Ironic

Right when Ray Ratto writes something nice about the A's. Somebody Bay Area Columnist decides to be old school Ratto and make misinformed comments. (registration required) The meat of this column was saying that "Beane didn't value chemistry."

Here's some snippets:

To Beane, team chemistry is mumbo jumbo. It has as much to do with winning and losing in baseball as good luck charms and favorable Tarot cards.

Mr. Moneyball likes cold, hard numbers. He likes proof. He likes production.

(snip)

You can just imagine Beane saying chemistry, shemistry as he made the deal, sending Byrnes to Colorado.

There are two flaws to his argument.

One, Byrnes was not the most important guy in the clubhouse. The most important person in the clubhouse is some combination of Zito, Kotsay and Chavez.

Two, if Beane didn't value chemistry, then why did he trade away or refuse to sign clubhouse cancers like Durham, T-Long, Rhodes, Jose Guillen, etc.?

There's no disagreement that Byrnes was a fan favorite, but remember fan favorite does not equal clubhouse chemistry.

This guy wasn't really ripping the A's. The column was very much disjointed. One moment he was ripping Beane for trading Byrnes and "destroying clubhouse chemistry" and then he says Oakland's chemistry is fine as evidenced by last night's win.

Whatever.