Economist wants pokertracker database hands

[sfer]

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From what I read, the prize that he's already won (which I can't remember the name of offhand and am too lazy to google at the moment, so I'll just refer to it as the Stanley Clarke prize, because I recall it having the name "clark" in it and also because Stanley Clarke is such a great bass player) is more prestigious in the circle of economists than the Nobel Prize is. So compared to his Stanley Clarke prize, the Nobel just ain't that funky.

It would be funny to see him up there in ridiculous tuxedo saying the word "freakonomics" in his speech, though.

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It's John Bates Clark and it's mentioned in this thread. It's given every 2 years to an an American economist under 40. Exclusivity is debatable, but his achievement really isn't.

[turnipmonster]

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because Stanley Clarke is such a great bass player

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school days!

[Jordan Olsommer]

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It's John Bates Clark and it's mentioned in this thread. It's given every 2 years to an an American economist under 40.

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joke Pronunciation Key (jk)
n.

1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line.
2. A mischievous trick; a prank.
3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.
4. Informal.
1. Something not to be taken seriously; a triviality: The accident was no joke.
2. An object of amusement or laughter; a laughingstock: His loud tie was the joke of the office.

[BottlesOf]

So Daryn...

[DesertCat]

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This economist is a tool. He wrote a "study" of Billy Beane and the Oakland A's that was hilariously poorly conceived. I question whether he's capable of rational thought.

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His book "Freakonomics" was pretty good, I must say [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

I couldn't find the original "study"/article/whatever it was, but I did find a follow-up one where he responds to some of the concerns people had about it - snippets below:

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Besides, the point I am making is so simple that it doesn't require complicated analysis to demonstrate. Oakland was average on offense and phenomenal on pitching. You can control for whatever you want, that story absolutely will not change. So how can you argue that hitting is the reason Oakland won so many games? And I don't think it is reasonable to say that Oakland won't do well in the future because the inefficiencies in the market for OBP have been driven away. Probably they have been driven away, but they were never that important anyway. If Beane were so smart, would he have let Michael Lewis give away the keys to the castle? I doubt it.

...
For all of you who disagree with me - and the betting markets - go to tradesports and bet on the A's. The market thinks they will only win 82 games. If they are as good as you believe, there is a lot of money to be made. And after you all bet and drive the odds up, I will bet the other side.

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Seems pretty confident in his opinion, at least.

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The problem with his analysis is that he relies on a straw man argument. His original quote "There's very little evidence Billy Beane [the club's general manager] is doing something right" was absurd.

His central problem was he tried to disprove Moneyball, by pointing out that the A's offensive stats weren't much better than other AL West teams. He claimed that Moneyball implied that the A's succeed by having a higher OBP than other teams, while in reality they had better pitching. Then he hit Billy with another cheap shot, that he was "genius" for getting a sweet deal from the new owner, before starting to rebuild the team.

First of all, Moneyball is a pleasantly enjoyable book, not a theorem. Secondly, despite his misrepresentations, the book doesn't make one central claim, other than that Beane exploited market inefficiencies. Levitt ignored the fact that Oakland's average offensive performance was built on half the payroll of the other AL West teams. And that Beane built a great pitching staff by drafting undervalued college pitchers instead of overvalued high school pitchers, which Moneyball discusses in depth.

Basically Levitt didn't do his research, got everything wrong, and was bombarded mercilessly for it. There has been a great deal of interesting research in baseball (some of which Moneyball summarizes), and he was arrogant enough to think he could start at ground zero and disprove all of it.

So basically I'm still on tilt from this sorry episode. He's actually a really bright guy. I shouldn't let a flip little comment and exercise by Levitt drive my entire opinion of him. If the SOB would admit how poor his analysis in the example was I could. Then I could read his book, which I really want to, but am refusing to until he shows some humility.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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Secondly, despite his misrepresentations, the book doesn't make one central claim, other than that Beane exploited market inefficiencies.

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Then why would he allow Lewis to publish the book, an act which would instantly eradicate those inefficiences by making them public?

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Levitt ignored the fact that Oakland's average offensive performance was built on half the payroll of the other AL West teams.

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But they had a median payroll in 2004, and they didn't continue their upward trajectory in performance, did they?

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There has been a great deal of interesting research in baseball (some of which Moneyball summarizes), and he was arrogant enough to think he could start at ground zero and disprove all of it.

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From what I have read, he didn't try to start from ground zero and disprove all of baseball statistical theory. All he said was that the OBP stat which was championed as being undervalued in Moneyball wasn't nearly as undervalued as was claimed, and that like you said, the A's succeeded because they had better pitching than the other teams - their offense was middle of the pack.

This is illustrated in this post:

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Billy Beane's devotees (who have been quite vocal in response to my past postings) would have you think that the way Oakland's offense generate runs is very different from the way other teams generate runs. As usual, my view is that we should let the data speak. I have assembled the average yearly offensive statistics for five American League teams over the period 2000-2004. The statistics are as follows:

Team.......HR.....AVG......OBP.....SLG......OPS... ....R.....SO.......BB
Team A...200...0.276...0.348...0.454...0.802...867...10 45...591
Team B...222...0.271....0.351...0.450...0.801...865...1 022...638
Team C...202...0.264...0.343...0.436...0.778...838...10 29...633
Team D...193...0.269...0.341...0.437....0.778...829...1 041...575
Team E...159...0.275....0.349..0.422....0.771...828...1 022...619

So two questions for baseball fans:

1) One of these five teams is Oakland. Which one?

