The Futility Infielder

Alex Belth (who's now at a new address) has a fantastic interview with Moneyball author Michael Lewis up at Bronx Banter. Here are a couple of my favorite exchanges:

BB: For a lot of the super stat nerds, this book is like the Torah. It’s had a real impact.

ML: It’s funny. I could understand as I was writing it, that would be somewhat unsatisfying to a hardcore stats nerd because all he wants in the statistical secrets of the Oakland A’s, and he wants them in a cold-blooded fashion. He doesn’t want a story. The truth is, I wasn’t ever going to get all of the secrets. I got some of the secrets, probably the most important ones, but there is still stuff I didn’t get. The other thing the stats geek wants me to do is dismantle whatever fallacies they might have. And I had no interest in doing that. I just wanted to give the reader a view of what they were doing. I didn’t want to say, ‘It makes no sense that on base percentage is three times better than slugging percentage…’ I didn’t have any particular interest in sifting through the minutia of the A’s statistical arguments. I thought the big point, is that they are even making them. If they are wrong, and it’s really only two-and-a-half times slugging, then who really gives a shit? I mean I give a shit sort of, but not really. The point is, the A’s are thinking rationally and analytically about it. We can argue about the finer details, but I didn’t care to do that. I knew when I was writing it that there would be a feeling with the hardcore baseball fan that they were being lead to the alter. It would miss the point too heavily to focus on just those arguments. These are people that basically embrace the same worldview, and they are arguing amongst themselves, in a language they can understand.

...

BB: Why didn’t Billy Beane take the Boston job?

ML: In the book I don’t explain why he didn’t go; I explain why he even entertained it in the first place. He wanted the validation. Why he didn’t go? I think his daughter had a lot to do with it. I think that he almost breaks out in hives when he’s in an east coast city. I mean, he doesn’t own a suit. Being in a more corporate, conservative, or business-like environment makes him uncomfortable. I think that the Red Sox job is actually a really shitty job right now. Because you’ve got this organization that looks to the fans and the media like, ‘Oh, we could win a World Series this year,’ but in fact, the minor league system’s bankrupt. Four of your stars’ contracts are coming up after next season. To do it right, what they need to do is rebuild. Not to max out right away at the major league level, but actually take a longer view. And that is such a bad environment to try and take a longer view because everybody wants it now.

Elsewhere, Lewis addresses the possiblity of a Moneyball movie (don't hold your breath), discusses some of what was left on the cutting-room floor, and skewers Joe Morgan for ignorantly spreading the false impression that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball.

Fans of the book will be pleased to note that Lewis plans a sequel -- in six years, when the A's draft choices profiled in the book (Nick Swisher, Jeremy Brown, et al) have reached the majors or busted. "I am following them through the minor leagues," says Lewis, "Traveling on the buses with them and all that other stuff."

For those of you who missed it, Belth's audio interview with Foul Ball author Jim Bouton is still up on the Baseball Prospectus Radio site. It's a freebie, so check it out while you still can.

• • •

The Yanks dropped the second and third games to the Red Sox in frustrating fashion over the weekend. On Saturday they clawed their way back from being down 4-0, tying the ballgame in the 8th inning. But new acquisition Armando Benitez lived up to the one in the catalog, giving up the winning run in the 9th inning. Sunday night was even more disheartening. Jeff Weaver, perhaps pitching for his pinstriped life, tossed six marvelous innings of two-hit shutout ball, staking the Yanks to a 3-0 lead. But Weaver unravelled in the 7th, walking a batter and hitting another. Enter Chris Hammond, who served up a 3-run homer to Jason Varitek, then a solo shot to Johnny Damon, pissing away Weaver's gem. Benitez and fellow recent acquisition Jesse Orosco continued the bloodletting, yielding two more runs.

Once again, Torre's management of the bullpen cost the Yanks the game. Instead of givng their shaky relievers a fresh start at the top of an inning, he waited until the Sox had a budding rally. And because he'd been relying on his shiny new additions, his mainstays had fallen into disuse. Hammond hadn't pitched in a week and had only 2.1 innings over the last 10 days and only 4.2 for all of July. Osuna spent the first half of the month on the DL, and had only pitched 2.2 innings since returning prior to last night. Way to keep everybody fresh, Joe.

The AL East flag is going to come down to which of the two teams bullpens sucks less, which skipper can minimize the mismanagment there, and which shaky acquisitions come through in the big moments. The Yankee bullpen has a 4.07 ERA this season, dead even with their starters. The Sox pen has a 5.05 ERA, 0.73 runs worse than their starters. Baseball Prospectus' Reliever Report shows the Yanks just about average, with -0.5 Adjusted Runs Prevented,16th in the majors. The Sox are at -30.7 ARP, tied for 28th in the majors. This one should turn out in the Yanks' favor, but as this weekend showed, anything can happen when Benitez comes into the ballgame, and the same goes for Byung-Hyun Kim.

The New York Times' William Rhoden has an amusing take on the Sox-Yanks rivalry, comparing the two teams to Warner Bros.' Roadrunner-Wile E. Coyote cartoons: "Will Boston be mashed by safes and crushed by boulders, blown up by its own dynamite, flattened by trains it never saw? Will the Red Sox continue to buy defective material from the Acme Corporation?"

Last I checked, the Roadrunner was undefeated in head-to-head competition against the Coyote. The Yanks can't live up to that lofty standard, but they might still elude the Sox yet again.