Does a movie starring Brad Pitt (as you) confirm your strategy?

Perhaps if your name if Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. Beane gained almost instant fame due to the Michael Lewis book Moneyball. Lewis first gained acclaim as the author of Liar’s Poker, which depicted his time as a bond salesman for a Wall Street investment bank in the 1980s. In Moneyball, Lewis looked at baseball as if it were a bond trade. Rather than rely on the traditional method of scouting players and rating them based on traditional skill, Beane used a Sabermetrics system to rate his players.

In traditional baseball scouting, a skill like speed is valued. Sabermetrics only values scoring runs. A fast player that does not get on base does not have the same value as a slow player with a high on-base percentage. Sabermetrics is similar to counting cards—it plays on percentages. Even though it might work in blackjack, baseball is not cards. Match-ups determine results as much as prior performances.

The odd thing about Moneyball is that it is a glorification of a system that shies away from glory. Sabermetrics was never meant to be sexy. It was meant to be correct and trump the old system of “seeing” talent or believing in baseball myths.

 

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Now that Sabermetrics has its own movie does it mean that no area of sports is immune to hyperbole? Perhaps, but somehow it seems correct. Statistics might be able to break down baseball better than most sports, but even the National Pastime cannot be entirely explained by statistics. Baseball is still an athletic competition full of drama and myth.