Moneyball (Movie Tie-In Edition) (Movie Tie-In Editions) by Michael Lewis Read Free Book Online Page B

close to a big leaguer. Each of them has about a thousand players ranked above him.
    “Jeremy Brown is a bad body catcher,” says the most vocal of the old scouts.
    “A bad body who owns the Alabama record books,” says Pitter.
    “He’s the only player in the history of the SEC with three hundred hits and two hundred walks,” says Paul, looking up from his computer.
    It’s what he doesn’t say that is interesting. No one in big league baseball cares how often a college players walks; Paul cares about it more than just about anything else. He doesn’t explain why walks are important. He doesn’t explain that he has gone back and studied which amateur hitters made it to the big leagues, and which did not, and why. He doesn’t explain that the important traits in a baseball player were not all equally important. That foot speed, fielding ability, even raw power tended to be dramatically overpriced. That the ability to control the strike zone was the greatest indicator of future success. That the number of walks a hitter drew was the best indicator of whether he understood how to control the strike zone. Paul doesn’t say that if a guy has a keen eye at the plate in college, he’ll likely keep that keen eye in the pros. He doesn’t explain that plate discipline might be an innate trait, rather than something a free-swinging amateur can be taught in the pros. He doesn’t talk about all the other statistically based insights—the overwhelming importance of on-base percentage, the significance of pitches seen per plate appearance—that he uses to value precisely a hitter’s contribution to a baseball offense. He doesn’t stress the importance of generalizing from a large body of evidence as opposed to a small one. He doesn’t explain anything because Billy doesn’t want him to. Billy was forever telling Paul that when you try to explain probability theory to baseball guys, you just end up confusing them.
    “This kid wears a large pair of underwear,” says another old scout. It’s the first time in two days that this old scout has spoken. He enjoys, briefly, the unusual attention accorded the silent man in a big meeting. The others in the room can only assume that if the scout was moved to speak it must be because he had something earth-shatteringly important to say. He doesn’t.
    “Okay,” says Billy.
    “It’s soft body,” says the most vocal old scout. “A fleshy kind of a body.”
    “Oh, you mean like Babe Ruth?” says Billy. Everyone laughs, the guys on Billy’s side of the room more happily than the older scouts across from him.
    “I don’t know,” says the scout. “A body like that can be low energy.”
    “Sometimes low energy is just being cool,” says Billy.
    “Yeah,” says the scout. “Well, in this case low energy is because when he walks, his thighs stick together.”
    “I repeat: we’re not selling jeans here,” says Billy.
    “That’s good,” says the scout. “Because if you put him in corduroys, he’d start a fire.”
    Clutching Jeremy Brown’s yellow nameplate, Billy inches toward the Big Board with the “Top 60” names on it. The scouts shift and spit. The leading scouting publication, Baseball America , has just published its special issue devoted to the 2002 draft, and in it a list of the top twenty-five amateur catchers in the country. Jeremy Brown’s name is not on the list. Baseball America has more or less said that Jeremy Brown will be lucky to get drafted. Billy Beane is walking Jeremy Brown into the first five rounds of the draft.
    “Billy, does he really belong in that group?” asks the old scout plaintively. “He went in the nineteenth round last year and he’ll be lucky to go there this year.” The Red Sox had drafted Brown the year before, and Brown had turned down the peanuts they’d offered and returned to the University of Alabama for his senior year. It was beginning to look like a wise move.
    The older scouts all share their brother’s