Holliday is a good hitter. He struggled early on, but he started to get hot right before he left Oakland. That doesn’t mean he’ll hit like that the rest of the season. Playing in Oakland was a downer for him, because you’re playing on a team that doesn’t excite you. It’s a boring team to watch. They either strike out, walk or try to hit HRs. Jack Cust is a typical Oakland hitter. He either walks or hits home runs. It’s just not an interesting team and that had an effect on Holliday.

Chat: Chat with Joe Morgan - SportsNation - ESPN

It’s almost a cliche to take a close look at Morgan’s “arguments” and then refute them, and I’ll never do it as well as the inimitable Fire Joe Morgan. But I can’t help myself.

Oakland is last in the AL in home runs, eighth in walks, and tenth in strikeouts. Jack Cust, who is decent at hitting homers and great at striking out, is not typical of the lineup at all.

It’s one thing to not understand the point of what the Athletics tried to do in the early ’00s. It’s another (somewhat worse) thing to refuse purposefully to understand it. And it is yet another (much worse) thing to offer up your intentional misunderstanding of that philosophy in lieu of knowing what the hell the team is currently doing. Cheese and rice, Joe; they’re paying you for this!

The A’s are definitely bad and arguably boring, but neither is because they are playing Morgan’s dumbed-down, intellectually dishonest version of “Moneyball.”

perma ∞ 18:32 on 08.05.2009

 
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