Ted Berg’s new TedQuarters blog, has become a daily stop on the internets for me.  Or maybe that’s multiple times daily.  I wanted to point out two things he’s written since Friday.

1. The first regards the Mets resigning Jeff Francoeur, prompted by this tweet from the New York Post’s Bart Hubbach:

Omar Minaya said today that Jeff Francoeur is coming back and wouldn’t rule out a contract extension for the right fielder.

Ted’s been banging this drum for a while, but handing Francoeur an extension, when he can be had for one year at a time, makes little sense.  Or as he puts it:

The more alarming thing about Bart Hubbuch’s tweet linked above, though, is the part that says the Mets “wouldn’t rule out a contract extension.”

OK, that’s where we start pushing into the realm of terrible, horrible, no-good ideas. Handing Jeff Francoeur a multi-year extension based on what he did for the Mets would be like punching common sense in the face.

Jeff Francoeur was pretty good for the Mets over 289 at-bats. Before those 289 at-bats, he had been downright terrible for the Braves for a year and a half and well below average for a right fielder for the two seasons before that.

That’s well put.  There’s no reason to commit to Francoeur beyond the arbitration award due him in 2010.  Why handicap the payroll moving forward with a guaranteed investment in a player whose performance history does not clearly indicate that he will provide significant value moving forward?

Something else I’ve been pondering, if the Mets do sign Francouer to a foolish multi-year extension (Foolish because there’s no need) will they then bow gently out of the sweepstakes for LF Matt Holliday?  Or would the team continue to pursue Holliday, putting up roadblocks to Fernando Martinez’s return to the bigs with major investments in both corner OF?

2. The second is an article that I can scarcely believe needs to be written as late as 2009, but still does: a defense of “Moneyball” or at least sabermetrics, and the ability of statististics to inform decision making by baseball executives.

Friday, Mike Silva wrote a silly and provacative column with a dopey quote from an “MLB team executive” with the title, “Moneyball is a Flop.”

Ted takes apart some of that column here.

One more point.  In the years following Moneyball, an A’s executive said something to me along the lines of “actually, we (the A’s) do business much more like everyone else than we’re given credit for.”  The false scouts versus numbers debate is just that: false.  Every organization employs scouts.  Everyone looks at numbers.  The only difference is one of sophistication and degree really.  That is, how much each club weighs the relative importance of scouting and statistical measures in the evaluation process.  Does a front office use basic stats, advanced, publicly available stats, or their own proprietary measures?  Do they use batting average and RBI?  OPS?  WAR?  and the sophistication with which each front office uses both newly available publicly available metrics and their own proprietary ones.