Did you know that geeks can win baseball games?
Billy Beane, former professional baseball player and the general manager of the Oakland A's, is the subject of Michael Lewis' 2003 book Moneyball. In the 1990's, Beane was forced to put together a competitive team on a very small budget. He utilized sabermetric principles in order to obtain and take advantage of a team of relatively undervalued players. Sabermetrics, named after SABR (the Society for American Baseball Research), is a method of analyzing baseball statistics using empirical evidence. In 2011, Brad Pitt played Billy Beane in Moneyball, the movie.
Watch the trailer below!
Watch the trailer below!
As explained in the book and the movie, the story concerns the management of the Oakland A's using a method called Sabermetrics. Their use of rigorous statistical analysis demonstrated that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success than traditional evaluations based on the opinions of scouts. The A’s, convinced that these qualities were cheaper to obtain, created a winning team with a group of undervalued professional baseball players, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues. They turned into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. Indeed, this narrative is just one example to show creativity is everywhere….you just have to look for it!