Post by theexorcist on Jul 11, 2007 20:46:18 GMT -5
hoyasincebirth said:
Yeah when i opened this thread i thought it'd be about why the princeton offense works at gtown, but not at other schools. Not about some baseball book that's full of wholes anyway.
Early on last year, Georgetown was awful. Really, really awful. Part of the reason that they were awful was because the III offense takes a while to grasp. And it requires a coach who will force players to play it. Consistently passing and waiting for the open man or the perfect backdoor is not obvious basketball and it runs counter to a desire to "push it".
This offense is not especially high-scoring, so it doesn't sell lots of tickets on its own merits (which is ironic, because it leads to a high point to percentage ratio). It causes many teams to regress, especially if everyone has to learn the new system (trust me, I was at the Temple game three years ago, and it wasn't pretty). And if the coach isn't strong enough, players can quickly subvert it.
I think these are the factors that make teams considering it back off. Which is a true pity, because when teams run the offense right, it is a true thing of beauty to behold.
Post by Hank Scorpio on Jul 11, 2007 21:13:53 GMT -5
Cashman's "idiocy" is not to blame for the Yankees stinkage right now. Years of awful drafting prior to his taking full control of baseball operations led to him doling out silly contracts for aging players in an attempt to "win now". Since seizing total control of the Yanks personnel moves, he has made the farm system one of the best in baseball through the draft and trades, and has held onto his top prospects while acquiring pieces at the deadline. He jettisoned some starters at the end of last season for younger players, which hurt depth, and Bobby Abreu and Johnny Damon have suffered from insane regression this season (damon's deal was supposed to be bad come year 4, not year 2. and abreu was key to winning the division last season). Things he can be faulted for: Doug Mientkewicz at 1b, Will Nieves as backup C, and the Kei Igawa/Carl Pavano debacle. Everything else, I'm on board with. The Yanks will be younger and more financially flexible under his reign. I hope he is GM for life.
As for Moneyball and the Pads, I agree with SF's assessment of Towers. He won't overpay for middle relief due to the fluctuating nature of their performances, and builds his relief corps through shrewd trades or promotion from within. For my money, he's the best GM out there (Adrian Gonzalez and my boy C Young for Adam Eaton and Otsuka? just plain silly).
One last thing....from FireJoeMorgan ------------------------------------------------
Moneyball Moneyball is a very good book by Michael Lewis, which chronicles the ways in which Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane tries to keep his team competitive with a small payroll. The clunky and incorrect understanding of the Moneyball philosophy is that it simply involves getting players to walk a lot and hit home runs. In reality, what Moneyball deals with is the search for inefficiencies in the complex world of evaluating baseball players. At the time the book was written, Billy Beane and his crew had determined that there were players who weren’t fast runners, maybe, or were fat, or short, or otherwise had some kind of superficial thing “wrong” with them that made other GMs dismiss them as not good baseball players. But these players were actually good at baseball, and because other people had undervalued their skills (skills like walking a lot, for example) Beane was able to draft them or trade for them and not pay them a lot of money, because no one else wanted them.
These days, enough people have caught on to the idea that on-base percentage is important that such players are not undervalued anymore, and so GMs like Beane, who have to put a team together with a $50 million payroll instead of, say, the Yankees’ $200 million payroll, are looking elsewhere for value.
The book rubbed a lot of traditionalists the wrong way, because it takes the obvious and yet somehow controversial position that the massive amount of observable data we can collect from a baseball player’s performance is more important than that player’s like physical strength or speed in the 40 yard dash. Beane, and others like him, believe that it doesn’t matter if a guy looks like he should be awesome at baseball – it matters if he is actually good at baseball. It doesn’t matter if some crusty old scouts who have been in baseball for seventy years look at a guy and say, “He’s fast, he’s got a cannon for an arm, he’s got a strong jaw line – dadgummit, that thar boy’s gonna be a star!” It does matter if the guy walks a lot and can hit well or is an awesome fielder or something. Seem obvious? Try telling fans of Darin Erstad. They will tell you that he is awesome because he is intense and used to play football at Nebraska. You will blink, confused, and say, “But he can’t hit well,” and they will say, “HE WAS A PUNTER AT NEBRASKA! HE IS INTENSE AND A LEADER!” and you will slink away because they are spitting on you.
