As someone for whom Moneyball bought a nice house, I can say with some confidence that I have seen analytics elevate the smartest organisations to new heights, while burying the less sophisticated under their own confirmation bias. Many in the middle do good work that nevertheless gets ignored by the relevant decision makers. The mere existence of stats guarantees you absolutely nothing.
I won the Premier League's first analytics hackathon (at Man City, 2016, IIRC), and all we did was some regression using some data that nobody had really looked at in detail before.
Back then, it was relatively easy to just look around and prod relatively available data and find new angles if you went in eyes open. If you were trying to justify spending all that money on that kid who isn't working out with you, the approach lets you dig the hole you want.
Moneyball highlights an inefficiency that I would think would've stopped existing sometime in the 80-90's as data driven approaches have become standard.
One of the analytics leads for the Red Sox came to Harvard to give a presentation. I asked if he could quantify the effects analytics was having compared to the conventional wisdom developed over the course of 150 years of pro baseball.
He thought that analytics was changing the probabilities of discrete events by single digits. Essentially, nobody was doing anything wrong, there were just optimizations that were/are available.
Remember that the book/movie is about the A’s, who were eliminated in the first round of the baseball playoffs.
It was just after the 90s in 2002 so not too far off. Teams were collecting more data but looking at it wrong and now it's likely much less effective because it's been brought out into the open by both the book and the movie. Though small cap teams are still paying way less per win than the big boys like the Yankees who can pay almost 3x per win.
I think a common misconception of Moneyball is that it's about analytics. The broader lesson is that people need to systematically evaluate undervalued assets in sports/business etc.
One of the interesting 'post-Moneyball' stories is when old-school scouting methods came back onto the scene. People started overvaluing the new popularized statistics, and the market advantage was to combine the analytics and traditional approach in a cost-efficient manner.
The 2014/2015 Royals capitalized on this to some degree, picking up players who didn't strike out or walk much, at a time when players who walked a lot were at a super premium.
Some of the smarter teams in the NFL seem to be figuring out that maybe running backs aren't completely fungible, as has been the mantra for a while.
There are things that work with a very high percentage ...and there are things that are enormously satisfying and exciting to do.
If you're interested in winning you will methodically do the "correct" things.
The problem is it's just so much fun to do a firemans carry ...
In the Moneyball narrative, the non-analytical scouts are branded as "stupid" or "thick" or even "bigoted". I see them as more human and less robotic. I bet they have more fun than Billy Beane (and the book suggests they do).
As someone who has practiced and followed sports before, during, and after the revolution in analytics and optimization, I can say that “back in the day,” sports were definitely more fun, interesting, and creative, whereas now they are more regimented and boring, but individual athletes and teams are much better at winning. There is no longer much room for eccentric, flamboyant characters, “geniuses,” or charismatic competitors who, thanks to their instincts and intuition, were able to make the winning move.
But, as in business and personal relationships, finding what works best and putting it into practice tends to be more likely to succeed than simply hoping it will work--look at me, it has never been tried before!
Totally anecdotal, but you see in Sim Racing versus Real Racing, the best sim racers are very regimented and analytical, and whilst it's mostly true of Real Racing, the confluence of death, consequence and mechanical failure lends some advantage to "characters" that can ride their waves better than others.
In both, it's way more interesting to watch a bunch of less talented people with personality and style duke it out, than it is to watch perfect, best of the best execution go toe to toe.
>I can say that “back in the day,” sports were definitely more fun, interesting, and creative…
I’ll agree. Was kind of a big sports fan in the 80s (nba, nfl, mlb). The characters were pretty fun. It was a little crazy but fun.
Some recent documentaries/books on the Celtics I checked out reveals more things going on behind the scenes. The press had more access. The Celtics broadcaster “Johnny Most” was really not very partial to other teams, but came up with fun nicknames. One game on the radio they stopped announcing and started laughing because he lit his pants on fire with a cigarette
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Most
I tried watching sports now, the players are so good but it lacks the fun / heart. It’s professional and big business but somehow when you don’t care it’s a lot less fun. Though I did enjoy the women’s world cut in France quite a bit.
Sports "analytics" is just the meta narrative bullshit of fools and a scientistic society willingly and collectively fooling itself via non-ergodic stochastic process taking the place of actual scientific progress.
it's only a matter of time before some team owner instructs his analytics team to "build me the team that gets me the best ratings/sells the most tickets" rather than "build me the team that gets me a championship".
It’s true in boxing, too. I almost never enjoy a Floyd Mayweather bout because he plays for points better than anyone. It’s effective but not entertaining.
The "highest expected value"-ification of MMA has made it uninteresting to me. Fighting styles have become so homogenized that I fight back tears of boredom, especially when my mind drifts back to the days of seeing random fighting styles like Art Jimmerson fighting Royce Gracie
This is a postmodernist, market fundamentalist, meta narrative that has basically nothing to do with reality.
As if there is some kind of no-arbitrage condition arbitrage, to be made between humans playing baseball.
This is nothing new though. Baseball is America's pastime in a very deep way. I collected baseball cards in the 80s like I was trading stocks in another bullshit, market fundamentalist delusion.
Game theory. Iff you're the only one in town doing it, it's a competitive advantage. As it becomes well-known, the market gets more efficient at valuing players and this specific advantage erodes away.
This was the issue with the common meme of "moneyball". It was never about optimizing the specific stats the A's originally used. The whole point was to zig when everyone else was zagging to save money.
A better example of this is Bill Belichick. He drafted multiple TEs when nobody valued the position, paid for top special teamers, like gunners (for pennies), switched to. 3-4 defense when every other team was 4-3, then back again when team copied him.
