The equal playing field that competitive sports like baseball
requires is in danger of being corrupted by the unequal money base
that exists between large market teams like the New York Yankees
and small market teams like the Oakland Athletics.
Suggestions like revenue sharing as a way to counteract this trend
are predictably opposed by the large market teams, and one
despairs that the entire sport will be spun out of whack as a
result. Why should anybody care, especially if they are not
a sports fan?
A financial journalist enters into this fray and tells us
why. Michael Lewis spent the 2002 season with the management
team of the Oakland Athletics, and describes how one small market
team has remained competitive by thoroughly analyzing the value of
statistical indicators and applying the resultant knowledge to the
unorthodox nature of player selection it employs in building its
roster. Oakland's general manager, Billy Beane, has a
century of statistics, lovingly kept, that allows him to
revolutionize how
players add to or subtract from a team's wins total. Other
general managers have access to the same stats, but baseball is
primarily a good ol' boys network. For most general
managers, predominantly ex-players, if it was good enough for Babe
Ruth, it's good enough for Sammy Sosa. Hallowed statistical
measurements like batting average and earned run average are
understood by management and fan base alike, so their utility goes
unchallenged.
This begins to change with the advent of sabermetrics.
Sabermetrics (Society of American Baseball Research-metrics),
aided by spread sheets and computers, make it possible to conceive
new categories, to ask previously sacrilegious questions and act
upon radically different assumptions. This becomes a
necessity for small market teams, which have often been priced out
of the market for superstars. Billy Beane specializes in
finding flawed players, who carry less onerous contracts, and in
blending them together to cleverly mask their deficiencies.
He achieves seasonal wins totals that rival the hated Yankees with
a small fraction of the salary base.
Lewis portrays this process in fascinating detail. He shows how
the Athletics actually improved after letting their best player,
Jason Giambi, sign a mega-deal with the archrival Bronx
Bombers. He demonstrates how ossified the philosophy of the
national pastime has become, and suggests that things are bound to
change as a new generation of money manager owners
purchase teams and streamline the sport. Lewis gives the
serious fan enough fodder so that never again will that fan look
at the game with tired old eyes. He shows how some player
categories, like relief pitcher and base stealer, are over-valued,
and how other categories, like patient hitters who work the
pitchers for bases on balls, thus driving up the pitch count and
inducing earlier fatigue, are under-valued. And he gives
fans a glimpse of baseball's future. The Yankees should
beware. Their most intense rival, the Boston Red Sox, a big
market, monied team like the Yankees themselves, has just hired a
29-year-old sabermetrician, Theo Epstein, a disciple of Billy
Beane, as their new general manager. The curse of the
Bambino may soon go the way of the Eephus pitch, the complete
game, and the five-tool superstar.
Dialogue on favorite books with Deane Rink before and during his latest trek to Antarctica, with a note from Bill Ransom and a digression about Frank Herbert (a.k.a Bookbabble 101) -- a very long and rapidly growing document:
Book reviews by Richard Seltzer |
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