The Myth About Moneyball

 

The book Moneyball by Michael Lewis is a book about how the 2002 Oakland A's and General Manager Billy Bean planned to get back to the playoffs after losing guys like Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon to free agency after winning 102 games the year before. They use all this math and statistics about on base percentage and figure out that they can pay a guy like Scott Hatteberg way less money for almost the same production as these big guys they would be losing. Now, in theory I guess you could say this might work. But it's the details that the book and the movie forget to tell you that make Moneyball basically complete bullshit. 

The first thing they do is try and tell you that Scott Hatteberg who was the replacement for Giambi has almost the same numbers as Giambi did the year before. If that were the case than Hatteberg would have won the AL MVP in 2002. Would you like me to compare the statistics of the two from 2001 to 2002? Well I will anyway. In 2001 Jason Giambi who also won the AL MVP and Silver Slugger Award hit .342 with a .477 on base percentage. He also hit 38 home runs had 120 RBI's and scored 109 runs. That is an absolute monster year. Here's Hatteberg's stats from 2002. He hit .280 with a .348 on base percentage, 15 home runs, 61 RBI's and scored 58 runs. How can you even compare those two sets of numbers? It's not even close. Giambi had more than double the home runs, double the RBI's, his 62 points higher, had an on base percentage that was 129 points higher and scored almost the double the amount of runs. There is no comparison. 

Next is where they fail to mention everything else that the 2002 A's actually had. That 2002 Oakland team had two Cy Young candidates with Barry Zito winning 23 games and Mark Mulder winning 19. Then to add to that Tim Hudson won 15 games and Billy Koch who threw 100mph had 44 saves. With that pitching staff you're not losing many games, yet this isn't mentioned at any point in the book or the movie. What is also not mention are the two MVP candidates they had in their lineup every day. Miguel Tejada hit 34 home runs, drove in 131 runs and hit .308. Eric Chavez also hit 34 home runs and drove in 109. Add to those two Jermaine Dye with 24 dingers and 86 RBI's and you have three guys that give you a lineup that makes everyone else better. These three guys also aren't mentioned at any point. 

The whole premise of Moneyball actually does work in theory. But in reality the comparison isn't even close. That 2002 Oakland A's team didn't win because of Moneyball they won because they had a tremendous pitching staff and lineup consisting of two MVP candidates. Are the book and movie interesting and phenomenal? Yes they are. But how well has it actually worked? As you can see here, it was about the other guys they still had on their roster and not about the theory.