Moneyball

by Lewis, Michael

  Poor teams enjoy one advantage over rich teams: immunity from public ridicule. Billy may not care for the Oakland press but it is really very tame next to the Boston press, and it certainly has no effect on his behavior, other than to infuriate him once a week or so. Oakland A’s fans, too, were apathetic compared to the maniacs in Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium. He could safely ignore their howls.

  Omar doesn’t buy it. He thinks maybe Billy Beane is screwing up his deal.

  “Omar, all I’m trying to do is give you a free player from me. And if they don’t do it, what have you lost? You can still do the deal.”

  Omar says he’s worried about losing his deal. He’s got Bud Selig sitting on his shoulder. Omar, thanks to Bud Selig, is in violation of Billy Beane’s Trading Rule #2: “The day you say you have to do something, you’re screwed. Because you are going to make a bad deal.”

  “Omar,” Billy says, “if they think they are going to get Floyd, Kevin Youkilis is not going to get in the way.” Billy Beane helps Omar to imagine the Boston headlines. NEW RED SOX OWNERS LOSE PENNANT TO KEEP FAT MINOR LEAGUER.

  Now Omar understands; now Omar very nearly believes. But Omar is also curious: who is this Youkilis fellow that has Billy Beane so worked up? Perhaps Youkilis is someone who should be not an Oakland A, but a Montreal Expo.

  “Youkilis?” says Billy, as if he’s only just heard of the guy and very nearly forgot his name. “Just a fat kid in Double-A. Look at your reports. He’s a ‘no’ for you. He’s a ‘maybe’ for me. From our standpoint he’s just a guy we like because he gets on base.”

  (Silly us!)

  Now Omar wants to make it more complicated than it is.

  “Omar, Omar,” says Billy, “the point is I think you can get him in the deal and if you do I’m getting you something for nothing.”

  He puts down the phone. “He’ll call Boston but I don’t think he’s going to push them,” he says.

  A’s president Mike Crowley pokes his head into Billy’s office. “Steve’s on the phone.” Steve in this case is Steve Schott, A’s owner.

  Billy’s thoughts linger on Youkilis. He imagines, fairly accurately as it turns out, the next words he’ll hear from the Red Sox. They’ll know of course that it was he, and not Omar, who has dropped the stink bomb of Youkilis. They’ll know because he, and no one else, has tried to get Youkilis from them in the past. They’ll know, also, because the Red Sox assistant GM, Theo Epstein, talks to Billy Beane as often as he can. Epstein is a twenty-eight-year-old Yale graduate who has known for some time that he’d like to be the general manager of a big league team and, when he is, which general manager he’d most like to be. The Boston Red Sox are moments away from joining Billy Beane in his crusade to emancipate fat guys who don’t make outs. All this Billy knows, and he still thinks Boston will give up Youkilis. What he doesn’t know is that Theo Epstein has new powers—new Red Sox owner John Henry listens to everything he says—and has used them to establish Kevin Youkilis as the poster child for the Boston Red Sox farm system. (“Three months earlier,” Epstein will later say, “and Billy would have had him.”)

  “Billy, Steve’s still waiting to talk!” Mike Crowley again. His owner again. Billy looks around as if he’s forgotten something; he’s spent too much time on Youkilis. He needs to raise some cash. He goes back to his phone and calls Steve Phillips, the Mets GM, one last time. “Steve. Here’s the deal. I don’t want Rincon pitching against me tonight.” He listens for a bit, and hears nothing that makes him happy. When he hangs up, he says, “He has no money. He needs what he has to sign Kazmir.” (Kazmir is the high school pitcher—now the high school pitching holdout—drafted by the Mets nearly two months earlier.)

  The Mets have no money to waste. This is new, too. The market for baseball players, like the market for stocks and bonds, is always changing. To trade it well you needed to be adaptable.

  Every minute that passes is a minute Brian Sabean—or even Steve Phillips!—has to talk Mark Shapiro into backing out of the two-hour promise he’s made Billy. Billy hollers to Mike Crowley: “Tell Schott that if we don’t move Venafro, I’ll sell Rincon for twice the price next year. No. Tell him that I’ll make him a deal. If I don’t do it, I’ll cover it. But I keep anything over twice the savings.”

