Moneyball: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

After Ricardo Rincon and Ray Durham move to the A’s, the team becomes great. Indeed, the 2002 A’s have a better second half of the season than any other team in the baseball history of the last fifty years, with the exception of the 2001 Oakland A’s. They set a record for consecutive wins—nineteen—and then beat their own record.

On the night of their twentieth victory, the A’s seem undefeatable. Then, unexpectedly, their pitcher, Tim Hudson, starts to give up runs. Art Howe calls in Chad Bradford, who’s distinguished himself as one of the best relief pitchers in the major leagues, to replace Hudson. Pitchers, Michael Lewis notes, are the most idiosyncratic baseball players. Like writers, they can have unexpected renaissances late in their careers, or burn out after showing promise. And, again like writers, they set a consistent tone and style for the game overall.

Chad Bradford grew up in Mississippi playing catch with his father. As a child, it was his ambition to play for a big-league team; sure enough, when he was twenty-three, he began playing for the Chicago White Sox.

The most amazing thing about Chad’s major league career was that, for most of his teenaged life, he wasn't very good. He played on his high school baseball team, but didn’t really distinguish himself, and few people thought he had any real talent. One exception was his coach, Bill “Moose” Perry, who encouraged him to pitch unconventionally. Chad wasn’t a versatile pitcher, but he learned how to mislead hitters and shut them out. Even after Perry helped him, however, few people, other than Chad himself, thought he’d make it to the major leagues.

Chad pitched in college, and, much to his amazement, he attracted the attention of a White Sox scout. He was drafted in the thirty-fourth round, and wasn’t offered a contract. However, he got to play professional ball for a minor league White Sox affiliate. Chad sensed that the White Sox didn’t take him seriously, but during his first year, he perfected his sidearm and became, for the first time in his life, a remarkable pitcher. He was promoted from Double-A to Triple-A, and he distinguished himself on the toughest fields in the division. A few seasons later, he was promoted to the big league, but before he could play, he learned that he’d be going back to Triple-A, supposedly because his pitches “weren’t moving like they used to.” Chad suspected that he was demoted because he didn’t look the part of a big-league athlete, and he may have been right.

Unbeknownst to Chad, Paul DePodesta took great interest in his abilities. Anther one of Paul’s secret fans was a paralegal named Voros McCracken, who, like Paul, was a fan of Bill James. McCracken realized that Chad was actually one of the most talented ballplayers in the sport. His great insight was that, contrary to popular belief, “pitchers had no control of whether a ball fell for a hit, once it was put into play.” Too often, pitchers were credited for tricking hitters to swinging at unhittable balls, or for throwing the ball too fast to be returned. Voros spent years confirming his theory: the number of hits per balls a pitcher throws into play is, by and large, a matter of random chance. McCracken sent his findings to Bill James, who wrote, “I feel stupid for not having realized it thirty years ago.” Amazingly, GMs largely ignored McCracken’s discovery. One exception was Paul, who realized that the discovery suggested that Chad was undervalued.

When Paul applied McCracken’s findings to Chad Bradford’s career, he realized why scouts didn’t like Chad. His number of hits per balls in play wasn’t impressive, but his other stats were. For instance, he had a phenomenal talent for throwing pitches that hitters could only return as ground balls, which rarely led to doubles, triples, or home runs. Chad was, furthermore, the rare ground ball pitcher who could strike out lots of hitters. Finally, Chad was a “funny-looking,” amateurish-seeming athlete, and therefore not someone the scouts loved to watch.

In 2000, Billy Beane, acting on Paul’s advice, called the GM of the White Sox and asked him about trading one of the White Sox’s lesser pitchers. Billy waited for the GM to bring up Chad Bradford’s name; in response, Billy just said, “He’ll do.”