2) When you compare these statistics, do you really feel comfortable suggesting that the reason that Oakland has been so incredibly successful can be attributed to the fact that they are following a different offensive strategy than other teams that have achieved roughly the same measure of success (as measured by runs generated)?

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From what I've seen, he's been able to back up his claims with some data. If you want to continue your claim that Levitt didn't do his research and conducted his argument in a poor fashion, you're going to need some as well.

[ceczar]

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If you want to continue your claim that Levitt didn't do his research and conducted his argument in a poor fashion, you're going to need some as well.

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I really think it's mostly about attitude here. He comes off as very arrogant, even when discussing issues for which he has only a cursory understanding. To people who read a lot about baseball from analytical sources, the way he has seemed to approach this issue betrays his general ignorance of basic sabermetric results and consensus. And it's not because he has studied the issues yet come to superior conclusions, but rather that he thinks his common sense understanding of the situation is enough. It's frustrating for anyone who previously held Steve in such high regard for his fascinating work, because one would expect someone of his intellectual caliber to not be confused by moneyball so thoroughly. he talks about moneyball in a way that implies a very naive understanding of what the book was about.
i wouldn't be surprised if some of the issues that he has raised in his criticism have some value and should be looked into further, but the way he discusses the issue is very grating for those with more background on the issues than he.

also, for some backup for moneyball: SSRN Paper

it's probably not just baseball. i can only imagine how many sociologists must feel after reading Levitt's analysis that may illustrate an interesting relationship but that totally ignore decades of research from people in the field.

[sfer]

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Then I could read his book, which I really want to, but am refusing to until he shows some humility.

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I guess you won't be reading most 2+2 books then.

[Jordan Olsommer]

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I really think it's mostly about attitude here. He comes off as very arrogant, even when discussing issues for which he has only a cursory understanding.

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This is pretty much the same as the post I responded to - saying "I think Levitt is full of it with this Moneyball business" is fine, but for anyone to give it more credence than "I like broccoli", you need to show where it's wrong. So far from the posts I read from Levitt, he's shown, through data, that the Athletics are a middle-of-the-pack team on offense, and that their current performance belies something other than a secret formula revolving mostly around OBP. Not to mention the other fact he mentioned; namely, if you have the key to exploiting enormous inefficiences in the baseball scouting market, why on earth would you publish it in a book? The amount of money generated by a small cut of a successful book is a pittance compared to the amount an owner would get by continuing to exploit these inefficiences, even if the book somehow manages to hump the New York Times bestseller list for months on end.

Or, like he said, you could just bet on the A's who are rated to win 82 games this season - if the management are in fact such geniuses, then it stands to reason that you'll make quite a killing if you put your money on Oakland.

[ceczar]

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So far from the posts I read from Levitt, he's shown, through data, that the Athletics are a middle-of-the-pack team on offense, and that their current performance belies something other than a secret formula revolving mostly around OBP.

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Nothing about this disproves anything related to the book, except for strawmen arguments setup by readers who don't realize the true point of the book.

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Not to mention the other fact he mentioned; namely, if you have the key to exploiting enormous inefficiences in the baseball scouting market, why on earth would you publish it in a book? The amount of money generated by a small cut of a successful book is a pittance compared to the amount an owner would get by continuing to exploit these inefficiences, even if the book somehow manages to hump the New York Times bestseller list for months on end.

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Nothing in the book was groundbreaking. It was all old news. all of that information was available before, and has been for a long time. if people didn't use the information available to them before, why would they use it after being published this time? sure it kind of smacks them in the face with it, but they're not really giving anything away. it was a book meant for the public, many of whom would not be familiar with these concepts. it shouldn't have really provided anything too interesting to baseball people. The point of the book was the approach: the systematic, analytical approach to player evaluation and the questioning of conventional wisdom. michael lewis trumped up certain aspects of the A's approach to tell a story, and he didn't emphasize everything he could or should have, but the point of the story is much more general than you and levitt are trying to make it out to be. i imagine the stuff they really are doing that's interesting has to do with defense, or something else for which the publicly available data and analysis is pretty immature at the moment.

this discussion isn't meant to be a proof about why Levitt is wrong about his conclusions, but an explanation of why baseball people are irritated by his treatment of the subject. if you look at all of the great baseball sources on the web, you'll find that not one of the good ones even acknowledges levitt's criticism. this isn't because what he said offended the sabermetric conventional wisdom, but because he didn't say anything interesting or provide any usefull analysis. he just blends in with the thousands of journalists who have said uninteresting or stupid things about moneyball over the past 3 years. it's frustrating that he hasn't taken the time to educate himself about the current state of the art in the field. many people make mistakes trying to reinvent the wheel. it has made me question whether he really is this lazy regarding fields i know much less about.