Case Analysis: Billy Beane, Changing the Game

The new approach helped the Oakland A’s succeed because it was ethical. Billy Beane used numbers to evaluate the players. Numbers matter but can be misleading. By looking closely and understanding what he was doing Billy made good decisions based on numbers. The old approach was unethical because it misjudged the players. In the “old fashion statistics of the players some key important factors were left out. For instance the old statistics did not mention the number of walks a batter earned. This left out information misleads coach’s judgments and resulted in scouts undervaluing players.

Baseball statistics are meant to be a representation of a player’s talent. Since baseball’s inception around the mid-19th century, statistics have been used to interpret the talent level of any given player, however, the statistics that have been traditionally used to define talent are often times misleading. At a fundamental level, baseball, like any game, is about winning. To win games, teams have to score runs; to score runs, players have to get on base any way they can. All the while, the pitcher and the defense are supposed to prevent runs from scoring. As simplistic as this view sounds, the statistics being used to evaluate individual players were extremely flawed. In an attempt to develop more

When baseball first started, the scores would be very low because no one knew how important the mechanics of the baseball swing were. This period of

I hope that we can all agree that Baseball is a sport. We can? Great! Now let’s analyze something very similar between the two sports, Baseball and Golf, and that is the swing. Now, what does a good batter’s stance look like? It looks like knees, bent at a 25 degree angle. It looks like a firm grasp on the bat’s handle, gaze permanently affixed on the ball. And the swing, careful, calculated, with a practiced turn at the hips to deliver power in order to send the ball flying. Let’s compare to a good golf stance. It looks like knees, bent at a 25 degree angle. It looks like a firm grasp on the clubs’s handle, gaze permanently affixed on the ball. And the swing, careful, calculated, with a practiced turn at the hips to deliver power in order to send the ball flying. It’s almost as if Baseball is just Air Golfing. Now, let’s look at some numbers, because numbers are fun talk about. “But these two events have no numbers in common,” one might say and to that I say poppycock! Why we can compare the accuracy of the athletes for the respective candidates! But for this comparison we need some subjects, so let's pull two gentleman from history. And of course, they have to be the best in their field, and they are, by the numbers, the best. The two gentlemen being referred to are Tiger Woods and Babe Ruth. If neither of those names ring a bell in your mind, stop reading here, google them and then come back and continue reading. Of course the resource list at the end of the paper might be helpful for that task. Now, Golf is the easy one, they give a percentage staight up, Between the number of fairways hit to the number possible. Tiger wood’s Driving Accuracy Percentage is 55.75% (Tiger). Now Baseball is a bit harder, as a player’s batting average is a decimal. Babe

The development of sports from their early stages, their metamorphosis and evolution to their current form and status is one of the most interesting areas of study. Unfortunately, most writers on such subjects only concentrate on the sport itself and players without exploring other ulterior factors that influence the development of a sport such as the emotional, economic and social environment. The book, Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball by Warren Goldstein is one of the few that have managed to avoid this perennial mistake. This paper is a review of the book,

Saberemtrics is the foundation of Beanes whole organizational philosophy, he tries to get players that take pitches, get on base, walk, and hit for extra base hits. Beane doesn't believe in steals because it's too risky or the sacrifice bunt because it's conceding an out. These beliefs are from Bill James formula "runs created". James measures "runs created" as (hits + walks) X Total Bases / (at bats + walks). This formula proved that conventional wisdom about how to measure offense was wrong because there was not enough emphasis on walks and extra base hits and too much value on expensive but not as important statistics such as batting average and stolen bases. (Lewis pg.77-78) Billy Beane has made a livelihood by concentrating on these important but less expensive statistics as a means of competing against bigger market teams.

Qualitative research plays a huge role in this article because of Rizzo’s decision making this season. This method explains Rizzo’s decision and makes him look a little better than the people persuaded him. He did this simply for security for the future, which makes total sense but most fans live for the now and professional baseball managers have to worry about winning now, but also later in the future and in the nationals situation setting an inning limit on Strasburg was the smart thing to do.

