SMALL SAMPLE SIZE! YOU USED A SMALL SAMPLE TO MAKE THAT POINT
There are at least fifty things worth picking on in this Buzz Bissinger shitbomb re: Billy Beane, Michael Lewis, and the book Moneyball. I don't have a lot of time so I think I'll pick on the most absurd one. Bissinger's thesis is essentially that Billy Beane is a decent but overrated GM, Lewis's portrayal of him is unfairly positive, and that the best way to build a baseball team is still by spending a lot of money on good, proven players. He may have a bit of a point with the last part. As for those first two:
Looking largely at the narrow time frame of 2000 through 2002, Lewis attempted to explain the phenomenon of how the A's had done so well (they made the playoffs all three of those years) with such little dough.
Yeah, great, that's true. Lewis does focus on that three year span, which isn't really as large a sample size as you'd like if you're going to evaluate a GM's ability. But before I get to my point about Buzz, let's quickly address this:
The explanation was dazzling, although Lewis barely mentioned the three reasons the A's had been so successful--pitchers Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson. The three won an astounding 149 games during that span. Each of them were 20-game winners in at least one of those seasons.
If you've read the book, you know that this is pretty unfair. First, Lewis mentions those three then-aces plenty. Second, the reason the book focuses a lot MORE on guys like Scott Hatteberg and Chad Bradford is because it's a lot more interesting to hear about how a GM took relative unwanteds like them and turned them into valuable players than to hear about how a GM had three really good pitchers at the same time.
But anyways, back to the point. Yes, Moneyball focuses on a tiny, insignificant, negligible number of seasons. Just three. (Three seasons during which the A's won more than 300 games.) Meanwhile, Buzz has some excellent points to make about Beane's allegedly sterling reputation for finding and developing talent:
Beane had seven first-round draft picks that year, each of them extolled by Lewis for their buried-treasure status. Three of them are still playing in the majors, none with anything close to superstar careers and all of them long gone from the A's. Three others were busts. Poor Jeremy Brown never stopped being fat and slow and finished with a grand total of 10 major league at-bats before retirement.
OHHH! OHHHH! JEREMY BROWN BUSTED EVEN THOUGH BEANE SPENT A FIRST ROUND PICK ON HIM! SHAME ON YOU, BILLY BEANE. SHAME ON YOU FOR FAILING TO DEVELOP EVERY PLAYER WHO ENTERS YOUR ORGANIZATION INTO AN ALL-STAR. OUT OF A WHOLE 7 FIRST ROUND PICKS IN 2002, NONE OF THEM BECAME SURE FIRE HALL OF FAMERS. THIS IS INDISPUTABLE EVIDENCE THAT BILLY BEANE IS AN IDIOT AND KNOWS NOTHING ABOUT BASEBALL. I'M BUZZ BISSINGER, AND MY HEAD IS STUCK IN MY TAINT. I LOOK DOWN UPON WRITERS WHO TRY TO MAKE THEIR POINT WITHOUT USING A REASONABLE SAMPLE SIZE. THAT'S JUST BAD JOURNALISM.
Read the rest of the article- it has a lot more garbage that will make you laugh. Or smirk. That's what Buzz would do if someone else wrote this and he read it.
