Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

To introduce Chad Bradford’s story, Lewis notes that after the trading deadline and the acquisition of a few new players, the A’s “went from good to great” (217). By September 4, 2002, they were one game away from a major league record of winning 20 games in a row. The 20th game was against the Kansas City Royals, and up through the seventh inning the A’s were winning handily. Then the pitcher faltered and the Royals started getting runs. The A’s manager, Art Howe, goes to his bullpen and calls up Bradford to relieve the starting pitcher.

Lewis describes Bradford as someone who shunned the limelight yet drew it as a pitcher. He pitched with his arm down low to the ground as if he were “feeding pigeons or shooting craps” (219-20). This made him a perfect example of an A’s player: someone with great stats and ability whom the baseball insiders on other teams ignored. It didn’t matter to Billy Beane what they looked like; if they created outs, they were good pitchers.

Bradford grew up in Mississippi and from early on had wanted to become a baseball player. He made the high school team despite not exhibiting any special talent. His coach had learned a sidearm technique from a minor league player in Jackson, and one day when there was time he taught it to Bradford. This improved his pitching and he started having more success. After high school, he went to the local community college, where a scout from the Chicago White Sox took an interest in him. The team drafted him in a late round, just to control his rights one year, but then he went undrafted after that. He enrolled at the University of Southern Mississippi. The following year, the White Sox drafted him again and gave him a small contract. No other team was interested.

Eventually, Bradford started dropping his arm even lower when he pitched, until it was down near the ground. This had the effect of giving the ball some spin, which was useful against hitters. He had moderate success, moving up a notch in the minor leagues to a Triple-A team in Calgary. Its location in the mountains was tough on pitchers because the strong wind and thin air meant balls traveled farther when hit. In one game, his team got off to a 0-13 start with their pitchers giving up run after run. Bradford was put into the game and pitched a bit over six innings. He gave up only one run, and his team pulled within two before he was replaced.

Before long, he was called up to the major leagues and pitched well the rest of the season. When he returned the following season, however, he was sent back to the Triple A’s and didn’t know why. It seems the baseball insiders at the White Sox didn’t see him as a major leaguer, despite his good statistics. He was considered a fluke and didn’t look the part of a major leaguer. He remained in the minors for two years, just working hard and hoping someone would take notice. That someone was Voros McCracken, a former paralegal inspired by Bill James who pored over baseball statistics in his spare time. He wrote an article about Bradford that Paul DePodesta read. In 2000, Billy Beane called up the White Sox manager and worked his magic to acquire Bradford.

This chapter describes the A’s game against the Royals on September 4, 2002. The author does so mostly from the point of view of Billy Beane, who watches the game in Art Howe’s office while discussing some of the players. Interrupting his usual routine of disappearing at game time, Beane was forced to stick around by the A’s marketing department. It would be a momentous event if they won, and those in marketing wanted to take advantage of all the press coverage coming their way. After a brief workout, when the score was 11-0 in favor of Oakland, Beane relaxed and went to Howe’s office.

There, Lewis engages him on the lineup for the night. He learns that Scott Hatteberg wasn’t playing because he hadn’t faced the Royals’ pitcher before, so Howe chose John Mabry, who had, as a designated hitter. They discuss players’ statistics, and Beane compares the A’s Eric Chavez to more famous hitters by looking at their batting statistics at the same age. He argues that this proves Chavez’s value. Lewis admits he still thinks there’s a human element that defies statistics, but Beane is “reveling in the objective, scientific spirit” (247).

Lewis writes that there is another, less objective, side to Beane, though, and when an A’s error in the fourth inning leads to five quick runs by the Royals, “the other Billy Beane awakens from his slumber” (249). In the seventh inning, Chad Bradford is called in to relieve the starting pitcher (mentioned briefly at the beginning of the previous chapter) and gets the final out. However, in the eighth inning, he walks the first two batters, something he rarely does.

Soon the bases are loaded, and Howe replaces Bradford with Ricardo Rincon, who gets two outs with the score 11-7. Rincon is a left-handed pitcher, and Howe now replaces him with a right-hander to face the right-handed batter up next. Beane is furious, thinking the righty/lefty strategy is overrated, and gets up to walk around the clubhouse to blow off steam. The Royals’ player hits a home run with two runners on base, making the score 11-10. Lewis hears Beane smash something somewhere.

