Schuerholtz wins with "traditional" methods. Does this mean that Cam Bonifay or Chuck Lamar, using traditional methods, is a good choice for GM?

I would be excited if I were a Reds fan and the team had a chance to hire Beane. Not DePodesta though. He tries the same approach, he's just not nearly as good. Its the same as trying to get Alex Sanchez to play OF because he has the same approach as Ichiro!

Not to say that DePodesta would be a bad choice. He couldn't make the Reds any worse, and he'd be no worse than what they've had since 1999.

Just don't expect him to be a savior. Its not realistic and its not fair to him either.

Don't write off DePodesta just because he had some personality issues in LA. Bill Belichik was a failure in his first job as a #1, too.

It's always nice to see a major media person call themselves a "stathead", though.

I think many teams use a combination of philosophies--none perfect. I've heard the stat group,
including BB use the word "luck" quite a bit, but I don't
hear people calling BB lucky. I think he gets respect.
For BB, there's no clutch hitting, but there is luck. If you
make it to the playoffs but not the World Series, he's
said luck is often the reason. If BB is lucky, it's that his
bosses accept that. That side also eschews team chem-
istry, personalities, etc. They're big on hiring mental
cases & telling the good guys to work it out with him.
Of all their philosophies, that's the worst, & I feel sorry
for any guy who has to play on one of their teams.

"Of all their philosophies, that's the worst, & I feel sorry for any guy who has to play on one of their teams."

Why? The A's routinely have one of the happiest clubhouses in all of baseball. Of course it doesn't hurt to win, which is the best salve of all.

Woah woah woah. Schuerholz does not win through traditional methods. His is a hybrid stats/scouting/development program through and through. Putting him in the same league as a tradiationalist is wrong.

I have come to believe that everyone focuses on the wrong things when evaluating Oakland and their approach. Sure, they have found players who can contribute offensively that weren't valued elsewhere (Hatteberg, Payton, Kielty, Durazo, Justice) at the major league level. They also appear to pay less attention to how a player looks in a pair of shorts and more on how they do on the field (smart).

The real trick though has been maintaining an offense that can compete and a pitching staff that wins. They simply do not overspend on offense because they have come to know that the total runs produced by most players don't vary that much. Quality pitching has been their hallmark, not a great offense.

This past year is a complete vindication of Beane. As to De Podesta, Beane was smart enough to hire him, its unclear to me why LA got rid of him. Their current team is very flawed. We will see how their season shapes up.

Juice: LA got rid of DePo because McCourt has a nasty little bee named Tommy Lasorda whispering in his ear. The media overplayed how DePo handled people, and McCourt caved to public pressure instead of sticking up for his general manager. It was shameful. But in a nutshell, that's why LA got rid of him.

Winning and Chemistry are the Chicken and the Egg.

The whole differentiation of luck and clutch speaks to baseball being a high sample sport: a cup of coffee...say, 100 at bats, doesn't say too much about a player. So the same with games played...the fact is, five or seven games just isn't a big enough sample size to determine who the better team is.

Look at the Yanks and the Double-A's, er...Balkaneers...er (hey, for me, the joke doesn't get old) the D-Rays, for example. Last year, the Yanks had a .586 WP and the Rays had a .414 WP. Nice and clean to add up to a 1.000 total. So if they play 1000 games, the Yanks win 586, and the Rays win 414. I ran a quick Excel simulation to examine outcomes in a five game set, and out of 200 series played, the Rays would have won 62 series. That's for the division winner vs. one of the most futile teams in the league. So, about 1/3 of the time, the worst team is going to beat the best team in a short series. That's just the way baseball works...that's why they call it luck...the best team is still going to lose to the worst team about 40% of the time This may be an oversimplification, but even the most chemistry-oriented mind must admit that the Rays are going to beat the best team in baseball in a short series at least 20% of the time. So imagine what happens when a WC and divisional winner get together, where the teams are much, much closer in performance...this number gets crunched so much closer. This is why luck is invoked so often. When we watch, we may see Podsednik's game winning home run as a sign of clutchness...but...really...Podsednik?

Here's the breakdown of outcomes in the fictional NYY vs. TB? 5 game set:

TB NY
3 games 9 37
4 games 33 60
5 games 20 41