Oakland Athletics Research Articles

Data Journey: Digitalization Projects Deliver Returns for Operators

Data are the backbone of what Klaus Schwab—the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum—proclaimed to be the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This 21st‑century revolution is one of connectivity, advanced analytics, automation, and manufacturing technology. While the road to this high‑tech revolution started long ago with the use of water and steam to power mechanized production, it was electricity’s ability to power mass production that delivered us from the first to the second industrial revolution. Electronics and information systems necessary to automate production ushered in the third revolution. The data and our abilities to decipher and extract value from these seemingly random and disparate patterns of numbers and letters to create actionable intelligence is rapidly transforming the way business is conducted. Data are everywhere and in everything. But on the grand scale of time, the collection, analysis, and application of digital data is relatively young. Billy Bean and the Major League Baseball team Oakland Athletics, for example, demonstrated the importance of data‑driven decision making in the early 2000s by leveraging the power of data analytics to go from last place contender to chasing the championship in what has become known as Moneyball. Some 20 years later, the power of data and digital continues to evolve, with the bright lights of Qatar’s Lusail Stadium, for example, shining down last month on the final football match of the FIFA World Cup; every movement made by Al Rihla was captured, stored, and analyzed. But Al Rihla was not a player; it was the football created by Adidas and used in each of the more than 60 matches held throughout the tournament with an internal sensor for real‑time ball tracking capabilities. High‑speed cameras and antennas surrounding the football pitch provided additional support, feeding data into FIFA’s enhanced football intelligence service. The data collected during the matches were analyzed on a variety of metrics like possession time, line breaks, pressure on the ball, and forced turnovers, and then shared with teams with the goal of improving the game and its players. Winning the “beautiful game” is not as simple as it looks, as there’s more to kicking the ball into the opposing team’s net to score a goal as many times as possible in 90 minutes. These data offer an inside look into the processes of success or failure. Simple, too, is the production of oil and gas when explained on paper: drill a hole into the ground, route what flows to the surface into a pipeline, and then get paid for the effort invested in delivering that resource to the market when the price is right. It is more complicated than that, and data are playing an important role in delivering production increases and more. Data powered the shale gale that swept across the US oil and gas industry. David Millwee, vice president of drilling performance for Patterson‑UTI Drilling, credits data for helping to deliver the yearly increases in the lateral footage drilled.

Hairs vs. Squares: The Mustache Gang, the Big Red Machine, and the Tumultuous Summer of '72 by Ed Gruver

