krblokhin/iStock via Getty Images Co-authored by Treading Softly In 2001, the Oakland Athletics baseball team was devastated by their loss to the New York Yankees. In 2002, their general manager, Billy Beane, had to desperately come up with a new team to be able to replace many stars who were leaving. The problem was that the Oakland A's had a very small budget compared to many large Major League Baseball teams.
What Billy Beane ended up doing became the focus of a book (Moneyball: The Art Of Winning An Unfair Game) and, eventually, a movie starring Brad Pitt (Moneyball). Billy Beane decided to take an unorthodox approach and apply mathematics to his baseball team roster. He wasn't looking for individual star power or the standard way where Scouts would have a "feeling" about the player.
Instead, he applied strict mathematics to try and come up with a team that would be able to generate the necessary number of runs to be able to win a majority of baseball games. To do this, he ended up assembling a ragtag team on his roster filled with rejects that others were unwilling to hire. Thus, he was able to get them at a steal of a price.
The Oakland A's, after taking some time to gel together, ended up having a phenomenal season and catching the attention of many other teams with larger budgets. Today, Billy Beane's method of building a baseball team is something that even the biggest teams are following. He wasn't interested in star players who could hit home runs all the time; he .
