Stupid baseball article

Buzz Bissinger gives me more reason to ignore him as he does his best to mangle an argument against Moneyball (this is still worth arguing over?) here. Matt Yglesias of all people can debunk his argument readily -

But for a while, detailed attention to statistical work allowed Beane to exploit massive market inefficiencies and put together high-quality, low-payroll teams. But then other people noticed. Michael Lewis wrote a bestselling book about it! So the insights spread, and there are fewer inefficiencies to take care of.

I'd also point out this comment in his argument -

The Lewis book was vintage Lewis--smooth, glib, smart, and unfailing in never letting anything get in the way of his argument. The protagonist of the book, Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, was hailed as a genius in a land of cave-dwelling front office men, managers, and scouts too stupid and stubborn to understand the statistical nuances of the game and what they truly reflected. The basic thesis of the book--the finding of inefficiencies in the marketplace through expert computer analysis--no doubt resonated. As Lewis told it, what Beane and his minions did was usher in the baseball equivalent of a new period of painting, the Age of On-Base Percentage.

Yes, let's not let anything get in the way of a good argument. If Buzz Bissinger showed any sign that he followed baseball at all he might have realized that the Oakland A's team that exists today (and which he uses as evidence later in the column of moneyball's failure) is run completely differently than that of the moneyball era. The Oakland A's earlier in the decade were criticized for completely abandoning small-ball for the "Age of On-Base Percentage", but the current A's are much more focused on exploiting the base paths -

Blez: You reference stolen bases and obviously it's something that has changed quite a bit about the A's. I think you're in the top three in stolen bases and Raj is one of the league leaders in that number and he really makes the overall team number larger. Did you make a decision to be more aggressive on the base paths because of the lack of power? Did you think, we've got to get some offense some way?

Beane: I really think it's Bob (Geren) trying to take the personnel he has and trying to do the best he can with it. He's playing to the strengths. We don't have a lot of power and it's certainly something in order to be a more complete offensive team it's something we need to get. In a perfect world you have both guys who can steal bases and guys who can hit it out of the ballpark. As much as anything, it's Bob really trying to take advantage of what he has.

The central thesis, as Bissinger articulated it, still exists - the market inefficiencies have just changed. OBP is no longer under-valued in a way that a poor team can benefit from going after overlooked high-OBP players. So the A's have to find a different way to compete.

There's a bunch of other stuff that annoys me about the Bissinger article like the way he uses the failure of Jeremy Brown to discredit Moneyball while ignoring that Beane and the A's were also targeting a similar type player before the Red Sox picked him up first - Kevin Youkilis -

Beane put more stock in empirical evidence than in scouts' hunches, and didn't care that Youklis was pudgy (or, as Lewis put it in the book, "a fat third baseman who couldn't run, throw, or field"), but just loved his ability to get on base (helped in no small part by his 20/11 vision). The book brought minor leaguer Youkilis his first national recognition.

Lewis also revealed that Beane repeatedly tried to trade for Youkilis before Youkilis reached the major leagues. His attempts were blocked, however, by Beane admirer, and now Red Sox GM, Theo Epstein.

I just wish it wasn't too much to ask of sports writers to not completely dismiss, I don't know, logic when making arguments. Especially when the take-away is something I would agree with - like teams such as the Yankees have an advantage due to money to take away talent from teams like the A's who cannot afford to keep it (that's such an apparent fact that I can see the need to continue to bring up a book that was published 6 years ago to lend it some illusion of being interesting or contrariness, some illusion that someone actually disagrees with that). But, screw it, Bissinger doesn't even like Joe Posnanski -

Buzz: This is the same Posnanski who has crapped out to Sports Illustrated and acted several weeks ago like he had discovered Dave Duncan when I wrote about him in Three Nights four years ago in much better depth and prose. That Joe Posnanski? He probably still believes in Moneyball? By the way, how did Billy Beane do this year? Or the year before? Or the year before? Biggest fraud in baseball. As for LaRussa, who you all hate, two world series and one division championship in five years.

It's pretty hard to take someone seriously who is named Buzz. At least as hard as it would be to take an adult seriously who calls himself Joey. And I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about Joey Harrington.