Rosenthal: In a reverse-Moneyball twist, scouts persuaded Billy Beane to ignore the stats and draft Matt Chapman

In a meeting before the 2002 draft, memorably recounted in Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball, the Oakland Athletics’ front office and amateur scouts discuss a hitter the scouts had endorsed.

Billy Beane, the A’s general manager, questions whether the player can hit, considering his lack of extra-base hits and walks in college.

“My only question is,” Beane asks, “if he’s that good a hitter, why doesn’t he hit better?”

The scene, also depicted in the movie version of Moneyball, was one of several showing how the A’s de-emphasized old-school scouting in favor of advanced metrics, a trend later embraced by virtually every team in the sport.

Yet 12 years later, as if nothing had changed, the Oakland scouts again clamored for the team to select a college hitter with underwhelming statistics, and Beane again questioned their collective judgment.

“I kept asking, probing,” Beane said. “I even used the famous line from the book: If he’s such a good hitter, why doesn’t he hit better?”

The hitter was Cal-State Fullerton third baseman Matt Chapman. The pick was the Athletics’ first-rounder, the 25th overall in 2014. And Beane ultimately would trust his scouts, literally flipping the script of “Moneyball” — and striking gold.

“He is about as quiet of a superstar as there is right now — a special, special player,” Rays GM Erik Neander said of Chapman.

Chapman, 25, arguably is the best defensive third baseman in the game, perhaps even better than the Rockies’ Nolan Arenado, who preceded him by two years at El Toro H.S. in Lake Forest, Ca. He also is proving to be a better hitter than his college statistics suggested, batting .254 with eight homers and an .830 OPS a little more than one-fourth into his first full season with the A’s.

“All of the credit goes entirely to our scouting department,” Beane said.

Nothing resembling that quote appeared in “Moneyball.”

Calling Michael Lewis. Might be time for a new printing and additional epilogue, if not an outright sequel.

Chapman’s batting statistics during his three years at Cal-State Fullerton, when judged by major-league standards, look decent enough.

His batting average increased from .286 to .285 to .312, his OPS from .710 to .872 to .910, according to thebaseballcube.com. But compared to two other college hitters at that time — Chicago Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant, the No. 2 overall pick in 2013, and Cubs left fielder Kyle Schwarber, the No. 4 pick in ’14, Chapman was not all that impressive.

Bryant’s OPS went from 1.081 to 1.154 to 1.313 in his three years at the University of San Diego. Schwarber went from .903 to 1.103 to 1.123 in his three years at Indiana. Bryant hit 54 homers as a collegian, including 31 his junior year. Schwarber hit 40. Chapman hit just 13.

“Plus arm, plus power, plus makeup, plus defense — you knew you were getting a solid player,” recalled Kansas City Royals scouting director Lonnie Goldberg, whose team selected left-hander Brandon Finnegan — the first player from the 2014 draft to reach the majors — with the 17th pick. “The only negative we had was the swing-and-miss. That was the knock, the hickey he had.”

ESPN.com had projected Chapman to go 56th in the draft, while Baseball America had him 64th and MLB.com 82nd, according to AthleticsNation.com. MLB.com, in its thumbnail sketch of Chapman, cited “questions about his hitting ability,” noting that he “displays above-average power in batting practice but not so much in games.”

Chapman was aware of the questions, though he believed them to be somewhat unfair.

“I think I got better each year, got stronger. I don’t think my numbers exactly resembled how well I played,” he said. “I feel like I made hard outs. And I didn’t have the same swing I have now. It was more like a college line-drive swing. We kind of played small ball.

“I didn’t really find this swing that works for me — I’m still finding it obviously — until I got into professional baseball. I kind of just developed it on my own . . . I didn’t have the freedom to make those adjustments in college, where everything is kind of micro-managed and you’re not really your own person.”

Still, it’s not as if teams viewed Chapman as a project. Brian Bridges, the Atlanta Braves’ amateur scouting director, said some clubs had Chapman going in the first round, while others had him in the second. Chris Buckley, the Cincinnati Reds’ amateur scouting director, said, “Most teams liked him quite a bit.”

Asked if teams considered Chapman as “a reach” in the first round, the Royals’ Goldberg said, “no, no, no — absolutely not.”

“When you got in a room and people talked about him, you knew this guy was a dude,” Goldberg said.

Eric Martins, the A’s area scout who recommended Chapman, had special insight into the player — he had coached Chapman at the age of 12 in “scout ball,” then watched him all through high school and at Cal-State Fullerton.

“I loved him,” said Martins, who would later coach Chapman again as the Athletics’ hitting instructor at Triple A, a position he assumed in 2016. “I loved the makeup. I loved his intangibles. I loved his defense. There were some things we needed to work with as far as his swing. But I was always saying, ‘We can put this guy in the big leagues right now just to play third base, and live with the rest until he figures it out.’