Moneyball is also famous because Joe Morgan rails against it constantly, even today, and on numerous occasions has pronounced it hogwash, despite freely admitting that he has never read it, and also for a long time believing that the book was actually written by Beane himself. When his error was pointed out to him, Morgan apologized profusely, admitted his mistake, rethought his stance, read the book and has now completely changed the way he thinks about statistical analysis. Oh, no – wait. I’m sorry. He didn’t do anything of the kind. He just dug in his heels and continued to claim that the book was hogwash.
elrobbo said:
sfhoya99 said:
Statistical Analysis has worked nowhere but the A's?
The Red Sox and Padres, both division leaders, are significant believers in statistical analysis of major leaguers. In fact, statistical analysis is much more significant for developed players than for developing players.
Logan White deserves most of the credit for the Dodger system, not DePodesta. But DePodesta deserves credit for Brad Penny, Jeff Kent and several other good moves, while scouting happy Ned Colletti signed Juan Pierre for no real reason and Nomar to play first.
-------------
A much better comp than Moneyball is the New England Patriots a few years ago. Their defense was one of only a few 3-4s in the league and thus they were looking for players that 4-3 defenses would never value highly. Since most teams were 4-3s, they had little competition.
That's how I feel about our offense -- lots of people want to run, so super athletic but maybe not so skilled players are in demand. Those offenses have little use for a Jon Wallace, for example. Since there are few teams that stress D and shooting over one on one breakdown ability, we have less competition for some of our fit players.
That said, we are competing for most of the top players anyway -- because the top players are athletic AND skilled.
Moneyball has worked for the Red Sox and Padres? Umm, no. With the amount of money Theo Epstein has had to work with, I could build a team to win the World Series. Cashman is just an idiot, thats the only reason the Yankees suck right now. As for the Padres, while Kevin Towers has somehow figured out some magic formula for relievers (he seems to be able to take any random right hander, and all of a sudden he becomes the best middle reliever or setup man in the NL), but our hitting has been atrocious since 1998. So, there seems to be a major failing there.
And I don't think Moneyball has anything to do with the Hoyas. Different sport, different importance in stats, different resources. Apples and Oranges.
Don't call me that word. I don't like things that elevate me above the other people. I'm just like you. Oh sure, I come later in the day, I get paid a lot more, and I take longer vacations, but I don't like the word 'boss'.
SF, I am not saying that the Pads do not intend to be moneyball. Obviously they try to emulate it very much, as is evidenced by the fairly recent hiring of Sandy Alderson, the former CEO of the A's. What I am trying to say, is that apart from the Padres success in the relief pitcher market, they have not been successful in obtaining or developing players.
While it is true that our hitting has worsened since moving to Petco, the team between (but not including) 1998 and 2003 was atrocious on all fronts. Money or no money, we sucked, and splashing out 10 million each on Nevin and Klesko were bad moves in any ballpark. What about getting rid of Jason Bay, or Jack Cust? If the Padres management was so good with stats, why haven't they built a team like the 2003 Marlins, who were built to play in a large pitchers ballpark? And why has this current Padres team been unable to hit at home or on the road? I don't know the reason, but I am F@#$ing frustrated that we keep losing games when our pitchers give up next to nothing. And moneyball has not saved us on that front.
Post by StPetersburgHoya (Inactive) on Jul 11, 2007 22:18:34 GMT -5
I just wanted to clarify my position a little bit. I was reading Moneyball, and while I am way too afraid of numbers to want to think about the math behind the Oakland A's success in the earlier part of this decade, the theory is generally exportable to other sports. In any market - inlcuding the market for college basketball players - there is likely to be some imperfection when the AAU system is based upon the subjective views of a set of internet scouts who announce their ratings. Unlike with the high school and college players the A's were evaluating, there is even more uncertainty with many college basketball recruits - all we really get is a star rating, some stories from tournaments/camps, and sentence fragments about their basketball game. That's not even close to the information that a coach (who acts like a GM and coach in college basketball) needs to maximize the 1-5 slots he needs to fill in his roster each year.
