It’s a lot more than a baseball movie/ book.

It’s a story of taking on the most powerful organisations within an industry, employing a different strategy and succeeding.

Its stories like this that spurred my interest in business as something that’s there to be changed. It denotes how it’s always vital to do things differently, to create progress and change the playing field.

In the case of Moneyball the different way of thinking is Sabermetrics (coined by statistician Bill James). As with any new strategy though it takes a brave individual to take the academic research and put it into practice, the guy that did this was Billy Beane the GM of The Oakland Athletics. 

Billy Bean had a massive problem in 2002 as his team The Oakland A’s had a payroll of approx $41mm Vs comp such as the New York Yankees who had $125mm to spend in the same season. 

The scene that really sums up the concept is when Billy Beane needs to replace one of their top players Jason Giambi (that they lost to the Yankees in 2002 for $120mm over 7 years).

The Oakland A’s scouts had put together a perspective list of replacements for Giambi. However the scouts were placing value on players in the same way every other team did with stats such as batting averages and runs batted in.

Sabermetrics looks at value differently; therefore Billy Bean didn’t want to look at the scout’s choices as they were demanded by other teams driving their value up. The Sabermetrics method of analysis used different measurables such as Base Runs and Runs created, therefore finding value in players that others couldn’t see, with a lower cost and greater ROI.

The scouts were taking this route as they weren’t approaching the problem correctly. They thought the problem was that they needed to replace Giambi. The main problem however was that there were rich teams, there were poor teams and right at the bottom of the pile were The Oakland A’s, it was an unfair game.

As Billy Beane knew with their payrole they couldn’t replace Giambi. He figured out they might be able to recreate him, in the aggregate (collective to form the total). To make things worse alongside Giambi two other top players were also being lost; Damon and Isringhausen.

Jason Giambi on-base percentage was 477 (irreplaceable), Johnny Damon on base 324 (replaceable) and Jason Isringhausen 291 (replaceable). Add them together you get 1092, divide by 3 you get 364. So instead of focusing on one replacement for Giambi the thinking was to look at the collective to get three ball players to equal an average on base percentage of 364.

The Players Billy Beane then focused on were selected via the on base percentage, player cost and their ROI. The selection being; Jeromy Giambi who had problems with weed and strip clubs, David Justice an old veteran who’s legs had gone and Scott hamberg who had nerve damage and could no longer throw a baseball. At least that’s how the scouts would perceive them.

The scouts didn’t understand the choice.

The game didn’t understand the choice.

The numbers added up and the decisions became legendary.

The game changed.