Yankees played Moneyball better than anyone in 2009

There was one very logical reason for Michael Lewis not to base his 2003 best seller “Moneyball” on the New York Yankees: Americans don’t like rooting for Goliath. It’s in our fabric to favor the underdog, the little guy who everyone counts out. That’s what made the scrappy Oakland A’s the perfect choice for Lewis. They were the team competing with the Yankees with only a fraction of the payroll thanks to a quirky general manager and his staff full of number-crunchers who never let their gut-feeling get in the way.

But if Lewis’ book was about a progressive franchise exploiting market inefficiencies to overcome all the odds, then the 2009 season proved once and for all that the market has fully corrected itself. Thanks in part to “Moneyball,” in part to the guys at Baseball Prospectus and in part to the simple evolution of the game, every team now realizes that on base percentage is far more important than batting average and that RBIs or Wins aren’t the most telling statistics when assigning value to a player. Everyone has caught on.

And when everyone follows the same blueprint, Goliath becomes an even bigger favorite.

To say the Yankees bought their World Championship this wouldn’t be fair to the guys who got it done on the field all year, but it wouldn’t be totally inaccurate either. The Yankees bought this season the same way they bought third place last year or the Wild Card before that or those runner-up finishes earlier this decade.

What made the difference this year was they bought the right players this time around. With all due respect to the core four, as the media suddenly refers to Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte and Posada, the Yankees would have missed the playoffs again if they had not signed C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira last winter.

We forget how poor the world’s richest sports franchise looked at the end of last season. They didn’t have a legitimate number two starter, let alone an ace pitcher. And for all the complaining about Alex Rodriguez not coming through in the clutch, the truth was ARod had very little protection in the lineup. An overhaul was needed.

Enter Sabathia and Teixeira. In Sabathia, the Yankees signed the most reliable starting pitcher in all of baseball. In Teixeira, they brought in the perfect complement to Rodriguez, the guy who would ensure ARod was going to see more pitches to hit. For the first time in recent memory, the team went out and purchased the best possible players, two guys in the prime of their careers, as opposed to the aging stars they usually seemed to end up with.

For a team that has had the highest payroll in baseball for over a decade, the Yankees may have spent their money more foolishly than anyone in the game. They couldn’t seal the deal with Manny Ramirez or ARod in 2000. They couldn’t land Vladimir Guerrero in 2004 or Carlos Beltran the following year. They even passed on trading for Johan Santana before last season.

Sure they were buying up loads of free agents every year, but they never seemed to land that top guy. That changed this year and the Yankees reaped the benefits. Sabathia and Teixeira, more than anyone else, delivered this championship.

And that’s how Moneyball really works. You perfect the art of winning an unfair game by exploiting your biggest strength – being unfair. It took almost an entire decade to figure it out, but now that they have, we all better watch out.

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Boston's arrogance got in the way of Teixeira deal

Yes, as 7000 other people have already pointed out, the money the Yankees spent this off season could have bailed out the auto industry. But to borrow the old line Babe Ruth had when he was asked about being paid more than the president; the auto industry didn’t hit 33 homeruns and drive in 121 runs last season.

But this isn’t about the absurd amount of money the Yankees have spent; it’s about the arrogance the Red Sox displayed as the team refused to spend an extra $12 million on what instantly would have become its best hitter. Make no mistake about it. Money was not the issue here. The Red Sox might not have New York money, but they aren’t some WNBA franchise either. At some point, management decided that Mark Teixeira and Scott Boras were bluffing about having better offers on the table, so it decided to sit back and put the pressure on the player and his agent.

And well, you know the rest of the story.

The guys in New York aren’t the ones Red Sox fans should be complaining about on WEEI radio today. The Yankees are a team that attempts to put the best product on the field no matter what. The Red Sox meanwhile, starting at the very top, decided that revenge was more important than even winning. The team figured it could get Boras back for the Manny debacle this summer and that Teixeira would ultimately come running back for that $168 million contract.

But in trying to show Boras up, they lost sight of the fact that Teixeira might be more about the bottom line than anyone in sports, even Alex Rodriguez. This is a guy who, with the help of Boras, turned down millions in high school because he wanted more money, managed to manipulate what team drafted him out of Georgia Tech and then passed up a $140 million contract from the Rangers in 2007. If the Red Sox actually had the high offer, I’m pretty sure he would already be telling the Boston media how he spent his childhood imitating Mo Vaughn’s batting stance.

Instead, the only things different about the 2009 Red Sox will be the silly new uniforms and their place in the standings. And spare me the nonsense about the Sox having heart and chemistry. They’re not a high school football team. You can have your camaraderie. I’ll take talent any day of the week.

Bill Simmons from ESPN pointed out recently that everyone has fallen so far in love with Theo Epstein that he never gets called out when he makes mistake. But he gets no pass from me. The egos in the front office shouldn’t be bigger than the ones in the clubhouse.

That’s just bad for business.

More on Teixeira to the Yankees:
Reaction to the Teixeira signing – Bugs & Cranks
Mark Teixeira snubs Sox, chooses Yankees – Sox and Pinstripes
The Best Team Money Can Buy – Yanks Fan, Sox Fan
3rd Night of Hanukkah or Christmas Comes Early – My Pinstripes

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Random Rumblings: Time for the Rays to get serious

• Maybe, as SI’s John Heyman suggested on WFAN yesterday, the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t actually believe this would be their year. Maybe the team wasn’t prepared to negotiate deadline deals because it thought a .500 record was the ultimate goal in 2008.
  
  But now, everything has changed and the Rays need to make a move. The team is still in first place, two games ahead of the Red Sox and four in front of the Yankees, but it is in desperate need of a bat. The Rays have scored more than four runs in a game just three times since it completed a sweep of Kansas City on July 6.
  
  Jason Bay, a player I love, might be the guy the team is trying to trade for, but he isn’t the best player available. That honor goes to none other than Barry Bonds, the guy whose OBP last season was almost 100 points higher than anyone in the Rays lineup today.
  
  Even if Bonds has regressed, he is still going to be on base 40 percent of the time and will undoubtedly put butts in seats. And if you’re telling me he isn’t more valuable than any of the players the Rays currently stick at DH, you’re out of your mind.
  
  The Rays considered Bonds an option before the season; now it’s time to make the Home Run King a priority.
  
  
• The Angels had a perfect night in Boston, acquiring Mark Teixeira before its game and then watching John Lackey no-hit the Sox for 8 1/3 innings. Already a World Series favorite, the trade puts the Angels in a league of its own, far ahead of the Red Sox, who they seem to dominate every time they meet.
  
  
• ESPN ranked UConn Men’s Basketball the sixth best program of the last 20 years, which is a testament to how Coach Jim Calhoun transformed a regional program into a national brand. But you have to wonder if he is proud of the current state of the program.
  
  His players have had off the court problems dating back to the laptop incidents, which have resulted in a couple arrests and even more transfers. Most recently, he brought in Nate Miles, a red flag guy who took the spot of the academically ineligible Stanley Robinson.
  
  Calhoun is an old school guy and it seems like he has figured out in a hurry that you have to be willing to compromise integrity in order to remain sustainable as a big time basketball program. It will be interesting to see how much more of this he can take.
  
  
• I’m always amazed by the people who complain about the length of the baseball and basketball seasons. They’re almost always the same ones who get all jazzed up about who is going to report to football camp in July.

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