Everyone has a specific skill set that they are good at. Some people are good with numbers, others have a gift for writing. The same is true in sports. The Buffalo Bills are very good at losing and disappointing their fans, while the Patriots are fantastic at bending the rules and winning Super Bowls. In baseball, each team is built around a specific group of players in order to create the best possible chance to win the World Series. Some of the greatest players have created seemingly unbreakable statistics. Joe DiMaggio had a hit in fifty-six consecutive games. Barry Bonds hit seven hundred and sixty-two home runs over his twenty-two-year career. Statistics like these only come about once in a generation. Teams are comprised of various talent. Some are like Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera always has a batting average over .300 with at least 25 home runs. These types of players are considered great hitters. Other’s, like Stephan Drew, get a hit less than 20% of the time they have an at bat. Players similar to Drew’s skill set have a job because they are very good at defense and their value on defense out ways their value on offense to their specific team. Baseball is sport rich with statistics. Almost anything one can come up with, has a statistic. In the last ten years alone, top executives, such as Billy Bean, have constructed teams based on advanced statistics and have been fairly successful, like the 2002 Oakland Athletics. Other teams, like the Houston Astros,

The Oakland A’s were a poor team. They could not afford to shop for costly players like teams who were considered “rich” did. So, the A’s were bound by money to find “bargain” athletes. This problem repeatable showed up in baseball’s history and baseball management continued to handle the problem the same way- by blindly trusting the system. The overall question was how could a poor team improve their standings? How can they overcome the biggest hurdle of money without being financially unstable? Can a team win games without any big names in baseball? Billy Beane, a fruitless baseball player turned thriving general manager, revolutionized the baseball industry by finding a new solution to an old problem.

This is important for players trying to achieve a higher BA will occasionally chase poorly thrown pitches, which in turn can cause a player to have a higher strikeout rating. One important stat which this writer was not aware of is that the BA does not consider the number of on-base walks (Birnbaum, n.d.). However, those numbers are calculated in a player’s on-base percentage along with showing player’s patience at the plate for better pitch selection to achieve a hit. Conversely players with higher on-base percentages forces the opposing pitcher to throw better pitches, tiring the pitcher’s throwing arm, and the avoidance of a quick outing at the plate (Birnbaum, n.d.). This does not mean having a higher on-base percentage is better than having a high BA nor the opposite, nevertheless, players with higher BA are more sought after by team earning player’s higher

Below is a table and scatter plot displaying David Ortiz’s home runs earned during the past five years with the Boston Red Sox. The data collected is based off of David Ortiz’s home runs earned over the course of that correlating baseball season. The table organizes data into the amount of times David Ortiz was at bat, the amount of earned home runs, as well as the percentage of hits that resulted in home runs. In addition to the table, summary statistics were created to show the mean, variance, standard deviation as well as median of earned home runs. These values show that David Ortiz has been consistent with home runs earned with little variance.

Batting average was the norm adopted by other baseball teams. But training for Oakland was focused on the player’s ability to obtain on-base scoring. The team relied more on selecting players by their on-base percentages. According to Sabermetrics model, teams always win with players having attained high on-base percentages.

Bill James’s theory on baseball, and its implementation by Billy Beane have changed the way of playing baseball forever. After the A’s won the World Series, their tactics were proving useful and effective. Although the A’s were economically unequal in baseball, Billy Beane effectively manage scarcity and inequality, making the A ’s one of the the major teams in the

Baseball is statistical driven sport more than any other because the game is structured in a way that allows for easy comparison of players performance through the use of statistical aspects. Baseball teams pay athletes based on their statistical performance such as the number of homeruns they hit, the number of

Money is a vital angle in practically every expert game. The film Money ball recounts the narrative of how Oakland Athletics general director Billy Beane utilized the influence of measurements to pick up preference in collecting and dealing with his baseball group. In the motion picture, Beane can't re-sign Oakland's best 3 players after the 2001 season because of a restricted finance. He utilizes sabermetrics as a part of an endeavor to discover underestimated players that can compensate for the misfortune. He meets overwhelming resistance from his scouts, who contend that their years of baseball experience and learning mean much more than any measurement. Beane overlooks their protests and constructs the group his direction. This is on account