Moneyball Essay

The book Moneyball by Michael Lewis is about a former major league baseball player who became the manager of the Oakland A’s. It tells the story of how he led the team to success despite their low budget by using computer based analytics to draft players. With the help of Bill James, the Oakland A’s came up with a new plan based on statistics to draft players. He went after players nobody wanted due to their low budget and his new plan. Billy led the Oakland Athletics to a successive win seasons by changing the way he measured players. He abandoned the traditional 5 “tool” the other scouts used and adopted empirical analytics. The abandonment of the traditional assessment of

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

Therefore Billy Beane decides to set an unconventional strategy in order to be able to compete with other wealthy teams “out there”. His goal setting is based on the strategy he sets for his game in what he calls “an unfair game”. Manager Billy knows that decreasing cost is the main concern of the top executives of his team. The main shareholders and stakeholders have set their goals based on their conservative approaches. To be more specific, the top manager of Oakland Athletic is not willing to take any risk in order to pay more money to recruit better players.

The 2001 offseason was a critical time for the A's front office. Center fielder Johnny Damon, first baseman Jason Giambi, and closer Jason Isringhausen were all free agents and the A's knew there was no way that they could afford to keep them. Beane believes that effective closers were overpriced in the free agent market because he thinks that saves are an overrated statistic. (Lewis pgs.125-126) So when replacing the hole left by Jason Isringhausen's departure Beane traded away a solid prospect in Eric Hinske to pick up an effective but less expensive reliever in Billy Koch from Toronto. This is an example of a tactic used by

Baseball did exactly what Billy Beane had said they would do, they erased them. The Oakland A’s are starting from scratch the same way they did in the 2002 season. It all begins in the small scout room. Billy Beane tried to repeat and go farther beyond what he did the past two years with this team, which was to bring them to the playoffs. Billy knows he has a chance to redefine the way baseball people think, and that is his goal… “I don’t play this game for records, I want what we do to make an impact and change the game” Billy said to Paul Depodesta. When Billy enters the little room, he sees all the scouts talking and catching up, but they all shut up when Billy takes his seat. As the discussion begins, they keep coming to the question they

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,

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.

Baseball is considered America's pastime as it is steeped in history and prestige. However, due in part to the emergence of alternative sporting events such as skateboarding, snowboarding and competitive biking, the profits previously garnered within the industry are not growing as fast as they once where. In fact, in many instances, individual player salaries are outpacing the growth of ticket and television revenue. Table 1 within the appendix was constructed by Michael J. Haupert, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. The table depicts TV revenue (excluding local markets), average ticket price, and average player salary from 1964 to 2002. For your convenience the pertinent information is highlighted in yellow. As depicted from the chart, total television revenue from 1964 to 2002 increased nearly 1000% on an inflation adjusted basis. During this same period however, player salaries have increase by over 2500%. Likewise, average ticket prices have not increased by this magnitude either (Haupert, 2010). Futhermore, according to the Forbes, every team in baseball with the exception of one (The Florida Marlins) spent at least 80% of their revenue on baseball operations last year. These operations include player salaries as well. The percentages vary and ranged from the Detroit Tigers who spent 116% of their revenue (operated at a loss), to the Marlins who spent 68%. Seventeen teams spent 90% or more on baseball operating expenses (Pasnanski, 2010). To many individuals,

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 statistics found cheap players that were just as much or more helpful to the team than the more expensive and overrated players. Statistics were used in trading for players and

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.

Do Major League Baseball teams with higher salaries win more frequently than other teams? Although many people believe that the larger payroll budgets win games, which point does vary, depending on the situation. “…performances by individual players vary quite a bit from year to year, preventing owners from guaranteeing success on the field. Team spending is certainly a component in winning, but no team can buy a championship.” (Bradbury). For some, it’s hard not to root for the lower paid teams. If the big money teams, like Goliath, are always supposed to win, it’s hard not cheer for David. This paper will discuss the effects of payroll budgets on the percentage of wins for the 30 Major League

number 23 out of 30 top salaries in the league, they also had 96 wins

Major League Baseball is known as America’s favorite pastime, and MLB teams spend an extensive amount of money in the excess of a billion dollars with the ultimate goal to win the World Series. This learning team’s focus throughout this descriptive statistics paper is the MLB players’ performances, salaries, salary caps, and winning percentages. Though salaries will by no means be a trade for wins, the goal is to use the less experienced players and pay them a lower salary. Research has been done on whether or not player’s salaries and wins are connected.

and analyzing vast amounts of baseball data. Then came the boom in baseball players’ salaries: this dramatically