[JoeRyan33]

I think the main difference between the Oakland A's and the Boston Red Sox was, and perhaps always will be, money.

The A's built their team on an idea of what they felt was the soundest way to produce the most wins at the smallest cost; the Red Sox didn't have such constraints. I find it hard personally to praise their methods when they tried to dump their key bat (Manny Ramirez) preseason 2004.

I don't necessarily agree with the A's formula, especially not when it came to predicting future performance in young players. Here their hands weren't tied so much, and they had the ability to get players who would contribute in the long run. Before you say they didn't, that they couldn't afford to take risks on big bonuses, I'm referring to the draftees outside the elite tier. These guys are very much signable at good value; the A's over reliance on DePodesta's stat lines, and Beane's stubbornness, cost them dearly.

Side note: When you play pure percentages with steals, you do remove the human element. No statistic can account for everything positive that speed does for a team, the things that don't show up in box scores. Maybe Roberts' in the 2004 ALCS wasn't the best example, but I understand what Bly is saying.

The Beane philosophy, and that espoused in Moneyball, is that speed is the element of baseball that you can most afford to be without. I don't necessarily disagree - in fact, I agree with that idea - but, the strict sabermetric approach does have its massive downfalls. The old scouting methods are in a lot of ways ridiculous, but so too is total adherence to pure statistical analysis in building a baseball team.