Evaluating Moneyball

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis, is probably the most famous book ever written (with the possible exception of Ball Four, by Jim Bouton). Since 2003, it has been a must-read for any baseball fan, and has reached an even wider audience after a movie based on the book was released in 2011, starring Brad Pitt.

Brad Pitt (top) starred as Billy Beane (bottom) in the 2011 film adaptation of Moneyball, which is still the biggest compliment Beane has ever received.

While the movie has helped bring Moneyball to a larger audience, I personally wish the movie had never been released. While it is entertaining and slightly informative, it completely misses the theme of the book, which is that there are multiple ways to construct a baseball roster.

The book itself chronicles Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's unorthodox methods of  building a successful baseball roster. Baseball, unlike the other major sports, does not have a salary cap. This means that a team can sign as many players as they want for as much money as they want. This puts teams with smaller budgets like the A's at a significant disadvantage compared to richer teams such as the New York Yankees or Los Angeles Dodgers. This made it difficult for small market teams to achieve sustained success, as they would lose their best players in free agency to teams who could afford to pay the players more money. This issue is documented in the beginning of the book, when the A's lose 3 of their best players (Jason Isringhausen, Jason Giambi, and Johnny Damon) to free agency. It is at this point that Beane realizes that he needs to find different methods to keep his his low-budget team competitive, despite the loss of his best players.

Beane's new approach to roster construction is what is now known as Moneyball, in which Beane successfully found "undervalued" players that did not cost a lot of money, yet were still able to perform at a high level. In 2002, baseball decisions were still made based off a player's batting average, speed, and home run totals. However, Beane became convinced that these were not the best barometers to judge a players value. Beane and his his assistant, Paul DePodesta, believed that the most important statistics to judge a player's value were On Base Percentage and Slugging Percentage. Equally as important, Beane believed that the players that hit this criteria were undervalued by baseball executives, and therefore were easier and cheaper to acquire.

To briefly summarize the book, the 2002 Oakland A's ended up being one of the best teams in baseball, despite having the 3rd-lowest payroll in the league. They were led by contributions by acquisitions of players that had previously been undervalued by the rest of the league. These players included Scott Hatteberg, Chad Bradford, and Billy Koch. The team succeeded despite being led by players that the casual fan might not have even heard of. In many ways, this was revolutionary, as the team won games despite having a roster of mostly castoffs or unknowns.

The most important theme of the book is the juxtaposition of the "new" ideas of Beane and DePodesta compared to the established, traditional rules of player evaluation. DePodesta was a Harvard graduate who did not play baseball, and used mathematical formulas to come to conclusions. This type of analysis was (and still is) ridiculed by scouts and baseball traditionalists, who believe that you have to have played baseball to understand the game and evaluate players. This conflict still exists today, where "baseball lifers" refuse to accept sabermetrics as a way to run a baseball team.

While there is no doubt that Beane's revolutionary methods led to his team having a successful season in 2002, it has to be mentioned that he has been the GM in Oakland since 1998, and yet has not won a World Series. That is a major caveat when reviewing Moneyball. While Beane's ideas have influenced other championship teams like the Boston Red Sox, the fact that Beane has never won himself does put a damper on the book. 

The book also spends a substantial amount of time talking about Beane's strategy in the MLB draft. Beane believes that college players are much more likely to succeed in the major leagues than high school draftees. As a result of this, Beane almost exclusively drafts college players over high school players. The book devotes a lot of time to this strategy, and portrays it as revolutionary. However, it turns out that Beane has not been particularly successful at drafting major league players. Here is every first round pick of the Oakland A's from 2002-2012 (it is too early to evaluate players drafted after 2012, as most are still in the minor leagues). During this period, the A's made 21 picks in the first round. Of those 21 picks, only 6 (Nick Swisher, Joe Blanton,  Mark Teahen, Huston Street, Cliff Pennington, and Sonny Gray) have gone on to be successful major leaguers. 9 of those picks made it to the major leagues, but did not have successful careers. 6 of those picks did not make it to major leagues at all. This is not an impressive draft record, and it makes the reader wonder if Beane's draft strategy is the correct one. For example, the 3 best players in baseball right now (Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Clayton Kershaw) were not college players. 

Despite the fact that Beane's career has been up and down, this does not change the fact that he was responsible for changing the way that baseball players are evaluated. He is one of the few general managers in sports to be a household name, and this is exclusively due to Moneyball. The book, to this day, remains extremely influential to the baseball community. Namely, it serves as a tool to teach fans that there are different ways to evaluate baseball players besides traditional statistics like batting average.