Crapshoot
11-04-2005, 05:48 PM
Great Read - didn't realize that AEI was broaching into sportswriting.. :D
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18819/article_detail.asphe Firing of Paul DePodesta
By David Damiani
Clarence Thomas once referred to his treatment during his Senate confirmation as a high-tech lynching. Perhaps what the baseball universe saw last weekend was the lynching of high-tech, as the Los Angeles Dodgers abruptly parted ways with general manager Paul DePodesta after a two-season tenure that saw a division title in 2004, disappointment in 2005, and several billion bizarre references to computers in baseball writers’ columns.
DePodesta had gained notoriety among sportswriters as the assistant general manager of the Oakland Athletics and a prominent character in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, a book that sportswriters react to like the Ayatollah did to The Satanic Verses. In that book, DePodesta famously—brace yourselves for the perfidy—looked up players’ statistics on a computer instead of solely relying on the opinions of team scouts.
For that offense, DePodesta was branded a soulless computer nerd. The reality now is not just that DePodesta inadvertently inspired a lot of trippy metaphors—I still haven’t fathomed descriptions of him as “speak[ing] in megabytes” or predicting that he’ll “land on his mousepad”—but that an ignorant baseball press actually swayed Dodgers owner Frank McCourt. The venom cast upon DePodesta ensured that he’d never win over the press, and as the Dodgers’ print reputation declined in the wake of their poor season and the recent success of the market-rival Angels, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that press opinion was the biggest factor in DePodesta’s firing.
DePodesta’s detractors will argue that the ousted G.M. had legitimate flaws—some cite rudeness to fired employees or unwillingness to explain himself more thoroughly to the media. But these characterizations may merely reflect writers’ seeing what they wanted to see in between spastic references to computer parts. (And what good would it have done for DePodesta to spend more time justifying a trade to a group given to suggesting that he would fit in better at Halliburton, as Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Bob Keisser did this week?)
DePodesta is most reviled for a few moves that virtually all press reports treat as disastrous. He is slammed for not resigning post-2004 free agents Steve Finley (a 40-year-old who posted a .271 on-base percentage while making $6 million in 2005), Adrian Beltre (who unsurprisingly slumped from an anomalous 48 homers in ‘04 to 19 in ‘05 while pocketing $11.5 million), and Shawn Green (an aging first baseman who hit an uninspiring 22 homers for $7.8 million and was no more productive than the Dodgers’ low-cost tandem of Hee Seop Choi and Olmedo Saenz at that position). He is also scalded for acquiring Jeff Kent (whose .377 on-base percentage and 29 homers paced the ‘05 Dodgers’ offense), Milton Bradley (a gifted but volatile player), and J.D. Drew (who had posted a .412 on-base percentage and 15 homers before a first-half injury). The major injuries to Drew, Bradley, pitcher Darren Dreifort, and ace reliever Eric Gagne in 2005 are often ignored when the DePodesta record is assailed.
The biggest, and most hated, DePodesta move was trading outfielder Juan Encarnacion, catcher Paul LoDuca, and reliever Guillermo Mota to the Marlins for starting pitcher Brad Penny and Choi. At worst, this was a break-even deal. Enigmatic Choi has been oddly jerked in and out of the starting lineup in each of his three seasons, but Penny brought youth and effectiveness to the Dodgers’ suspect rotation going into their 2004 playoff drive. Mota regressed badly after leaving the Dodgers, while Encarnacion surprisingly diverted from his career as an out machine masquerading as a power hitter and was an average role player last season.
The most fabled player in the trade, though, is LoDuca, a catcher with a predilection for fading in the second half whose reputation as a leader on the Dodgers stemmed primarily from the press’s inexplicable, Tourette’s-like repetition that LoDuca was a leader. L.A. writers lamented his absence throughout this season. But it’s hard to imagine LoDuca, or any of the departed Dodgers, would have made their season much less disappointing, given their ‘05 performances.
Applying his incomparable skills and leadership to the Marlins this season, LoDuca posted a mediocre .334 OBP and 6 home runs for a supposed contender that barely made it past .500. How he would have made the Dodgers substantially better in 2005 remains a mystery to all but those who can magically ascertain heart (a word that appears in almost every article written about LoDuca). Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke evidently knows heart, so certain is he that LoDuca and Finley had it, that Drew lacks it (witness a surreal column calling Drew “J.D. Ghost” as a repeated refrain), and that DePodesta is too computerized to recognize it.
“Heart” in modern sports writing is the last refuge of a scoundrel who doesn’t care to make an effort to understand his topic and has abject contempt for his subject and audience. It’s a weasel word for many sportswriters’ visceral hatred, not for DePodesta, but for his fabled computer—the democratic box that allows those writers and their comfortable, smug conclusions to be challenged. It emerges when Plaschke accuses DePodesta of wearing Clearasil (in the first sentence of his first column on the man), or when the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bruce Jenkins suggests that fans who discuss statistics they don’t understand never go out in the sun. The message to fans who think for themselves is that they’re nerds who don’t play or care about sports and shouldn’t dare question the press status quo. (For what it’s worth, DePodesta played college football; his even more reviled mentor, Billy Beane of the Athletics, played pro baseball. Their athletic careers and time in the sun probably have surpassed Jenkins’s or Plaschke’s.)
Add McCourt to the list of those who enable this point of view. He gave in to baseless hatred posing as legitimate analysis. Firing Paul DePodesta is a craven, spineless P.R. move easily scouted even without having to use a computer.
