Moneyball

Throughout the history of major league baseball we have seen countless astonishing hitters come pass through, some putting up record breaking numbers, at times too good to be true. Barry Bonds, known as the “homerun king” was able to put up an amazing total of 73 home runs in 2001. The very next season, he continued to present his skill with a .370 batting average. Between 1999 and 2007, Bonds’ stats were shocking, hitting 351 home runs, winning four national league MVP awards, and racking up 780 RBI’s, 69 stolen bases, and just over one thousand hits. Alex Rodriguez, better known as “A-rod” is another huge name when talking about the greatest hitters in baseball. For nine seasons out of Rodriguez’s twenty two season career, 8.5% of the balls he would put into play were home runs. By the end of his lengthy career, he was able to collect 698 home runs, over two thousand RBI’s and runs scored, with over three thousand hits. He was also named All-Star fourteen times. With numbers like these, it is hard to

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

He was not going by the proper way to scout players. Other scouts were getting mad he was not doing this. Billy believed in the statistics. As the 2002 Oakland Athletic team started off strong with three straight wins in the beginning. As the season started going, the A’s started a 20 game winning streak. Billy was praised for finding these players that were all pulling in the same direction. Not one player had an ego that would set back the team. Just like Billy, the players were focused on one thing winning, winning the World Series. Billy lived by this quote, “The problem,”‘ wrote James, “is that baseball statistics are not pure accomplishments of men against other men, which is what we are in the habit of seeing them as. They are accomplishments of men in combination with their circumstances” (Lewis 71). Billy just did not focus on the stats rather he also focused on what the player actually accomplished throughout their years of playing baseball. This is what made him one of the best general managers in the league at the time. After the A’s did not make it past the first round of the playoffs all of the criticism waiting for the Billy to fail for the first time started to pour in. Billy simply responded “We’ll be back.” Billy was not viewed as a real general manager in the beginning, but after he succeeded he gained

MLB teams are finding new innovative ways to use analytics, one way is to use the statistics for a more effective way to evaluate free agents. “Astros employed an analysis based on the TrackMan system to acquire an unaccomplished pitcher called Collin McHugh, because of his fast-spinning curveball” (“Every Step They”). “They then told him to throw that pitch far more often during the next season, and he blossomed into a star” (“Every Step They”). General Managers and coaches can use these analytics to scout areas they have never scouted before. Analytics gives teams more resources and more assistance to evaluate players. “For example, by comparing the number of strikes called for a catcher in relation to every other catcher in the league, the data can illustrate how good any one catcher is at getting umpires to call strikes” (Nadler). “Additionally, general managers and scouts can use

Baseball players have changed in multiple ways and different aspects have changed the way they play.These aspects could make them better like the technology we have came out with to analyze baseball swings we have learned a lot is the same with golf swings .Baseball has started paying players so much money which changes how they play.Giancarlo Stanton's contract

Many people in major league baseball attempted to stop segregation in the sport, it wasn’t even close to get accomplished until Brooklyn Dodger 's general manager, Branch Rickey began the "great experiment". The Jim Crow policies of baseball had been changed ever since 1945 when Rickey and Jackie Robinson from the Negro League 's Kansas City Monarchs was placed onto a contract that would place Jackie into the major leagues in 1947.

In 2003, David “Boomer” Wells claimed that up to 40% of major leaguers used steroids, and then in 2005, Jose Canseco addressed the media with stating that 80% of major leaguers had taken steroids, and have credited the drug for their entire career (Gilman, 2013, p.2). So the facts are there, players are using and abusing to cheat their way into the HOF (Hall of Fame). The one time strike is followed without pay, because the player will not completely process the magnitude of what he did was wrong. This solution would hold true to the integrity of the game and keep the playing field fair across the board. For the fair players this zero tolerance level is a godsend.

It made the governing system of Major League Baseball have to think about the past and realize that they may have made a mistake. Even though they never meant to hurt the game, they might have tarnished it forever. Although they did save baseball, they may have tarnished baseball for good because now the homerun leader is a “cheater” rather than the original homerun leader, Hank Aaron, who did without using steroids. When people ask a baseball fan, “What is the most homeruns an individual hit in his entire career?” the answer will be given because everyone knows what the holy grail of baseball records is. It challenged the ethics of Major League Baseball, because they knew they would soon have to challenge their own ethics because Barry Bonds was exceeding in every category from homeruns, to batting average and RBI’s. The problem is that Bonds was breaking every possible offensive record in baseball and it was becoming evident that he was using steroids to accomplish these records. In previous years, when steroids were used in baseball, no one was endangering the highest record so it wasn’t a problem because these players using the drug were bringing in revenue. It is clear that Major League Baseball had no plans of punishing players in the 90’s for the use of steroids, because they knew they couldn’t punish players who were bringing the game back into the spotlight

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.

By adding pressure to the owners and league officials, it forced baseball to make changes to the game. This in which introduced the opportunity for Robinson to wear a Dodgers

The A's recent success is attributed to the innovative approach taken by Billy Beane in assembling a baseball team with a very limited amount of financial resources. Billy Beane has built a successful ball club because he has found an efficient and cost effective way of measuring baseball talent thus essentially creating a loophole in this unfair game because winning percentage is a result of talent not

The analytics software is the useful tool and great supporter for organization to reduce workload, increase the productivity and create competitive advantages. The analytics software helps organization knows exactly what customers want and their purchasing power, which will assist the company makes best decisions whether big or small every day. What is more, the analytics software works like an effective predictor, which will help organization look forward to the future scenario and make the best plan. Also the software is the key business enabler

The ways Golf is using analytics is basically the same way how other sports are using analytics, see what is their weak spot and what is it that makes them fare better. DeChambeau, a 22 year-old self-proclaimed golf scientist,

Michael Lewis’s Moneyball is a fascinating story about a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. The underlying question to this story is where the real discussion should begin. That question is: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? This question can lead into a series of discussions regarding strategy or luck, but the real answers can be found in the leadership of the organization. This leadership is found in the form of

Sabermetrics is a systematic statistical approach in evaluating teams and players. Based on this science it was found out that this basis for judging the performance of the player should be on-base percentage. The Oakland A’s recruitment would prioritize college players rather than high school players. This was due to the fact that college players have already played more games against better competition. Beane was convinced with the fact that “a young player” is not what he looks like, or what he might become, but what he has done. The bottom line is what the player has produced in college. Beane and DePodesta believed that they could forecast future performance of college players more efficiently than high school ones.