Big League Blues

After steroids and salaries, the hot topic in baseball is the number crunchers. Michael Lewis's Moneyball kicked off a debate about whether a general manager should evaluate players through traditional scouting or by performance analysis.

On the one hand you have scouts who rely on player-evaluation methods almost as old as Cap Anson. They employ the same standardized grading systems that have been used to evaluate players since the 1960s. On the other hand you have a generation of statheads raised on the theories of statistical heroes such as Bill James and Pete Palmer.

General managers today rely on both approaches. Despite what you hear in the media, there isn't really a debate between these two schools, not in the sense that one side is right and the other is wrong. Any respectable stathead will admit that the numbers can tell you only so much, that data can answer only specific questions. Any scout worth his salt will tell you his methods answer different questions, that players develop in a way no scout can anticipate. Today's smart GMs take basic scouting information about a pitcher's mechanics, a hitter's swing or a player's foot speed and integrate it with whatever insight the data can provide. Statistical analysis isn't about replacing scouting; it's about gaining a competitive advantage over an opponent.

Further evidence that the debate is overdone is that many of the approaches Jamesians take to player analysis echo ideas that John McGraw, Branch Rickey and Earl Weaver used to build winning ball clubs: Score runs by getting people on base; don't overcommit to aging talent; manage the pitching staff effectively.

So which franchises in today's game get a leg up on the competition by doing their homework? Billy Beane's Oakland A's might be the top performance-analysis franchise, and not just because of the facts Lewis presents in his book. Year after year Oakland avoids little ball--the running game, for example, and sacrifice bunting, both of which give the opponent free outs. The workload of starting pitchers is monitored throughout the organization, from the lowest rung of the minors to the majors.

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But Beane doesn't make decisions strictly on a statistical basis. Just as Lewis made his name writing about Wall Street, so Beane made for a natural subject because of his brutally frank commodity-management approach to roster assembly. Rather than sit on his heels, Beane tries to improve his current team while also keeping an eye toward the future. This past winter he tore down two thirds of the starting rotation's big three, dealing both Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder out of economic considerations and for the opportunity to acquire premier talent from the Braves and Cardinals.

The A's front office has been raided repeatedly by teams trying to add a bit of the Oakland stroke. First Grady Fuson left the player development side, moving to Texas for a raise and an assistant general manager position. (He was later driven out by John Hart, the general manager famous for successfully rebuilding the Indians in the 1990s.)

Subsequent defectors went straight to the top job in their new organizations--J.P. Ricciardi to the Blue Jays in November 2001, then Paul DePodesta to the Dodgers in February 2004. Both men have tried to reproduce elements of what they learned in Oakland. Ricciardi, one of the game's better-regarded scouting minds, hired a stathead to complement his player development background. DePodesta, an accomplished analyst in his own right, looked to shore up the Dodgers' moribund domestic scouting. While Ricciardi has to cope with the two powerhouses of the AL East and is signed up for a longterm rebuilding project, DePodesta has already done remarkable work in turning around the Dodgers, emulating his mentor with bold free agent signings and trades.

Last year's pennant winners, the Cardinals and Red Sox, both have statheads on the payroll. Boston settled for no less than Bill James himself. He is only one part of a front office team that does an unparalleled job of evaluating every decision, and Theo Epstein should be counted among the few general managers who can do their own homework. The general managers of several other teams are on board with gaining a statistical edge: The Indians' Mark Shapiro, the Padres' Kevin Towers and the Royals' Allard Baird are all identified with the Moneyball generation. Beyond them, teams such as the Mariners, Brewers and Mets have made a point of hiring their own stat-heads in the past year, and a generation of front office staffers who read Bill James in college is slowly moving up the management ladder.

We're entering an age in baseball history when competition won't be ferocious just on the diamond. It has become a year-round effort, where franchises use data, data crunchers and scouting to win. Teams that don't adapt will get used to life in the cellar.