  Mike Crowley doesn’t know what to do with this. His GM, who earns 400 grand a year, is telling his owner that he’ll take an equity stake in a single player. Go down this road and Billy Beane could make himself a very rich man, simply by dealing players as well as he has done. No reply comes back from the owner, and Billy assumes he is free to do what he wants with Rincon. (Later, and after the fact, the owners will indeed give him authority to do the deal.) He gives the Mets and Giants fifteen minutes more. Finally, he decides. He’ll take the risk. He picks up the phone to call Mark Shapiro to acquire Rincon.

  Phone in hand, almost casually, Billy says to Paul DePodesta, now seated on Billy’s sofa, “Do you want to go down and release Magnante?”

  “Do I want to?” says Paul. He looks right, then left, as if Billy must be talking to some other person, someone who enjoys telling a thirty-seven-year-old relief pitcher that he’s washed up. When he looks left he can see the Coliseum a few yards away, through Billy’s office window. It wasn’t that Mags was just four days short of his ten-year goal. He’d get his pension. It was that, in all likelihood, Mags was finished in the big leagues.

  “Someone’s got to talk to him,” says Billy. Now, suddenly, there is a difference between trading stocks and bonds and trading human beings. There’s a discomfort. Billy never lets it affect what he does. He is able to think of players as pieces in a board game. That’s why he trades them so well.

  “Call Art,” says Paul. “That’s his job.”

  Billy starts to call Art and then remembers that he hasn’t actually made the trade, and so reverses himself and calls Mark Shapiro in Cleveland. It’s 6:30 P.M. The game against the Indians starts in thirty-five minutes.

  “Mike Magnante has just thrown his last pitch in the big leagues,” says Paul.

  “Sorry I took so long, Mark,” says Billy.

  No problem, But since you did, do you want to wait until after the game to take Rincon?

  “No, we want him now. We want to get him in our dugout tonight.”

  Why the rush?

  “By and large Magnante cost us the game last night and Rincon won the game.”

  Okay. No big deal. We’ll do it now.

  “You feel comfortable with Ricardo’s health, right?”

  Right.

  “We’re going to have to release a guy before the game,” says Billy. “In the spirit of speeding things up, you wanna call Joel?” Joel is Joel Skinner, the Indians manager. Panic rises on Billy’s face. “Oh shit,” he says. “McDougal. He has a little tweak in his leg. You know about that, right?” McDougal’s the player Billy’s giving up. McDougal’s also been dogging it during workouts. He’s conveyed to the A’s minor league coaching staff a certain lack of commitment to the game. But these things the Cleveland Indians are required to learn the hard way.

  No problem. I know about the tweak.

  Billy hangs up and dials Art Howe’s number. The A’s manager has just returned to his office beside the clubhouse.

  “Art. It’s Billy. I have some good news and some bad news.”

  Art gives a little nervous chuckle. “Okay.”

  “The good news is you’ve got Rincon.”

  “Do I?”

  “The bad news is you gotta release Magnante.”

  Silence on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Art finally says.

  “And you’ve got to do it before the game.”

  “Okay”

  “I know it’s not the best way to get rid of a guy but we got a good pitcher.”

  “Okay.”

  Billy hangs up and turns to Paul, “Can we designate Magnante for assignment?” This is a prettier way to release a player because
it leaves open the possibility that some other club will claim him, and take his salary off Oakland’s hands. When you designate a guy for assignment, Billy explains, “you put him in baseball purgatory. But he can’t pray his way out.”

  He then makes several quick calls. He calls the A’s equipment manager, Steve Vucinich. “Voos. We gotta get rid of Mags by game time. Yeah. You have twenty-five minutes to get him out of there.” He calls the Mets’ Steve Phillips. “Steve, I got the guy I wanted. Rincon.” (For you, it’s Venafro or nothing.) He calls the Giants’ Brian Sabean. “Brian. Hey, Brian. Hey, it’s Billy. I’ve made a deal for Rincon right now.” (So don’t think you can wait me out.) He calls Peter Gammons and tells him what he’s done, and that he’s not doing anything else.

  Then he brings in the Oakland A’s public relations man, Jim Young, who agrees he should have a press release ready before the game. He also says Billy should make himself available to the media. “Do I have to go talk to them?” Billy asks. He’s already talked to everyone he wants to talk to.

