Hats Off

Dave Paisley

I figured that writing about Billy Beane and Moneyball would get the old email rolling in, and sure enough it did. If you hark back to last week?s article, you?ll remember that I was a little puzzled about the Oakland front office?s preoccupation with strikeout rate as reported in the book.

Last week I showed the OPS values for the top and bottom ten players in walk rate and strikeout rate so far this year. Several people were curious about how the OPS split broke down by on base percentage and slugging, so here?s a bit more detail for walks:

Skill	OBP	SLG
Top 10 Walkers	.427	.531
Bottom 10 Walkers	.307	.436
Difference	.120	.095

And for strikeouts:

Skill	OBP	SLG
Top 10 Strikeouts	.329	.428
Bottom 10 Strikeouts	.347	.448
Difference	-.018	-.020

And here are the ratios of the differences:

Ratio of Differences	OBP	SLG
	6.7	4.8

As you can see the difference in both OBP and SLG between the top and bottom ten players is five to six times larger for walks than strikeouts. Also, the only really significant difference is the one between the high and low walkers. Of course, part of the increase in OPS is directly due to the increase in OBP expected from all those walks, but along with that patient eye comes a higher slugging percentage. It?s not hard to understand that a guy who can lay off bad pitches to walk is going to swing at better pitches with better results, too..

The reason this whole story comes up in Moneyball is that Beane and DePodesta were casting around for how to replace Jason Giambi. Curiously, Paul DePodesta, the sidekick, is somehow convinced that OBP is three times more valuable than SLG. That in itself is curious, but I?ll come back to that later. So Beane and DePodesta weren?t worried about replacing Giambi?s slugging as much as they were worried about replacing his on base ability (.477 OBP in 2001). .

Oakland had also lost Johnny Damon and Olmedo Saenz who, at least in the OBP department, were no great shakes at .326 and .291 respectively. According to Lewis, the A?s front office felt they only needed to replace the average OBP of those two and Giambi (.364) thirty points above league average in 2001. .

This seems really stupidly simplistic, but I?ll give DePodesta the benefit of the doubt in assuming that Lewis somehow oversimplified the problem. Still, given the solution, maybe he didn?t. The solution at first base at least, was Scott Hatteberg. Now, I have nothing against Hatteberg. He seems like a nic e guy and some of the best anecdotes in the book are entirely due to his engaging personality. But his lifetime OBP of .350 going into the 2002 season was hardly anything special, especially as it came with a SLG of .414 (but that?s not important according to DePodesta, so what the heck?).

Of course, Hatteberg came cheap because he?d had a poor 2001, even for him, a mere .245/.332/.345 (Avg/OBP/SLG) but that was easily explained away by his not fitting into the Boston system, where groundouts to second are much preferable to walks apparently (so we knew Johnny Damon would fit in there, no problem, right?).

Hatteberg is also stingy at striking out, being one of the handful of major leaguers who strike out less than they walk. He fit right into the A?s system, turning in a decent .280/.374/.433 season in 2002. But in 136 games and 490 at bats, he managed to score just 58 runs and drive in 61. Even if you subscribe to the fancy Runs Created formula, that gives him only 78 (and that overestimates actual runs scored by quite a bit.).

Jason Giambi he wasn?t. This year he?s managing .262/.346/.362 so far (barely Rey Ordonez) so maybe that 2002 was more due to random variation than the A?s system. .

The book is full of wonderful little snippets from the players who still don?t get the whole ?take a walk? deal. Miguel Tejada and Terrence Long in particular seem to be bemused by the notion (and their stats prove it...) So don?t expect these guys to stick around when they hit free agency. In fact, you can rest assured Beane has already figured out who he wants from which team for Tejada at the trade deadline. .

So all you GMs - don?t say you weren?t warned...

about the author

Who do you think Beane will get for Tejada? Don't be shy - send your thoughts to Dave Paisley at drdjp@strikethree.com.