> Home runs, walks, and strikeouts now dominate baseball, with 35% of plate appearances ending without involving seven defensive players. This has reduced balls in play by 20% since 1980, creating longer games with less action
Do baseball fans ever discuss potentially changing the rules or game setup to mitigate this?
> Nearly a quarter of the way into the 2023 regular season, the rule changes MLB implemented this year are continuing to have their intended effects -- namely, a quicker pace resulting in a significant reduction in overall time of games, more hits and more steal attempts.
Yes. In the past MLB lowered the pitcher’s mound and widened the strike zone to benefit hitters, and there’s been talk in recent years of doing it again, or moving back the mound. The league also recently instituted the pitch clock, which helped hitters a little.
If it were named anything else besides "moneyball," the take about it glorifying underpaying players wouldn't exist.
I'm not old enough to remember a pre-moneyball world, but MLB has been mitigating the effects of the “three true outcomes” problem quite well over the last few years. The pitch clock is the best thing to happen to baseball since integration.
It's been around for a few years now. Games went from averaging around 3 hours to averaging 2.5. The long tail of 3.5-4.5 hour games were basically eliminated. The only time that happens now is if you get extra innings, high pitch counts, and lots of plate appearances that don't end in outs -- in other words, longer games are long because they're good!
Occasionally an old head will grumble about it, but even the old guys tend to be pretty happy about the pitch clock.
> This randomness explains why sabermetricians often view regular-season performance as a more reliable indicator of a team's true quality than its playoff results.
That makes sense statistically, but I think most fans would intuitively disagree. When your team plays great all season and chokes in the playoffs, you rarely come away feeling that the regular season was their “true quality.” Typically, such events are seen as revealing that the team wasn’t as good as it seemed, or at least not when it mattered most. There’s probably truth to both perspectives.
Moneyball is about identifying undervalued assets, and demonstrating that value in a highly compeitive arena. Luckily this was done in a popular avenue (baseball) so the lesson was spread across society.
Readit News
Back then, it was relatively easy to just look around and prod relatively available data and find new angles if you went in eyes open. If you were trying to justify spending all that money on that kid who isn't working out with you, the approach lets you dig the hole you want.
He thought that analytics was changing the probabilities of discrete events by single digits. Essentially, nobody was doing anything wrong, there were just optimizations that were/are available.
Remember that the book/movie is about the A’s, who were eliminated in the first round of the baseball playoffs.
One of the interesting 'post-Moneyball' stories is when old-school scouting methods came back onto the scene. People started overvaluing the new popularized statistics, and the market advantage was to combine the analytics and traditional approach in a cost-efficient manner.
Some of the smarter teams in the NFL seem to be figuring out that maybe running backs aren't completely fungible, as has been the mantra for a while.
There is no durable thing you can simply identify as your edge in metrics that you can stick to for years.
There are things that work with a very high percentage ...and there are things that are enormously satisfying and exciting to do.
If you're interested in winning you will methodically do the "correct" things.
The problem is it's just so much fun to do a firemans carry ...
In the Moneyball narrative, the non-analytical scouts are branded as "stupid" or "thick" or even "bigoted". I see them as more human and less robotic. I bet they have more fun than Billy Beane (and the book suggests they do).
But, as in business and personal relationships, finding what works best and putting it into practice tends to be more likely to succeed than simply hoping it will work--look at me, it has never been tried before!
In both, it's way more interesting to watch a bunch of less talented people with personality and style duke it out, than it is to watch perfect, best of the best execution go toe to toe.
I’ll agree. Was kind of a big sports fan in the 80s (nba, nfl, mlb). The characters were pretty fun. It was a little crazy but fun. Some recent documentaries/books on the Celtics I checked out reveals more things going on behind the scenes. The press had more access. The Celtics broadcaster “Johnny Most” was really not very partial to other teams, but came up with fun nicknames. One game on the radio they stopped announcing and started laughing because he lit his pants on fire with a cigarette https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Most
I tried watching sports now, the players are so good but it lacks the fun / heart. It’s professional and big business but somehow when you don’t care it’s a lot less fun. Though I did enjoy the women’s world cut in France quite a bit.
what about grabbing a folding chair and hitting your opponent with it?
the problem is when 'entertaining' optimizes away reality.
As if there is some kind of no-arbitrage condition arbitrage, to be made between humans playing baseball.
This is nothing new though. Baseball is America's pastime in a very deep way. I collected baseball cards in the 80s like I was trading stocks in another bullshit, market fundamentalist delusion.
Dead Comment
Do baseball fans ever discuss potentially changing the rules or game setup to mitigate this?
> Nearly a quarter of the way into the 2023 regular season, the rule changes MLB implemented this year are continuing to have their intended effects -- namely, a quicker pace resulting in a significant reduction in overall time of games, more hits and more steal attempts.
https://www.mlb.com/news/effect-of-new-rules-early-2023
I'm not old enough to remember a pre-moneyball world, but MLB has been mitigating the effects of the “three true outcomes” problem quite well over the last few years. The pitch clock is the best thing to happen to baseball since integration.
Occasionally an old head will grumble about it, but even the old guys tend to be pretty happy about the pitch clock.
That makes sense statistically, but I think most fans would intuitively disagree. When your team plays great all season and chokes in the playoffs, you rarely come away feeling that the regular season was their “true quality.” Typically, such events are seen as revealing that the team wasn’t as good as it seemed, or at least not when it mattered most. There’s probably truth to both perspectives.