Oakland Park Baseball

"Production shut down on “Moneyball,” Giants pitch “In the Shadow of Moneyball: How We Went to One More World Series than Beane Did During that Time.”"
-Tim Brown, Yahoo! Sports

yea everyone knows that brain sebean is one the best gms in the game just look at this trade he made: he got a.j. pierzynski and gave up joe nathan, boof bonser, and francisco liriano.

i guess sebean thought that a.j. would fit in a clubhouse with other douchebags like jeff kent and barry bonds

Fuck that, Sabean sucks, though people forget (fuck, I forget) that we have some real good pitching prospects as a result of that trade, and the Giants knew Liriano's body was a pile of match sticks.

And I liked A.J.!

But Sabean sucks. How about singing a 30+ year old centerfielder who had never played 130 games in a season to a 3 year deal wroth like $8 million each, when all the Giants had were speedy outfielders with no pop? (Brian Roberts). That's, to me, far worse than even the Zito deal!

But we did get a pennant!

Yeah, there's not much point baiting Giants fans by slagging off Sabean. Rare is the Giants fan, it seems, who has anything but disrespect for him. Myself included, although I'm pretty ignorant and the first to admit it.

well you guys insulted my gm so i pointed out that your gm is basically a retard.

so's your face

Saying he's a retard is probably pushing it, but he hasn't exactly had a great track record.

I would like to point out that while yes, the giants did go to a World Series during the Moneyball era, it was ONE YEAR, and then they got beat by another AL West team. Overall, the A's were far more successful, operating on a much smaller budget, and without RoidBonds.

Just sayin.

Tayster wrote:Saying he's a retard is probably pushing it, but he hasn't exactly had a great track record.

I would like to point out that while yes, the giants did go to a World Series during the Moneyball era, it was ONE YEAR, and then they got beat by another AL West team. Overall, the A's were far more successful, operating on a much smaller budget, and without RoidBonds.

Just sayin.

That's right. The A's only had RoidGiambi and RoidTejada! Then again, the Giants also had RoidBernard. I guess that evens out!

The Giants over Sabean's first 8 years had the third best record in baseball, behind the Yankees and the Braves.

I mean, I know that Sabean can be very dumb, but very few teams can equal his track record--which may say more about the difficulty of the job or the lack of GM talent than it does about Sabean.

Plus, the Giants have the third best record in baseball in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. How many other teams have had rebuilding eras for a decade or more?

Correction--- second best record.

retep wrote:That's right. The A's only had RoidGiambi and RoidTejada! Then again, the Giants also had RoidBernard. I guess that evens out!

Moneyball era (or at least the years that the book follows) started after Giambi left. I'm not saying that no A's player juiced, just pointing out that none of them broke any records or won some 5 or so MVP's because of illegal substances.

I mean, I know that Sabean can be very dumb, but very few teams can equal his track record--which may say more about the difficulty of the job or the lack of GM talent than it does about Sabean.

To be honest, a GM does not stay a GM for a long time unless he's made some decent moves. Making moves that don't especially work out happens to everyone, hell even some of Beane's latest moves have been puzzling (Harden for Ghallager and some rejects that aren't around any more?).

Plus, the Giants have the third best record in baseball in what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. How many other teams have had rebuilding eras for a decade or more?

You're right, congrats on playing well. You've got a great pitching staff, and you're making the most out of it, especially in the weakest division in baseball. You can't deny though that the last few years have been miserable for the Giants.

I'm sorry, but that cannot stand. The weakest division? I beg to differ. Not this year.

One cannot simply look at a division's sum of wins and losses to figure this out. For example, the ALW has a win percentage of (as of tonight, according to ESPN) 0.512, versus the NLW having 0.513, so very little difference there .

Digging a little deeper, however: the ALW and NLW both have 39-39 records in interleague play, yet the ALW is 70-70 vs (ALE+ALC), while NLW is 74-65 vs (NLE + NLC).

