What the movie doesn't say: The Moneyball approach failed in the end

The truth is that a mixture of the two philosophies is what works. The biggest issue the A's have, as you said, is that even when using the moneyball system they just end up screwing themselves because they get talented players and then can't keep them. That's why teams like Boston who have modified that system have won.

What makes the A's a success though is that even though they have the lowest or nearly the lowest payroll in the league, they can still be a contender using this system. They did step it up last season and made some moves but unfortunately fell flat.

you missed the whole point, the old system of idiots who claim to know it all based on intuition is obviously destroyed forever, a new more knowledgeable system dominates.

Well it achieved what it was supposed to do. Judge players by their statistics not public image or some other "gut" feeling of 125 year old "scout" sense for laughing out loud.

The increase in human knowledge is the cause of the decline of religions.

People have already answered this pretty well, but I'll re-iterate one key point, as well as mention my own. Billies goal was to "change the game".

1) All the other teams now use this approach to get the best statistical players that money can buy (so of course if everyone is doing it, it's now harder to get a bargain based on the statistics). But everyone still uses it because the approach was a resounding success. Just because the fishing hole is no longer the "secret fishing hole", doesn't mean the fishing hole doesn't yield fish.

2) Billie was originally signed based on flawed methodology. One of the first things he did when he hired Pete in the film was ask him if he would have taken him in the first round. He's doing this because he wants to know if the Moneyball approach would have resulted in better outcomes than the current methodology.

He concluded that it would have. The Moneyball approach may have failed to let the A's win, but *everyone* now uses it because, on average, it results in far superior decision making. In an odd way, I saw it as Billies way of going back in time, to make sure that what happened to him, would be less likely to happen to other players in the future.

Actually it proved that with a reasonable budget to carry out the Moneyball strategy it could lead to a World Series win...The Red Sox took the blueprint that the A's utilized and won it all 3 times over the next ten seasons...



The feeling we have here — remember it, take it home and do some good with it. Please be kind

No, it really hasn't failed.

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

This is a very good article that explains in detail just how impressive Beane's system has been. If after reading this article you still think Saber-metrics hasn't had a very serious effect on Baseball, in particular the Oakland A's, then your living in la la land.

Still Shooting With Film!

1) No strategy is a long-term winning strategy, because eventually your competitors figure out what you're doing and adapt it to their own circumstances.

2) Context matters. "Long-term" in your industry is not equal to "Long-term" in sports, where every GM (and coach) knows they're hired to be fired. i.e., The next 3-4 years are all that matter.

3) Over the last few decades, major sports leagues have grown from 16-24 franchises per league to now 30-32. Since there is still only one championship per league, you either

(3a) accept the fact that there will be 29-31 losers every season, or
(3b) re-calibrate success to include getting deep into the playoffs (which the A's did fairly often)

What happened was other teams did what Beane said to the scout who quit in the movie, "Adapt or die". Everyone adapted to Beane's ways of finding players, now he has to "Adapt or die" again, if he's still around running the show in Oakland.