Is This the End of Moneyball as We Know It?
Billy Beane, general manager of baseball’s Oakland A’s and the founding father of Moneyball, appears to be changing his strategy of winning with bargain-basement talent.
At baseball’s annual trade deadline last week, the most aggressive mover and shaker was none other than Billy Beane, the longtime general manager of the small-market Oakland A’s. Why should this matter to you? Mainly because Beane’s cost-efficient methods of talent-management–generally known as “Moneyball” principles–have long been reveredby the business world.
In Moneyball, Michael Lewis’s 2003 book about the Oakland A’s 2002 baseball season, the author sought to answer an essential question: How did the A’s, with their paltry payroll ($41 million), manage to compete with the big-market New York Yankees ($125 million)? A 2011 movie based on the book dramatized the same question, with Brad Pitt playing the part of Beane.
The answer had to do with the A’s precocious grasp of advanced baseball metrics. While many teams still used traditional statistics to gauge the ability of players, Beane and the A’s began using a more advanced set of numbers, called “sabermetrics.” The A’s realized that players with strong sabermetrics correlated just as much (if not more) to winning games than did players who were strong in traditional stats.
Better still, the players with strong sabermetrics cost far less to employ than did the players with strong traditional stats. The reason? Most teams still gauged player value by traditional stats. The A’s, in using sabermetrics to gauge player value, found cheaper talent that could still get the job done.
All of this still seemed to hold true–until last week, when Beane contradicted these Moneyball principles by trading a reasonably priced young outfielder, Yoenis Cespedes, for Boston Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester, a pricey veteran whose contract expires at the end of the season.
Moreover, this was the second time this year Beane had peddled affordable youth for pricier veterans with short-term contracts. In July, he shipped two of the A’s vaunted minor leaguers to the Chicago Cubs for two more experienced pitchers: Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel. Jeremy Gordon in the Wall Street Journal observed: “Beane is no longer some guy you associate with Brad Pitt in Moneyball but a risk taker going all in on his hopes of a World Series.”
Here, then, is the question: Why is Beane changing his ways, after all these years?
The most logical answer is that Moneyball, in the biggest possible picture, hasn’t worked for him.
Beane became the A’s general manager after the 1997 season. That means that, excluding the current campaign, he’s presided over the team for 16 years. In those 16 seasons, the A’s have made the playoffs seven times. That, in and of itself, is superb, especially when you factor in the A’s small-market payroll. There’s a reason Beane and Moneyball are famous, after all.
But if you dig a little deeper, it’s easy to see the glaring hole in Beane’s resume. Under his watch, the A’s have never won the World Series. More than this, they haven’t even made the World Series. They excel at making the playoffs, but once they get there, they fall short.
In addition, they suffered through a significant drought, missing the playoffs for five straight years (2007-11), four of which were losing seasons.
You could argue, then, that Beane appears to be abandoning his long-held principles in a quest to fill the only hole on his resume. For all his skill in assessing the talent market to build consistent winners in Oakland, he and the A’s have still never won a title.
All of which leads us to another question: Is Beane smartly learning from–and adapting to–the A’s shortcomings of the previous 16 seasons? In business parlance, is he adjusting the business model to become more competitive?
In truth, it’s hard to know the answer. This is one season out of many in Beane’s tenure. If in future seasons he continues to sell his young talent for veteran pitchers, it will be easy to argue that he’s changed the business model.
For now, it’s safer to say he’s seizing an opportunity in the quest for a long-sought title. There are roughly 50 games left in the current season, followed by the playoffs, scheduled to begin in early October. Barring a surprising collapse, the A’s will be contending for a title. If they win it, Beane’s maneuvers will look shrewd. He’ll be praised for his flexibility.
But if the A’s don’t win, then the holes in Beane’s resume–and his Moneyball tenets–will come under increased scrutiny, both in the world of baseball and in the world of business.