  “Yes.”

  After the final call, his phone rings. He looks at his caller ID and sees it’s from the visitors’ clubhouse. He picks it up.

  “Oh, hi Ricardo.” It’s Ricardo Rincon, who is Mexican, and normally gives his interviews through an interpreter.

  “Ricardo, I know it’s a little bit shocking for you,” says Billy. His syntax changes slightly, he’s groping for a Mexican mode of expression and winds up saying whatever he can think of that Ricardo might understand. “But we have been trying to get you for a long time. You’re going to love the guys on the team. They’re fun.”

  Ricardo is trying to get it clear in his head that he’s supposed to do what he’s just been asked to do, take off his Cleveland Indians uniform, gather his personal belongings, and walk down the hall into the Oakland clubhouse and put on an Oakland uniform. He can’t quite get his mind around it.

  “Yes! Yes!” says Billy. “I don’t know if you’ll pitch tonight. But you’re on our team tonight.”

  Whatever Ricardo says he means: Oh my God, I might actually have to pitch tonight?

  “Yes. Yes. Possibly you’ll punch out Jim Thome!” Possibly you will punch out Jim Thome. Billy is becoming, quickly, a Mexican immigrant.

  “We’ll have a uniform and everything ready for you.” And everything. He’s had just about enough touchy-feely for one evening. He tries to lead the conversation to a not horribly unnatural conclusion. “Where are you from, Ricardo?”

  Ricardo says he’s from Veracruz, Mexico.

  “Well, Veracruz is closer to here than to Cleveland. You’re closer to home!”

  He finishes that one, hangs up, and says, “It’s gotten to be a longer road trip for Ricardo than he expected.” He looks absolutely spent. The wad of tobacco is gone from his upper lip and his mouth is dry. He gargles with the glass of water on his desk, and spits. “I’ve got to work out,” he says.

  At that moment Mike Magnante was removing his Oakland uniform and Ricardo Rincon was removing his Cleveland one. Mags quickly left the Oakland clubhouse; he’d come back for his things later when no one was around. His wife had brought the kids to the game so he couldn’t just leave. Magnante watched the game with his family until the sixth inning, and then left so he wouldn’t have to answer questions from the media. He had no desire to call further attention to his situation. In his youth he might have mouthed off. He would certainly have borne a grudge. But he was no longer young; the numbness had long since set in. He thought of himself the way the market thought of him, as an asset to be bought and sold. He’d long ago forgotten whatever it was he was meant to feel.

  The main thing was that Mags was gone from the clubhouse before Billy walked across to change into his sweats. As Billy headed in, however, he bumped into Ricardo Rincon heading out, in street clothes. Ricardo remained confused. He had heard he was going to the San Francisco Giants, or maybe the Los Angeles Dodgers. He’d never imagined he might be an Oakland A. And he still doesn’t understand the full implications of what’s happened. The Oakland A’s only left-handed relief pitcher is going out to find a seat in the stands to watch the game. Billy leads him back into the clubhouse where the staff has just finished steaming RINCON onto the back of an Oakland A’s jersey. “You’re on our team now,” says Billy.

  Ricardo Rincon walked back into his new clubhouse, put on his new uniform, and sat down and watched the entire game on television. “I was not ready,” he said. “I couldn’t concentrate.” His left arm, however, felt great.

  Chapter X

  Anatomy of an Undervalued Pitcher

  After Billy acquired Ricardo Rincon and Ray Durham, the team went from good to great. The only team in the past fifty years with a better second half record than the 2002 Oakland A’s was the 2001 Oakland A’s, and even they were just one game better. On the evening of September 4, the standings in the American League West were, with the exception of the Texas Rangers, an inversion of what they had been six weeks before.

  Wins Losses Games Behind

  Oakland 87 51 —

  Anaheim 83 54 3%

  Seattle 81 57 6

  Texas 62 75 24%

  The Anaheim Angels were the second hottest team in baseball. They’d won thirteen of their last nineteen games, and yet lost ground in the race. The reason for this was that the Oakland A’s had won all of their previous nineteen games—and tied the American League record for consecutive wins. On the night of September 4, 2002, before a crowd of 55,528, the largest ever to see an Oakland regular season game, they had set out to do what no other team had done in the 102-year history of the league: win their twentieth game in a row. By the top of the seventh inning, up 11-5 against the Kansas City Royals, with Tim Hudson still pitching, the game seemed all but over.

