General

If you've seen, or are planning to see the film “Moneyball”, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, it's entertainment. Most of the real story can be found on Wikipedia, in the articles on A's GM Billy Beane and Assistant GM Paul DePodesta.

DePodesta was taken out of the film entirely, and replaced by the fictional character played by Hill. The film portrayed Beane as placing his career on the line with the deals he made during the 2002 season, when, in fact, he had already been the General Manager of the A's for four seasons.

The book that the film was based on was written by Michael Lewis and published in 2003. It gives a history of “sabermetrics”, a set of baseball statistics that started with Bill James, and was refined by a community of geeks. James felt that batting average, home runs, and RBI are ineffective measurements of a players performance. On-base percentage is better, but James came up with the “runs created” statistic, which is:

If you play in, coach, or follow a summer league that uses Pointstreak, you can see runs created and other sabermetric stats:

Northwoods League: batting pitching

West Coast League: batting pitching

Cal Ripken League: batting pitching

Western Major Baseball League: batting pitching

You'll see, for example, that Shaun Cooper of Utah led the Northwoods League in runs created (63.595), although he ranked seventh in batting average; he led the league in home runs and RBI. Mike Mandarino of Cumberland, who batted .308 in the Cal Ripken League, had an RC of 23.308, good for eleventh place. Sean Myrom of Concordia-Portland had an RC of 19.273, which put him in 19^th place in the West Coast League.

Bryan Abrey of Lewis-Clark State, who led the WMBL in batting average by a large margin, was a close second in RC with an RC of 55.455. Jesse Sawyer of South Dakota State was first, with an RC of 56.696. Sawyer had 18 home runs and drew 37 walks; Abrey had 3 home runs and 12 walks.

There are also sabermetric pitching statistics, such as strikeouts per nine innings (K/9), first pitch strike percentage (FPS%), and component ERA (ERC). ERC is also an invention of Bill James, and the formula is:

This looks complicated, but the basic idea is to remove the luck factor (and specifically inherited runners on base) from ERA. ERC usually doesn't vary a lot from ERA. For example, Ryan Richardson of Campbellsville, who led the West Coast League with an ERA of 1.53, had an ERA of 1.603. This put him behind Alex Phillips of Kentucky, who had an ERC of 1.073, and an ERA of 1.89.

What both the book and film are primarily about, however, is how Beane went up against conventional baseball wisdom in assembling the 2002 A's team that won a division championship, despite losing Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, and Jason Isringhausen to free agency. Beane and DePodesta used sabermetrics to locate players who were undervalued, such as Scott Hatteberg and David Justice.

I asked a local expert, British Columbia Head Coach Terry McKaig, who earned a degree in Human Kinetics from UBC in 1997, some questions about how Beane's tactics fit into college baseball.

Bob Broughton, CourtesyRunner.com: Beane's A's were discouraged from bunting and stealing bases, because his statistical analysis showed that the cost of an out outweighs the benefit of advancing a base. What do you think about this?

Terry McKaig: I both agree and disagree with this being a sole way of looking at the strategy of bunting and stealing. In college, we only play 55 games (32 conference) so win/loss is weighted much different than over 162 games. I also like looking at other factors. If a pitcher/catcher combination are terrible at holding runners, why not take advantage? We look at pitcher's release times, put it with a catcher's pop time, and then decide from there whether to exploit. The last 5 seasons, we have stolen bases at a 70.6% clip. The same really applies to bunting. Do the 3B/P look shaky fielding their position? Then not only are you advancing baserunners, but also putting pressure on a bad defense to make game changing mistakes. You are much more likely to see that bunt thrown away down the line for 2 extra bases than in MLB. To sum up this area, if you have players that can bunt and steal, use it. If some players can't, don't do it.

BB: How important is first pitch strike percentage?

TM: This is one of the most important keys to baseball. Get ahead as a pitcher and all the stats and numbers drastically change in your favor. Throwing a first pitch strike does many things. Gives pitcher confidence, opens up all pitches and locations, gets the hitter defensive, gets the hitter more aggressive than he likes (doesn't like getting down 0-2), initiates contact which will keep pitch counts down. I have heard professional scouts say that the best pitch in baseball is not a fastball, slider, or changeup... it is strike one!

BB: The NAIA doesn't keep stats on first pitch strike percentage. Do you and other coaches keep your own stats for this?

TM: We do keep this and other key stats for our pitchers and opposition pitchers. I truly believe you can build offensive, defensive, and pitching game plans and strategies off this stat.

BB: Beane didn't think that a player's defensive ability is all that important. How does this fit in with your experience?

TM: We have just been very fortunate at UBC to have great defenders. Have a careful look at what a great defender is. We have good defensive numbers the past few years in terms of fielding percentage. How much of this is playing a lot of games on field turf? Our great pitching tends to get "easy" outs, which then inflates fielding percentage. We have been great defenders on routine plays. Would I say we have had exceptional athletes that take away base hits, great range in infield/outfield etc.? No. The exception to this would have been Sammie Starr (now a shortstop in the Orioles organization). So in recruiting, you can only worry about defense so much. A high school player is going to put on 15-30 lbs. in his time at UBC. What will that do to his athleticism, range, defense?

BB: Beane had a strong preference for drafting players with college experience instead of 17 and 18-year-olds. Why?

TM: I'm sure he has seen some value in being able to put valuation on college stats. You could never do that in high school given wide array of competition. College stats mean something and the athletes are 20-22 yrs old so not as much guess work at what their ceiling might be. More of a "what you see is what you get" scenario.

BB: What are pro scouts looking at when evaluating college players?

TM: For pitchers, they of course need to see velocity but the pitchers had better have much more in terms of makeup, pitchability, and polish given they are already 20-22 yrs old. The second and third pitches need to be polished and body type and arm health is also evaluated. For hitters, they are looking for power, speed, and offensive approach. Not as much projection valued here as in college, they should be able to tell whether a player can hit or can't hit. If he can't hit, then defense, base stealing come into it if the player is to have any value.