It all started with the Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane. During the 1990s and in to the 2000s, the MLB was dominated by none other than the New York Yankees. This domination came as a result of the money that the Yankees had to buy players with. In 2002, the Yankees spend over $125 million in payroll, while the Oakland Athletics had a meager $41 million for their players. This HUGE difference in payroll gives the Yankees an unfair advantage to buy all the big-time players at the time. This still exists today, when a player does great on a baseball team other than the Yankees, you can guarantee that the Yankees will try to buy the hot player for the next season.
However, Billy Beane decided to attempt to change the way scouts and managers will judge players in both active players and upcoming prospects. The Athletics were written off for the 2002 season because they were said to not have the talent to keep up with other teams. This was a direct result of not having the funds to purchase big-time players, so Billy Beane made one of the most controversial movements in baseball today.
When any game is set up in a manner that allows for monopolizing the game, other players must adapt in order to maintain a health competition in the competition. According to game theory, one’s success when making choices is said to depend on the situation and the choices of others in the game. For the Oakland Athletics, baseball and scouting was their game and the other teams that they were trying to emulate were teams like the Yankees and other big-time, big-budget teams. The cards were simply stacked against the Athletics during their 2002 season. But, Billy Beane decided to go against the stigma that the best players result in the best baseball team. He incorporated a little-known system to rank players based on specifically what players do and have done in game situations called sabermetrics. So, rather than picking the 6’ft. 3”in., 22 year-old, up-and-coming player out of the pile, Beane decided to draft the players that show statistical evidence for a given characteristic (such as average walk percentage, base-stealing percentage, etc.) via sabermetrics.
After a season filled with unhappy fans and questionable management, the 2002 Oakland Athletics finished first in the American League West and set an American League record for winning twenty consecutive games (a record set by the Yankees). By going against the “norms” of managing a baseball team, Billy Beane displayed how by taking a new perspective on the game and being able to get away from old, traditional methods of being successful in the MLB, he could use clever statistics in order to fill a roster geared to be the most statistically sound. Raising eyebrows around the league, Beane decided to let go of their most valuable and “talented” players on his team to make room for more statistically significant players.
Sabermetricians and pioneer general managers like Billy Beane changed the sport of baseball forever. By being able to predict what other teams would do when filling a roster (go for talent), Beane instead went for statistics. This saved TONS of money and shocked the world of sports at the time. During this period the Oakland Athletics were able to compete with the best teams in the league regardless of talent. Also while spending under half of what the other teams were paying their players.
This is a clear display on how new technology and, most importantly, innovative perspectives on games can change the field of competition in any game. Also, this shows that, even when faced against a dominating opponent, teams must use other means in order to gain a competitive advantage.
Although I enjoyed the book more than the movie, here is the trailer of the 2011 movie: Moneyball staring Brad Pitt, Robin Wright, and Jonah Hill.
