Moneyball - Michael Lewis [92]
Waiting for Shapiro to call him, Billy distracted himself by paying attention to several things at once. On his desk was the most recent issue of Harvard Magazine, containing an article about a Harvard professor of statistics named Carl Morris (the Bill James fan). The article explained how Morris had used statistical theory to determine the number of runs a team could expect to score in the different states of a baseball game. No outs with no one on base: 55. No outs with a runner on first base: 90. And so on for each of the twenty-four possible states of a baseball game. “We knew this three years ago,” says Billy, “and Harvard thinks it’s original.”
He shoves a wad of tobacco into his upper lip, then turns back to his computer screen, which displays the Amazon.com home page. In his hand he’s got a review he’s ripped out of Time magazine, of a novel called The Dream of Scipio, a thriller with intellectual pretension. He reads the sentence of the review that has made him a buyer: “Civilization had made them men of learning, but in order to save it they must leave their studies and become men of action.” As he taps on his computer keyboard, the television over his head replays Mike Magnante’s home run ball of the night before. The Oakland A’s announcers are trying to explain why the Oakland A’s are still behind the Anaheim Angels and the Seattle Mariners in the division standings. “The main reason this team is trailing in the American League West,” an announcer says, “is that they haven’t hit in the clutch, they haven’t hit with guys in scoring position.” Billy drops the book review, forgets about Amazon, and reaches for the TV remote control. Of the many false beliefs peddled by the TV announcers, this fealty to “clutch hitting” was maybe the most maddening to Billy Beane. “It’s fucking luck,” he says, and faces around the dial until he finds Moneyline with Lou Dobbs. He prefers watching money shows to watching baseball anyway.
On the eve of the trading deadline, July 30, he was still pursuing two players, and one of them is the Cleveland Indians’ left-hander, Ricardo Rincon. At that very moment, Rincon is still just a few yards away, inside the visitor’s locker room, dressing to play the second game of the three-game series against the Oakland A’s. The night before, he’d only thrown seven pitches. His arm, no doubt, felt good. The Cleveland Indians have given up any hope of winning this year, and are now busy selling off their parts. “The premier left-handed setup man is just a luxury we can’t afford,” said Indians’ GM Shapiro. Shapiro has shopped Rincon around the league and told Billy that there is at least one other bidder. Billy has found out—he won’t say how—that the other bidder is the San Francisco Giants and that the Giants’ offer may be better than his. All Billy has offered the Indians is a minor league second baseman named Marshall MacDougal. MacDougal isn’t that bad a player.
Anyone seeking to understand how this team with no money kept winning more and more games would do well to notice their phenomenal ability to improve in the middle of a season. Ever since 1999 the Oakland A’s have played like a different team after the All-Star break than before it. Last year they had been almost bizarrely better: 44–43 before the break, 58–17 after it. Since the All-Star Game was created, in 1933, no other team had ever won so many of its final seventy-five games.*
The reason the Oakland A’s, as run by Billy Beane, played as if they were a different team in the second half of the season is that they were a different team. As spring turned to summer the market allowed Billy to do things that he could do at no other time of the year. The bad teams lost hope. With the loss of hope came a desire to cut costs. With the desire to cut