Reviewed by: Hairs vs. Squares: The Mustache Gang, the Big Red Machine, and the Tumultuous Summer of '72 by Ed Gruver Brian E. Campbell Ed Gruver, Hairs vs. Squares: The Mustache Gang, the Big Red Machine, and the Tumultuous Summer of '72. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. 408 pp. $29.95 (cloth). Journalist Ed Gruver's Hairs vs. Squares chronicles the 1972 Major League Baseball season. In doing so, he provides a window for exploring broader tensions in national culture and identity in the United States following the turbulent 1960s. Gruver shows how the media framed the 1972 World Series matchup between the Cincinnati Reds and Oakland Athletics as a contest between conservative midwestern values and emerging liberal politics on the West Coast. Citing how the media portrayed differences in style, dress, and appearance, Gruver's book shows that by studying the Reds/A's series, we can trace the origins of contemporary debates over culture in public discourse. Each chapter moves the story forward chronologically, beginning with baseball's off-season in February and culminating in the Reds/A's series in November. Along the way, Gruver stops to comment on pivotal moments during the spring and summer months. He is at his best in this regard when describing the 1972 labor strike that occurred during the opening week of the season—the first of its kind in MLB history. Gruver rightly argues that while brief, the April strike "set the stage for future labor disputes in each of America's four major sports" (53). It would still be two years before MLB abolished the reserve clause, finally giving players the opportunity to negotiate contracts with other teams in free agency. But in 1972, players realized their labor power in an unprecedented way: Baseball owners would have to contend with a powerful players' union moving forward. The Cincinnati media responded to the labor strike with great animosity towards the ballplayers. Gruver explains that Reds owner Francis Dale—who also owned [End Page 188] the Cincinnati Enquirer—used his newspaper to undermine the players' strike and generate the sentiment among fans that greedy athletes were cheating hard-working, blue-collar fans out of their national pastime (63). Throughout Hairs vs. Squares, Gruver suggests that differences in style and dress were central to media depictions of the Reds and A's. He writes that in an "era in which one's personal appearance was oft en a political statement, the free-spirited, long-haired, and mustachioed A's represented the California youth movement, campus protests at UCLA, and the counterculture" (3). The team's anti-establishment look and attitude "conjured up images of Berkeley students taking on the military-industrial complex," according to Gruver (301). In contrast, the Cincinnati Reds embodied the conservative history of baseball as the team of traditional values and midwestern sensibility. Conservative sportswriters in Cincinnati negatively referred to Oakland's ballplayers as "hippies and Yippies" in contrast to the home team's more straight-laced, traditional appearance (3). The World Series, then, became more than just a sporting event—it represented a drama played out in public discourse about differences in regional cultural identity. Hairs vs. Squares also examines how baseball's demographics changed as Latino stars like Tony Pérez, César Gerónimo, and Dave Concepción emerged as key players for the Reds in 1972. Latino ballplayers made up 9 percent of major leaguers that year, and that number was estimated to rise to 11 percent by the end of 1973 (132). The 1972 season represented a turning point as Latinos changed the racial makeup of baseball in the U.S. for good. In chapter 12, Gruver elaborates on the Latino experience by profiling former Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Manny Sanguillén. Sanguillén was born in Panama and broke into professional baseball with the Columbus, Ohio, minor league team in the late 1960s. Sanguillén spoke little English when he first arrived in Columbus, but he soon met other Spanish-speaking players who helped him navigate life in the Midwest (261). Hairs vs. Squares reminds us that by 1972, Latino players were living and working in various midwestern cities, creating a network that...

Evaluation of soccer players under the Moneyball concept

ABSTRACT The recruitment of athletes with limited resources is a global problem in professional sports. In US Major League Baseball, the experience of the Oakland Athletics’ general manager in the last decade turned his “Moneyball” model into a synonym of quantitative analysis in the transfer market of baseball players. His strategy focused on hiring players with outstanding technical skills but relatively low market value. This study adapted this model to the framework of a multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA), by selecting undervalued players who have complementary abilities. The novelty here refers to the joint use of four algorithms explored by the composition of probabilistic preferences (CPP) (i.e., ranking, classification, dynamic evaluation and regularity analysis) and their application to soccer player performance evaluation. The new model analysed the recent transfer of a left-back soccer player to Europe. The results indicated 12 opportunities for better investment, among 32 left and right-back players considered. Two years later, the value of the same player was considerably lower. He played only five matches in the 2018–2019 season, without scoring or providing any assists. On the other hand, the players better classified by the CPP-MB model presented higher performances and market values.

Data analytics effects in major league baseball

The use of data analytics has enjoyed resurgence over the last two decades in professional sports, businesses, and the government. This resurgence is attributable to Moneyball, which exposed readers to the use of advanced baseball analytics by the Oakland Athletics, and how it has resulted in improved player selection and game management. Moreover, it changed managerial vocabulary, as the term “Moneyballing” now commonly describes organizations that use data analytics. The first research question that this study examines is whether the organizational knowledge related to baseball data analytics has provided any advantage in the competitive Major League Baseball (MLB) marketplace. The second research question is whether this strategic advantage can be sustained once this proprietary organizational knowledge becomes public. First, I identify “Moneyball” teams and executives, i.e., those who rely on baseball data analytics, and track their pay/performance over time. Next, using econometric models, I analyze whether these “Moneyball” teams and GMs, have enjoyed a pay-performance advantage over the rest of MLB, and whether this advantage persists after the information becomes public.

