More indignation!

Hat tip to Andrew for passing along this article.

Apparently the Boston Herald also employs morons. Who knew. Ron Borges has a masterful doom and gloom column, berating the Sox for their failure to improve their offense and having the gall to actually improve their defense. But really, once you take a closer look, this article isn't any different than some of Murray Chass' rantings that FJM tore apart a couple of years ago: Borges is just an angry man upset by things he doesn't understand. Let's dig in to the article itself:

"If an array of new fielding metrics you need a Ph.D. to understand are to be believed, the Red Sox will have to travel with two planes this year. The first for the players, the second for their Gold Gloves."

Actually, no. Although I am in a Ph.D. program I don't need one to understand that defense has an impact on the number of balls that are in play that end up falling for hits. In fact, it really is quite simple: the better a defense is, the lower the proportion of balls in play that will become hits. The Red Sox were 28th last year in that stat. Do you need a Ph.D. to understand 28th out of 30?

"A year ago, the Sox won 95 games despite apparently stumbling around in the field like a half-drunken softball team in a Wednesday night league. Somehow they miraculously finished only eight games behind the Yankees without being able to catch a cold standing naked in the Alaskan wilderness."

After the earlier statement I don't really expect him to understand, but yes, the Red Sox were awfully lucky to win 95 games last year, despite their horrid defense. Every single starter had a higher ERA than their fielding independent ERA, except Buchholz. Doesn't that raise some flags?

"Together, Cameron, Scutaro and Beltre hit eight home runs more than Jason Bay but, as we now know, home runs are meaningless."

I don't really know what to do with this; either Borges is incredibly stupid or is just being intentionally obtuse. The shortstops last year were unbelievably bad.

"Some might argue that pitching in Fenway Park [map] is not exactly like pitching in Yosemite Park, but Sox’ management has discovered that despite mistaken evidence to the contrary, scoring runs is no longer essential to winning games. Interesting concept."

Some might argue that in the Boston Herald a non-sensical run-on sentence combined with a two word sentence is considered a good paragraph. Interesting concept.

"Now it seems the Sox have headed down the same road of quantum baseball over your grandad’s version, which was mistakenly centered on foolishness like hitting and scoring runs."

And now we're down to a one sentence paragraph! Amazing! And we're still completely nonsensical. I've pondered this for several minutes, but I still have absolutely no idea what "quantum baseball" is. Borges nearly makes a coherent point: you still do need to score more runs than the opponents to win a baseball game. But Ron, you do realize that you can prevent an opponent from scoring runs, right? You don't always have to just score more yourself, right?

"As the days dwindle toward the start of another spring of hope, let’s pray that’s no longer the case, because if all this talk of OBP, OPS, UZR, DRS and PMR was really only about ATM that’s going to end up BAD for US."

What an amazingly clever turn of phrase! Ron capitalized BAD and US to make it seem like an acronym! My God, his wit is so incredible! On base percentage, on base plus slugging, and ultimate zone rating don’t mean anything and it was always about automatic teller machine! Borges does have one thing going for him with this article though: despite his past brush with plagiarism during his time with the Globe, even if he did steal this article from someone else I doubt the original author would want to step forward.

Moneyball

Another day, another article that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. Today the guilty party is Sky Andrecheck (don't you just hate him already?) writing for SI.com. I'll do my best to break this down FJM style, although we both know I won't match their lofty standards. Sadly, the anger inducing column is only about 10 years late to weigh in on the topic.

The start is promising, unlike the actual Joe Morgan, Sky actually appears to understand that "by scooping up undervalued players on the cheap, Oakland was able to compete with the big-market clubs despite suffering major monetary disadvantages." Unfortunately, after that things pretty much go to shit.

"Traditionalists wondered, if all teams adopted Beane's thinking, emphasizing patience and drawing walks, wouldn't the game's aesthetic appeal be ruined?"

Really? Because I can't recall a single article or conversation about that. People were too busy heaping praise on Billy Beane's new approach to worry about whether or not the game would look like a slow pitch softball game, as Andrecheck frets about.

Andrecheck goes on to show this graph, pointing out that walks peaked before Moneyball was even released and that walk rates in class A has also decreased slightly. So. fucking. what. 1. Anyone with half an understanding of statistics would take a look at that graph and easily determine there is no trend. 2. Working a walk is a skill, just like running the bases, fielding, or hitting for power. Do you think that with the success of the big sluggers in the late 1990's other players decided, "You know what I should do? I should hit more home runs. I'm going to do that!" (On second though, maybe you shouldn't answer that question). 3. Who knows what other covariables there were - maybe class A players were getting younger? On top of that, if the new approach to coaching is supposed to be a big difference maker, why are you showing me the YOUNGEST league?

"Another element of the Moneyball approach was its disdain for the speed game."

Again, just flat wrong. The entire baseball premise behind Moneyball is that outs are precious. If you run like crazy with moderate success, you're hurting your team. It isn't that stealing bases is bad, getting caught it.

"Though stealing is down from its peak in the 1980s..., the fact remains that teams are stealing... with a 72% success rate, and are doing so more efficiently than at any time in the game's history."

And he makes my point for me! This is getting easier and easier.

"Regardless of current statistical thinking, the variety of types of players that populate the major leagues has not and will not change significantly."

And again? Really, that is too kind.

As best I can tell Andrecheck doesn't really understand Moneyball, but thinks he does. Sprinkled throughout the article are little tidbits of knowledge that are correct, but when an attempt is made to synthesize them together he ends up with something incoherent. Things like defense is the new Moneyball and that Moneyball was about OBP players being undervalued are both correct, but hideously twisted around into some vision of a Billy Beane beer league softball show (although does anyone walk in beer league softball?). Either he's totally missed the point or he's constructed a marvelously flimsy straw man to break down in his last paragraph.