I read Moneyball, but didn’t remember that there was a bit about judging a player by the shape of his butt. Apparently, (some) baseball scouts believe that if a player has a flat butt, that player will not be able to add “power” weight. So, when judging the future success of a baseball player, it may make sense to look at his butt. Not exactly the stats-based approach that’s been en vogue.

“You don’t see a lot of good power hitters or good pitchers that generate arm speed that don’t have a good, high butt on them,” Showalter said on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. And who, according to Showalter, best exemplifies high-buttedness? Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee. “I don’t want to say he’s got a perfect butt, but when I look at it I say, Wow.”

Just read this sort of follow-up on Moneyball updating things on the movie and philosophies the book exemplified. Nothing really groundbreaking, but it did touch on Bill Walsh, who seems to be tied to these Michael Lewis “change the game” books.

“What I want,” he told me that day 10 years ago, “is to be the baseball equivalent of Bill Walsh, where you have a tree of guys who worked for you, the same way I worked for Sandy, running teams all over the league. That to me is pretty cool.”

and the lineage of Billy Beane…

Perhaps Beane’s best friend in the game, J.P. Ricciardi, was named general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays in 2001. Beane’s assistant, Paul DePodesta, took over the Dodgers in 2004.

On the strength of Beane’s emphasis on technology and quantitative and qualitative analysis, the hiring of young, highly educated executives who never played at a professional level became the single greatest change in the business of baseball over the past quarter century.

DePodesta went to Harvard, and that created a connection for Forst, who played shortstop at Harvard, to become Beane’s current assistant GM. Boston’s Theo Epstein graduated from Yale. Farhan Zaidi — another member of Beane’s camp, now the A’s director of baseball operations — graduated from M.I.T. Jon Daniels, the Texas Rangers’ general manager, is a Cornell graduate. Peter Woodfork, the Arizona assistant GM, has a degree in psychology from Harvard, and worked under Epstein in Boston.

Michael Lewis documents the statistical similarities between his book Moneyball and Shane Battier. Everyone and their brother has already quoted this article, so I won’t. But it’s well worth the read.