The Story Behind Moneyball - Math and Baseball
As some of you may know, baseball is a sport of statistics. What’s your batting average(BA), your on base percentage(OBP) etc. Both as a player and a fan, you always gage how a player is performing based heavily upon their season statistics. What if it was taken a step further? What if it was possible to use statistics to assemble a roster that may not be full of the biggest names in baseball, yet was still theoretically likely to win. That is exactly what Billy Bean with the Oakland Athletics.
To begin, ground work must be laid for what exactly Beane was trying to do. In the early 2000’s baseball was being dominated by the teams that could afford to pay the best players and form the best teams. As a die-hard New York Yankees fan it begrudges me to acknowledge this, but year in and year out, the Yankees payroll is among the top 5 in baseball. Many attribute this to why they have been able to maintain their ultra winning ways. Can’t argue with 27 world series wins! Anyway, back to Beane. He was in charge of the front office of the Athletics meaning he was in charge of making personnel decisions for the Athletics. (A’s) In 2002 the A’s were near the bottom of the payroll rankings so Beane used statistics to assemble a low cost team that could still compete. He used a method called sabermetrics.
Using advanced statistical analysis, Beane implemented sabermetrics, a statistical theory created by Bill James, to assemble the best team he could for the amount of money he had available. Sabermetrics is an incredibly complicated process, but in short it takes a look at Wins Above Replacement(WAR). WAR is probably the most accurate stat concerning the contribution that a single player makes to his team. It takes into account all aspects of the game and combines them into a simple stat, how many wins is a player worth to a team over the next best guy.
The best players in the league typically will record a WAR of 9 to 10. Bryce Harper had a 9.93, the best in the league last year. Obviously that type of player is going to cost a team a lot of money. Beane’s approach was to not go after one player with a high WAR, but go after many players who had lower WARs but were cheaper.
His strategy paid off as the lowly A’s were able to make the playoffs in consecutive years in the early 2000’s. Most notably was when they went on a tear and won 20 straight games in 2002, a major league record, to make their way into the playoffs.
In closing, there has always been an age old thought that sports and math don’t mix. That nerds don’t belong on the baseball field. This is absolutely incorrect because in a game driven by statistics, mathematics can be a crucial skill needed to assemble a winning baseball team.
