* Before there was Moneyball…

September 15, 2009

I was doing some research about Allan Roth, the Stephen Hawking of statisticians and came across this article (ostensibly) written by Branch Rickey for LIFE magazine back in the 1940s, courtesy of Baseballthinkfactory.com.

Rickey, ever the innovator himself, credits Roth with a new set of numbers by which to judge the players, including on base percentage. Pardon me, but if that’s the case, why was everyone  oohing and aahing over Billy Beane as if he invented the idea of assessing batters’ skills in this manner?

By the way, Alan Schwarz included an excellent chapter on Roth in his book, The Numbers Game: baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Numbers. Roth is also featured in the upcoming second volume of Jews and Baseball, by Bonita and Burton Boxerman.

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Tagged as: Alan Schwarz, Allan Roth, Branch Rickey, Jews and baseball

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