There was now such a thing as intellectually rigorous baseball analysts. James had given the field of study its name: sabermetrics.
The term “moneyball” refers to the implementation of a predictive statistically management system which can then be applied analytically to one of the few processes in baseball which has proved almost entirely entirely immune to mathematic calculation. More than any other organized sport, baseball is a game that is defined by numbers—stats. Some of these individual stats have taken on an almost ritualistic, magical meaning: .300, 56, 714, 20, 191, 2130. Translating the statistical basis upon which baseball became America’s Pastime into a calculus for determining which players a team should sign or pass on, however, has never been lucked upon. The rationale has always been fundamentally flawed: if a guy can bat .300 and hit thirty homers for one team, then he should be able approximately as productive on any other team. Sabermetrics as utilized by the Oakland Athletics in 2002 became the closest thing yet to finding the holy grail that is that calculus. The "money" part refers to how successful implementation of the statistical metrics could also be used to avoid overpaying for underperforming players or underbidding for players predicted to overperform.
“One absolutely cannot tell, by watching, the difference between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter. The difference is one hit every two weeks…in fact, if you see both 15 games a year, there is a 40% chance that the .275 hitter will have more hits than the .300 hitter in the games that you see. The difference between a good hitter and an average hitter is simply not visible —it is a matter of record.”
Bill James is the baseball writer/statistician who developed sabermetrics and the architect of that 2002 baseball season of the Oakland A’s which changed the game of baseball forever. James is the perfect storm for introducing a possible statistical analysis holy grail into the way the game is played since he is not just a brilliant mathematician, but an obsessive lover of the game itself. Ironically, he is also the target of harsh criticism that basing management decisions upon sabermetrics is the path to destroying the game. The argument being statistics are in the end only predictive under rigorously controlled conditions and that very often it is the gut instinct of an owner, general manager, manager or even individual players that make the difference between winning and losing.
People who want very badly to win, and to be seen to have won, enjoy a tactical advantage over people who don’t. That very desire, tantamount to a need, is also a weakness. In Billy Beane, the trait is so pronounced that it is not merely a weakness. It is a curse.
Bill James is the architect of moneyball, but Billy Beane is the guy who took the blueprints and constructed a building from it. That building was the Oakland A’s and he constructed the first monument to sabermetrics as General Manager. Beane had himself at one point been one of the most highly prized and intensely scouted high school baseball players in the country. Eventually, he was lured out of plans to attend Stanford University by the temptation of being the second player drafted by the Mets that year: the first player was a guy named Strawberry. While Daryl went on to become a superstar, Beane’s fortunes faded even before getting to the big leagues and thus the baggage he was carrying while trying to prove that James’ theories could be the difference between winning and losing was his own history as potential unrealized and great promise unfulfilled. Trying to steer his team against the currents of more than a century of MLB traditions and conventional wisdom only served to ignite the conflicting emotions feeding on those two decades of seconds thoughts and regrets about what might have been.
Pete Palmer, the sabermetrician and author of The Hidden Game of Baseball, once calculated that the average difference in baseball due to skill is about one run a game, while the average difference due to luck is about four runs a game. Over a long season the luck evens out, and the skill shines through. But in a series of three out of five, or even four out of seven, anything can happen.
The 2002 Oakland A’s put together a regular season that by any stretch of logic would seem to prove that sabermetrics at least has a point. Maybe it isn’t the holy grail, but it’s a grail of some sort and whatever grails are used for, it is one with a very definite use. Beane and his team had made believers out of more than a few critics during the season, especially by the end of their twenty-game winning streak. And then all the belief seemed to utterly collapse with a playoff loss to what was considered a clearly inferior Minnesota Twins team. Another baseball writer and statistician is referred to in this quote as a way of putting into context the difference between how the MLB regular season and its post-season need to be considered two different types of play in which what works for one doesn’t necessarily translate so successfully to the other.
