Moneyball?

With the Academy Awards tomorrow night, I figured this was as good a time as any to take a look back at Moneyball which has been nominated for 6 Oscars including best picture. First off highly recommend the film. Secondly, in case you're unaware, it's the story of how Oakland A'S GM Billy Beane had to make the most of his meager budget after losing star players Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and Jason Isringhausen to free agency after the 2001 season. His philosophy was to use complex, highly detailed, statistical analysis to find players over looked by other teams for various reason. The results were an incredible MLB record 20 game win streak and a 2002 AL West Championship. However, the Cinderella run came to a halt at the hands of the Minnesota Twins in the ALDS. They lost to Boston in the ALDS the next year and have only made the playoffs once since losing in the ALCS to the Tigers in 2006 after beating the Twins in the ALDS. Beane was widely praised for this strategy, and even offered the GM position in Boston as this method of running a franchise has been incorporated by many teams since, and written about extensively by people with much greater understanding of mathematics and logic than myself. It was said to be a game changer, a breath of fresh air, but the simple fact is you can't change the fundamental nature of the a game that's been around for over 100 years. The recent success of upper middling market teams like Texas, St. Louis, Tampa Bay and San Francisco goes to show that you don't need to spend like the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox to win a championship, who spent over half a billion dollars between them last year, though these teams have all won a World Series in the last 5 years. The fact is when San Francisco won their championship in 2010 they didn't have a ton of big name stars by they had a lot of talented players and an incredible pitching staff led by Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum. The same can be said for St Louis who had the like of Albert Pujols, arguably the best player in the game, Yadiar Molina (arguably the best catcher) and Chris Carpenter, a former Cy Young winner. The talent was there and they weren't near the bottom of the league in payroll with the exception of the Rays who failed to win the World Series. Baseball is the ultimate numbers game producing stats like the Dominican Republic turns out ball players, but the fact is talent wins and money talks. True you don't need to have the highest payroll in the league to win, but it is tough to compete with the big boys without solid financial backing, just ask the Blue Jays who have been mired in the AL East behind baseballs juggernauts. Money is power in the sense that it will get you the best available players, and while that doesn't guarantee success or team chemistry, it gives you the opportunity to have success and eventually find the right ingredients to win. This is a sad reality of sport in a world where it is now more big business than a game. Teams like the A's and the old Montreal Expos turned out a lot of talent only to see it walk when contracts were up. Early on the A's are described as a farm system for the Yankees who pilfer players like picking out groceries. They can afford to overpay players and do so without a second though to what this might do for franchises struggling financially. It's not a level playing field and for all the great things they accomplished in Oakland, at it's core this movie shows the sad reality of sports in today's world.