Research Paper On Moneyball

Moneyball!” It’s hard to know where to start about this movie because it has so many great parts in it but this is definitely a movie I would refer people to watch for fun or even to learn about the power moves that happen in the movie. This movie was about a baseball team, not just any baseball team but the Oakland A's; a team that was down recently after they had lost to the Yankees in playoffs the year before. They lost 3 stars in the offseason and didn’t have much money to get more top notch talent on their team. So at first they panicked, general manager Billy Beane had to think fast and figure out how to generate a team that could compete and help him win a world series. Billy Beane was a MLB player but things didn’t work out for him
so he went into management and hated losing so he was pumped up to do whatever it took to make his team win. To do this, he used statistical data to analyze and place value on the players he picks for the team. He had help from a man name Peter Brand who helped him pick players that he analyzed using the Bill James' statistical approach. People were confused by the idea but he knew if he could assemble a team full of no name players who could get the job down and play together well they would be just fine and they would not need to pay the guys hefty contracts that the team could not afford. Now, by them doing that really intrigued me. Just by knowing that this movie was based on a true story and that his strategy was so outrageous for the time period. The business moves they did were looked at as crazy back then and to this day people will still believe that is. The things they did without much money was amazing. To pull that off It took great marketing, great management, and a lot of focus and time to do what they did. The amazing part about what they did is that they did what the richest teams could not do with all the money they had. It goes to show that money can’t buy everything. Just because you can buy a lot of players and have a team full of big stars doesn’t mean that you will win every game. It’s a deeper strategy that goes into it! They knew if they could keep the cost down while picking up quality players that they would still win many games because all the pieces would connect right for them. Billy and his group of “rejects” valued winning more than anything but they knew what had to be done in order for them to win.
Which brings me to my next point, it must have been extremely challenging for Billy to figure out a plan to compete with teams that had almost double what his team had for money to offer.
Especially after losing three of his star players to richer teams. He had to go out on a whelm if you will and go off of theories that had never been proven. The people he had to look for support from a lot of them did not believe in his theory at first especially the head manager Art Howe! Art Howe had no clue and did not believe in his plan at all and Beane knew that. This is why making sure that his theory was right I believe was the most challenging thing he had to do because he knew if he didn’t produce that he would be fired. So he had to make some tweaks and pick players up that some would call washed up and or overvalued like Scott Hatteberge. Scott was a pitcher that everyone thought was washed up but that’s not how Billy saw him, he knew that Scott had a bad elbow injury but he still knew he had value in him. So, he signed him as a person to get on base even though they knew he wasn’t a hitter. They also showed him how to play first base as well because he would not need to throw typically. This is something that nobody liked at first but it ended up working out for
him.
Now, that was one of the decisions I thought was a monetary decision and a winning reason. The reason why is because Beanie signing him saved him money but also helped him win games because he knew he was a competitor and a monetary one because he fit the system that they trying to run. He made a lot of decisions that were both monetary and winning reasons. However here is one that is just about monetary, he fired his scout for openly questioning him. He had to fire him because he did not need more people second guessing him and being negative so I believe that was a long term decision that paid off big for him.
Another decision that I thought was a monetary one that was long term was when he hired the Yale graduate as an assistant manager who had good skills at breaking players down and using analytical system to figure out who they needed to sign. A short term decision that I believed effected both winning and monetary was his decision to follow through with his theory no matter what and to keep pursing it, even when nobody else believe in him. He made so many big decisions, even just the people he worked in the office with. They had a huge effect on winning and the monetary perspective. All in all, I believe most of decisions were pretty sound, it’s kind of hard to say that they were not good ones because of all the success he had during the season even when everybody doubted his method.
I know, many people will say that GMs/owners should be able to have influence over the lineup because it’s their team. However, I do not believe they should have a whole lot of control because they should hire people with like minds to help the team out. They should not “but” in every time there is a problem. They should ride it out and see what comes of the new move first. I understand that things get sketchy and it makes it easy to want to intervene but you are paying these people good money to know what they are doing.
Which brings me to my last point I do not believe players salary caps should be lowered because some players really have a huge impact and they train hard to be that good so that should be awarded based of impact. However, I do wish there was a way to keep teams total compensation level relatively equal that way super star teams aren’t form even though this movie shows that the A’s still were able to compete at a high level even with richer teams. The teams should have all have around the same amount to spend because after all fans love close games but in the same breath people love cheering for the underdog. So this is a rough decision but I do believe teams should have close to equal spending!
All in all, this film showed me a lot about business and how it works.
The strategies that were used in this movie to make a team of nobody’s and washed up players great is remarkable. They figured out their team’s weaknesses and went after all the small parts that they needed to make a team that stuck together and that was driven to win and prove the baseball world wrong. They kept their budget low and even though they did that, they still were able to beat most of the big and rich teams because how they analyzed each player. Each player was valuable for a certain reason and even though this sounds harsh but nobody was really a super star. The players were just pieces to a bigger puzzle. They showed the business side of baseball it’s all about what you can do for the team. They made the best moves they could while keeping the spending down. This movie was very intense but had a lot of light moments in it as well that will make you laugh but over all this movie was a straight business
movie.