Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

In Major League Baseball the general belief is that the more a team spends on their payroll the more games they will win. With the absence of a salary cap baseball may seam unfair to the smaller market teams who can't bare the salary costs that the larger market teams can. In Michael Lewis' Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Lewis depicts just how the Oakland Athletics have been winning in an unfair game for almost a decade. The A's are a small market team that doesn't have nearly the amount of money at their disposal that their competitors in the American League do. However this past season the A's won their fourth American League West championship in the last seven years while having the lowest payroll in their division. In the 2006 season Oakland had a salary of just over 62 million and still finished with a better record then the Boston Red Sox whose payroll was double that of the A's.

Based on the economic model developed in our textbook on pages 168-170, the Oakland A's aren't supposed to field a competitive team year after year because the author Rodney Fort says that a large market team will always win more then a small market team. Fort argues that with the existence of large and small market teams there is revenue imbalance because the large market team brings in more revenue then the small market team. Revenue imbalance then causes competitive imbalance because the large market team will buy more talent then the small market team and winning percentage is described as a function of talent. As a result of buying more talent, the large market team will have a higher payroll so not only does revenue imbalance cause competitive imbalance but it also causes payroll imbalance.

One might say that this expla...

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...r league debut this past season and the A's believe that he is the future catcher of their organization.

Fort argues in the textboot that revenue imbalance causes competitive imbalance because large market teams are able to afford talent that is capable of producing a winning team. However Beane has proved that a baseball team can win with out spending a lot on talent by concentrating on important but inexpensive statitistics outlined by Bill James and his sabermetrics. Beane has transcended the way a baseball team can be assembled and now many other GM's have begun to follow suite including Theo Epstein of the Red Sox and J.P. Ricciardi of the Blue Jays who was the director of player personnel under Beane. Beane has proved that small market teams have the opportunity to be successful in baseball as long as they are efficient and cost effective in the front office.