There have been pages and pages written about baseball, its inefficient markets, and the ability of people like Billy Beane and Theo Epstein to take advantage of those inefficiencies. That's why I was shocked at the reaction to the Santos/Molina trade.

From the perspective of Ken Williams and the White Sox, it seemed this trade was what the "Moneyball" philosophy was all about. This was numbers scouting at it's finest. In Molina Williams had found a guy who was posting Strasburg-type numbers who was available for an average closer. I fully expected Baseball Prospectus and the other great minds of baseball to laud the genius of Williams. It was not to be.

Let's forget for a moment that one of the key building blocks of the vaunted Beane philosophy is that closers are always highly overvalued. The numbers posted by Molina are as eye-popping as anything guys like Strasburg or Prior had done at any level. Another key principle of cutting edge baseball thought is that command/control numbers like K/BB ratio are not likely to change drastically as the player moves up through the levels.

So why wasn't Molina regarded the way Strasburg and Prior were? Certainly not because of his results. The answer is about the kind of traditional scouting that was lampooned in "Moneyball" and by people like Paul DePodesta and Keith Law. Molina doesn't have any "plus pitches". Isn't that exactly the kind of statement over which Beane would have railed at Grady Fuson?

So, I'm left to conclude that what is viewed as "smart" management of baseball assets by a certain school of writers/"experts" has much more to do with who is making the transactions rather than the actual transactions themselves.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don