A Whole New Ballgame

Each year, when I’m inevitably asked, “Did you watch the Oscars?” I usually respond with “no,” and try to come up with a nicer way of saying, “because I had zero interest.” Usually, the movies that are nominated are ones that I haven’t seen and probably never will. Movies like The Artist and The Descendants  may be brilliant, moving films, but they’re just not the type of movies I enjoy watching.

This year, however, was different, because I had a horse — a dark horse, in fact — in the race.

I quickly fell in love with Moneyball, a biographical sports film that chronicles Oakland Athletics General Manager Billy Beane’s attempt to assemble a competitive baseball team on a limited budget. After the team not only fell in the first round of the 2001 American League playoffs, but also lost its top three players to teams with bigger payrolls, Beane decided it was time for a change. Rather than continuing to spin his wheels by fighting with the big-market teams over pricey free agents, he implemented a new approach to scouting and analyzing players called sabermetrics. The term, coined by well-known baseball author and statistician Bill James, refers to the “specialized analysis of baseball through objective evidence.” In plain English, it offers an innovative way to determine a player’s true value.

These days, many baseball fans are familiar with the principle, but when Beane was preaching the idea a decade ago, it was a foreign concept that was met with a great deal of resistance. One of the key components of sabermetrics involves placing less value on batting average — which measures the amount of hits a player has divided by the number of at-bats — and more on on-base percentage, a statistic that measures how often a player reaches base, whether it’s by getting a hit, reaching on an error, or drawing a walk.

The idea is actually very simple. The goal in baseball is to score more runs than the other team, and so, logically, the more players you put on base, the more runs you will score, and the more games you will win. Yet for many, this concept was difficult to grasp — not because they didn’t understand the fact scoring more runs is better, but because it represents a different way of thinking. For years, scouts had been conditioned to go after players with a high batting average and/or a lot of homeruns. The problem with this is twofold — first, these players don’t come cheap (and are often out-of-reach for teams with thin wallets), and second, by employing this type of single-minded strategy, teams can miss out on undervalued players.

For Beane, a lot of the challenged lied in getting people to alter approaches that had been used forever. He even lost some of the team’s top scouts because they weren’t willing to change the way they rated talent.

And it wasn’t just about on-base percentage. Beane’s method also involved zeroing in on players who had great potential but weren’t able to thrive in a particular environment — whether it was due to the ballpark’s dimensions, a lack of team chemistry, or a manager who wasn’t utilizing them to their potential. Beane’s quest wasn’t just about finding success with a small-market team, but rethinking the game of baseball: “how it is managed, how it is played, who is best suited to play it, and why,” in the words of Michael Lewis, author of the book Moneyball.

By sticking to antiquated philosophies, Beane and Bill James believe that teams were limiting themselves and missing out on some good talent.

Beane’s ability to think out of the box helped make his team a contender and generated a great deal of interest in a recruiting method that is now widely used by teams. In fact, a year after the Boston Red Sox hired James, the team won its first title in 86 years. James was instrumental in the signing of David Ortiz and Mark Bellhorn, two players who were sitting on the bench for other teams and ended up playing pivotal roles in Boston’s championship run.

Unlike Beane’s team, the Red Sox weren’t strapped for cash when James arrived — they were, however, hindered by outdated thinking that, in year’s past, would’ve caused management to overlook players like Ortiz. By adopting James’ principles, one of the oldest teams in baseball was finally able to move out of the stone ages and embrace a new way of thinking.

Now, it’s a whole new ballgame.