“The Magnitude of Me”: Reggie Jackson, Baseball, and the Seventies

Abstract During the 1970s, Reggie Jackson, arguably the most polarizing black baseball player of his time, became an emblem of the decade. A five-time World Series champion with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees, he publicly challenged white owners, managers, teammates, and reporters. For Jackson, challenging white authority meant reclaiming his manhood. While white critics claimed that he was too flamboyant and too outspoken, black fans and writers complained that he was self-absorbed, unwilling to speak out for any cause other than his own. Embracing the politics of self, Jackson emerged as a symbol of excessive individualism during a growing cultural shift toward personal fulfillment. Although Jackson was one of the most prominent athletes of the seventies, historians have neglected to explain his larger cultural significance. His story, however, not only reveals how black athletes shaped the idea of the “Me Decade” but also how they transformed American sports through participation, protest, and personalized peformance. Jackson was at the forefront of a new generation of black athletes: the first class of baseball’s fee agents, players who were wealthier, more mobile, and more independent. Among the first black athletes who crossed over as mainstream corporate spokesmen, he became baseball’s greatest media star, recognized as much for his personality as for his athletic accomplishments. The age of Jackson marked a turning point in American sports history, one where black athletes embraced new freedoms, defied authority, and expressed their own individual style.

"God Bless America" and Baseball's Anthem Controversies

"God Bless America" and Baseball's Anthem Controversies Justin Turner (bio) Many storylines from the 2016 and 2017 NFL seasons involved player protests during the pregame playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Baseball, by contrast, was largely spared from controversy. The only Major League Baseball player to kneel during the national anthem was Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell, who first took a knee in September 2017. Maxwell cited inflammatory comments from President Donald Trump—who had referred to protesting NFL players with an expletive and called for their firing—as a motivating factor, along with the racism he witnessed growing up in Huntsville, Alabama.1 Maxwell's protest did not continue into the 2018 season, which was his last in MLB, and through the 2019 season, no other major league players have kneeled during the national anthem.2 Baseball has not been devoid of controversies over patriotic songs at the ballpark, but these have typically not involved "The Star-Spangled Banner."3 Rather, another nationalistic tune, "God Bless America," has been baseball's tonal tempest in the twenty-first century. First written in 1918, the Irving Berlin song carries religious overtures, reinforces the belief in American exceptionalism, and has become something of an alternate national anthem, particularly in recent years. Since September 11, 2001, it has assumed a prominent place at ballparks, often played or performed as part of the seventh-inning stretch. This relatively new profile, along with recent political developments, have made the song far more polarizing for baseball than the national anthem. "God Bless America" has a long history with baseball. The song became popularly known after Kate Smith's 1938 debut radio performance, and by the 1940s it was occasionally being performed at baseball stadiums. In the 1960s, the Chicago White Sox temporarily substituted the song for the "Star-Spangled Banner" in pregame ceremonies, prompting none other than Berlin himself to call for the latter's reinstatement. In response, the team conducted a poll and allowed fans to cast votes for the permanent pregame anthem, with "The Star-Spangled Banner" beating out "God Bless America," and "America [End Page 82] the Beautiful." "God Bless America" also persisted despite technological changes, as recorded popular music began to displace live organ performances at baseball stadiums. A 1980 newspaper article on the musical innovations at Shea Stadium, which abandoned organ music during the 1979 season in favor of contemporary songs, noted that a few old standards, including "God Bless America," were still played on occasion.4 Two specific performances of "God Bless America" at baseball stadiums demonstrate the song's importance in the cultural landscape. On July 20, 1969, baseball games paused to acknowledge the moment that the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon. When game two of a Cubs-Phillies double header in Philadelphia was stopped, players lined up along the foul lines, the crowd observed a moment of silence, and the stadium played a recording of "God Bless America."5 Seven years later, the song spontaneously took part in a bizarre on-field incident. In the fourth inning of an April 1976 game at Dodger Stadium, William Errol Thomas and his eleven-year-old son ran onto to the field and attempted to set fire to an American flag to protest the treatment of American Indians. Before they could ignite the banner, however, Chicago Cubs left-fielder Rick Monday, who was positioned closest to the pair, snatched the lighter fluid–soaked flag and sprinted away. As Thomas and his son gave chase to Monday, Tommy Lasorda—then the Dodgers' third base coach—went after them, shouting expletives at the pair as security personnel detained them. The crowd erupted in applause and began singing "God Bless America," as a congratulatory message, "Rick Monday—You Made a Great Play," appeared on the stadium scoreboard. Lasorda later called it "one of the most heroic acts ever to take place on the field during a major league baseball game."6 "God Bless America" did not become a ballpark mainstay until after 9/11. The song developed a new primacy among patriotic tunes, thanks in part to an impromptu and emotional rendition by United States Senators and Representatives who gathered at...

