Billion-Dollar Billy Beane

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/billion-dollar-billy-beane/

by jsnell • 12 years ago

87 34 12 years ago

Billy Beane's A's may be winning games, but during the period in question (2002-2014), the Red Sox have won 3 World Series Championships, and the A's haven't been to one in 25 years... it's the World Series wins that count, eventually. Everything else is irrelevant.

noazark• 12 years ago

Not according to the Red Sox. They still made him an offer despite their wins and despite Billy Beane's absence from the World Series.

discardorama4• 12 years ago

The Sox had not won a World Series since 1918(!), and hadn't appeared in one since 1986. The offer was made in 2002. They made him an offer, thinking that he would lead them to a Win after an 84-year drought. Despite his refusal, they were still able to win 3 championships.

Maybe this shows that while Beane can get you wins, his method may not work in building a Championship-winning team?

dmckay• 12 years ago

In that case, what you should take from the article is that the St. Louis Cardinals are by far team to bet on.

jessaustin• 12 years ago

Unless we're playing the BoSox... fortunately they didn't choose to take part much in the 20th century.

elchief• 12 years ago

I'm pretty sure the owner cares about profitability.

mnarayan012• 12 years ago

Probably a safe bet. It seems...unlikely...that Liverpool will do better this year having sold Suarez. Though, obviously, Henry may place a different value on profitability/championships in the MLB than in the EPL.

towski• 12 years ago

Beane doesn't have much utility in a franchise with a big budget

mnarayan012• 12 years ago

I believe the author's argument is that the Red Sox could have achieved more and/or spent less money with Beane as manager. I find the argument plausible, but (like many things on 538 of the same nature), it seems like they oversell the case: I also find it plausible that Beane would not have achieved similar results either due to sabermetrics not performing well in winning championships or his particularly advantages/idiosyncrasies not working as well when applied to higher paid players.

avemg• 12 years ago

MLB playoffs are a crapshoot. You can construct a team that consistently performs well over the 162 game regular season but once you reach the postseason it often comes down to luck and which teams are hot at the right time. Billy Beane has been very unlucky there.

TheBiv• 12 years ago

In the book Moneyball, Billy is quoted as saying "My sh*t doesn't work in the playoffs."

jgalt212• 12 years ago

I don't know about that. #4 and #5 starters are very important for a team's season-wide performance. But in the playoffs, these players see very little action.

chatmasta2• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I agree with this. At least in comparison to other pro sports, the MLB playoffs seem to be the most representative of actual talent. The early rounds are 5-game series, and the best teams are playing the worst teams, so you would expect a low sample size is needed to determine the "best" team. In the later rounds, when teams are much more closely matched in talent, the series last 7-games. I haven't done the math on this (would anyone care to?), but I surmise that the statistical power of a 7-game series, spread over 10-14 days, is far higher than that of say, NFL playoffs, where the sample size is 1. This is not even considering the fact that each game has 200+ separate pitches from which to derive success or failure, as opposed to ~100 plays per NFL game.

Baseball has 162 games, which is twice as many as the NBA and NHL, and ten times as many as the NFL. It also has more independent events (pitches) per game than any of those sports. Of all the major sports, it seems baseball is the "fairest" in terms of representing talent, by the simple fact that it requires orders of magnitude more successes of independent events to win the World Series.

727374• 12 years ago

Yeah, but Beane wasn't dealt the same hand as Theo Epstein, who had 2-4X the payroll to work with. If the A's could have augmented their strategy with a couple big free agents every year, it would be a fair comparison.

icelancer5• 12 years ago

it's the World Series wins that count, eventually. Everything else is irrelevant.

This is an outrageously dumb post for a site that is supposed to be full of people who understand remedial mathematics and statistics.

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

Baseball is business, heavily marketing dependent, and World Series wins are a big marketing deal. Metrics that don't measure what the customers are actually buying the product for are bad metrics.

World Series wins may in one sense be a very poor reflection of some abstract idea of "team quality", but at the same time be the most important single measure when it comes to the ability of a team to drive demand for its products (tickets, licensed goods, etc.)

Understanding statistics is one team, understanding what matters in a particular market is another.

samzer• 12 years ago

One major aspect that separates Red Sox and Oakland A's is the difference in money invested which definitely would make a significant difference if a team wins the World Championship or not.

TheEditor2• 12 years ago

I'd like to be your bookmaker. Do you enjoy betting on football games?

discardorama4• 12 years ago

Of course not. I am a Buffalo Bills fan. After the early 90s, my hopes have been dashed repeatedly, to no end. The coming season will be no different.

wdr1• 12 years ago

During that time didn't they hire Bill James, who originated the system upon which Billy Beane based his management?

keithwarren• 12 years ago

I love me some 538 but I cannot read it without noticing how they gloss over some major factors that create variables in the systems they are trying to examine. Feels like Malcolm Gladwell for Statistics.

Splendor• 12 years ago

It might add more to the discussion here if you described what you feel is being glossed over.

mathattack• 12 years ago

Oh my poor miserable Cubs on that list. And I thought they were bad because of underinvestment. The list shows they're bad even relative to that underinvestment!

Billion-Dollar Billy Beane

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