The Story of the Success of the Oakland A, Essay Example

The story of the success of The Oakland A’s is one of the mind challenging stories that would strike any mind that success is a matter in their life. As the article by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, “Money ball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” claims that anyone can think that is all about baseball matter and therefore there is no need to follow it through and get to understand how a minor team can climb the ladder of success and win such great prices in such a short period of time. The story of The Oakland A’s is fascinating because it was a very small-marketed team, but in short period of between late 1990s and early 2000s the team made drastic changes under the leadership of their team leader and manager Billy Beane that came to made history. What Mr. Billy Beane is that he introduced a different management in order to solve fundamental economic problem of maximizing on-field success subject to a budget constraint. The change of management was done despite the challenges that baseball industry was undergoing including the lower payroll that both the team players and there mangers were subjected unto. It strikes the mind of every team leaders or mangers and other managers in different fields on how statistics can be used effectively to bring success in any field.

The first question that comes in the mind of those who read this article is what traits of professional baseball players are overvalued and what traits are undervalued? The first trait is that a good professional baseball payer must portray intelligence (Thaler & Sunstein 27). This is the fundamental trait for any successful achievement in the professional world. A good player was supposed to be intelligence in their operation as they play the ball and even when interacting with other game players. Intelligence is what will make the team player to make right and correct judgment while in the field and also out the field. It is the book of records that when Mr. Beane took over the team, drastic changes and the athletics had an amazing record. This was so because Beane was very intelligent and he encouraged the team to use their brains when issuing judgments. The other overvalued trait of a professional baseball player is must predictor of diligence. According to the article and many other scholars claim that intelligence and diligences are two major admirable qualities and traits that are most wanted by merely any job. Diligence is the tendency to keep on doing a particular task over and over again even if the environment is not conducive. It is the ability to stack on something whether situation are favorable or not. This is what Beane induces in his team players and at the end diligence played back by making The Oakland A’s to thrive in their field of profession despite the challenges that were being encountered during that period. On the contrary, there are other traits that are undervalued but are very pleasing to the eye. Such qualities don’t qualify a person to be a professional baseball player or a profession in any other field. One of the traits is race. The race of a person doesn’t count when professionalism is concerned. The other undervalued trait is gender or beauty. Although it has been the issue that in an interview only lady were selected for the intended job, gender has never been a concern in professionalism. Also just because a person is beautiful or handsome they are supposed to be given the first opportunities is the fallacy and criteria that only illustrate people use as the determiner of a successful person. A person success is measured on their intelligence and diligence (Thaler & Sunstein 28).

According to James a professional in base ball claims that on-base percentage better measure of players’ performance than other conventional measures. The reason he argues so is to avoid reluctance on losing team. It has been observed that when a team is loosing their game or even winning, thee is a relaxation mode that is observed in the field. On-base percentage is also the most effective way to measure batting skills and also batting averages (Thaler & Sunstein 29). James pushed for this method because he said that is the modern way of measuring baseball batting and it is better than “runs batted in.”

By using on-base percentage, Hakes and Sauer paper have statistically proved the Money ball hypothesis. They did this by using linear regression analysis to prove that on-base percentage is very powerful in indicating the number a player has batter and contributed to winning. On-base percentage is calculated from the variables in the regression that are recorded in tables. Also performance data is calculated according to season in years. The winning team is hence forth detected (Hakes and Sauer 177).

One of the examples I can think about that is similar to Money ball phenomenon of which Joseph Schumpeter called the “creative destruction” is the introduction of automated telephone switchboard to counter or stand in the gap of manual plug-in systems is the best example. The introduction of new and modern automated telephone switchboard comes with other techniques that are easier to use and the same time cheaper and saves time but better than the manual plug-in systems (EconTalk Episode with Skip Sauer 11)

Works Cited

Hakes and Sauer, “An Economic Evaluation of the Moneyball Hypothesis,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2006, pp. 173- 186.

Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Who’s on first? New Republic, 229(9), 27–30. http://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/sunstein090103

EconTalk Episode with Skip Sauer “The Economics of Moneyball” http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2006/10/the_economics_o_8.html