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My Corrections and Additions to “The Numbers Game,” by Alan Schwarz My Problem with "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis |
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Correcting My Perceived Role in the One of the worst moves in
the history of the Colorado Rockies was the big free agent signings of Mike
Hampton and Denny Neagle after the 2000 season.
Those contracts made those two pitchers the 2nd and 7th
highest paid pitchers in salary, and the length of their contracts bordered on
the absurd. The 32-year-old Neagle got five years,
and I had worked one year for
the During
my time there I had written a report titled “The Mile High Effect” which looked at the impact on professional
baseball when it was played at high altitude. It focused on both hitters and
pitchers, and came up with several potentially helpful notes from both the
offensive and defensive perspective. One of things I was able to confirm in
that research was a hypothesis that I noted had been published earlier: "[a]... brief study that STATS Inc
published in their 1999 Baseball Scoreboard book on the topic of which
pitchers do well at Coors Field ... The only conclusion of their study was
that it looked like pitchers who used the changeup as a significant part of
their arsenal were better Coors Field pitchers. They realized the softness of
their study and downplayed their certainty by prefacing their conclusion
with: `We're not necessarily saying the changeup theory is right, mind you.'
Well, I'm ready to be more forceful, and independently I say their suggestion
is right on the mark." One of the people who worked on that STATS study was my friend
Mat Olkin, and I did mention to him the report I had done for the Rockies,
but only to the extent that in regard to his change-up theory, my research
had confirmed his suspicion, and that I had properly credited the STATS study
as the originator of that hypothesis. In Mat’s
enthusiasm for a subject close to his heart and his own work, he spoke
unwisely of this to Chris Kahrl, a writer for the Baseball Prospectus. Mat felt that he
had prefaced it in such a way that Kahrl would know
it was privileged information that he did not have permission to publicize.
But Kahrl did write about it in an essay on the
Rockies, focusing solely on that small element – which was all he knew about
– and then guessing at how that information was being used, including it
possibly being behind the signings of Neagle and Hamption. He reported that I
had done a study for the “…the one thing that
pitchers with any kind of success at Coors [Field] seemed to have in common
was a good change-up. [GM] O’Dowd took that observation and applied it …
Based on the decisions to sign Denny Neagle and
Mike Hampton, each the owner of a quality change-up, it looks like O’Dowd is
committing to Craig Wright’s observation.” From there it is easy to
see how in the next few years my name became “mud” for some fans of the I explained to the
Rockies Assistant GM, Josh Byrnes, what had happened, and it was easy for him
to see I had not intended to break the confidence of that work for the
Rockies, and that in fact had not cooperated with the writer. Besides seeing
that Kahrl had no understanding of the scope of the
report and was focused on that one small aspect as “the one thing,” Byrnes
also knew that I had been directly opposed to the strategy of the free
agent signings of Neagle and Hampton, and that I
had been particularly scathing in my evaluation of Denny Neagle
as a very poor fit to the Rockies. But
other than the In
October of 2000, I wrote a report for the In addressing the question: “What is Our Best
Acquisition Strategy for the 2000 Post-Season?”, I wrote: As a
general rule, the last thing we should be doing at this time is trying
to sign or trade for someone who is a front-line pitcher at low
altitude. … In my conclusion on the research on pitchers in The Mile High Effect, I felt there
were four major points, and this was one of them: Don’t expect fair return when acquiring pitchers
who excel at pitching at low altitude. The
research clearly showed that performing with unusual success at low altitude
was a significant inverse indicator for carrying over that relative
success at high altitude. In fact, I discovered that the ability to prevent
runs at low altitude was the single largest indicator for falling short of
expected success at high altitude -- more than a low groundball percentage,
more than anything. The better a pitcher was at low altitude,
the more likely he was to lose more off his performance at high altitude
compared to the average and below average pitcher. Understand
this is not saying that the best pitchers at low altitude aren’t also
the best pitchers at high altitude. It
is saying that the gap between the best and the rest is significantly narrowed.
And in the case of the pitchers it practically obliterates the difference
between the middle third and top third in run prevention. At low altitude,
these two groups were separated by over a run per 9 innings, but at high
altitude the gap fell to about a tenth of a run. So what does that mean to us? Let’s use the example of free
agent Mike Mussina. The biggest factor driving the
bids of the low altitude teams is that Mussina is
likely to prevent runs at a clip 22% below the average starting pitcher. But
for us, half of his innings are going to be at high altitude. If Mussina is affected like the best third in run prevention
were in the research study, that 22% edge is going to fall off to about
10.6% in those home innings, which
will make him a 16% pitcher overall. In other words, even if Mussina
didn’t ask for an extra dime to take on pitching in Don’t expect fair return when acquiring
pitchers who excel at pitching at low altitude. So how do
we get around that? First, let’s think about what the problem is. Baseball is
a very different game at high altitude, and that is especially true for the
pitchers, where different styles of pitching carry different rewards from
what is common at low altitude. Let’s say
I’m an exceptional pitcher compared to others at low altitude. How did I get
to that point? Chances are
I was scouted by men whose sole experience was judging the ability to
succeed at low altitude baseball. Chances are
I was coached by men whose sole experience was refining the ability to
succeed at low altitude baseball, and better than most I was able to pick up
those refinements. I was carefully
selected and coached to succeed at low altitude. My skills were better suited
for it, and I was able to refine my skills toward succeeding at low altitude.
I have a distinct edge over the other pitchers in succeeding at low altitude.
Is it then a surprise that if you put me at high altitude that I am going to
lose more of my edge than the pitchers who were less suited and less refined
to succeed at low altitude? Let me say it a third time: Don’t expect fair return when acquiring
pitchers who excel at pitching at low altitude. If you
can’t get fair return for what you give up, that right there is sound logic
for the need to develop exceptional pitchers on our own rather than trying to
acquire them. And of course, to be an exceptional pitcher in our context, it
would help if the pitcher’s skills were being refined toward being successful
at high altitude. No one is better suited to do that or to give them the
relevant experience than we are. We need to develop our own star pitchers. When
asked to consider these two specific pitchers, I was much kinder to Mike
Hampton, saying essentially that if you were going to go against my general
advice on this point, Hampton was at least the best of that free agent pool
of pitchers. I was extremely hard on Neagle who I
felt was being immensely overrated by all the teams because of his poor aging
profile, and I determined that he was an especially poor match to succeed
with Colorado because of his flyball tendencies. I not only was not an
advocate for the Hampton-Neagle signings, I
actually tried hard, very hard, to prevent the spending of that $175 million
in that manner. |
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My Corrections and Additions to “The Numbers Game,” by Alan Schwarz My Problem with "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis |