saintsRrising wrote:freely wrote:What are moneyball players?
Second best players.
The players are available and come cheaper because they have some flaw etc, but whom you hope you can use to still improve the team.
Problem is that we now have so many of these that I doubt that anymore will help us to go higher on the ladder as anyone injected in will probably not be that much different that whomever they displace. What we need now is quality. QUALITY.
If Kelly re-signs here is hoping that it frees up someone like a Whitfield from GWS for upic fas.
If after all the drum beating of the last 5 years of building a war chest, the losing players like Dal and BJ for as it stands indifferent returns, if they do not now land a promised Big Fish or two THIS trade period it will be an epic fail.
Not so much "second best", as undervalued, 'rising.
Self evidently, all have flaws. What Billy Beane and his analytical sidekick did was identify players whose perceived flaws had reduced their $ value to below what they could/would bring to the Oakland A's TEAM.
One of the best examples was this bloke -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chad_Bradford
Beane's adaptation of cold, hard performance statistics nearly won the ultimate prize, in a sport without a whole lot of equalisation levelers (their budget was tiny cf the biggies).
While such an approach does have application in various sports, I reckon it is less so in something like modern day AFL. Baseball, whilst a team sport, has 2 key differences - 1) it is still dominated by 1 key one-on-one contest - pitcher vs batter, and 2) positions on field are more fixed and specialised.
That is not to say Beane's m.o. has no application to AFL. For instance:
https://thewest.com.au/sport/afl/how-mo ... -ya-138871
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/w ... ip0b8.html
That 2nd article was written in August 2015. The Dogs won the flag the next year.
So, considering what the Moneyball theory is all about (i.e. identify the key(s) to success, then assemble a team strong at those key(s)), and how a couple of clubs have used it, to whatever degree, knowingly or unknowingly, prospered as a result, and in light of this mention in the 2nd article...
"The key to their strategy? Players who amass high tackle numbers, and high possession numbers. Let's call them the ball magnet mutts from the west. The leather-poisoned pups from the kennel."
....just what is 'Saints footy', anyway?
As noted to a fellow poster yesdee, I'm not unhappy we missed Martin, nor that we would miss Kelly. Landing big fish can be used as a sop and a distraction, and paper over the fundamental flaws in the fabric of the organisation. The way the game is played these days, the big fish tend to operate at the margins of overall team cohesion and coherence.
Yes, they can make differences in big and important games - that's the "margin", because you only play in big and important games if you are cohesive and coherent in the lead up.
'I have no new illusions, and I have no old illusions' - Vladimir Putin, Geneva, June 2021
