Originally Posted by
Olympic Fan
The most interesting part of Moneyball (to me) was the chapter on the draft and how Beane infuriated all the scouts with his offball approach. And you know what -- he basically blew it. They were right and he were wrong (at least for that draft). The centerpiece with the chapter was his love affair with an Ababama catcher that put up great numbers, but -- acoording to the scouts -- was a marginal prospect. Beane made the kid a first-round pick ... and (although it's not in the book) he bombed. In fact, they had like five first-round picks that year and the only one that panned out was the one that everybody else wanted -- Nick Swisher.
I agree with the point that Beane exploited the misunderstanding of OBP and OPS (although with a few other measures) -- but it worked best when he used it to acquire undervalued veterans. His draft acumen turned out to be mediocre to poor.
True, Jeremy Brown didn't work out, but Joe Blanton and Mark Teahen were two of the other first round picks. By any reasonable measure, Blanton panned out, and Teahen played at the major league level through last season (though didn't make the Nationals this spring training and my guess is that he might not make it back at this point). Anyway, not a total waste beyond Swisher.
And there were a lot of other draft successes later on - far better than "mediocre to poor" in my view.
"I don't like them when they are eating my azaleas or rhododendrons or pansies." - Coach K