Multiple Regression and Marketing-Mix Models

In this technical note, the concept of regression using a single independent variable is first introduced and then some of the practical challenges associated with it, including multiple independent variables in a regression, are discussed. Particular attention is paid to bias in the regression coefficients in the presence of omitted variables. The concept of the economic significance of a model is introduced and is contrasted with statistical significance. At Darden, this note is used in the course elective Big Data in Marketing. Excerpt UVA-M-0855 Rev. Jun. 20, 2014 Multiple Regression In Marketing-Mix Models The movie Moneyball has a lot to teach us about optimizing a company's marketing mix. In the movie, the management of the Oakland Athletics discovers that the baseball team can get ahead by changing its perspective and looking at data differently than its competitors. The A's know most major-league teams use batting average (hits over real opportunities) as the prevailing metric for determining the worth of a hitter. Traditional baseball wisdom says, “You hit more, you win more.” So the players who have more hits per at bat are generally the most sought after and are paid the most money. But by examining the outcome of decades of baseball games, the A's manager finds a variable he believes to be more predictive of success. It is not only hits that help a baseball team win; walks count too. Getting on base and not making outs is more closely correlated with winning games than hits alone. The team's management takes the analysis of the data and uses it to buy undervalued players—players who don't necessarily have the highest batting averages but who do have high on-base percentages. For a small-market team such as the A's, which has less money to spend on players than other franchises, this strategy changes the game. . . .

Major League Baseball Anti-Trust Immunity: Examining the Legal and Financial Implications of Relocation Rules

Major League Baseball (MLB) rules restrict the movement of any franchise into another’s territory. These territorial rules are designed to protect each team’s potential local revenue sources as well as to provide stability throughout the league. Recently, Major League Baseball approved financial compensation for the Washington Nationals’ move into the Baltimore Orioles’ territory – primarily because it was in the best interest of MLB even though it hurt the Orioles. However, the Oakland Athletics were unable to even negotiate a potential compensation plan for a move into the San Francisco Giants’ territory, despite the apparent financial benefit the move could have provided for every other league franchise. The Athletics are already located within 15 miles of the Giants, and their potential 40 mile move to San Jose, California would not add a new team to the San Francisco Bay Area; rather, it would simply be a move of a current team to a different location within the metropolitan area. The refusal of the Giants or MLB to negotiate a potential compromise has kept the Oakland Athletics in a substandard facility and has led to their potential move to Fremont, CA – a less desirable location than San Jose.This paper investigates the legal, policy, and financial considerations concerning Major League Baseball’s territorial rules. Specifically, it addresses antitrust law as it pertains to American professional sport; relevant sport franchise relocation cases; financial arguments why leagues desire to control relocation; financial components of MLB’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement; and the potential legal and financial impact of a challenge to MLB’s territorial rules – an option the Oakland Athletic initially investigated prior to their decision to pursue a potential move to Fremont.

Moneyball After 10 Years

Michael Lewis’ Moneyball … describes how the Oakland Athletics exploited an imperfection in the way player productivity was being evaluated pre-2003. On-base percentage appeared to be more important in determining team success compared to more popular statistics. We test the hypothesis that in a competitive market, other teams will increase the weight given on-base percentage in the reward structure for their players. Our results show that in the post-Moneyball (MB) era, the return to on-base percentage has indeed increased for free agents, the group whose salaries we expect to be most affected by the MB philosophy.

Bay Bridge anchorage construction: George Booth Post.

Bay Bridge anchorage construction: George Booth Post.

A Swing and a Hit

A Swing and a Hit

Cost-effective medicine vs. the medical-industrial complex.

In the fascinating non-fiction book Moneyball (and the movie produced therefrom) the story is told of a major league baseball general manager whose team (the Oakland Athletics) did not have the revenue to compete with other major league teams in hiring the expensive superstar players whose celebrity and superior abilities were thought to be necessary for a winning baseball team.

