THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Here are the HS pitchers picked in the 1st round of that draft:

Chris Gruler (#3)
Adam Loewen (#4)
Clint Everts (#5)
Zach Greinke (#6)
Kazmir (#15)
Hamels (#17)
Matt Cain (#25)

A neat coincidence that of the seven HS pitchers, four were successful, but they happened to be the last four taken.

Is everyone here as annoyed by Moneyball as I am? Although it was my “introduction” to and my cause for wanting to get into trying to understand sabermetrics, there’s a whole lot of contradiction, cherry-picking, and even factual errors in the book. Add that with the generally condescending tone Lewis has when not talking about the members of the A’s organization that best suit his story, and I don’t know why any sabermetrician/person with saber leanings would really support the book itself (though its impact within baseball was fairly signficant).

It tells a great story in a wonderful way.  I’m not sure that you can expect more in a book.

I have said this before.  I am not a big fan of Lewis in general.  After I read Moneyball, I read Liar’s Poker.  That book was a joke.  While it was supposed to be non-fiction, like Moneyball, it appeared to me that half the stuff was made up for effect.  I suspect the same is true of Moneyball.  You have to be really careful with non-fiction books that are written like a novel.  They usually are part-novel, part documentary.

In any case, I doubt that Beane ever thought that you NEVER take a high-schooler in the first round.  At the same time, even if it were correct to never take a high-schooler in the first round or as first pick, you are still going to find a certain percentage of high-schoolers who become superstars.  That is an important point to remember.

I think everyone’s in agreement that you never take a 12-year old Little Leaguer in the first round (if you could).  Let’s say that there were teams who did, and incorrectly so.  Well, a certain (small) percentage of them will end up as stars in MLB.  Can you use that data to refute the idea that you never take a Little Leaguer in the first round?  Of course not.

Same thing with high schoolers.  And we have no idea what the percentage of high schoolers making the majors or becoming a star (or whatever) would have to be for the “break even point” of never taking or occasionally taking a high schooler.  We can figure it out to some degree.  It also depends in what you think of your scouting staff. The better it is, the more likely you are to take a low-amateur player.  Also, the more you are into stats in your scouting and the less you are into (or competent in) observation and tools analysis, the less likely you are to take players from the low amateurs and with limited data.  So there are a lot of considerations here.

So I think that this kind of logic and analysis is folly.

The article I linked to from Scherer shows that the correct split is what teams are doing right now: the top 6 college pitchers, at the time of the draft, provide as much value, on average, as the top 3 high school pitchers, at the time of the draft.

So, if you put a dollar value on each college pitcher from 1998-2007, and pick out the top 6 college pitcher (total of 60 college pitchers) and you do the same for the top 3 college pitchers in teh same time period (total of 30 high school pitchers), and the AVERAGE of the 60 is higher than the AVERAGE of the 30, then you are overvaluing college pitchers.  If it’s lower, than you are undervaluing college pitchers.

(Naturally, things change over time, especially since a college pitcher is a high school pitcher who didn’t sign with an MLB team.  And, the 60 and 30 are rough approximations that themselves must change over time, even if all other things are equal.)

Sure, there are problems in Moneyball. However, having been in and around academe for a while, I’ve grown a bit tired of hearing my colleagues dismiss works as “mere popularizations.” Popularizations serve a valuable function. Those who are inspired to dig deeper will. If sabermetricians are really such elitists that they can’t be bothered to explain their ideas in more detail to those people, but would rather just dismiss those plebes who “just read Moneyball,” then they shouldn’t be surprised when they aren’t taken seriously enough.

Would you rather people just read “Scouts Honor?”

I also have serious doubts that DePodesta valued OBP at 3x the value of SLG. The reasoning for it in the book made no sense either.

Ask him on his blog.

#6, I agree.  Many more people are going to read Moneyball than The Book or the THT annual, so as long as it is not complete fiction, which it is not, it serves some purpose (other than to entertain of course).

Not to belabor the point, but I think that it was Rob Neyer who pointed out that the real effect of _Moneyball_ isn’t going to be seen on current baseball people, but on younger people who read the book and are going to be getting into MLB team positions (and are probably already getting into those positions, given the time interval) in the future.

#7- I read somewhere, don’t remember where exactly, that what Depodesta meant was that OBP was 3x cheaper to acquire that SLG, not literally 3 times more valuable.

Victor--

If true, that makes much more sense. No clue if it’s right or not, but I can see how he might have figured that out. Of course, in the time since the book came out, that 3x figure has changed significantly.

From Tango: (Naturally, things change over time, especially since a college pitcher is a high school pitcher who didn’t sign with an MLB team.  And, the 60 and 30 are rough approximations that themselves must change over time, even if all other things are equal.)

There’ve been huge changes in how amatuer talent enters MLB and is developed over the last 20 years.  I wouldn’t pin too much on a study from 1986-1991, especially on the HS v C issue.  The mid to late 1980s were a golden age of college talent.  College players dominated the draft in those years.  The 1990s - and I suspect the 2000s - have been much more balanced between the two school types.  I’m pretty sure that carried over to HS pitchers as a sub-type.

To further the Kazmir and Hamels observation that started the thread, there was yet another top HS lefty from the top of that draft.  Jon Lester was picked at #32 (just out of the 1st rd and so didn’t make Patriot’s list, but given a 1st rd bonus).  That will turn out to be a great draft for HS lefties.

Toss in John Danks and CC Sabathia and 2008 just happened to be a great year for 1st rd HS lefties in general.

@ Dan

“I also have serious doubts that DePodesta valued OBP at 3x the value of SLG. The reasoning for it in the book made no sense either.”

I asked him about this at a BP pizza feed. He said the general idea is that OBP is more valuable than SLG, but he doesn’t remember putting it as a matter-of-fact 3:1 ratio the way the book reported.

Lewis asked me to comment on the 3:1 notion, and I told him it should be 1.8:1.  I guess it didn’t help his story by putting that in. 

Lewis by the way is a very good guy.  Even now, several years after the one and only time I spoke with him, he responds to my emails same-day (without fail), even though he needs nothing at all from me.  Some people don’t even bother returning my emails at all, and here’s a guy, a star basically, who is very courteous to a Jacques Canadien.

Tango/5: “The article I linked to from Scherer shows that the correct split is what teams are doing right now: the top 6 college pitchers, at the time of the draft, provide as much value, on average, as the top 3 high school pitchers, at the time of the draft.”

This might be true collectively, but I think the team involved matters. Beane didn’t want to avoid high school pitchers because they never work out. He believed that college pitchers were more of a sure thing/less likely to flame out. And I don’t know if it’s true, but the logic is there: A pitcher with three or four more years of experience has also had three or four years without a major injury. And for a team that just can’t afford to have a lot of bust-out first round picks, you need to minimize the risk even if you’re going to miss out on a few superstars.