Moneyball, Old School, and Jim Tracy

The Jim Tracy situation, both here and in LA, has sparked a lot of debate about "Moneyball" vs. "Old School." This of course got me thinking about the whole thing, which resulted in the following monster of a post. Keep in mind that I'm not trying to bash either side of the argument, or even trying to pick sides. I'm just seeing a reason to stay positive about Tracy when it seems like a lot of people very quickly are going negative.

I read Moneyball about two years ago along with the rest of the free world and was very intrigued by the concept of looking beyond traditional stats to find value players that no one else would see (Scott Hatteberg, etc), but I also wondered if maybe too big a deal was being made because the team on which this so called revolution was taking place had the Big Three in their rotation. Not in a Joe Morgan type way, mind you, but in a typical analytical thought process. Still, Beane's model seemed made sense on a small market scale to me.

After I read Moneyball, the first thing I thought back to the most recent World Series champs (at the time), the Florida Marlins. They were a small budget team with the oldest of old school managers, Jack McKeon. McKeon got a ton of praise from the Good Ol' Boy Network after that series for all the small ball he played and how he didn't pay attention to silly things like how many innings his young pitchers were pitching which was, of course, ridiculous. All McKeon did was trust his young pitchers instead of hinder them. I could be wrong, but I don't remember Beckett or Penny or Pavano racking up ridiculous pitch counts in those playoff games. They kept coming back because they were pitching well, and when they didn't he could fall back on Fox, Urbina, and Looper. Their offense had some decent bats, but nothing that struck fear in the heart of opponents. They won with young pitching (like I'm telling anyone anything new here).

So after Beane, let's move to some disciples. His right hand men who moved on, Ricciardi and DePodesta, have had mixed results in their time in Toronto and LA. I could go on about what has and hasn't happened in their terms as GMs, but I'll just point to this year. Both seemed to be doing OK (even the Jays in the vaunted AL East) until their aces, Halladay and Gagne (Gagne is maybe the one closer in the league that can be called an ace, look at the numbers, they're insane) went down. The seasons went down more or less with them. Neither has been able to reproduce Beane's success in Oakland (though DePo has only been on the job two years) because neither has had the pitching Beane has. Another celebrated Beane/Bill James disciple is Theo Epstein, the wunderkind in Boston. What was the difference between the just short '03 Red Sox and the curse-busting '04 version? Keith Foulke and Curt Schilling. Their offense could make up the gaps in the rotation, but without Foulke and Schilling the Red Sox don't win a World Series last year (just look at this year's Red Sox).

Look at this year's teams. Why did White Sox build up an enormous lead and almost blow it, then run away with the division? Was it because Ozzie-ball magically worked, then ceased to work down the stretch, then worked again? No, it was because Buerhle and Garland were Cy favorites for the first 2/3rds of the year, then faltered, only to be picked up by Contreras down the stretch. As long as Patterson and Hernandez were horses, the Nationals were in contention. The Pirates were a .500 team before Mark Redman and Kip Wells fell off the face of the planet and Oliver Perez went psycho on a laundry cart.

So what am I saying? Am I saying that pitching is the only thing you need to win? No, of course not, you could use my example of last year's Red Sox to disprove what I'm saying just as easily as I use it as more justification. Am I saying Moneyball is bullshit? No, you can't dispute the results that Beane has had in Oakland, Three Aces or not. He's revolutionized the game, in terms of looking beyond batting average and similar things. Am I saying that hearing Tracy say things like

It's the intangibles they (the Cardinals) have. They do the little things. Sure, they can thunder you in a heartbeat. But where they really beat you down is when Albert Pujols hits the ball through the hole on a hit-and-run and it's first and third and nobody out

don't mortify the crap out of me? No, in fact I can't think of a thing more terrifying than Jason Bay hitting and running with the winning run on first base. Lloyd McClendon himself would have said the exact same thing. The only thing I'm saying is that pitching is universal. Billy Beane won with pitching the same way Jack McKeon did. And if our pitching is as good as we think it isl (something I'd say it has a better chance of doing under Tracy and Colborn than it did under Lloyd and Spin) than I think Jim Tracy can do it too.