Made for walking

David Pinto observes some confusion between walks and on base average. Among the 47 or so misread premises of Moneyball, David has touched on one near the top: The Oakland A's organization portrayed in the book did not favor walks over other methods of getting on base per se. Other methods of getting on base -- or rather, other methods of measuring the propensity to get on base -- include batting average and slugging average. But these were not undervalued in the market. They could not compete, on their budget, for guys who hit .300 and slugged .500. They could sign a bunch of guys who hit .250 but who had .350 OBAs, like Scott Hatteberg and David Justice, who were together brought in to replace Jason Giambi.