Academic Moneyball

We apply lessons from Moneyball, Michael Lewis's (2003) best-selling account of the Oakland Athletics's use of “sabermetrics” to find undervalued baseball players to help build a cost-effective team to the context of recreation, park, and leisure studies. Specifically, we coin and apply the term “academetrics” to find undervalued faculty members to help build cost-effective academic teams. We also draw analogies between the effects of long- term baseball contracts and tenure on performance, as well as describing different kinds of academic leagues, different kinds of academic players, and what it takes to “win” in academe. We conclude with a discussion of how academe's traditions, just like baseball's traditions, interfere with the progress of the “game.”

A Historical Analysis of the Chicago Cubs’ Use of Statistics to Analyze Baseball Performance

A Historical Analysis of the Chicago Cubs’ Use of Statistics to Analyze Baseball Performance Alan S. Kornspan (bio) Recently, the discussion of baseball statistics has become a popularized aspect of today’s culture. For instance, a best-selling book, Moneyball, portrayed general manager Billy Beane’s use of statistical analysis to lead the Oakland Athletics organization.1 While modern best-selling books and films have focused on the use of baseball statistics, there has been a long history of the utilization of statistical analysis within professional baseball.2 For example, one of the first individuals to scrutinize baseball statistics was Henry Chadwick. Throughout the 1860s, Chadwick initiated the recording of home runs, hits, and total bases, which influenced others to devise statistics such as the batting average.3 While statistical analysis has been part of the game for many years, there is some uncertainty over when it was first used to by teams to evaluate players and to make coaching decisions.4 Baseball historians have long recognized Branch Rickey for bringing statistician Alan Roth onto the Dodgers staff in the late 1940s, but Chicago Cubs owner Philip Wrigley had analysts performing sophisticated analysis a decade earlier.5 In fact, Jerome Holtzman believed that Wrigley should receive credit as one of the first individuals to use statistical analysis in professional baseball.6 Also, according to Donald Dewey, until the 1930s, professional baseball teams only utilized data to provide an explanation of what baseball players did on the field of play.7 Dewey suggested that Wrigley was the first to use statistics to analyze how players performed in various situations.8 Although the use of statistics throughout the history of baseball has been documented, few details about Philip K. Wrigley’s employment of individuals in the late 1930s to provide data analysis for the Chicago Cubs organization have been discussed. Since minimal attention has examined Wrigley’s utilization of statistical analysis during the late 1930s, an assumption may be presumed that before the late 1940s, few team statisticians provided professional baseball management and coaches with detailed information to aid in decision [End Page 17] making and performance improvement. Therefore, this manuscript details the work of Coleman R. Griffith, Jack Sterrett, and Chester Lynn Snyder, who were hired by Philip K. Wrigley in the late 1930s to assist with the collection and analysis of baseball data.9 Additionally, this paper provides information about individuals who provided the Chicago Cubs organization with statistical analysis in the 1950s and 1960s, including Cliff Jaffe, Stan West, Don Biebel, and Ed Whitlow. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to detail the initiation of the use of data analysis for player evaluation by Philip K. Wrigley and the Chicago Cubs organization. First, an overview of Coleman R. Griffith’s beliefs about the importance of statistical analysis and athletics are described. Next, Wrigley’s views and applications of science to improve performance are presented. Specifically, a synopsis of the Chicago Cubs Experimental Laboratories will be depicted. This is followed by reasons Wrigley employed individuals to investigate the scientific components of baseball. Following a discussion of these motives, the work that Griffith, Sterrett, and Snyder provided to the Chicago Cubs will be recounted. The growth of the utilization of statistical analysis for player evaluation by the Chicago Cubs throughout the 1940s to the 1970s is delineated. Finally, the Chicago Cubs’ current use of data analysis is presented. coleman griffith, jack sterrett, and the chicago cubs experimental laboratories Dr. Coleman R. Griffith, the director of the Athletic Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, believed that statistical records could be utilized as a critical tool in helping athletes enhance performance.10 Specifically, in the text Psychology of Coaching, Griffith explained how data analysis could be utilized in various sports. He provided examples of how businesses used statistical analysis that was disseminated in the Babson Reports.11 Likewise, Griffith’s viewpoint was that coaches and athletes could benefit if they utilized data in a comparable manner: There is only one way to be absolutely sure of selecting the right man for the right place and that is to secure all the statistical data about him that can be gotten. Information should...

