Moneyball - Michael Lewis [90]
But none of those first three at bats stuck in Hatty’s mind like the fourth. The fourth and final time he came to the plate, Moyer teased him with pitches on the edge of the strike zone and quickly got ahead 0–2. The next four pitches were either balls Hatty took or strikes he fouled off, because he couldn’t do anything more with them. Six pitches into the at bat, with the count 2–2, Jamie Moyer walks off the mound. He actually says something to Hatty, and stands there, as if waiting for an answer.
This is new. Hatty’s at bats, inevitably, are conversations, but the non-verbal kind. The pitcher isn’t supposed to stop in the middle of the game for a sociable chat. “I’d never had a pitcher talk to me while I was in the batter’s box,” he says. With Moyer just standing there, refusing to budge, Hatteberg steps out of the box: “What?” he shouts.
“Just tell me what you want,” says Moyer wearily.
Hatty shrugs, as he doesn’t know what to say.
“Tell me what you want and I’ll throw it,” says Moyer.
Hatty was always having to make a guess about what was coming next. His ability to do it depended on his knowing that the pitcher was trying to fool him. This more straightforward approach made him uneasy. It screwed up some inner calculation, threw him off-balance. He didn’t feel comfortable. For once, he couldn’t think of anything to say. And so he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to know. He preferred to stick with his approach.
On the next pitch Moyer throws a change-up and Hatteberg hits right back at him. Just another out—and yet it wasn’t. He did what he did so quietly that the market in general never perceived the value in it. Scott Hatteberg will finish the season at or near the top of a couple of odd statistical categories, and one not-so-odd one. He’ll be first in the entire American League in not swinging at first pitches, and third in the percentage of pitches he doesn’t swing at(64.5 percent). Trivial accomplishments, if they did not lead to another, less trivial one. At the end of the season Paul DePodesta will measure the performance of every A’s hitter. He’ll want to know how efficient each has been with his plate opportunities. He’ll answer that question in an unorthodox way, by asking: how many runs would a lineup produce that consisted of nine perfect replicas of that hitter? If Scott Hatteberg, for example, had taken every single at bat for the Oakland A’s in 2002, how many runs would he have generated? Nine Scott Hattebergs generate between 940 and 950 runs, tied for the Oakland A’s lead with Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez, obviously much flashier hitters. The offensively explosive 2002 New York Yankees, by comparison, scored 897 runs. Nine Scott Hattebergs are, by some measure, the best offense in baseball.
Chapter 9
THE TRADING DESK
It’s not like I’m making pitching changes during the game.
—Billy Beane, quoted in the Boston Herald, January 16, 2003
IT WAS LATE JULY, which is to say that Mike Magnante had picked a bad time to pitch poorly. “Mags,” as everyone called him, had come in against Cleveland in the top of the seventh with two runners on and a three-run lead. The first thing he did was to walk Jim Thome—no one could blame him for that. He then gave up a bloop single to Milton Bradley and the inherited runners scored—just plain bad luck, that. But then he threw three straight balls to Lee Stevens. Stevens dutifully took a strike, then waited for Mags to throw his fifth pitch.
The first question Billy Beane will ask Art Howe after the game is why the fuck he’d brought Magnante into a tight game. In tight situations Art was supposed to use Chad Bradford. Bradford was the ace of the pen. So that it would be clear in Art’s head, Billy had instructed him to think of Bradford as “the closer before the ninth inning.” Art’s