{"id":100,"date":"2004-03-14T12:43:38","date_gmt":"2004-03-14T12:43:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=100"},"modified":"2004-03-14T12:43:38","modified_gmt":"2004-03-14T12:43:38","slug":"more_money_doesnt_always_pay_off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=100","title":{"rendered":"More money doesn’t always pay off…."},"content":{"rendered":"


\n“Are we going to be replaced by a computer or what<\/a>?” one veteran baseball scout told The Los Angeles Times last week.
\nSelena Roberts has a timely look at Billy Beane<\/a>, General Manager of the Oakland A’s. Beane has made the Oakland A’s winners, despite a very low payroll and competitors with piles of cash (money is not the secret to success).<\/p>\n

But what the swipes reveal is how threatening an alternate view is to baseball’s theology.
\nIt’s a threat to inept owners ? and\/or a certain baseball commissioner ? who have used their small-market woes as habitual excuses for futility. It’s a threat to Yankeesque teams who spend millions to assemble constellations only to be increasingly grounded by teams of cohesive humans. It’s a threat to romanticized scouts whose legends are built on a 5 percent success rate.
\n“Everyone thought they had it figured out a long time ago,” said Scott Hatteberg, the A’s first baseman. “Now you have these young guys coming in to mess with it.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club<\/a> has an interesting interview<\/a> with Beane and writer Michael Lewis regarding last year’s excellent book, Moneyball<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Are we going to be replaced by a computer or what?” one veteran baseball scout told The Los Angeles Times last week. Selena Roberts has a timely look at Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A’s. Beane has made the Oakland A’s winners, despite a very low payroll and competitors with piles of cash […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}