I wouldn’t necessary call him a hero, but Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s, is certainly a true rationalist. He is the protagonist of the nonfiction book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.
Before Beane, decisions about what baseball players to draft were mostly made by professional scouts. These guys spent their time driving across the country to find young players and watch them play. Serious attention was paid to how a player “looked”—his physique, his grace, and his personality (aggressiveness was a big plus). Statistics were factored into the decision, but not given much weight, since 1) statistics about a player’s high school career didn’t imply much about his professional career, and 2) people weren’t counting the right things. For example, batting average turns out to be much less important than on-base percentage (the latter takes walks into account, the former doesn’t).
Billy Beane helped to change that. He was able to turn a team with a relatively small budget (the A’s spent about a third of what the Yankees spent on salaries) into a consistent winner. Like Munger, he looked for value: players who, because of inadequacies in other teams’ evaluation methods, could be hired cheaply relative to their talents.
I wouldn’t necessary call him a hero, but Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland A’s, is certainly a true rationalist. He is the protagonist of the nonfiction book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.
Before Beane, decisions about what baseball players to draft were mostly made by professional scouts. These guys spent their time driving across the country to find young players and watch them play. Serious attention was paid to how a player “looked”—his physique, his grace, and his personality (aggressiveness was a big plus). Statistics were factored into the decision, but not given much weight, since 1) statistics about a player’s high school career didn’t imply much about his professional career, and 2) people weren’t counting the right things. For example, batting average turns out to be much less important than on-base percentage (the latter takes walks into account, the former doesn’t).
Billy Beane helped to change that. He was able to turn a team with a relatively small budget (the A’s spent about a third of what the Yankees spent on salaries) into a consistent winner. Like Munger, he looked for value: players who, because of inadequacies in other teams’ evaluation methods, could be hired cheaply relative to their talents.