Based upon a true story, Moneyball, written by Michael Lewis,
the book discusses the idea of how does a poor baseball team compete with the
richer markets, like the New York Yankees. The main character Billy Beane, the
GM of the Oakland A’s baseball team, created a new system to win games with low
budget players. To work within the low payroll budget; Billy recruited young
new players or under value older players which didn’t have high salary
requirements. My prediction is that Billy Beane’s system will be a success and
will get the A’s to the playoffs again.
In the 2000 and 2001 seasons the A’s used Mr. Beane’s system.
After two seasons with this method, the A’s got 91 wins the first year, and 102
the next. The A’s payroll was only 90 million dollars, compared to the Yankees,
who had 120 million dollars to spend on super stars. The gap between the rich
teams and the poor teams is only growing bigger. For an example, for every one
dollar a poor team has, a rich team has four dollars to spend on salaries. This
is the biggest money gap in all of the major sports. In contrast, basketball
spends one dollar for every one dollar and seventy-five cents, and football
only has difference of fifty cents between the richer markets and smaller
markets.
Another reason for their success is when the A’s players are
in their prime, they trade them away. Those players in their prime can do one
thing the A’s don’t like, take up money. With that money saved, they could pick
up promising minor league players and picks in the MLB draft for low prices.
This actually happened with the A’s star closer, Jason Isringhausen, they
traded him for 2 first round draft picks and reduced A’s payroll by millions of
dollars.
The system Billy Beane created benefited not only his A’s,
but every other small market team in baseball. It was a way to beat the rich
teams with a smaller payroll.
