Moneyball

Jeremy Brown, a catcher in the Oakland A’s farm system has been promoted to the Major League squad due to Jason Kendall’s suspension. There has been a lot of talk of this promotion on the West Coast because Brown was one of the main characters in the book, Moneyball. His promotion has led to many more people anointing Billy Beane as the greatest general manager of all time. The main characters or players in the book were Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton, John McCurdy, Ben Fritz, Jeremy Brown, Steve Obenchain, Mark Teahen, and Brant Colamarino. All were first round picks. So far Swisher and Blanton have been the only two players to regularly play in the Major Leagues. Mccurdy is a disapointment hitting .252 in single A. Fritz had surgury on his arm last year and is recovering but has not done much anyway. Jeremy Brown hit .261 with 20 hrs and 72 rbi last year. This year he has hit .333, 3hr, and 11 rbi, and a .400 OBP. Obenchain has stunk. Teahen was traded to the Royals and and a lot of people are claiming he is a great young prospect. Colamarino had a great year in AA two years ago but was bad in AAA last year. He was sent back down to AA this year.

I still do not buy into Billy Beane being an amazing innovator and having the ability to draft better than anybody else. I think everyone gives him way too much credit without really seeing how his draft pans out. Let’s look closely at that 2002 draft. I think everyone who has read the book will agree that both Nick Swisher and Joe Blanton were guys a lot of GM’s liked, not just Billy Beane. He wanted Swisher really bad and almost flipped out when he found out he could not have him. At that point he was going to take Blanton away from some other team. That other team ended up not drafting him, but the point is those were both guys that were high on other teams radars. None of the other guys from that draft have done anything yet. I’m not going to pretend knowing anything about McCurdy, Fritz, or Obenchain. Jeremy Brown, on the other hand, is someone we can not judge right now. We will be able to tell about him in the future. Mark Teahan is a guy who is always talked about, especially by Peter Gammons, but look at his numbers, http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/stats?playerId=6011, they are not very good. He is actually not even on the Royals major league club. And we all know the Royals are terrible. If he was really one of the best young players in baseball he would currently be playing for the Royals. Now, he may be another guy that we have to wait on and I don’t want to judge him too early. But as of right now, out of the seven guys Beane drafted in the first round, only two have made it and neither has been that good. And lets not forget that he said he would never draft Jeremy Bonderman, Scott Kazmir, Jeff Francis, and Prince Fielder. I would rather have any one of those three pitchers rather than Blanton and Fielder rather than Swisher. I almost feel with as loaded as the 2002 draft was, you could have put 35 names into a hat and anybody could have picked out 2 major leaguers with those seven picks.

At the same time I do not want to discredit Beane’s system. In the future it may prove to have worked, but all I’m saying is as of right now it has proven nothing.

The major league draft is absolutely ridiculous. I just do not understand the point of the rules. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is the draft works as follows: Draft picks can not be traded, the MLBPA makes a list of free agents they deem as core players and if one of those players signs with a different team the team that lost that player gets the player’s new teams first round pick as well as a compensatory pick at the end of the first round. In 2002 the A’s lost Giambi, Damon, and Izzy and got the Yankees, Red Sox, and Cardinals first round picks as well as three picks at the end of the first round. The thing that bothers me the most is Why should the A’s profit from not signing their own players? It does not make any sense. And why do those teams get compensatory picks on top of the other teams pick? Baseball is the only sport that does this and I simply do not agree with these rules. To me they make about as much sense as the seeding in the NBA playoffs.