Welcome to Billy Beane’s Low Budget Strategy to Stay Competitive in the Era of Big Market Baseball.

Depending on your level of obsession with baseball, you may have heard the term Moneyball. As far as avid Oakland Athletics fans go, Moneyball has become your sole existence. Contrived by Athletics’ General Manager Billy Beane, Moneyball is a proven philosophy. If you’re on a limited budget, there is no better way to produce an effective team on the cheap. Inhibited by the Athletics’ frugal spending, Billy needed a revolutionary system to ensure his club’s success.

Billy Beane is a numbers guy, erring on the side of simplicity. In his mind, the game does deeper than intangibles. Refusing to accept what his eyes witnessed on the field, he turned to numerical analysis. The initiative was to find a key measure of worth hidden behind all of the accumulated statistics. What he discovered was a simple ratio that transformed the sport. OPS (On-base Plus Slugging percentage) would become the cornerstone of a paradigm shift that would arm player development programs with a fast-track to major league success.

OPS has proven itself immensely valuable as it single-handedly defines your offensive prowess in one number. In order to understand this better, let’s breakdown the composites of OPS. On-base percentage alone, reflects the number of times a hitter reaches first base safely via a hit or base on balls (also known as the number of times a player reaches first safely divided by the number of timed or official at bats). Secondly, a player’s slugging percentage reflects their total bases divided by their number of timed at bats. Finally, you add the two quantities, on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and you have a player’s OPS. For instance, a player with a .347 on-base percentage and a .497 slugging percentage, owns an (.347 + .497) = .844 OPS.

What it All Means

You now have quantitative data that intimates a players ability to hit for average, draw walks, and drive the baseball for extra base hits (i.e. homer runs, triples, and doubles). Beyond that, OPS also infers the number of pitches you see per plate appearance since high walk totals and high batting averages (also known as high on-base percentage) translate to many pitches thrown during a plate appearance. In the era of pitch counts and poor middle relief, this is an extremely valuable trait for a player to possess.

How Billy Used this Knowledge to Compete

Enter Billy Beane’s genius. He realized the value of this previously overlooked ratio. He realized the true statistical measure of a hitter’s worth. Finally, plate discipline, bat control, and power are all captured in a single measure. To foster this trend, Billy went to work restructuring the Athletics minor league program. His Player Development Personnel focused on long, patient at bats. Players were encouraged to not swing the bat until the first strike had been recorded.

Plate discipline in young players was previously unheard of, yet has multiple benefits. First, it gets the hitter comfortable taking pitches, and hitting when they are behind in the count (more strikes than balls). Secondly, it ensures a pitcher has to work hard by throwing many pitches during the at bat. As a point of reference, any player that sees over 3.5 pitches per plate appearance is doing a great job of what is known as “working the count”. This approach has a compounded effect as each hitter in the lineup “grinds out” at bats against the opposing pitcher, wearing away at the hurler’s endurance. Finally, it allows young players to learn how to hit off speed pitches. Normally a pitcher throws fastballs early in the count in order to get ahead. The Moneyball philosophy forces hitters to learn to hit curve-balls, change-ups, and sliders. Readily preparing them for the filthy stuff they will see in the Majors.

Hold Your Ground, We Don’t Steal in Oakland

Moneyball is not just for hitting, it extends to the base paths. In Billy Beane’s system there are no stolen bases. Staying put is not just encouraged it is enforced. Systematic with Billy’s pragmatic approach there are 27 outs in a game, and there is no room for giving up outs on the diamond. Therefore, players on the A’s will have a handful of stolen bases at best by the season’s end, regardless of their speed. Ironic, considering this is the same organization that witnessed Rickey Henderson’s unrivaled prowess on the base paths during the late 80s Oakland dynasty.

Considering how frugal Billy is with giving up outs, one can imagine there is no room for sacrifice bunting either. Seldom if ever will you see an Athletic lay down a sacrifice bunt to advance the runner into scoring position while giving up an out in the process. With Billy the plan is simple. Take pitches, draw walks, and hit for power.

Jason Giambi, the Prime Example of Moneyball

In every way, Jason epitomizes Moneyball. Brought up in Billy’s system, Jason put up dominant numbers for the Athletics while adhering strictly to the Moneyball mantra. Jason’s prowess culminated during the 2000 season when he was voted the League MVP. That year Jason’s on-base percentage was .476, his slugging percentage .647, translating to a (.476 + .647) = 1.123 OPS! As a point of reference, an OPS over .900 is All Star caliber with over.975 being the measure of dominance. Remarkably, Giambi followed up his 2000 campaign with a towering 1.137 OPS in 2001, which was his year to become a free agent.

With his contract with the A’s expiring, Jason Giambi would come full circle in the Moneyball system. He would leave. There was no way the A’s could match the 7 year $140 million deal offered by the Goliath Yankees. George Steinbrenner was fresh off a World Series defeat and was looking for a free agent splash. Unfortunately, few players are worth that kind of money. Here lies the final piece of wisdom that is Moneyball. Big money free agents are paid inflated salaries not for what they will do, instead they are paid for what they have done. By the time a player reaches the open market he is often times on the wrong side of 30. They may produce a few excellent seasons, but they will almost never replicate the success of their mid-late twenties. See Jason’s numbers with the Yankees.

Billy Beane has exploited this logic, as a result Moneyball teams receive the highest cost benefit of their players. They get peak production at a fraction of the cost. As long as an organization is equipped with an outstanding scouting unit as a part of their Player Development, they will maintain competitiveness despite being grossly outspent by the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, Cubs, Angels, and Giants.

Billy Beane deserves tremendous credit. This maverick GM has kept his organization proud and competitive with the power of innovation. In Baseball, tradition is the great equalizer, but Billy has proven there is always something magical hidden in the numbers.

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