Funnyball: The Curious Continued Employment of Mr. Sabermetrics

Things can change pretty fast in sports. A team is great one year, bad the next. A player struggles for a couple of seasons and has everyone thinking he’s a scrub, and then he breaks out and becomes a star. Even from game to game, perceptions can change wildly. Look at Minnesota Vikings quarterback J.J. McCarthy. He has a terrible game and everybody wants to run him out of town. The next week he looks good and suddenly he’s a franchise QB again.

The sports hype train is very much real, and people are just as eager to tear down as they are to build up. One of the most egregious examples of the latter in recent history concerns the Oakland (or at some point perhaps in the future “Las Vegas”) Athletics and their Moneyball era. Let me set the stage.

In the mid-80s, the A’s weren’t great, but they were entertaining. Both Jose Conseco and Mark McGwire debuted within two years of each other, and the Bash Brothers hit a lot of home runs. It wasn’t long before that power was combined with an excellent pitching staff featuring guys like Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley, and the team dominated for a stretch. The A’s went to three straight World Series, but ultimately won just one. This dynasty (if it can be called that) was short-lived, however, as from 1991 to 1999, there was just one trip to the postseason.

In the late 1990s, the A’s decided to do something pretty drastic. Instead of giving a lot of money to sluggers, they opted to give less money to guys who were adept at hitting singles or getting walked. Yup, while chicks dig the long ball, new GM Billy Beane really dug on-base percentage. Beane’s partner in crime during this new era was Paul DePodesta (more on him in a bit), and the two used sabermetrics to analyze stats to figure out which players to sign and how best to use their skinny payroll.

While this seemingly went against the fundamentals of building a team, it actually worked. The A’s made it to the ALCS four straight years – topping 100 wins in two of them – and Beane and DePodesta were considered geniuses by many. They were profiled in Michael Lewis’ book Moneyball, which later became a hit movie. And everybody lived happily ever after, right?

Time has a funny way of changing people’s views. The more years that go by, the easier it is to look at things with rose-colored glasses or perhaps forget them altogether. And while current A’s fans would probably kill for the success the team had 25 years ago, the truth is as good as they were, they never won a World Series. In fact, they never even got there, losing each of those four ALCS. But Brad Pitt sure looked great working the phones in that flick!

Someone who opted not to be depicted in the film is DePodesta, who was concerned that the real story would at least in part be fictionalized. (And frankly, if I found out Jonah Hill would be playing me in a movie, I’d pass too.) Since leaving the A’s after the 2003 season, DePodesta bounced around MLB, with short stays in the front offices of the Dodgers, Padres, and Mets, with only that last one reaching (and losing) the World Series during his tenure.

Perhaps deciding that baseball just wasn’t for him any longer, in 2016, DePodesta became the Chief Strategy Officer for the Cleveland Browns. So, does data analysis work in football? The Browns quickly discovered that if it does, perhaps DePodesta isn’t the guy to be using it. The team finished 1-15 in 2016, and they followed that up with a winless season the next year. And while Cleveland did make the playoffs twice during DePodesta’s stint, they also had the worst record in the NFL in that time frame.

At this point, you might be thinking that it’s time for DePodesta to try something else. Perhaps a new industry or maybe he should take up a hobby, like fishing. Apparently, however, that’s not what the Colorado Rockies thought, as they just hired him to be their President of Baseball Operations.

It does make sense, however, for a team that has lost over 100 games in each of the last three seasons to take a chance on DePodesta. After all, things couldn’t get much worse in Denver, could they? I guess we’ll all find out. And whether he’s with the Rockies for a year or a decade, afterwards he’ll surely move on to another team or another sport. Maybe hockey? Though Moneypuck doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?