  Then, suddenly, Hudson’s in trouble. After two quick outs he gives up one single to Mike Sweeney and another, harder hit, to Raul Ibanez. Art Howe emerges from the dugout and glances at the bullpen.

  What turned up in the A’s bullpen seemed to vary from one night to the next. On this night the less important end of the bench held a cynical, short, lefty sidewinder Billy Beane had tried and failed to give away, Mike Venafro, and two guys newly arrived from Triple-A: Jeff Tam and Micah Bowie. On the more important end of the bench was a clubfooted screwball pitcher with knee problems; a short, squat Mexican left-hander who spoke so little English that he called everyone on the team “Poppy”; and a tempestuous flamethrower with uneven control of self and ball. Jim Mecir, Ricardo Rincon, Billy Koch. Of the entire bullpen, in the view of the Oakland A’s front office, the most critical to the team’s success was a mild-mannered Baptist whose delivery resembled no other pitcher in the major leagues: Chad Bradford. Billy has instructed Art Howe to bring in Bradford whenever the game is on the line. In most cases when Bradford came out of the pen, the game was tight and runners were on base. Tonight, the game isn’t tight; tonight, history is calling Chad Bradford in from the pen.

  Art Howe pulls his right hand out of his jacket and flips his fingers underhanded, like a lawn bowler. Taking his cue, Bradford steps off the bullpen mound and walks toward the field of play. Before reaching it, he pulls the bill of his cap down over his face and fixes his eyes on the ground three feet in front of him. He’s six foot five but walks short. Really, it’s a kind of vanishing act: by the time he steps furtively over the foul line, he’s shed himself entirely of the interest of the crowd. If you didn’t know who he was or what he was doing you would say he wasn’t making an entrance but a getaway.

  Baseball nourishes eccentricity and big league bullpens have seen their share of self-consciously colorful oddballs. Chad Bradford was the opposite. He didn’t brush his teeth between innings, like Turk Wendell, or throw temper tantrums on the mound, like Al Hrabosky. He didn’t stomp and glare and leap dramatically over the foul lines. His mother, back
home in Mississippi, often complained about her son’s on-field demeanor. Specifically, she complained that he never did anything to let people know how handsome and charming he actually was. For instance, he never allowed the television cameras to see his winsome smile, even when he sat in the dugout after a successful outing. Chad never smiled because he was mortified by the idea of the TV cameras catching him smiling—or, for that matter, doing anything at all.

  None of it helps his cause of remaining inconspicuous. Once he’s on the mound, nothing he does can wall him off from the crowd or the cameras. He makes his living on the baseball field’s only raised platform, and in such a way as to call to mind a circus act. Sooner or later he needs to throw his warm-up pitches, and, when he does, fans who have never seen him pitch gawk and point. In their trailers outside the stadium TV producers scramble to assemble the tape the announcers will need to explain this curiosity. Pitching out of the stretch, he does not rear up and back, like other relief pitchers. He jackknifes at the waist, like a jitterbug dancer lurching for his partner. His throwing hand swoops out toward the plate and down toward the earth. Less than an inch off the ground, way out where the dirt meets the infield grass, he rolls the ball off his fingertips. When subjected to slow-motion replay, as this motion often is, it looks less like pitching than feeding pigeons or shooting craps. The announcers often call him a sidearm pitcher, but that hasn’t been true of him for nearly four years. He’s now, in baseball lingo, a “submariner,” which is baseball’s way of making a guy who throws underhand sound manly.

  The truth is that there is no good word to describe Chad Bradford’s pitching motion; “underhand” doesn’t capture the full flavor of it. This year, for the first time in his career, Chad Bradford’s knuckles have scraped the dirt as he throws. Once during warmups his hand bounced so violently off the ground that the baseball ricocheted over the startled head of Toronto Blue jays’ outfielder Vernon Wells, minding his own business in the on-deck circle. ESPN had replayed that one, over and over. Chad’s new fear is that he’ll do it again, in a game, and that the television cameras will catch him at it, and everyone will be paying him attention all over again.