Is this still being practised by organisations ? Or have turned directions towards physical athlete's who excel at throwing, hitting, and running. Not standing taking walks, and improving their on base percentage.
After re reading the book, and reflecting the current drop of GM's, I would concede that we are past that era, that it really was spawned out of the Billy Beane forced budget era currently residing in northen California.
Take a good look at the A's now, a squad made up of some talented hurlers, and an odd assortment of positional players, some are cast offs, some are might be's, many are just guys. Daric Barton is a true holdover from the Moneyball philosophy. Mark Ellis is just a hold over from better days.
What keeps the A's at the .500 plateay these days is young pitching that has exceeded expectations, like Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson, and perhaps Vinny Mazzaro, amongst others.
If you look closer, back in the day when the A's ruled the AL West, they had Harden, or Mulder, Hudson, Zito or more recently Danny Haren. Having Cy Young caliber arms usually means you can stay in contention a long time, and are not going to hit long losing streaks.
They had Giambi, and Chavez, to hit 30 plus home runs, plus the aforementioned Mark Ellis, and at times resembled a pennant contender. But time, and injuries, defections and no PED's have reduced the A's to a squad of hitless wonders. Without the bangers and mashers, the run support isn't there. The On Base Kings are not on base, and when they are, there is no one to drive them in.
The Moneyball theme was to build your team around not only a group who would rather walk to 1st, than chase pitches in hopes of driving them, and add in a few sluggers, and cheap controllable pitchers. When the players got too expensive, they were dealt off, and process continued.
So when you have no mashers, and no one gets on base ( save Barton ), the Moneyball approach falls flat.
It was a them built out of necessity rather than design. A reduced amount of scouts, who cost more, were replaced by a group of computer aged wannabees who would find a the kid who had a bad body, but a .450 on base. He would come cheaper, and hopefully could be taught how to run faster than a tortoise.
Andrew Brown, who seemed to be a poster boy of who not to draft , a kid who seemingly could not run fast, could not play at catcher, or barely at first , but who who walked 125 times, was the to be a center piece of the A's offense. Problem was, he could not hit, or hit very much and there was a reason he walked more, he did not like to run fast. You see Brown was tipping the scales at 255-260 and not all that was in muscle. One A's scout claimed they should pass him up, because he was quote "fat". they called him the Fat Kid, and as it turned out, he lacked too many baseball skills to make it higher than Double AA.
So, is there really any validity now after 8 years have past that the Moneyball method can help a team.
Well, a team with a fixed and very limiting budget, maybe you get a diamond once and again, but the game has become leaner, the players train year round, we are emerging from post steroid era, and runs are being scored by the hit and run, and stealing, and less dependant solely on clogging the base paths and hoping for sac flys or seeing eye base hits.
So much the better, the other GM's have seen that players who are bleached from drugs have to learn to hone other skills to stay in the game, and the game will be better for it.
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