At Martins’ urging, the A’s scouted Chapman heavily in the spring of his junior year. Slowly but surely, other club officials came to share Martins’ opinion.

“Every time we wanted to move him down based on his performance, he would do something to keep our interest and commitment,” A’s amateur scouting director Eric Kubota said.

On April 17, two leading A’s executives — David Forst, now the team’s GM, and Dan Feinstein, the assistant GM in charge of pro scouting and player personnel — went to watch Cal State-Fullerton play at Cal Poly, as much to see Cal Poly pitcher Matt Imhof as Chapman.

Imhof — who would go in the second round to the Philadelphia Phillies, only to see his career end in June 2016 when he lost his right eye after a freak accident during his post-game stretching routine — pitched 6 1/3 scoreless innings. Chapman went 1-for-4, and did not make a particularly strong impression.

“He didn’t really do anything remarkable with the bat, but did get a few chances to show off his arm if I remember correctly,” Forst said. “Looking back at my notes, he definitely displayed his bat speed and power in BP, but it did not carry over to the game at all.”

Forst, echoing Beane’s recollections, said the Athletics’ scouting department loved Chapman, but the front office remained “skeptical” until they saw him excel at a hastily arranged private workout at the Oakland Coliseum three days before the draft.

Kubota asked Martins to find out if Chapman would fly to Oakland for the workout after Cal State-Fullerton lost to Oklahoma State in the NCAA Regionals in Stillwater, Ok. Martins called Chapman’s father, Jim, and recalled Jim responding immediately, “He’ll be on a plane tomorrow.”

Matt Chapman said his future agent, Scott Boras, approved the plan, a somewhat unusual recommendation from an advisor so close to the draft.

“During Matt’s junior year he was developing and blooming at a rapid rate,” Boras said. “A number of clubs saw him early and moved on. We noticed his strength and bat speed were further advanced at the close of his junior season and wanted clubs to reevaluate him. I knew Billy [Beane] and his staff would see what we were seeing.”

Chapman said he did not work out privately for any other team. Upon taking the field at the Coliseum, he sensed the enormity of the moment.

“It was just me and 60 of the front-office guys all there — it felt like 100, there were so many people there, getting ready for the draft,” Chapman said. “And it was just me, by myself.

“I took like 15 groundballs and threw every one as hard as I could across the infield. They were like, ‘All right, that’s enough.’ And then they wanted to see me hit, so I took batting practice. I just remember getting into the cage and was like . . .”

Chapman shook his right hand, as if nervous. Martins, his old mentor, also was a bit out of sorts.

“For me, it was weird,” Martins said. “Usually I’ll throw batting practice to the kids coming in for workouts. But I didn’t want to throw to Matt. I just kind of wanted to sit back. I really wanted him bad.”

Martins need not have worried. Chapman’s display in batting practice was nearly as impressive as his display in the field. Martins recalls Chapman putting on “a show,” hitting line-drive home runs, as opposed to moonshots.

“His physical skills were obvious,” Beane said. “It was like, ‘Holy cow.’”

And yet, both Forst and Kubota mentioned that meeting Chapman and getting a feel for his makeup also figured prominently into the team’s decision.

“We got to talk to him a bit and watch him put about 20 balls above the out of town scoreboard,” Forst said. “Those two data points made it a little easier to overlook his batting average at Fullerton.”

The Athletics already had adjusted their drafting philosophy since the days of Moneyball, selecting high-school position players — shortstops Addison Russell and Daniel Robertson and first baseman Matt Olson — with their first three picks in 2012.

Chapman was still available to the A’s at No. 25, the same spot where the Los Angeles Angels chose a high-school outfielder named Mike Trout in ’09 and the San Francisco Giants took a high-school pitcher named Matt Cain in ’02.

Four years later, only 12 of the 24 players selected ahead of Chapman have reached the majors. Only two position players in that group — Washington Nationals shortstop Trea Turner (chosen by the Padres at No. 13) and New York Mets outfielder Michael Conforto (No. 10) — rate higher in career Wins Above Replacement, a cumulative estimate that increases with production over time. Turner has played 245 games, Conforto 308, Chapman 131.

The 2014 draft also included Schwarber (No. 4), Philadelphia Phillies right-hander Aaron Nola (No. 7) and Atlanta Braves left-hander Sean Newcomb (selected by the Angels at No. 15). Chapman might throw harder than any of the pitchers selected.

“It’s not the most important tool, but the arm demands your attention,” Kubota said. “We talked a lot about his chance to impact the game on defense. And we knew the power was there. It was just a matter of whether the contact would be consistent enough to show it. At the end of the day, we just felt the possibility to get a guy who might impact the game both offensively and defensively was too good to pass up.”

Moneyball was an accurate portrayal of the Athletics’ numbers-based approach, then and now. But Chapman, it turns out, was a worthy exception.

Time for a rewrite. When others zigged, the A’s zagged again.

(Top photo of Chapman: Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)