The mentions of players feeling like they are part of a machine reminds me of another Houston GM who is also big into stats and non-traditional managing: Daryl Morey.
Morey had several years where he was basically just accumulating assets before he hit home runs with the Harden trade and Howard signing. I wonder if the 'stros can pull it off, too.
I also wonder how much the article is exaggerating the uniqueness of this approach. Yes, they are using advanced statistics, but so is everyone else in baseball at this point. This isn't 2003. The main difference seems to be the extremes this ownership group is willing to go (getting down to $13 million in payroll for example). Perhaps this is a non-point, the article is named "Extreme Moneyball" after all.
Hasn't Beane pretty much concluded that this works in the regular season, but becomes worthless once you hit the playoffs because it comes down to luck due to the small amount of games?
Nah, that's a famous quote "the playoffs being a crapshoot", which makes the point you attribute (ie, you may well lose 3 games if you have a 55% chance of winning each, despite the probabilities suggesting you wouldn't if you played the same team say, 300 times). Playoff baseball has some changes (for example, the value of a #5 starter is much higher in the regular season than the post-season, because he will never start in the latter; same with a deep bullpen), but that's common in playoffs of all sports - you're less likely to use your depth, and more likely to increase the playing time of core talent.
Luhnow is good, and he did basically play a big role in the Cardinals rebuilding, but Green simplifies this a bit - the Cardinals also happened to have the one of the 3 best players in baseball at that time at well below market value, and the previous GM (Jocketty, who is now in Cincinnati), made some astute trades (Adam Wainright, the pick of Chris Carpenter).
Baseball, for all that I love it, is fundementally a reactionary, conservative sport - unlike the NFL, which changes rules every week (or so it seems), and doesn't seem to bear any burden from the media to provide the "national pasttime", baseball is relatively slow moving and cautious, and seems to carry a higher intrinsic burden from the media and itself. Radical change is thus much harder to pull off in this sport, which is both a good and bad thing.
> Hasn't Beane pretty much concluded that this works in the regular season, but becomes worthless once you hit the playoffs because it comes down to luck due to the small amount of games?
The important thing is making the playoffs. If you're a consistent playoff contender, then you'll win a championship when luck goes your way.
Morey's strategy of treating his players as assets has garnerned heavy criticism as of late with his failure to acquire a 3rd superstar after the Asik/Lin trades.
Harden is now the most senior player on the Rockets team...
Luhnow has done to the Houston Astros what
Mitt Romney used to do to steel companies
while at Bain Capital: stripped them down
with ruthless efficiency to build them
back up again, stronger and better than before.
Some of the more recent negative stories around the Astros are alluded to in the article, but it's worth emphasizing that Houston is probably the most dysfunctional organization in the majors.
The focus of the piece, GM Jeff Luhnow, has an ongoing and borderline public feud with the manager Bo Porter.
They were the only team in recent memory (and possibly ever) to have 10 months of internal trade talks leaked.
And most recently, they were the first team since 1983 to not agree to terms with the 1st overall pick. Sure, they supposedly identified a red flag in Aiken's elbow, but it seemed driven by their desire to sign specific additional draft picks (none of which they did) and earned them the wrath of the player's union.
I think there are quite a few people, very much in love with the game, who are perhaps more surprised than they need to be about "World class management consultant manages X, things improve". No matter what you may think about those guys, they are not actually bad at their jobs, typically.
Morey had several years where he was basically just accumulating assets before he hit home runs with the Harden trade and Howard signing. I wonder if the 'stros can pull it off, too.
I also wonder how much the article is exaggerating the uniqueness of this approach. Yes, they are using advanced statistics, but so is everyone else in baseball at this point. This isn't 2003. The main difference seems to be the extremes this ownership group is willing to go (getting down to $13 million in payroll for example). Perhaps this is a non-point, the article is named "Extreme Moneyball" after all.
Hasn't Beane pretty much concluded that this works in the regular season, but becomes worthless once you hit the playoffs because it comes down to luck due to the small amount of games?