July 10, 2003
The Movement That Is Moneyball
Over at Blissful Knowledge, Dr. Manhattan has a treasure trove of Moneyball-related information. Most recently, he linked to an interview Robert Birnbaum conducted with Moneyball author Michael Lewis about how the book is impacting outside of the world of sports:
The lead investment strategist for Credit Suisse/First Boston, the investment bank, devoted his whole research report a week or two ago to this book. The gist of it was if you want to know how to manage money the Oakland A's are a good example—if you want to look at allocation of resources and how you think about it.
The second post concerns a trial balloon the good doctor is floating concerning who would be the best sort of manager to match up with Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane:
The perfect managerial match for Billy Beane would share his intellect and volatility. He would not be afraid to cause controversy in his commitment to doing what he felt was the right move (in baseball terms: to tell his detractors and the media to go f$#% themselves). And a connection to the Mets wouldn't hurt.
Bobby Valentine, would you like to move to Oakland?
Not long ago, Newsday's Sports Television writer, Steve Zipay, spent a day in Bristol at ESPN with Valentine as he prepared for a Baseball Tonight broadcast, and one of the beauties Valentine uncorked was his belief that Moneyball was "80 percent fiction." If anything, I'm not sure there's a room big enough to accomodate a pair of egos the size of Valentine's and Beane's. Both would need to work with someone who would serve as more of a foil: which is why Beane works so well now with the low key Ken Macha; and it's also why Valentine clashed so often with the high profile ex-Mets General Manager, Steve Phillips.
POSTSCRIPT: The Doc also links to the latest column from ESPN.com's Rob Neyer, who interviewed ex-Houston Astros manager Larry Dierker, and how some of the principals of Moneyball can and did cause friction between Dierker and players who thought they knew better.
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