Joe Posnanski on “The Oakland Way”

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“Moneyball” is over a decade old and most teams have adopted Billy Beane’s formula from those heady years. Or altered it or improved upon it. No matter the case, Beane can’t be doing the same things now that he did in 2002.

As Joe Posnanski writes today, he and the A’s aren’t. Indeed, they’re doing different things. But so too is everyone else and we’ve reached a point in baseball where simply being smarter than the next guy isn’t going to get the job done in 2014 the way it did at times in 2002. Instead, you have to be disciplined. And the A’s are disciplined:

 … in real life, Moneyball II is not about being smart. Everybody in baseball can be smart. Moneyball II is about doing smart things. There’s a big difference. The A’s face the same pressures, the same groupthink, the same visual cues as everyone else. They have the same gut reactions to events, and they initially want to respond in the same way as everyone else. To say that they are smarter than everyone else misses the biggest point . . . the A’s are not a testament to genius. They are a testament to doggedly stopping themselves from making the mistakes everyone else makes. In other words: Everybody knows. The Oakland A’s do.

 

Go read the rest of Joe’s story on how the A’s continue to win even though the revenues are still small and even though everyone else has caught up to them in the brains department.

Anthony Rendon fan interaction video looked into by MLB

Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
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OAKLAND, Calif. – Major League Baseball is looking into a video circulating on social media that appears to show Los Angeles Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon grab a fan by the shirt through the bleacher guardrails after Thursday night’s game in Oakland, a league spokesperson said Friday.

Rendon looks to have grabbed the fan’s shirt near his chest through the bars of the railing and exchanged words with him before appearing to take a swipe at the bill of the man’s ballcap and walking into the tunnel.

Angels spokesman Adam Chodzko says the team has no comment. The Angels do not play Friday, but the club expects Rendon to address the video Saturday in the clubhouse before the game against the Oakland Athletics in Oakland.

The video shows the fan, dressed in A’s colors, approach the railing as Rendon turns toward him from the tunnel walkway below. Rendon then appears to grab the man’s shirt and ask him what he just said, accusing the fan of calling him a derogatory term before swiping at his ballcap.

The A’s won the game 2-1.