The Real Lesson of Moneyball
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You know you've got a winner when you're parodied on the Simpsons. That's that happened to Michael Lewis' book, Moneyball in a Simpsons' episode titled "MoneyBart."
The book Moneyball came out in 2003. The movie, starring Brad Pitt as Oakland A's general manager (GM) Billy Beane hit movie theaters just a few days ago. Here's how the movie is described.
"The story of Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball club on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players."
Essentially, the cash-strapped Oakland A's got a lot better in the early 21st Century by using statistical analysis instead of "proven baseball wisdom" to pick the players that they wanted and could afford. The A's were the first team to use the statistical analysis tools that find undervalued stocks to find undervalued baseball players. When they did, they got better.
The book is a bit more nuanced. You'll learn about how the analysis movement on the A's was started by Sandy Alderson who was the GM before Beane and who introduced Beane to the basics and the work of Bill James. And you'll learn that the need to do something different, the "mother of invention" in this case, occurred when the estate of Walter Haas, sold the team to a partnership that was going to cut salaries in an attempt to make the team profitable.
The basics make for a good story. Unlikely hero takes over awful team, comes up with a new way to choose players and leads the team to victory. And that sort of happened.
Beane became the General Manager shortly before the 1999 season. Under his
leadership the won-lost record of the A's improved. But, over the last ten
years, the A's have only won their division series once (2006) and they lost the
American League series that year. In other words, the team improved, but not
enough to beat the more affluent teams at championship time.Not only that, the other teams have learned to do the same statistical things.
That's why the biggest lesson from Moneyball is probably contained in an article by Adam Sternbergh in the September 23, 2011 NY Times. The title: "Billy Beane of ‘Moneyball’ Has Given Up on His Own Hollywood Ending." Here's it is.
New ways of doing business and business process innovations are important. They can give you a temporary advantage, but soon your competitors copy what you do and what was once a big advantage becomes table stakes.
Boss's Bottom Line
People, with their knowledge and relationships, are the only source of sustainable competitive advantage.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Sounds like a great book turned into a good movie. My wife and I are planning to go out this week to see the movie. Thanks for your review!
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Full disclosure, James. I haven't seen the movie yet, which is why I didn't go into details about it in the blog post. I, too, am planning to go this weekend. Thanks for stopping by.
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Great capture of the real lesson, Wally. I took a similar tack and went so far as to say that a leader's job is to be continuously working to understand and tap into the knowledge and relationships and determine a strategy that best utilizes it in my post, "What are we all really worth?"
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Thanks for joining the conversation and pointing us to your post.
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So many lessons from Moneyball - here are some additional thoughts regarding lessons for organizations in relation to talent management in my post "Gain a competitive advantage by tapping into undervalued talent."
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Thanks for the pointer, Michael.
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Moneyball was overrated as a book. The statistical methods used by the GMs in question helped, maybe, but then again so did great drafting which was performed by scouts, using old school methods. An entire section of the book was dedicated to the new age methods Beane hoped would give the As their next championship team. Didn't work out so well.
Bottom line is the As are just another small market team, like Detroit this year, which got lucky at the right time and then Lewis decided to write it up like it was a new thing. Sabermetrics have their place in baseball, but as someone who has devoured much of what it has to offer, I can't really say that it has improved my understanding or enjoyment of the game more than old school writers.
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Those are good points, Dan. The A's had their greatest success when they were a small market team with a big payroll. That was when Walter Haas owned the team. The problem was that they were an unprofitable small market team with a big payroll. Sandy Alderson was savvy enough to move on before he got frustrated. As for the book, I enjoyed it. I thought it was an interesting counterpoint to a lot of baseball writing and I think Lewis is incredibly good at sketching portraits of people. Thanks, as always, for your thoughtful contribution.
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