Losing Your Edge in Games Where You Can't Go Broke (and How Successful Teams Start Losing)

Every month, Kyle Boddy releases his/Driveline's internal xERA and Stuff farm system rankings, which have been very informative. The leaders are pretty much who you would expect, it's some version of the Dodgers, Rays, Astros, Yankees, or Baltimore, and some usual suspects like the Royals and Rockies at the bottom. What I find striking is that the A's and the Cardinals are consistently near the bottom of the list. Some teams have been penalized by either promotion or trades (or in the Astros case, forfeiting draft picks), which is not the fault of the organization per say, but the A's and Cardinals do not have this excuse. 

What I find so fascinating about this is that the A's and the Cardinals were at the top of the game in cutting edge analytics. Everyone knows about the A's and Moneyball, and the Cardinals were one of the first teams join the A's in having an analytics based approach. Adopting analytics and being bold was wildly successful for them, as the Cardinals won a couple World Series titles and the A's were very successful despite cheapskate ownership. Now, they seem to have fallen behind by not emphasizing new player development initiatives, which is where the cutting edge of baseball analytics is right now. One example is that Boddy notes how the A's have an extremely fastball heavy approach, which is an old school philosophy that is falling by the wayside. For the Cardinals, drafting Michael McGreevy in the first round feels like a pick that would have been sharp in 2005, but now that we have more than surface level college stats and can look at things such as spin rate and vertical movement, probably is not a great first round pick.

In professional gambling, it's extremely easy to know when you have lost your edge. You lose all your money. In professional baseball, it's not that black and white. In fact, it's super easy to ignore the warning signs by looking at surface level stats and dismissing criticism by saying Twitter isn't real. That's fine. The Cardinals are above .500 and the A's are explicitly rebuilding right now, so from a results based mindset things do not look too bad. This level of apathy can linger for a long time, far longer in comparison to a professional gambler losing his or her edge.

Hopefully both teams can reclaim their boldness and get out of the cellar of minor league xERA. As early adopters, the A's and Cardinals face a problem that many large businesses have the first time they reach growth slumps. It will be interesting to see if they can regain their startup magic.