball ways.
I like the Oakland A's, under Billy Beane. Certainly they have been the most interesting ballclub to watch in the last 7-8 years (outside of my fave team, but that's besides the point). It kind of pains me to see them run into the Yankees and Red Sox 12 times in May with so many of their young players out with injury. It's a real rough trot for them right now; but they have the 2004 Rookie of the year Bobby Crosby; they have the Moneyball guys Joe Blanton and Nick Swisher; they have a resrugent Jason Kendall; slugger Eric Chavez; they still have Barry Zito & Rich Harden; and Mark Kotsay in CF is pretty productive for them. I like their squad going forwards for the next 3-5 years.
- Art Neuro
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