Moneyball — A Game Changer
If you are a Brad Pitt fan or even a Jonah Hill fan (like me), chances are you have seen or heard of Moneyball. It is a 2011 movie about baseball that was nominated for several Academy Awards, including best supporting actor for my guy Jonah, who is going to play a pivotal role in this blog post. The movie follows the true story of Billy Beane (Pitt) and Paul DePodesta (Peter Brand as he is called in the movie) (Hill), and how they changed the game of baseball and other sports worldwide forever.
Without giving any spoilers away, Billy Beane, the general manager of MLB team the Oakland Athletics, had an awful team and budget for the 2002/03 season and needed to make some serious changes in order to be in with a chance of competing. In short, they needed a miracle. So they tried something that had never been done before and drafted players solely based on their stats. Using sabermetrics (baseball statistics) only, they selected players that had the highest on-base percentage. This was revolutionary, as traditionally scouts would recommend players having watched them play and identified their strengths and weaknesses, giving each player a scout’s report. Some of the players Beane picked were old, slow or hindered by injuries, but they all had one thing in common: they got on base. Didn’t matter how fast or how elegantly they got there, the only thing that mattered was that they got there. Against his own scouts’ advice, Beane selected these players using this model that was introduced to him by Peter Brand. This is dramatized in this movie scene below, with Jonah Hill providing the cold hard stats:
This new method of selecting players proved to be extremely successful. So much so, in fact, that the Oakland Athletics went on to win 20 consecutive games that season, a feat that hadn’t been done for over 100 years and a MLB record. The Red Sox offered Beane a whopping $12.5 million (the largest contract for any manager of any sports team in the world at the time) to take over as their general manager afterwards, which he rejected. They went on to win the 2004 World Series using this model pioneered by Beane and DePosta.
The Red Sox were not the only team to take notice. The use of data and statistics in sport around the world changed forever after this. Basketball teams started to change their game plans to score more efficiently. Giving preference to 3 pointers and easy, close to the basket shots to average a higher average points per game tally. This change in tactics is illustrated perfectly below with the stark contrast in the top 200 most popular shot locations in the NBA in 2002 and more recently in 2020. Daryl Morey was the first to introduce this tactic with the Boston Celtics and it was dubbed “Moreyball”, I’ll let you guys connect the dots there...
Fun fact: Michael Lewis, who wrote the book on which the movie “Moneyball” was based, also wrote a book about “Moreyball”. Hmmmm.
These are 2 great examples of information systems and how they are used in sports. We can clearly see how data influenced 2 different sports. Want another example in a different sport? Say no more, take Memphis Depay. A young Dutch footballing prospect who moved to Manchester United in 2015 and endured a tragic 2 years where he failed miserably and disappointed everyone. Desperate, in 2017 his agent hired a sports data intelligence firm called SciSports to analyze Memphis and match him with the best European team that would suit his play style and help to maximize his talents. After crunching the numbers, SciSports presented their findings to Lyon who couldn’t argue with the numbers and agreed to sign him. This transfer was one of the first of its kind and proved to be a huge success. It has changed the way many signings are made today and is yet another example of how data driven decisions in sport can be more effective than human scouts or intuition.
Well there you have it, Moneyball- an absolute game changer. Knock on effects which carried over into completely different sports. There is no way to know exactly how big an influence Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics have had but what is known is that they were one of the first teams to make decisions that were predominantly data driven and they have inspired many others to follow suit.
Thanks for reading, enjoy the rest of the blog posts :)
Cormac
Bibliography
University Express. 2021. “The Moneyball Effect” — how data is revolutionising sport. [online] Available at: <https://uccexpress.ie/the-moneyball-effect-how-data-is-revolutionising-sport/> [Accessed 7 April 2021].
Toronto Star 2021. Morey’s ‘Moneyball’ approach paying off. [online] Available at: <https://www.thestar.com/sports/basketball/raptors/2008/03/13/moreys_moneyball_approach_paying_off.html> [Accessed 8 April 2021].
Razorgator.com Blog. 2021. How Legit Was Moneyball? The Story Behind The Oakland A’s and All That Data. [online] Available at: <https://www.razorgator.com/blog/how-legit-was-moneyball-the-story-behind-the-oakland-as-and-all-that-data/> [Accessed 8 April 2021].