In the ninth inning, the Royals tie the game. Two days earlier Hatteberg had faced the same Royals pitcher playing now, and Howe wants him to pinch-hit. Hatteberg isn’t prepared. In his haste, he grabs a bat he’s never hit with before. He takes a ball on the first pitch and then likes what he sees in the second. He swings and the ball heads toward the stands in right center field. It’s a home run, and the A’s hold on to win.

This final chapter discusses the end of the 2002 season, when the A’s get to the playoffs. Lewis begins by describing a scene near the end of the regular season. Infield coach Ron Washington and hitting coach Thad Bosley are chatting while they watch Ray Durham practice his hitting in the batting cage. Durham was one of the players Billy Beane got in a trade at mid-season. They all knew he would be gone at the end of the season when he became a free agent and his salary requirements ballooned as a result of his stellar hitting.

Both Washington and Bosley were former players and therefore “old school.” Beane’s dilemma in hiring was that there were so few people totally behind his new approach of using sabermetrics; he needed to hire people with experience, and they always brought their old ideas, relying on their own instincts and subjectivity. As the men talk, the subject of stealing bases comes up. Both had been adept at this back in their playing days, but the A’s discourage it in their players because it’s too risky statistically. Durham overhears them and gets into the conversation. He’s good at stealing bases, a talent that gets little use on his current team. They all agree that it’s a waste of speed, which can make the difference in the playoffs.

The author writes that at the end of every recent season, people question the A’s approach and doubt that it will sustain them through the playoffs. In 2002, they won one game more than the previous season and finished first in their division—this after losing their star Jason Giambi. Oakland lost the first game, prompting Hall of Famer and now TV analyst Joe Morgan to explain the loss in terms of their not being aggressive enough—of waiting for walks instead going out there and “manufacturing” runs. In the second game, however, the A’s put up nine runs en route to a win to tie the series.

In the end, Oakland lost to the Twins, an inferior team in Beane’s mind. Paul DePodesta explains to Lewis that their method is still sound. What had happened was that their best pitcher, Tim Hudson, had a slump and pitched two bad games. There was always the human element of being lucky or unlucky. During the regular season, teams play enough games that these instances get ironed out statistically. The playoffs, however, present too small a sample size for their methods to work consistently. The playoffs represented, in effect, “a giant crapshoot” (274).

Beane felt the same—that the playoffs were about luck—so he weathered the games with surprising calm. Before long, however, his dissatisfaction returned. Lewis writes that he usually dealt with such a feeling by looking for a good trade, but there was no one on his radar just then. Soon he fixed on the idea of “trading” his manager, Art Howe, who had mostly bought into the A’s system but was now asking for a large salary increase. Howe went to the Mets.

Beane felt perhaps he had done all he could in Oakland. With all the A’s success on a shoestring budget, he was worth a lot more than he was getting. He verbally agreed to a deal with the Boston Red Sox, and then backed out at the last minute. The deal would have paid him more than any general manager in history, so that proved his worth. He decided he would have done it just for the money, something he had vowed he’d never do again after what he considered the mistake of signing with the Mets out of high school.

The Epilogue presents a brief vignette of Jeremy Brown, the catcher the A’s took in the first round of the 2002 draft, and his rise from ridicule to acclaim. When he first reported to the rookie team, baseball publications were writing derogatory things about his husky physique. Soon, however, he and Nick Swisher—a draftee who looked the part—were the first to be promoted to a single-A team. There Brown’s teammates took to calling him “The Badger” for the amount of hair he had on his body. He just kept his head down and continued working hard. It paid off with high stats and the starting catcher’s job, and he was the only player from that year’s draft invited to the spring training camp for the big leagues in 2003.

Lewis ends with a description of Brown at bat in October of that year, explaining his thoughts on each of the pitches he’s thrown. Brown notices a different initial arm movement for the pitcher’s fastball and change-up, allowing him to predict the fourth pitch. He knows what to expect and cracks a home run. Only he doesn’t realize at first that it’s a home run, speeding around the bases as fast as he can. Between first and second base, he slips and falls. Thinking the ball must have bounced off the wall into play, he scrambles back to safety at first. His teammates laugh and encourage him on. This time, though: “their laughter has a different tone; it’s not the sniggering laughter of the people who made fun of his body. It’s something else” (286). When he looks again, he realizes he hit a home run.