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.

Dodgers place pitcher Noah Syndergaard on injured list with no timetable for return

dodgers syndergaard
Katie Stratman/USA TODAY Sports
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CINCINNATI — The Los Angeles Dodgers placed pitcher Noah Syndergaard on the 15-day injured list Thursday with a blister on the index finger of his right throwing hand.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the timetable for Syndergaard’s return is unknown despite the 15-day designation.

“The physical, the mental, the emotional part, as he’s talked about, has taken a toll on him,” Roberts said. “So, the ability to get him away from this. He left today to go back to Los Angeles to kind of get back to normalcy.”

Syndergaard allowed six runs and seven hits in three innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night, raising his ERA to 7.16.

Syndergaard (1-4) has surrendered at least five runs in three straight starts.

Syndergaard has been trying to return to the player he was before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the better part of the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Roberts said Syndergaard will need at least “a few weeks” to both heal and get away from baseball and “reset.”

“I think searching and not being comfortable with where he was at in the moment is certainly evident in performance,” Roberts said. “So hopefully this time away will provide more clarity on who he is right now as a pitcher.

“Trying to perform when you’re searching at this level is extremely difficult. I applaud him from not running from it, but it’s still very difficult. Hopefully it can be a tale of two stories, two halves when he does come back.”