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Since the beginning of Major League Baseball, scouts have been following the same process for selecting their prospects. Seeking players that are athletic, power hitters, and pitchers that throw like a cannon. But Billy Beane, general manager of Oakland A's and the main character of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a different plan. He and his staff defied old tradition, by building a team based on statistical information not based on how a player looks. Instead they selected hitters with a high on base percentage, and pitchers that have a high ground out percentage. They also achieved this with one of the lowest payrolls and budgets than that of any other team in the league. Just like in class or in Corporate America, Michael Lewis does a fantastic job with the correlation of statistics, statistical analysis, and baseball. Statistical information can be used to aid and provide one with the probability of what may occur, and help make a wise business decision that will benefit the organization. The 2001 baseball draft was a learning experience for the Oakland A’s scouting staff, who mutually came together before the draft on their draft picks. One by one, Billy Beane watched as all of the players that he and his staff highly coveted got picked up. Leaving him with a pool of players that he really did not know anything about. From that moment on, with the help of his assistant Paul DePodesta and a laptop, Billy decided to go against the odds and old scouting tradition and come up with a more effective and cheaper way to choose his players. Tired of making blind decisions, Billy basically had to retrain his scouting department and veer them away from old ways. They decided to research the history of the draft and use the internet to find every stat imaginable on any player imaginable. They found out that scouts loved picking up high school players, but most of all high school pitchers. With the touch of a button Paul and Billy also discovered that these same high school pitchers were twice less likely than college pitchers, and four times less likely than college position players, to make it to the major league.
Approximate Word count = 1385
Approximate Pages = 5.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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