Monday, September 03, 2012

My favorite National League team is the Dodgers....

...and my favorite American League team is whatever team has Billy Beane as its general manager--which is still the Oakland As.

The As have the same won-lost record as the Yankees with 1/4 the payroll.  That is the kind of austerity I can get behind, because it is austerity based on statistics.  But what is remarkable is that after Michael Lewis' Moneyball ( a terrific book) and Bennett Miller's Moneyball ( the highly enjoyable movie version of the book), what Beane is doing is no secret, and yet most other teams have not been able to figure it out, showing that information inefficiencies can stick around for a long time.

The Red Sox were able to combine money with moneyball for awhile to banish to curse of Ruth, but, well, not reason to dwell on others' misery.

(BTW, even though I have only lived in LA for four years, I have been a Dodger fan for much longer, because my wife, a native Angelino, grew up in a Dodger household.  Giving up the Cubs was not a hard thing to do).

3 comments:

Ken said...

It seems that Beane's latest market inefficiency is very specific: the Red Sox are good at finding slugging young outfielders. They are even better at trading those outfielders to the Athletics for ineffective relief pitchers.

RevolutionaryClown said...

growing up in chicago(land) i i'd have to disagree that giving up the cubs is difficult. i'm not a fan of theirs myself but i see too many people who remain infected by chronic cub-itis.

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