(From BTW, originally published 3.15.04)
Now that spring training is in full swing, I finally got around to reading Michael Lewis’ 2003 book about the Oakland Athletics, Moneyball. I had expected to read about all sorts of arcane baseball statistics and strategy, and there’s plenty. But Lewis goes beyond the science to bring us closer to a number of compelling personalities in the sport and business of baseball.
The book begins with the fascinating story of Oakland’s GM Billy Beane. As a young man, Billy was perhaps one of the best natural talents in baseball – ever. And that’s saying a lot. So of course you ask yourself, “then why haven’t I ever heard of him?” and before you know it, you’re sucked into the book and reading about Beane’s amazing physical gifts and his mental demons. Throughout the book, Lewis weaves additional narratives of A’s players in between discussions of baseball stats and the A’s expert use of them.
So let’s examine the A’s vaunted system, which came about because of financial pressures. The A’s have one of the lowest payrolls in baseball (2002 payroll: $40 million), yet they reach the playoffs regularly and came pretty close to beating the Yankees (2002 payroll: $126 million) in the playoffs a couple of years ago. The A’s are able to compete because they find players that other teams don’t want. In essence, they look for inefficiencies in baseball’s player evaluation system, which has been historically based on finding players that look athletic. In contrast, the A’s don’t care about how a player looks. They find players who can perform efficiently in the areas that help the team win games – getting on base and scoring runs, and making plays in the field to take away runs from the other team. Read the rest of this entry »
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