End of Moneyball Era?

LPKingsFan

LPKingsFan

All-Star
First Dodgers GM Paul DePodesta was fired, and now Red Sox GM Theo Epstein has resigned. While Billy Beane is still presumably safe in Oakland, these two were both followers of his whole "Moneyball" concept, or a derivative thereof. Anyone see baseball teams going back to a traditionalist way of running things?
 
Perhaps. There aren't many disciples of Beaneology left, other than Riccardi in Toronto and his days may be numbered too because Toronto hasn't done much of anything since he's been there. Beane is perfect where he is, and as long as he has a short pocketed owner (although Wolff may not squeeze the seat cushions for change like Schott did) and low revenue expectations he will maintain the aire of genius. Just fielding a team that's competitive is good enough for Beane to look good.

I didn't see that Epstein resigned tho, I'm curious what the reason for that is besides the FA departures he's going to have plus the on-going Manny Ramirez headache. But he at least won a ring in a place that's been ring starved so I don't see why he left and it certainly wasn't a philosophical issue that drove him out so I'm not sure it signals a rejection of Moneyball. DePodesta just flat out never managed to master the art of one-sided fleecing in trades, or how to best judge reclaimation projects from other team's castaways.
 
You may be right. DePodesta perhaps was best as a right-hand man for Beane rather than a negotiator and whatnot on his own.
 
Riccardi was definitely the better of the two Beane right hands and that's probably why he has a longer leash, that and the fact that he's not working for a major revenue generating team. And I mean "better" in the sense that he had a lot longer philosophical history with Beane than DePodesta did and definitely was the better trader/negotiator of the two.
 
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