Moneyball Roots on 35th Street

 Yesterday, the White Sox swept the A’s in Oakland for the first time since 1997, or as I told my 23-year old daughter, “when you were six.”  Whatever they’re calling the Oakland Coliseum these days (it now has a dot in its name), the place has been a house of horrors for the Sox.

Last year, the A’s were buyers at the July 31 trade deadline, acquiring pitchers Jon Lester and Jeff Samardzija.  Then, after losing the gimmicky wildcard playoff game to the Royals, they went into classic Billy Beane mode, as the Oakland GM traded away four regulars and Samardzija for prospects.  The results?  The A’s are an embarrassing 13-26, worst in baseball.  (But, yes, I’d still like to get back Josh Phegley and Marcus Semien, even if he does now have 13 errors at short.)

Beane’s Moneyball strategy of drafting smart and trading players away before they become free agents has never won him a pennant, let alone a World Series.  More than anything, it reminds me of Bill Veeck’s “rent a player” scheme from the 1970s.  Faced with the impending loss of Rich Gossage and Terry Forster to free agency, Veeck traded them to the Pirates for outfielder Richie Zisk, who had a career year for the Sox in 1977 with 30 home runs and 101 rbi’s, only Zisk also took the free agent’s walk.  For added measure, Veeck traded shortstop Bucky Dent (all together now, Red Sox fans, rhymes with…) to the Yankees for outfielder Oscar Gamble, who bettered Zisk by one homer and followed him out the door at the end of the ’77 season.  The next year, Veeck shipped Brian Downing off to the Angels in exchange for Bobby Bonds.  This time there were no home runs—OK, 2—to delight the man who invented the exploding scoreboard.  Veeck got rid of Bonds before the season was even halfway over.

The moral of the story is you can trade like Bill Veeck or trade like Billy Beane, but trades alone won’t buy you championships or just drafting the right players.  As the song says, no money no funnee.  In this day and age, shoestrings are for shoes, not baseball team budgets.