Many of our loyal readers read Moneyball in 2003. If you did not read it you have heard it discussed here many times. JP Ricciardi worked with Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta in Oakland, and although JP had left when Michael Lewis was writing the book, JP's philosophy is closely aligned with Oakland's front office.
Some criticisms of Moneyball suggested that Michael Lewis did not get all of his facts straight, that he embellished certain stories for dramatic effect. So what is the truth?
Paul DePodesta recently spoke at an investment conference sponsored by Legg Mason. His presentation was titled "the Science of Winning an Unfair Game". Luckily for us, the presentation and his response to some questions have been posted on the Legg Mason website. His approach to baseball is described in detail, adding to the Moneyball description. Even if you have read Moneyball this presentation has enough new material to be worth a read.
His remarks are fascinating, but it will take you a good half of an hour to get through it. Save it and read it over the weekend. If you are a scout, you might want to give it a pass! I have put some "teasers" below.
Paul talks about when he first joined the Cleveland Indians "During the course of the year we had traded for a player named Jeff Kent. I was sitting in this meeting, and one of our major league staff members who shall remain nameless who said, and I quote, "Jeff Kent has the weakest freakin' hack I have ever seen. So what did we do as a front office? We went ahead and traded Jeff Kent a couple weeks later. Over the course of the next four years, we got to sit and watch Jeff Kent become the most prolific offensive second baseman in the entire game."
Paul also references Bill Lee's comment "In baseball, you're supposed to sit on your ass, spit tobacco, and nod at stupid things."
Another area of controversy was the famous Moneyball draft. A lot of observers have heaped scorn on the draft. Paul defends it "So we took this draft that we had in 2002, the Money Ball draft, and a year later we went through every single team, their top 10 rounds, and figured out how many of those players just one year later were performing at an above-average level for a minor league team. This is just one year after the draft, these are guys we all spent a lot of money on, and how many of them are actually performing at an above-average level? What we found was that the industry average was just over 20%, about 1 in 5 guys. One year later, we're talking low minor leagues, and it's still a long shot for those guys to get to the big leagues. There was one other team just over 30%, and we weighed in right at about 65%."
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20040206023709999