In Process Blog Post #2 Moneyball

It's clear to me that the author is trying to document the divide between Billy Beane's idea of talent, and the other twenty nine teams idea's of talent. He emphasizes the reaction of the other teams when Beane drafts players such as Jeremy Brown, juxtaposing their scorn and dismissal of Oakland with Beane's elation. As the book progresses, the A's continue to be more and more successful in the regular season. They are better than the New York Yankees, a team that is the antithesis of what Beane and the A's do. They're the Goliath to Oakland's David, a big market club with more money than they know what to do with, they can sign whatever "talented" players they want to because they can afford to. Yet as they A's continue to acquire more and more players that the rest of the teams have cast off, they continue to win more games. In fact, they set the Major League record for most consecutive games won. Without a doubt, Beane's mathematical approach to the game of baseball is effective, his is the only team doing it at the time, and they are the only team winning as much as they do. This leads me to what I'd like to do for my essay, today, the landscape of baseball has changed completely because of the Moneyball experiment. Every team in the league has an analytics department that breaks down each mathematical aspect of the game of baseball, they've developed a multitude of advanced statistics, hoping to find the most productive player they can. In other words, small market teams like the Athletics no longer can gain a true edge through the process of 'sabermetrics'. I'd like to examine how a small market team in today's game can gain a competitive edge. It's appropriate that I examine the current Oakland A's as they remain successful, but I'd also like to look at a team like the Kansas City Royals, one of the poorest teams in baseball, a team that has never really embraced sabermetrics fully, yet a team that made it all the way to the World Series last year.