Editor's note: Bryan Leonard has been tearing up the baseball regular season. Get the lowdown on his latest plays by going to his pick pack.
The term "Money ball" has been in the air in recent years. The topic comes from the title of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane’s book. The A’s have been very successful the last few years despite a low payroll, very successful in the regular season, though they’ve developed a reputation for folding in October. After the A’s lost another playoff series last year I recall an Oakland sportswriter saying that "money ball was the title of Beane’s book, not something the A’s play in October."
Oakland has been able to compete with the high payroll teams partly with the aid of an organizational philosophy. Part of that philosophy was acquiring draft picks and having players execute proper fundamentals, and another part is teaching young hitters how to be patient at the plate. Base on balls are just as important as hits, money ball suggests, meaning on-base percentage is more important than batting average.
This concept is nothing new. In the 1960s and 70s Baltimore’s Earl Weaver used to play station to station with his offense, rarely bunting, instead getting guys on the bases and then waiting for the three-run bomb. It’s tough to find fault with a strategy that saw the Orioles play in five World Series from 1966-79, winning twice. In the late 1990’s the Yankees preached plate discipline and a large part of their success were walks and forcing starters to throw a lot of pitches.
But is it something that can be identified in box scores? And, for that matter, does it work? One thing this current group of Oakland A’s does offensively is to work the count, making the opposing pitcher throw a lot. One angle is to get the opposing starters into high pitch counts, knock him out earlier than usual and jumping on the bullpen, as the opposing manager is foreced to use more relievers than he normally might like.
I took a look the teams with the best and worst bullpens that Oakland has played this season. The teams with the worst bullpens, the Twins and Tigers, played nine games against Oakland. Here’s what happened:
Innings
by starters Walks Walks off bullpen Wins - Losses
5.5 average 44 23 6 - 3
Now, here’s a look at nine games the A’s played against two teams with terrific relief pitching, the Angels and Red Sox:
Innings
by starters Walks Walks off bullpen Wins - Losses
5.5 average 27 11 3 - 6
Each time, the A’s were able to knock the starters of all four teams out by the sixth inning, on average, so their plate patience is able to get to the bullpens rather early. What stands out are the number of walks: The teams with weak relief pitching – both the starters and relievers – walked around twice as many batters as the teams with excellent pens. While this is a small sample, you can see from these games that the A’s and their philosophy of plate-patience is more successful against teams with lousy bullpens. The A’s were able to win 6 of 9 games against the Twins and Tigers, garnering a lot of free passes. The A’s lost 6 of 9 games against opponents with outstanding bullpens, and received far fewer walks.
However, a couple of other things need to be pointed out. Against the Red Sox/Angels, the A’s scored a total of 32 runs off the starters and 13 runs off the relievers. Against the Twins/Tigers, the A’s scored 26 runs off the starters and 13 runs off the relievers. The A’s actually scored more runs off the better pitching teams despite losing 6 of 9, and scored an equal number of runs of all the relievers, even though the Angels and Red Sox relievers didn’t allow many free passes.
So, yes, money ball can help teams knock out a starting pitcher earlier than normal, but in this sample the A’s scored the same number of runs off both the strong and poor bullpens. So drawing walks doesn’t necessarily mean scoring more runs.
All of which leads me to another thought that those who don’t buy the money ball theory have suggested – Perhaps the A’s have been a perennial playoff team because of their brilliant young rotation of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, more so than anything associated with plate patience and other money ball theories.