Coaching plays a factor, to be sure, I'm not denying that JTIII is an amazing coach - but its even more interesting that he picked Sapp and Wallace as his starting backcourt and despite neither of them being 5 star recruits - turned them into the starting guards for a final four team.
The other similarity is what both the A's and Hoyas emphasize - offensive efficiencey - GU has been off the charts in offensive numbers over the last two years and its defense has been ancillary to that goal. College baskteball recruting - like baseball drafts and free agent deals in Moneyball - emphasizes the value of things that are seemingly related to offense but, in fact unrelated. Athleticism is highly over-valued in college basketball recruiting - there are a number of 5 star rival recruits who are very athletic but don't have jump shots. The real goal of basketball isn't who can jump the highest, run the fastest, has the best lateral quickness, or has the longest wing-span - its who can put the ball in the basket more efficiently than their opponent. Offensive efficiencey is what should be most highly valued and the focus of coaching strategies.
Paradoxically, in the past the common wisdom is that defense is the starting point for an offense. That's simply not true. Watching JTIII's teams play its clear that the real goal of a defense is not turn-overs and easy baskets - its limiting the number of total possessions that the opponent has. Turn-overs don't limit the number of possessions - they risk players being out of position and increase the total number of possessions. Georgetown's defense is designed to play tough defense for 35 seconds - making the other team run their sets unsuccessfully.
That's why I think the Princeton offense worked at Georgetown initially - it found something that other coaches weren't recruiting - offensive efficiencey - and recruited it and systematically taught it. Compare Georgetown in those 3 years to Connecticut - if the Rivals/Scout ratings of recruits based on athleticism dictated results Georgetown should have lost each year. Instead Georgetown won handily last year against a team that had much higher rated players.
1) Player development. The Padres historically have been awful at this. I got to listen to Alderson a year ago and what I got out of this is that Towers, for all his good attributes, never ran an organization. We had no philosophy, no consistency in what we were teaching. I think this contributes.
I agree that our development has been anti-Moneyball. The most frustrating thing to me is that it would be incredibly easy to raid the Twins or Braves for a few employees (they are cheap compared to Geoff Blum). One of the biggest market inefficiencies right now is how little minor league instructors are paid compared to players.
2) The draft. I have a hard time getting on them for the draft. The Pads have made two gigantic mistakes in the past five years, and one of them was Towers and one was Moores. The Bush pick has hurt us badly, but that's all on Moores. He changed the plan at the 11th hour.
In short, Towers has been mostly excellent in acquiring good players cheap, and that's partially made up for an inability to develop talent. It's not just the rip-off trades like for Young and Adrian or Cla and Bard or Cameron. It's also getting Jose Cruz when the Dodgers sign a less effective Pierre for billions more. Hopefully Fuson is helping to cure the development ills.
(Before this gets locked, of course the other awful move was dealing Bay over Nady. That was Towers' scouting getting in the way of performance metrics...awful the moment I saw it).
"The ball should move, bodies should move. You talk about being an undisciplined, unselfish group. That's what you do. If the ball's sticking, great defensive teams are going to load up. If you don't move the ball and [be] unselfish, it's gonna be long nights, so you better learn to move the ball, share, and play with a sense of urgency on every possession. Our teams will always be unselfish, our teams will always be physical, and our teams will always do our best to defend."
Post by HoyaSinceBirth on Jul 11, 2007 22:39:39 GMT -5
i disagree with the purpose of defense being "limiting the number of total possessions that the opponent has."
I bleieve JTIII's philosphy is to get the best possible shot on offense and limit the other teams ability to get a good shot on defense. that's whay they don't focus on turnovers. Because as you say it leads to people being out of possesion. I don't think the whole concept of limiting possesions is essential to the philosphy as we've put up tons of points on number of occasions. I think the philosophy is to optimize out offense and limit the good looks on defense.
The Red Sox absolutely follow the moneyball/sabermetric approach. They just do it with a lot more money than anybody else. It just so happens that they have enough money to sign two players (at least) in Manny and Papi who are among the best at everything, the things that were undervalued ten years ago, are undervalued now, and will be undervalued in 10 years.
