We just kind of relied on written scouting reports through the eighties and even the early nineties. I've really been amazed by some of the data that's out there, especially with regards to tendencies of hitters, and certainly tendencies of pitchers as well. I would have loved to have gotten that data when I played.
I'm not a big 'Moneyball' fan.
Americans are analytical in their sports, which are very stop-start, so the numbers tend to add up. That's why Moneyball works for baseball. It doesn't work so well for football because it's a fluid game.
I understand what sabermetrics get across, and what they're getting across is to keep it simple. Especially for me, as a pitcher, that's something that helps me - finding ways to keep it simple. Numbers can only tell so much.
Baseball fans love numbers. They love to swirl them around their mouths like Bordeaux wine.
Who wants to get really granular with sabermetrics when you're going to see a two-and-a-half-hour Brad Pitt movie? You don't go to the cinema for a maths lesson.
Fantasy sports went a long way toward developing the sabermetrics formulas used not only by oddsmakers but general managers in hiring players. So the amateur fantasists ended up creating some of the algorithms that Oakland GM Billy Bean's statisticians used to win games with less salary money available for star players.
In baseball you have terrific data and you can be a lot more creative with it.
I love baseball - 'Moneyball' was my favorite book when I was 13.
The version of 'Moneyball' I pitched - and we made - is about a guy, Billy Beane, who thinks he's trying to win baseball games. But it's deeper than that.
Statistics are to baseball what a flaky crust is to Mom's apple pie.
That's all baseball is, is numbers; it's run by numbers, averages, percentage and odds. Managers make their decisions based on the numbers.
I loved 'Moneyball,' I thought that was a great Hollywood movie. I like baseball, but I don't know that you have to like baseball to like that. I thought it was really well done.
Every time I sit with our general manager at a baseball game, and there's number-cruncher and statistician guy - I'm sitting around - they start talking about stuff, and I say, 'What's that? I've never heard of that one before.'
Though 'Moneyball' had the talents of screenwriters Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin going for it, they weren't baseball insiders.
Just because I am increasingly bored by sabermetric arcana doesn't mean anyone else has to be; it remains good for people who like that sort of thing.
