moneyball Page 1 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Which MLB hot starts through Memorial Day are here to stay?
We’ve reached Memorial Day, the first real milestone of the MLB season. The first seven weeks or so don’t decide who makes the playoffs, but it gives us a pretty good barometer. But which (at least somewhat surprising) starts are here to stay?...
The Bengals are in the Super Bowl, but don’t expect them to pick up a check in L.A.
The Cincinnati Bengals have overcome quite a bit of adversity to get to Super Bowl LVI. They had to claw their way to an AFC North championship after some bad regular-season losses, including the infamous 400-yard Mike White game against the New York Jets, followed by getting smoked by Cleveland Bro...
Billy Beane changed baseball, but he could never conquer the game
While the movie “Moneyball” has become canon for the analytics movement in baseball — or more accurately those looking to trace its spread to basically every other sport — those who have read the book know that Billy Beane didn’t invent them with some intern he ransomed out of Cleveland (and every C...
The Future Of Baseball Won't Look The Way You Expect
Back in 2017, the American League’s top Most Valuable Player candidates were New York’s Aaron Judge and Houston’s José Altuve. Judge, at 6-foot-7 and 280-some pounds and with his ungodly exit velocities and tape-measure home runs, was widely hailed as THE FUTURE OF BASEBALL. In the future, all power...
A Decade After <em>Moneyball</em>, Have The A's Found A New Market Inefficiency?
Originally published on Baseball Prospectus....
Tell It To Your Analyst: The Raging Genius Of Earl Weaver
The first and obvious thing about Earl Weaver, for me, was that he was terrifying. I lived about seven blocks from Memorial Stadium, depending on how you walked it, and Junior Orioles packages were cheap, so my parents took my older brother and me to games all the time, from our youngest days. This ...
RIP Earl Weaver, The Irascible, Cigarette-Smoking Orioles Manager Who Was Moneyball Before "Moneyball" Existed
Earl Weaver, who managed the Orioles for 15 seasons from 1968-1982 (and another two from 1985-1986) passed away on Friday night at the age 82. In 11 of his 17 seasons, the Orioles won 90 or more games, and in his first three at the helm he guided Baltimore to three World Series, one of which, the 1...
H, Y, and Z Are Your Money Letters: How To Beat Scrabble's Flawed Points System, Using Google-Powered Math
This week the director of research at Google, a fellow named Peter Norvig, published on his blog the results of a fascinating deep-dive into the English language. If you're at all interested in letter frequency or word frequency, you owe it to yourself to at least skim Norvig's post. Essentially the...
The Oakland A’s Cap Off An Incredible Late-Season Comeback And Win The AL West
"The Oakland A's have shocked the Rangers and the baseball world!" That's one way to put it mildly. As Dan Brooks of BrooksBaseball.net reminded us all, the A's had less than a 1 percent chance of even making the playoffs back on June 15. That's just completely insane....
How To Build A 21st-Century Bullpen With Failed Hitting Prospects And A Radar Gun
Earlier this month, Sean Doolittle made his major-league debut for the Oakland Athletics. It wasn't an obviously momentous event: The left-hander took the mound with two outs in the top of the fifth, with the A's trailing Texas 5-0. He struck out Nelson Cruz to end the inning, then pitched a perfect...
"Nobody Likes The Game That They've Won Over And Over Again To Change": Lady Gaga Reviews <em>Moneyball</em>
Republished from V Magazine....
A Night At The Movies, Watching <em>Moneyball</em> With Yogi Berra
Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal took Mr. and Mrs. Yogi Berra to see Moneyball. Yogi liked the movie, although not Philip Seymour Hoffman's dour Art Howe. "'Art's a good guy,' he says. 'And I never saw him that fat. He's thin.'" [WSJ]...
Billy Bean, Openly Gay Former MLB Player, Has Much In Common With His Former Minors Teammate, Billy Beane, The Guy From <em>Moneyball</em>
We've heard from many of the figures on the periphery of Moneyball since the movie hit theaters two weeks ago, but one we hadn't heard from was Billy Bean, the former Tigers, Dodgers, and Padres outfielder who came out of the closet in 1999. Bean, because of that slight difference in names, has ofte...
Tony La Russa Made A Funny About <em>Moneyball</em>
Until today, I'd seen no evidence that Tony La Russa had ever in his life been intentionally funny. I believe the funniest thing Tony La Russa ever said was probably, "Nah, I'm just tired, officer." Tony La Russa treats funny the way he treats a lefty reliever facing a righty in the sixth inning of ...
<em>Moneyball</em> Author Michael Lewis Is The Most Powerful Man In The Universe
Michael Lewis isn't just a disturbingly prolific journalist who elevated Billy Beane to mythic status. He's also a one-man center of power who enriches and ennobles all those with whom he consorts, according to New York Magazine, which neglects to really examine why having so much influence concentr...
The Undervaluing Of <em>Moneyball</em>; Or, What You Can Learn By Watching With A Bunch Of Old People
Although advanced baseball analysis had been around for years, Michael Lewis's 2003 book Moneyball, about the Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane's using it to build their roster, helped to start an online industry of carping about player evaluation and team structure. The release of the 2011 fi...
The David Justice Lookalike Who Bombed Out Of Pro Baseball And Wound Up Playing David Justice In <em>Moneyball</em>
Moneyball popped into theaters on Friday, and it did well, among critics and audiences alike. The movie's impressive with its depiction of that A's team—fake Chad Bradford conjures up Chad Bradford, fake Jeremy Giambi reminds you of Jeremy Giambi, and so on....
There Is An NBA GM Out There Who Doesn't Know How To Use Google
Ever wonder if the men who run our professional basketball teams are as clueless as the men who were running our professional baseball teams (as depicted by Michael Lewis in his 2003 book Moneyball)? There is no definitive answer to that question, yet, but we do now know that at least one NBA GM doe...
Deadspin's Guide To <em>Moneyball</em>
The much-delayed Moneyball film finally pops into your area cinemaplex today, marking one of nerds' few victories in a September filled with Red Sox defeats. We take particular interest in this film, and not just because we've long yearned to see someone portraying Chad Bradford dance across the scr...
Billy Beane On His Pet Names For Brian Sabean
Every morning, the fine folks at Sports Radio Interviews sift through the a.m. drive-time chatter to bring you the best interviews with coaches, players, and personalities across the sports landscape. Today: "Sabey Sabes" was a Hollywood invention. The real one was much worse....