It's like if a 5-5 person (A's) played basketball with a 6-5 person (Red Sox). They can both have the same strategy (moneyball) and even though the bigger person has more to work with, both people are using the same strategy.
"While rattling off a list of her experiences and her undying affection for Georgetown’s heroes of the day, Bridget was cut off by Jeff Green:
“Hold up, you camped outside of MCI? It’s freezing! Can I give you a hug?” "
Post by ExcitableBoy on Jul 12, 2007 13:13:06 GMT -5
tal1286 said:
The Red Sox absolutely follow the moneyball/sabermetric approach. They just do it with a lot more money than anybody else. It just so happens that they have enough money to sign two players (at least) in Manny and Papi who are among the best at everything, the things that were undervalued ten years ago, are undervalued now, and will be undervalued in 10 years.
It's like if a 5-5 person (A's) played basketball with a 6-5 person (Red Sox). They can both have the same strategy (moneyball) and even though the bigger person has more to work with, both people are using the same strategy.
J.D. Drew
How would I describe myself? Three words: hardworking, alpha male, jackhammer… merciless… insatiable.
Red Sox don't play money ball, but they are using a more hybrid approach that is intriguing. I'd call it more of Angels/Dodgerball. A strong farm system coupled with big name acquisitions. I wouldn't say the Sox rely on anybody who is undervalued, they merely have become more patient and confident in their ability to develop talent as well as buy talent.
The vastly improved farm system has given them the depth to fill their roster with bargain basement, quality homegrown talent like Pedroia, Youk, Paps, Lester, Delcarmen...with lots of top notch talent waiting in the wings Bucholtz, Ellsbury, Bowden, Lowry, Bard, etc.
This means they can go out and spend real cash on the FAs they want: DiceK, Manny, Beckett, Drew...whether it works out or not.
I am the Laird Hamilton of websurfing. I have no rivals but nature and time.
The season comes down to a game or a series which isn't long enough for any of your stats to kick in. Sure, in baseball with its massive season you can get good results by giving yourself the best probability of winning games over the long haul. But all that goes away in the playoffs when you face a very specific subset of the best teams and suddenly "better than average" means you could be the worst team in the bracket.
As for the Hoyas. Tyler was NEVER the best rated player in that class. Ever. We really have ventured into bizarroland with respect to the 2004 class. Pretty soon they're going to have peglegs and glass eyes before they got to the hilltop. Jon is the ONLY guy who would even remotely fit into this mold of being undervalued.
The rest are Sapp (1st team all-met), Summers (Jordan AA and Baltimore PoY), Green (1st team all-met), Hibbert (2nd-team all-met).
To give you an idea we landed ONE first-team all-met guy between 1998 and 2003 (You guessed it, Big Mike). The only recent team with two first-teamers on it before Jessie arrived? Again you guessed it, 2001 (Ruben, another guy who played in the league, was the other).
There's no "magic" here guys. We're landing the top tier local talent. That's the trick. Princeton's cool and it's nice to come up with interesting theories but if a guy named Peter Beane Carrill landed at Georgetown, he would be worth about 1/10000th of what JTIII is worth due to recruiting. Let Gary Williams find the undervalued. I'll take the highly-valued thank you very much.
I like diamonds in the rough but I also like diamonds in a stack of more diamonds. By the looks of the recent recruits, JTIII agrees.
Interesting take. I guess that is really the difference between football and basketball. It is just a matter of numbers. In football I don't focus on the one or two marquee players that everyone goes gaga over. I want consistent quality and depth. If we sign 20-24 kids that are mostly 4 and 5 star players that is all you can really ask. In hoops though it is a lot different. Every year there are a half dozen guys that really are "can't miss" guys that virtually everyone would want. The advent of the NBA minimum age rule is only going to fan those flames with the tremendous increase of one and doners.
Still, at least from my angle, what Billy is doing seems to be working. He focuses on the quality of the kid. If you want to call it developing the talent, then so be it. If kids like Noah and Horford were diamonds in the rough, that's fine by me because when all was said and done, they were diamonds, not rough. Brewer however was the Parade All-American and he worked out fine too. It really is a balancing act, but I agree with your premise that the better off you start, the better you will likely finish.