In baseball, there are the teams that can afford to pay any price for talent and then there are the teams not called “Yankees.” Michael Lewis spent part of the 2002 MLB season with the Oakland Athletics to see this practice in action. Lewis used the material from the time he spent with the team to write Moneyball. In 2011, a film based on the book was released.
Instead of looking for one player with a dream stat lines, Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane looks for players that in the aggregate would have the same stat line as a team that a superior team would. It’s a great way to save money, or just stay within budget. Despite having a payroll of $41 million, which was about one-third of the Yankees payroll, the A’s were playoff contenders
The art of moneyball really involves being able to understand the sabermetrics behind baseball. Sabermetrics being derived from the acronym SABR – Society for American Baseball Research, made famous by Bill James in the 80s. There are an abundance of statics in baseball to consider and Beane was able to use the right stats to create a successful team. In 2002 only the Atlanta Braves, San Francisco Giants and the Yankees won more regular season games.
Because of Beane’s success with type of player selection and management style, other teams have begun to copycat the use of sabermetrics when building a team roster. It is perhaps because of this that the A’s have not finished a season above .500 or made a playoff appearance since 2006. When everyone is trying to build a better team with players who have just one unconventional quality, there are fewer for everyone else to choose from.
For an average baseball fan, Moneyball provides a little bit of insider knowledge to how a team with little money can compete against teams with seemingly endless resources.