Streakiness in Home Run Hitting

4 Sports fans are fascinated with patterns of hot and cold behavior among athletes and teams. One of the greatest hitting accomplishments in baseball is Joe DiMaggio’s “Great Streak” of getting a hit in 56 consecutive games in the 1941 season. The Oakland Athletics’ winning streak of 20 consecutive games during the 2002 baseball season was partly the inspiration for the book and movie Moneyball. Indeed, streaky patterns of performance have been featured in a number of Streakiness in Home Run Hitting

Ruck-Play as Performance Indicator during the 2010 Six Nations Championship: A Commentary

INTRODUCTION Analytics is the use of statistical analysis to support decision making in organisations. It is a growth area in many sectors including elite sport. Sports analytics is increasingly becoming part of the coaching toolkit as more and more teams analyse the numbers to go alongside their video analysis. Michael Lewis’s book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (2003), subsequently turned into an Oscar-nominated film starring Brad Pitt, tells the story of how the Oakland Athletics in Major League Baseball embraced the use of statistical analysis in player recruitment and has done much to publicise the possibilities of sports analytics as a David strategy for resource-constrained teams trying to become more competitive. Rugby union is one of the invasion team sports that has been more open than most to the possibilities for analytics as part of an evidence-based approach to coaching. As both a professor of business and sports analytics as well as a technical analyst with a leading English Premiership rugby union team, I welcome Kraak and Welman’s detailed study of ruck play using data from the 15 games in the 2010 Six Nations tournament. My comments on their study come mainly from the perspective of an active practitioner in elite sport. The main contribution of Kraak and Welman is the level of detail on ruck play, particularly the numbers of players involved in a ruck. The 15 games studied yielded 1,479 rucks all of which have been analysed. Although a mass of performance data on all aspects of the game is now available to teams from commercial providers, this data remains primarily tally data on the quantity of different activities and their outcomes, usually coded by player, time and field position. What we still lack is extensive data across teams and games on the micro technical detail of the activities. So, for example, teams are able to source data on the number of rucks contested and the outcomes but are less likely to have detailed data on the number of attackers and defenders involved in each ruck.

Refleksiv Sports Management – Sports Management i et socio- filosofisk perspektiv

Refleksiv Sports Management – Sports management i et socio-filosofisk perspektiv (Reflexive Sport Management – a socio-philosophical approach to sport management)Sports management and its development is closely linked to the development of modern society and modern rationality. This article applies sociological theories and practical management philosophy to shed light on how sports management and its rationality in Denmark (Europe) and the United States have changed and undergone different phases for more than a century, and to show that, in late modernity, they are entering a new phase in which they seem to be more reflexive and communicative. This trend is evident in American sports management and will also soon be reflected in Danish sports management. My analysis of this development will also be based on a specific case study from the American world of sports, namely the story of Oakland Athletics baseball club’s reorganisation in the 1990s, because it both provides a rare insight into a modern sports organisation and demonstrates the reflexive and communicative dimension in late modern sports management.

Hypertension Self-Management

> “People … operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.” > > —Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game The book Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, who collected detailed data and applied advanced statistical techniques to identify high-value baseball players.1 Beane’s data-driven, evidence-based approach to evaluating players ran counter to traditional baseball scouting techniques, which relied on subjective assessments (a batter’s swing, a pitcher’s mechanics) and time-honored performance measures (batting average, stolen bases) that correlate poorly with the ultimate outcome of winning games. Article see p 269 Like traditional baseball scouts, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) often rely on subjective assessments rather than robust data to guide coverage decisions.2,3 By law, CMS must cover reasonable and necessary health services for Medicare beneficiaries.4 However, Congress did not define reasonable and necessary in the legislation that established Medicare. Further, CMS excludes consideration of cost or cost-effectiveness in coverage decisions.5 Because healthcare expenditures continue to grow, we need a more evidence-based and cost-conscious way to make coverage decisions.6 One low-cost …

