Essay Questions

What are Sabermetrics?

On a basic level, Sabermetrics (which were coined by and pioneered by a man named Bill James) are advanced statistics used to analyze Major League Baseball (MLB) players and how they play the game of baseball.

Sabermetric batting analysis metrics include: On Base Percentage (OBP), Slugging Percentage (SLG), and On Base Percentage + Slugging (OPS) (note: this is not an all-inclusive list).

Sabermetric pitching analysis metrics include: walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP), Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP), and peripheral ERA (note: this is not an all-inclusive list).

In Moneyball, Billy Beane and his analysts used sabermetrics to find proverbial gold in the trash heap (i.e. by finding undervalued and underpaid players who would put up great statistics - particularly OBP - or On Base Percentage).

How did Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics revolutionize Major League Baseball?

Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics no doubt revolutionized Major League Baseball. Because of Beane's strategy and the Lewis' book, the term Moneyball entered the baseball lexicon. Every team and their general managers wanted to recreate the famous A's strategy.

To that end, the New York Mets, New York Yankees, San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals, Boston Red Sox, Washington Nationals, Arizona Diamondbacks, Cleveland Indians, and the Toronto Blue Jays hired full-time sabermetric analysts. Hoping to recreate the strategy, other teams hired some of Beane's top lieutenants for their general manager jobs.

And these changes worked. The New York Mets, who hired Sandy Alderson (Beane's top lieutenant) to be their GM, made it to the 2015 World Series with a payroll of just over $100 million. En route to their World Series berth, perhaps most importantly, the Mets defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, who sported an astronomical payroll of $275 million (the highest in baseball).