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Alex Rodriguez completely misunderstands ‘Moneyball’ while praising Milwaukee Brewers
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- Alex Rodriguez completely misunderstands ‘Moneyball’ while praising Milwaukee Brewers
Credit: MLB on Fox
In 2003, "Moneyball" took MLB by storm.
The book, which chronicles how the 2002 Oakland Athletics won 103 games using a data-driven approach, became the template for how baseball would be played for decades to come. Many of that Athletics team's core "sabermetrics" tenets still drive strategy in MLB today: prioritizing on-base percentage over batting average, aggressively deploying relief pitchers, and chasing extra-base hits.
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In fact, some recent baseball rule changes were made specifically to counter the numbers-driven tactics that took over the sport. Some of those shifts have allowed less expensive, deeper teams to dominate once again.
The Milwaukee Brewers, headed to their second straight NLCS after a chaotic series against the San Diego Padres , are one such example. Milwaukee led the league in on-base percentage, were fifth in stolen bases, had one of MLB's best defenses, and rode a killer bullpen through the Division Series this week.
Baseball media has a fantastic story to tell about a Brewers team outplaying its payroll and showing how to win in the modern MLB. Yet after the Brewers' dominant Game 4 road win on Wednesday night, Fox Sports studio analyst and baseball legend Alex Rodriguez told the exact opposite story.
Teed up to give the first postgame take on Milwaukee's win, Rodriguez puzzlingly painted the Brewers as "counter-Moneyball."
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"They've taken a bit of a counter-Moneyball approach," Rodriguez said. "Meaning that because they don't hit home runs, I don't think people out there realize, in the national audience, how great this team is, how well-managed they are, where they do all the little things that win games. It may not get the SportsCenter 's, but they're top in batting average, contact, running in scoring position, defense, base-running, the best ERA in baseball."
The three-time league MVP fell into a frustrating habit among commentators across all sports these days. Rodriguez used "Moneyball" as a catch-all to describe any strategy informed by analytics. NBA analysts do the same thing with the word "analytics." In this case, the all-out pursuit of home runs that took over baseball did come from statistical analysis. However, the Brewers are perhaps baseball's coolest antidote to that approach — by riding the original principles of "Moneyball."
The league office also helped by shortening the basepaths and restricting defensive shifts, bringing back small ball-style baseball. Yet no team is "counter-Moneyball" anymore. And Rodriguez's championship Yankees team in 2009 hit more home runs than any team in the league this season.
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Baseball has been overtaken by numbers in a way that frustrates fans. But the top commentators paid to cover the sport should have a much better handle on how the game is played than Rodriguez did Wednesday night.
The post Alex Rodriguez completely misunderstands 'Moneyball' while praising Milwaukee Brewers appeared first on Awful Announcing .
