Innovative Statistics in Baseball

Major league baseball teams, when assessing players, typically use runs batted in (RBIs) and home runs (HRs) to assess the value of players. The RBI and home run leaders are great players, but at times smaller market teams like the Oakland Athletics cannot meet the players’ demand for money. This demand is often met instead by larger market teams like the New York Yankees. Although these larger market teams offer ridiculous sums of money to RBI and home run leaders, this does not typically lead to winning the World Series, or even making the playoffs.
In 1995, Billy Beane took over the position of general manger for the Oakland Athletics. With a limited checkbook of $40 million, he was forced to find true value in players that didn’t necessarily have the big RBI or home run totals. Instead, his organization invented a statistical equation that emphasized on-base percentage and batting average rather than RBIs and home runs. With this equation, he was able to find quality players that typically hit at the bottom of the order on other teams. Because they did not put up the big home run and RBI totals, these quality players were looked over during free agency and the Oakland Athletics were able to get the players for bargain prices. Beane’s organization, since 1995, has ranked as one of the most winning clubs in all of baseball because of his innovation in statistical data. http://www.thelavinagency.com/usa/billybeane.html http://www.thelavinagency.com/articles_covers/Beane/beanearticle2.pdf