As the Seattle Mariners struggle through their annual season of supreme mediocrity, their division rivals in Oakland currently sit half a game ahead of the Texas Rangers in first place. The A’s are in a neck and neck race with the high-budget Texas Rangers and figure to stay in contention throughout the year.
As usual, Oakland has found success with undervalued players who are out-performing their expectations. Seriously, who had Josh Donaldson on their All-Star ballot before the season? And, in my favorite example of an unexpected over-achiever, ageless wonder/fat plumber Bartolo Colon is also currently putting up a perplexingly dominant, All-Star caliber season sporting an 11-2 record and a 2.79 ERA. Did I mention that he’s 76 years old and weighs 408 pounds? Insane.
"I feel better right now than last year," Colon said recently. "I worked more than last year, even though I'm still fat, but that don't mean nothing."
Touché, Bartolo. Don’t listen to the haters. I’m all for a dumpy fat guy mowing down line-ups, while also possessing roughly the same physical shape as a basketball. I don’t know why but watching 40-year-old Colon light up chiseled 230 pound Nelson Cruz is funny every time. It defies all conventional sports wisdom.
Why do the Mariners continue to struggle while the A’s stay competitive? One reason is simply bad luck. Players like Justin Smoak and Dustin Ackley have drastically underperformed for one reason or another and management can’t necessarily be blamed for that. However long ago it may seem, there was a time when Smoak and Ackley were once big-time prospects who seemed primed to man the right side of the Seattle infield for the foreseeable future. Now they’re struggling to stay out of AAA. That’s just how it goes sometimes. However, that can’t be the whole story.
The answer isn’t as simple as money. The Mariners indeed have a higher payroll than the A’s. And, as any Moneyball readers should know, much of the secret to the A’s success lies in statistical analysis. Oakland General Manger Billy Beane and his staff have mastered being able to find players who can offer high levels of production for lower cost. Obviously every team in the modern league is making use of advanced statistics to one degree or another with varying success rates. But if the A’s success can show us anything, it’s that these players are available for EVERYONE to sign and develop. You just have to find them and you have to commit to a different mentality for player analysis. To be fair, the Mariners front office does use a lot of refined statistics when evaluating players. However, manager Eric Wedge’s comments recently regarding the demotion of Ackley were a good illustration to me of how advanced statistical analysis maybe doesn’t have as much widespread acceptance in baseball as it should, despite the fact that practically every team now uses it.
“It’s the new generation. It’s all this sabermetrics stuff, for lack of a better term, you know what I mean?” Wedge said, with what seemed to be complete and utter conviction. “People who haven’t played since they were 9 years old think they have it figured out. It gets in these kids’ heads.”
Ah, yes. Sound reasoning. It’s not the physical, mental or technical aspects. It’s the nerds! God, do I love the nerd defense. Dustin Ackley can’t get it together in the batters box because all the nerdy nerdlings and their nerd minions are getting in his head by crunching too many numbers while they play World of Warcraft and compare pocket protectors. But, just to be clear Eric, I was actually the backup left fielder for my local Sullivan Design Group Little League team until I was 11, not 9. So yeah, I think I know a little something about baseball.
I understand that Wedge was just defending his player. And, to his credit, he later clarified and backed off this statement a little bit. However, fans, coaches and even players more commonly believe Wedge’s comments and the line of thinking expressed in his quote than you would think.
I just don’t see how you can dispute and dismiss models and methods that are scientifically proven to give you, if nothing else, an improved statistical chance at performing better. In 2002, statistician Nate Silver developed PECOTA, a model that can predict player performance with almost freakish accuracy. Silver is also the former managing partner of Baseball Prospectus, which has a model that can predict the performance of an entire team. BP actually determined that the Chicago White Sox would go 72-90 just two seasons after they won the World Series in 2005, a prediction that was widely dismissed because it concerned a team that was coming off a recent championship and a strong record the previous season. Well, guess what the White Sox record was in 2007? 72-90. Silver eventually graduated to doing projections for political elections, where he correctly guessed the results of all 50 states in the last presidential election based on polling data and numbers. Leading up the election, his model was once again dismissed but, once again, turned out to be correct.
The point is, this stuff works and there is no reason why every team shouldn’t be employing the use of advanced statistical analysis to the utmost of their ability. I’m not saying the Mariners aren’t winning because they don’t analyze stats because they obviously do. Every team does. What I am saying, however, is that we should shift the mentality that pegs this type of analysis as “nerdy” and “out of touch with the human element.” Stats by no means guarantee victories but they, at the very least, give you a better chance. Mariners fans and baseball fans alike should embrace the SABER-metric revolution as a more advanced and critically refined way of looking at baseball and hope the front office can begin to find creative ways to stay competitive with the higher-budget teams. Otherwise, they’ll be looking up at the smarter and better run A’s for another decade.
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