At a reunion on Friday of three of the four inventors of Moneyball, Michael Lewis, who wrote the book, discussed the innovation that Bill James, who pioneered statistical analysis of baseball, brought to the game.
As James saw it, the baseball diamond “was a field of ignorance,” Lewis told an audience at MIT’s Sloan Sports conference in Boston. James, who self-published his analyses starting in 1977. (He also pioneered blogging, you might say.)
James’ work formed a foundation for the use of statistical methods by Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta after Beane became general manager of the Oakland A’s in 1997. Since then, front offices throughout sports have adopted (and refined) statistical tools to inform everything from scouting to strategy.
So it was with amusement that we greeted comments by Goose Gossage, the former Yankees pitcher, who on Thursday unleashed a diatribe against teams’ reliance on math.
“The game is becoming a freaking joke because of the nerds who are running it,” Gossage told ESPN. “I’ll tell you what has happened, these guys played Rotisserie baseball at Harvard or wherever the f— they went and they thought they figured the f—ing game out.
“They don’t know s—,” he added.
Whatever you think of the state of baseball, Gossage has impeccable timing. This weekend marked the 10th anniversary of the MIT event, which opened with the aforementioned reunion of Lewis, James (who did not attend Harvard) and DePodesta (who did).
Paul DePodesta: The average draft (50 rounds) in 2002 produced one everyday major league player. #SSAC16 #moneyballreunion
— Brian Browdie (@bbrowdie) March 11, 2016
Grousing by the Goose aside, it helps to appreciate how baseball operated before James, now a senior adviser to the Red Sox, began studying the game. In 2002, the average draft, which lasted 50 rounds back then, produced one everyday major league player, according to DePodesta, who now serves as chief strategy officer of the Cleveland Browns.
“We aimed to be wrong 48 out of 50 times, instead of 49 out of 50,” DePodesta recalled.
Gossage, it seems, goes with his gut, though even he acknowledges there is a role for statistical analysis, according to Andrew Marchand, who covers the Yankees for ESPN.
Still, it makes you wonder what Gossage might think of “Tracking pitcher performance with instantaneous component ERA and moving averages” or “zWins, an alternative calculation of wins above replacement in baseball,” to cite two of the papers presented at the gathering in Boston.
The tirade, in which Gossage also blasted Jose Bautista as a “f—ing disgrace to the game” for flipping his bat upon hitting a home run in the playoffs last October, earned Gossage, who is at Yankees’ training camp this spring as an instructor, a talking-to from General Manager Brian Cashman and Manager Joe Girardi.
In the end the nerd had his revenge. “That’s what’s changed since 2002,” said James. “You used to have to pay attention to those guys [like Gossage]. Now you can just ignore them.”