To any Oakland 's baseball fans from a former Padres fan--Moneyball ?

Question

We now have Sandy Alderson who is leading our team to oblivion. He ran Oakland A's with an iron hand using the " Moneyball System"

Don't get me wrong I have all the respect in the world for the Oakland Athletics Organization, but 11 of Sandy's years there from 1980 to 1996 were at or below .500 wins

The other winning years you had Canseco and probably Mark Mcguire (huge guy!) on steriods, which really helped the team win the other 5 years.

The problem is "Moneyball" find players "under the Radar" who don't have the traditional major league skills such as PLUS arms, throwing, running and hitting for average ; even sometimes hitting for power. So instead moneyball looks for hitters with exclusively with high on base percentages. And for pitching guys with low on base percentages (don't walk people).

In other words it produces a slow, boring semi -competitive team that will be good enough to put some people in the stands and not ever go in the red. EVEN BUSINESSES HAVE TO INVEST MONEY AND GO IN THE RED TO TRY TO BECOME BETTER. But moneyball teams never get far in playoffs, or even in playoffs, ect. The whole idea is to get semi-competitive team for the least money---moneyball , not with talent but with percentages. Now we have a boring team in San Diego thanks to Sandy Alderson. We do not have major league talent and out team is slow, runners steal second with ease, no power or average--mediocre pitching. Like I said I have all respect in world for the A's but please let me know if you think monneyball is a joke?

Answer 1

I do not mean to attack you  or be rude so please excuse me if I'm being disrespectful, but a true fan would stick with their team. I do not like the way my A's try to win because it doesn't work. It did when we got big names but now we are going downhill. We no longer have big name players.  You named some big names for Oakland who were on steroids, but do not forget about Eckersley. He was outstanding. Isringhausen had good years with us as well. The A's had a lot of glory years. We are just on a downfall right now. The Padres will pull out of it eventually. I am and always will be a die hard A's fan, and I hope we can do something to bring a winning season back to Oakland.