Pros Of Baseball

“1, 2, 3 strikes you are out at the old ball game.” Baseball has changed over the years there is more to baseball than what people know. The old methods of baseball are starting to vanish and new more effective ways of coaching and drafting are in use. Small less paid teams are able to compete against big rich paid teams. This is only possible if you strip down the old baseball game as the Americans knew it. Michael Lewis an author goes into what really makes up baseball starting from the team, players, managers, and future players. When choosing the players, scouters looked at there potential not at their current stats. America wanted people they could look forward to, and to hope on, but after a while they started noticing that most of the
times their hopes were being let down. Michael Lewis the author of Moneyball gives the reader an inside scoop of what the sport of baseball undergoes and how a small team can overcome the odds of large power house team. Throughout Moneyball, the author portrays that there is much more to baseball than it just being a sport Michael Lewis was born to a lawyer and community activist. He attended Princeton University where he received his bachelorette in art history and later attended London School of Economics were he received his masters degree in economics. He was hired by Saloman Brothers who sparked his interest in writing. Four years later after his first book publishing, Lewis wrote Moneyball, while writing the book, he learned that baseball was more than just a sport. He investigated the success of Billy Beane and his team Oakland A's. Now Michael Lewis is married and lives with his two children in California. He continues writing and has published many more controversial books that question the system. “The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.”(Lewis 158) David and Goliath went against each other in the bible. David, a young teenage boy, won against Goliath a huge giant. David believed in himself and was fighting, because Goliath defied God’s army. How does something so small end up winning? The Oakland A’s are another great example. They are one of the least paid teams who went against powerhouses that have tons of money to draft the best players possible. The Oakland Athletics buy cheap players who no one else wants to buy. The Oakland A’s general manger has a trick up his sleeve for why he is doing this. There success is based on their smarts and scientific reasoning. They are still able to play against some of the top baseball teams even though one of their player’s salary adds up to all the player’s salaries on the Oakland A’s team. Michael Lewis shows that using statistical analysis instead of choosing a player, because of the hope or appearance, a small-market team can compete by buying traits that are undervalued by other teams and selling ones that are overvalued by other teams. Billy Beane was a high school student who was accepted into Stanford, he could have been anything but instead became a minor league baseball player. Baseball changed his life, instead of going to college he decided to play professional baseball by doing so he committed to the sport. The recruits saw what they wanted to see a man who had the perfect baseball look regardless of his anger issues. He signed for the Mets only for the money. “Many years later he would say that when he’d decided to become a minor league baseball player, it was the only time had done something for money.”(Lewis 14) He lost his love for baseball and decided to quit and he became a general manager for the Oakland A’s. He realized in order to make the best team he had to choose players wisely. He had to make sure the players were doing it out of the love of baseball solely and not just the money. He decided that would only take college players, they were mature enough and had the mentality of baseball player. They had been playing long enough to have solid stats that could be compared to others. Billy Jame’s gave his work the Abstract to many baseball teams. Most of them choose to ignore it, but Billy Beane didn’t he read every book. The information was given to all baseball teams, but the ones that had money thought they were good to read it. The Oakland A’s needed anything they could get to make there team better. Billy Beana asked for money but he couldn’t get any more he had to get players with he money had. Billy Beane read the absract and lived on it. He learned many important information that would let him become successful When people were chosen to play baseball many of the recruiters based it on the players potential and ability to improve, and they also based their physique and physical attributes. The Oakland A’s on the other hand based it solely on stats, and the attributes that were undervalued. Sine the Oakland A’s were one of the least paid team they had to make sure they choose players could afford to do base it solely on stats. Paul DePodesta, came in he had been an economics major at Harvard. He had absolutely no past background with baseball, but he did understand you can’t base a good baseball player on what you see. Looks may be perceiving so he told Bill Beane that they had to examine the players stats. Paul stated a theory which was that on-base percentage was an undervalued trait and sluggers were overvalued. The on-base percentage had more wins than those that didn’t. On the other hand it wasn’t a very significant predictor of an individual player salaries. That means players who drew a lot of walks was really inexpensive than who were sluggers. Author Michael Lewis demonstrated how baseball is more than just a sport, but also a mental game. He demonstrated how baseball is complex and how the sports industry strategizes. He said Billy Beane only took college students, because they had matured for the mental game of baseball. "They'd drafted kids in the first round who didn't think they'd get drafted before the fifteenth round, and kids in lower rounds who didn't think they'd get drafted at all. They had drafted ballplayers."(Lewis 117 ) They drafted people who had undervalued assets, they got baseball players they could afford. Baseball had a new system that was being created. the old set of rules were being revised and changed to meet standards. The Oakland A’s had to be careful with their budgets, and by doing this, they had to choose players who were ready for the game, and wouldn’t be a disappointment. "The Oakland A's never claimed to have discovered sophisticated statistical analysis. They claim to be ramming it down the throat of an actual big league baseball team." (Lewis 292) Billy Beane went against baseball tradition. He thought outside the box to coach a team that had little money in comparison to the other baseball teams. Billy Beane was once a baseball player, so he knew all the tricks in the baseball world. Author Michael Lewis has an impeccable background. He received a bachelor’s in art history and a master’s in economics. Billy used his management skills to his personal advantage. Managers need to be willing to adopt quickly to changes for the better of the team Money Ball was a transformative book in many ways because it turned decades of common wisdom on its head, introducing the cold hard reality of statistics into a sport that relied so much on subjective opinions about what makes a player valuable and a team win.
Tnd the analysis, Billy Beane went to work finding a roster of inexpensive players who could get on base and hit. Remarkably – or perhaps predictably – the A’s made the playoffs that year, shocking the baseball world, given a lineup mostly regarded as a bunch of under-achievers
s. FinHis high school batting average had plummeted by his senior year, and he did not deal well with adversity, launching into temper tantrums after strikeouts and struggling to adjust to the changing patterns of opposing pitchers. In addition, Beane was not enthusiastic about playing professional ball as opposed to attending college. In the end, a sizable bonus swayed him to sign with the Mets.
The results were, in terms of his playing career, frustrating. Beane struggled mightily, even in the minor leagues. His raw tools were good enough to give him a shot in the major leagues as a fringe utility player, but by 1993 he had opted to pursue a career in Oakland’s front office instead. He ultimately became General Manager Sandy Alderson’s assistant, inheriting Alderson’s scientific approach to the game as well as his appreciation of bases on balls and the importance of on-base percentage. When Alderson moved on, Beane became the general manager. He not only continued in Alderson’s footsteps but also heartily reinforced his predecessor’s
wisdom, with references to his own failed career as a player.
As a player, Beane had lacked discipline at the plate, striking out in bunches and rarely walking.
His attitude had also predicted failure. Finally, Beane had been signed out of high school. This gave scouts far less data on his abilities than they had for college players. For Beane, ability to make solid contact would trump the more spectacular tools. A player’s makeup would be of paramount consideration. College players would be preferred to high schoolers. These priorities put Beane into conflict with much of his organization. A’s scouts still drooled over young stallions and undervalued less flashy players. Coaches craved speed and were infatuated with the stolen base. Part of Beane’s task, therefore, was to give solid organizational expression to his philosophy. This he did by making the on-field management completely subordinate to the front
office.