This clearly shows that ALW is weaker (this year so far this year, at least) than NLW. One of the other divisions may be even worse, I don't have the inclination to run those numbers right now.

Well, seeing as how my power came back on suddenly at 2am after about a 9 hour outage and woke me up due to my lights all of a sudden turning on and now not being able to fall back asleep, I ran some numbers.

Turns out that currently the NL West is sitting on top of the NL in win percentage. The NL East has a .457 (though if you take out the whipping boys... sorry, Nationals that skyrockets to .498), and the central is sitting at .499. I had more or less forgotten about the Rockies latest retard-o run of winning something like the last 20 out of 25 games or something, which has pushed the NL west up (as a complete side note here, the AL East has the best percentage of any division at an amazing .544).

Just for fun though, I decided to take out the Dodgers from the West's equation. The Dodgers currently have the major's best record largely in thanks to a bloated 27-11 division record, and found that without the Dodgers the west's percentage falls to .491. After doing the math on all the other divisions, this was the biggest drop-off in win percentage taking out the first place team of any division. Oh, and the Giants against the west? 15-16.

My contention here is, of course, that the west's numbers are skewed because of one team whose numbers are largely skewed because they do play in the west.

Interesting. My retort would be that the ALW numbers would likewise become quite respectable if you took away the A's. This would, of course, be because the A's suck balls.

Just kidding. Calm down.

My real retort would be that you cannot take away one team from the division. They are in our division and we have to play them all the damn time. Note that we have a pretty respectable 4-5 record so far this year against them, also.

Finally, I note that it is curious how you call it a "retard-o-run" when the Rockie have a long winning spell, yet when the A's do the same, none of you would never think to denigrate their success so. No, then it's because they are a great team, a team that does much with little, a team of true spirit and gumption.
Hypocrisy!

tallguy wrote:Interesting. My retort would be that the ALW numbers would likewise become quite respectable if you took away the A's. This would, of course, be because the A's suck balls.

Just kidding. Calm down.

My real retort would be that you cannot take away one team from the division. They are in our division and we have to play them all the damn time. Note that we have a pretty respectable 4-5 record so far this year against them, also.

Finally, I note that it is curious how you call it a "retard-o-run" when the Rockie have a long winning spell, yet when the A's do the same, none of you would never think to denigrate their success so. No, then it's because they are a great team, a team that does much with little, a team of true spirit and gumption.
Hypocrisy!

Ok, so, lets clear up something here. I do, in no form, think the A's are a good team this year. They can't hit, and the pitching they had at the beginning of the year is pretty much gone as well now. How Geren still has a job I have no idea, the day after Weurtz said he was fatigued Geren put him out on the mound for 2 innings. What. The. Fuck.
Could... nay, should they be better? On paper I believe so, but on paper many teams are better than they are. Not that I couldn't see this coming, c'mon, signing Giambi and GarciaparrDL?

As for taking the Dodgers out of the NL West percentage was just something I thought I'd throw out there. It's nearly pointless but I just thought it was an interesting statistic. My entire point was that you have a couple of the bottom feeders of the league in the NL West in Arizona and San Deigo, which, because you face them quite a lot, nets you a fair amount of wins. The A's on the other hand have to deal with the always good Angels, the suddenly good Texans, and the overachieving Mariners. Then again I'm not sure if it's fair to compare the two Wests since one has more teams than the other.

Any time a team goes 20-5 in for a month I will call it a retard-o run. Just by sheer numbers that should not happen. I don't care what team it is. The Rockies run currently is just compounded by the fact that they were completely abysmal to start the season. On the other hand, the retard-o runs of all retard-o runs when the A's won what was it, 21 games in a row, was in a season which they were already performing at a high level. No one saw it coming, but you can't tell me that you'd be more shocked if say, the Nationals of now pulled off a 21 game winning streak rather than the Red Sox.

So to answer your "Hypocrisy" cry, no, I have none of it (well, not in this case anyways).

This is beautiful.