Tag: moneyball

Guardians Should Heed Peter Brand: “He Gets On Base”

There is a famous scene in the movie “Moneyball” where in a meeting of talent evaluators, GM Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, brings up a player and asks the group why he likes that player.

The assistant GM Peter Brand (really Paul DePodesta) played by Jonah Hill replies “he gets on base”.

That is a credo the Cleveland Guardians should use going forward toward 2024.

We all understand the Guardians need power too. They are last in all of baseball with just 106 home runs and rank 13th the American League in slugging percentage. We know they stress contact, striking out the least in the league, but are only 9th in the AL in on base percentage.

If you don’t have power, you better have a lot of guys getting on base. You see, “he gets on base” translates to “he doesn’t make outs”.

The three best Cleveland players to avoid making outs are Jose Ramirez with a .349 on base average, with Josh Naylor at .347, followed by Steven Kwan at .340. The next best player is Bo Naylor at .320.

The two players who joined the Guardians in August, veterans Kole Calhoun and Ramon Laureano are next at .319 and .318 each.

And since the game of baseball is measured by 27 outs, having guys who make a lot of outs is not good in terms of scoring runs.

We aren’t sure the front office thinks getting on base (err, not making outs) is a valuable skill. For exhibit A, we present Yandy Diaz.

Diaz certainly wasn’t the hitter he is today in Tampa (889 OPS), but what he did do here was get on base. He had a .361 OBP in the 88 games he played in Cleveland in 2017-18.

Last season, the Guardians traded two young outfielders, Nolan Jones and Will Benson. Their on base averages in AAA were .388 and .396 respectively. To be fair, they did receive Juan Brito for Jones, and he has a career .393 OBP in the minors to date.

The player they kept instead, Will Brennan, had a .367 OBP at the AAA level. This isn’t to bash Brennan, who seems to have improved after a mid-season slump. But he’s walked 12 times all season, less than Mike Zunino and the same number of times as Calhoun.

By the way, Jones and Benson both have a .367 OBP in the major leagues this season. That number would be the highest on the 2023 Guardians.

What is we told you they have a player on their current roster who got on base at a .393 clip at the AAA level? That player is Tyler Freeman and they can’t find a place for him right now.

We are sure there are other examples, but in 2016, Cleveland had veteran switch-hitter Robbie Grossman in training camp. Grossman has a career mark of getting on base at a .344 clip. Grossman played part of ’16 with Columbus, before being released in May.

He went to Minnesota, where he recorded OBPs of .386, .361, and .367 over the next three seasons.

We think the Cleveland organization is searching for the long ball so much, they are forgetting there are two aspects to offense, and the ability to get on base is one of them. And quite frankly, it’s probably easier to identify and obtain.

Remember this, a player with a 1.000 slugging percentage simply went 1 for 4 with a HR. A game in which a team had a 1.000 OBP would never end.

Don’t Go Overboard on Browns Analytics

Since the Cleveland Browns made their moves last Sunday night, they have been the fodder for many jokes about their new “analytical” way of looking at football.

It didn’t help when they hired Paul DePodesta, a former baseball general manager with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

We aren’t saying that DePodesta is a bad hire, because by all accounts he is a very smart man, and certainly can be viewed upon as a man who knows something about being in good organizations.

No, the problem is that he was portrayed in the movie “Moneyball”, by Jonah Hill.  That lead to a great number of jokes.

And while we would love to see a guy with success in the football business as the guy in charge of the organization, we don’t think the Browns will be run by people looking at minute statistical details.

Most of the numbers they will look at will just make sense, just as Bill James’ number crunching did when he came out with Baseball Abstract.

The analytics in drafting players may be used to show there is a better chance that a player coming out of a major conference is more apt to succeed in the NFL than a player out of a small college.

They could show what we have looked at earlier in this season, that team who can run the ball and can stop the run have better success in today’s professional football, even though it is dominated by the pass, than team who can do neither well.

It may also tell them you can’t try one running play in a half, like the Browns did in the first game against Cincinnati this year.

It will probably involve other more subtle things as well, but the numbers will be used to create a competitive advantage for the Browns’ coaching staff.

We can all agree they could use that.

The problem could be finding a coach and GM who is open to getting those numbers and understanding what they mean.  That could cause the Browns to lose out on some coaches we would like to see here.

We have said before that we want someone with head coaching experience, and that person needs to be a tough-minded individual that will change the country club atmosphere that has permeated Berea.

Cleveland has hired several “player’s coaches” in a row.  Mike Pettine, Rob Chudzinski, and Pat Shurmur would all be described that way, and that is too many to hold the job consecutively.

It’s time to bring in someone who will demand accountability, and who coaches like this is their last chance to handle the reins of an NFL team.

The other thing we think the analytics will show is the Browns need more draft choices, and as many high ones, as they can get to rebuild the roster quickly.

Our guess is that several of the veterans who have been here the last two seasons, will not be back.

If you are over 30 years old, we wouldn’t be too comfortable this off-season.

And we are fine with that.  As we always say, the only thing worse than being bad is being bad and old.

You don’t need to be someone who studies numbers to know that is a bad combination.

JD