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NYT 12/20/04 Economics Wilt 'Moneyball' Fantasy
THOSE of us who do not subscribe to the "Moneyball" approach to baseball, the theories laid out in the book that celebrates Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, have been quick to point to the real strength of the Athletics in recent years, the pitching triumvirate of Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito.

The Yankees add Johnson; the Athletics subtract Hudson and Mulder. That's the difference between having an unlimited payroll and a severely restricted payroll. Nobody said baseball economics were fair.

Why did Beane shred his vaunted starting rotation?
"We needed to," he said in a telephone interview yesterday.
"We're constantly playing a shell game here," he added. "The status quo was not within our means. We need to be in a situation where our team is getting progressively better, and the status quo could have put us in a position where we'd be worse."

The Athletics had a payroll of about $58 million this year. They could not keep all of their star players and maintain that payroll. Hudson's salary was $5 million this year and goes to $6.75 million next year. Mulder was at $4.45 million this year and will go to $6.5 million next year. Together, they will escalate from less than $10 million to more than $13 million.

If the Yankees' rotation is Johnson, Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright, the combined 2005 salaries of the starters will be $67 million. That total is more than the 2004 payrolls of 18 of the other 29 teams.
The anticipated Oakland rotation would fall a little short of that total. It doesn't figure to earn much above $6.7 million, let alone $67 million. And Zito's $5.6 million will account for most of it. The other four projected starters - Rich Harden, Danny Haren, Dan Meyer and Joe Blanton - have a combined major league service of two and a half years, with all but Harden less than a year each.

"It's a risky thing, but we've taken risks before," Beane said.
Could any three younger members of the starting corps evolve into Hudson, Mulder and Zito?
"The three guys we had together were pretty historical," Beane said. "If they became half of those guys, they'd be pretty good pitchers. But it's not fair to make that comparison. We had a pretty historical group. Nevertheless, we feel they can be very good big league pitchers."