Problem Solving In Money Ball

When the Oakland A's are heading into their 2002 season they face a big problem.  As I have said before the A's are one of the poorest teams in the major league and this hurts them most when it comes to free agency and offering players money.  The problem is the A's are loosing 3 of their stars to free agency and the most important of these players was Johnny Damon, a great center fielder who was a great lead-off batter as well.  The A's were trying to figure out how many runs it would costs them by putting Terrence Long in center field (Damon's replacement).  Now you may be thinking, how is it possible to tell how much runs Damon's replacement will cost them?  However Beane's assistant Paul DePodesta knew how.

Paul concluded that the cost of loosing Johnny Damon was 15 runs enough to be impact a teams success.  He used the AVM system to make these calculations.  "A set of platonic ideas is one of the gifts of Wall Street traders gave to Paul DePodesta. The Precision of the AVM system, copied by Paul, enabled him to think about every event that occurred on the baseball field in a new more satisfying way"  (Lewis 135).  Using this system Paul was able to make a conclusion.  "And it (the AVM system) was able to reinforce the A's working theory that a guy's hitting ability had a far greater effect than his fielding ability on a teams performance"  (Lewis 137).  Since no one they could find someone who could hit and field as good as Damon, the A's decided to cut their losses on defense and beef up their offense.  There is one flaw in Paul's system that was brought up and that is the factor of the luck/life of a player.  "No matter how accurately you valued past performance, it was still an uncertain guide to future performance.  Johnny Damon or Terrence Long might lose a step.  Johnny Damon or Terrence Long might take to drink, or get divorced.  Johnny Damon or Terrence Long might decide that he'd made enough money and lose his middle-class enthusiasm for running down fly balls" (Lewis 136).  So  it can be concluded that stats aren't the only factor in judging performance and other factors can come into play.  So how much do you think lucky can play into a teams success? Or downfall...