Quantifying Market Inefficiencies in the Baseball Players’ Market

Among the central arguments of the bestselling book and movie Moneyball was the allegation that the labor market for baseball players was inefficient in 2002. At that time, Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics used observations made by statistical analysts to exploit this market inefficiency, and acquire productive players on the cheap. Econometric analysis published in 2006 and 2007 confirmed the presence of an inefficient market for baseball players, but left open the question of to what extent, and how quickly, a market correction would occur. We find that this market had in fact already corrected by 2006, and moreover argue that the perceived market response to Moneyball in 2004 is properly viewed as part of a more gradual longer-term trend. In addition, we use official payroll data from Major League Baseball to refute a previous observation that the relationship between team payroll and performance has tightened since the publication of Moneyball.

The American League in Transition, 1965–1975: How Competition Thrived When the Yankees Didn’t by Paul Hensler (review)

Reviewed by: The American League in Transition, 1965–1975: How Competition Thrived When the Yankees Didn’t by Paul Hensler Mark Armour Paul Hensler. The American League in Transition, 1965–1975: How Competition Thrived When the Yankees Didn’t. Jefferson nc: McFarland, 2013. 256 pp. Paper, $39.95. After winning twenty-nine pennants in forty-four years, in 1965 the New York Yankees suddenly collapsed to sixth place, and then went pennantless for eleven years. The stated premise of Paul Hensler’s new book is that this period represented a transitory time, when other American League teams vied to take advantage of this temporary Yankee dormancy to stake their own claim to be king of the league. “The period of 1965 to 1975 was an interregnum between Yankee dynasties … [which] served as unwitting bookends in the chronology of American League history” (230). Hensler tells the story of this period through the lenses of three teams—the Minnesota Twins, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Oakland Athletics. All three attained some success before falling back and letting someone else try to gain the throne. The Twins won one-hundred games and the pennant in 1965 and contended a few other times in these years, while the Orioles won four pennants and two World Series, and the A’s won three Series. The author has written three largely unrelated stories, each told chronologically. First, we get the story of the Twins from their move to Minnesota in 1961 through the pennant and two division titles to the mediocrity of the 1970s. The Orioles story chronicles their 1953 move from St. Louis and their growth into the excellent organization they were throughout the 1960s and 1970s. [End Page 162] Finally, we get the story of the A’s, beginning in Kansas City and detailing their rise to glory with lots of material about their zany owner. The stories do not interact with each other. The Orioles met the Twins twice in the postseason and the A’s three times—each of these playoff series is therefore described twice, from different perspectives. The only place in the book that attempts to buttress the point implied by the title and subtitle is the introduction—the rest of the book stays focused on these teams, one at a time. The author does a fine job in discussing the year-to-year, often day-to-day, narratives of these clubs. If you want to learn about the late 1960s Twins, or the great 1966–71 Orioles teams, or the swinging A’s of the early 1970s, especially if you are interested in how the seasons and postseasons unfolded, the author’s well-researched prose provides the salient details. As for the book’s stated premise, the author does not touch on this beyond the introduction. Is this period truly unusual? If one were to look at the whole of American League history—or National League history for that matter—what stands out is not the 1965–75 period, but the years of the actual Yankee dynasty from 1921–1964. The rest of baseball history is littered with teams that win or compete for a year or three or five before falling back to reload. What made the Yankees’ success so amazing is that they never went through these down periods for more than a year or two—as one group of stars was beginning to slow down, another group took the baton and kept running. When we think of a league being competitive, we generally think about teams fighting to win the division or a pennant. In 1964, the Yankees beat the White Sox by one game and the Orioles by two games, one of the better races in league history. The next year, the Twins won rather easily, and in 1966 the Orioles also won easily. Can we really say that competition “thrived when the Yankees didn’t”? But this is not what Hensler means. He is writing not about teams fighting to win the pennant, but about teams fighting to create a dynasty—the end of the Yankees’ run meant that someone else was free to have a dynasty. But are teams run this way? Did...