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18819/article_detail.asphe Firing of Paul DePodesta
By David Damiani
Clarence Thomas once referred to his treatment during his Senate confirmation as a high-tech lynching. Perhaps what the baseball universe saw last weekend was the lynching of high-tech, as the Los Angeles Dodgers abruptly parted ways with general manager Paul DePodesta after a two-season tenure that saw a division title in 2004, disappointment in 2005, and several billion bizarre references to computers in baseball writers’ columns.
DePodesta had gained notoriety among sportswriters as the assistant general manager of the Oakland Athletics and a prominent character in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, a book that sportswriters react to like the Ayatollah did to The Satanic Verses. In that book, DePodesta famously—brace yourselves for the perfidy—looked up players’ statistics on a computer instead of solely relying on the opinions of team scouts.
For that offense, DePodesta was branded a soulless computer nerd. The reality now is not just that DePodesta inadvertently inspired a lot of trippy metaphors—I still haven’t fathomed descriptions of him as “speak[ing] in megabytes” or predicting that he’ll “land on his mousepad”—but that an ignorant baseball press actually swayed Dodgers owner Frank McCourt. The venom cast upon DePodesta ensured that he’d never win over the press, and as the Dodgers’ print reputation declined in the wake of their poor season and the recent success of the market-rival Angels, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that press opinion was the biggest factor in DePodesta’s firing.
DePodesta’s detractors will argue that the ousted G.M. had legitimate flaws—some cite rudeness to fired employees or unwillingness to explain himself more thoroughly to the media. But these characterizations may merely reflect writers’ seeing what they wanted to see in between spastic references to computer parts. (And what good would it have done for DePodesta to spend more time justifying a trade to a group given to suggesting that he would fit in better at Halliburton, as Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Bob Keisser did this week?)
DePodesta is most reviled for a few moves that virtually all press reports treat as disastrous. He is slammed for not resigning post-2004 free agents Steve Finley (a 40-year-old who posted a .271 on-base percentage while making $6 million in 2005), Adrian Beltre (who unsurprisingly slumped from an anomalous 48 homers in ‘04 to 19 in ‘05 while pocketing $11.5 million), and Shawn Green (an aging first baseman who hit an uninspiring 22 homers for $7.8 million and was no more productive than the Dodgers’ low-cost tandem of Hee Seop Choi and Olmedo Saenz at that position). He is also scalded for acquiring Jeff Kent (whose .377 on-base percentage and 29 homers paced the ‘05 Dodgers’ offense), Milton Bradley (a gifted but volatile player), and J.D. Drew (who had posted a .412 on-base percentage and 15 homers before a first-half injury). The major injuries to Drew, Bradley, pitcher Darren Dreifort, and ace reliever Eric Gagne in 2005 are often ignored when the DePodesta record is assailed.
The biggest, and most hated, DePodesta move was trading outfielder Juan Encarnacion, catcher Paul LoDuca, and reliever Guillermo Mota to the Marlins for starting pitcher Brad Penny and Choi. At worst, this was a break-even deal. Enigmatic Choi has been oddly jerked in and out of the starting lineup in each of his three seasons, but Penny brought youth and effectiveness to the Dodgers’ suspect rotation going into their 2004 playoff drive. Mota regressed badly after leaving the Dodgers, while Encarnacion surprisingly diverted from his career as an out machine masquerading as a power hitter and was an average role player last season.
The most fabled player in the trade, though, is LoDuca, a catcher with a predilection for fading in the second half whose reputation as a leader on the Dodgers stemmed primarily from the press’s inexplicable, Tourette’s-like repetition that LoDuca was a leader. L.A. writers lamented his absence throughout this season. But it’s hard to imagine LoDuca, or any of the departed Dodgers, would have made their season much less disappointing, given their ‘05 performances.
Applying his incomparable skills and leadership to the Marlins this season, LoDuca posted a mediocre .334 OBP and 6 home runs for a supposed contender that barely made it past .500. How he would have made the Dodgers substantially better in 2005 remains a mystery to all but those who can magically ascertain heart (a word that appears in almost every article written about LoDuca). Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke evidently knows heart, so certain is he that LoDuca and Finley had it, that Drew lacks it (witness a surreal column calling Drew “J.D. Ghost” as a repeated refrain), and that DePodesta is too computerized to recognize it.
“Heart” in modern sports writing is the last refuge of a scoundrel who doesn’t care to make an effort to understand his topic and has abject contempt for his subject and audience. It’s a weasel word for many sportswriters’ visceral hatred, not for DePodesta, but for his fabled computer—the democratic box that allows those writers and their comfortable, smug conclusions to be challenged. It emerges when Plaschke accuses DePodesta of wearing Clearasil (in the first sentence of his first column on the man), or when the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bruce Jenkins suggests that fans who discuss statistics they don’t understand never go out in the sun. The message to fans who think for themselves is that they’re nerds who don’t play or care about sports and shouldn’t dare question the press status quo. (For what it’s worth, DePodesta played college football; his even more reviled mentor, Billy Beane of the Athletics, played pro baseball. Their athletic careers and time in the sun probably have surpassed Jenkins’s or Plaschke’s.)
Add McCourt to the list of those who enable this point of view. He gave in to baseless hatred posing as legitimate analysis. Firing Paul DePodesta is a craven, spineless P.R. move easily scouted even without having to use a computer.