Can Money Ball be an inspiration for weaker teams in 2012 MLB regular season? – Part 2
Similarly, Atlanta Braves are emulating part of an idea discussed in Money Ball. In the pursuit of signing a contract extension with Jon
Niese, they intend to disallow him from fetching extra money at the time of invoking free agency option when the club will most probably be paying him huge amount of money for retention.
While above mentioned measures reflect more of the clubs’ attitude toward controlling finances than getting an immediate result through them in the season, application of objectivity is not far from this. Only a change in focus is needed and even more important
is an ability to incorporate all possible factors falling in the realm of a particular issue.
At best, one expects a Baseball manager to put a laptop on front, open players’ stats and evaluate them as per exclusive team requirements. To become little more objective, he will analyse year by year graphs of a player and will rank them on his criteria
accordingly. In the process, he will not be stopping himself from partiality, superstition, stereotypes or whatever one wants to call it. Eventual results will be, in general terms, a scientific outcome, but as it most probably happens, it may not be so altogether.
How a manager can be confident enough to have detailed everything a player has to potentially offer the team? Determining strength and weaknesses of a team is extremely subjective with everyone varying on every single issue and if a manager claims he has
done so, he is wrong. While one admits an impossibility of perfection, one equally has to stress on what mostly leads to misconceptions and hence poor results.
For doing justice with scientific principals, reliance on expertise of a single person and even more than one cannot be sufficient. Every player needs an individualised treatment and that too in light of teams’ constraints.
This will help in gauging real talent of every player and the end result can be as startling as a player currently at third base is found best as a shortstop and vice versa.
Similarly, a relief pitcher can turn out to be best for his team as a starter not because he is less capable there, but he can serve particular objective of a team better at other position. As disbelieving as it may be for anyone, only if one starts to interpret
career statistics of a player right, one can fathom the whole pedigree of a player and thus a weird response as most may come up with from the surface of the idea can be abandoned.
So far reaching effects the movie Money Ball is going to have, other sports will not be immune. Even some of the cricket teams have started to redesign whole infrastructure in a way reflective of objectivity and sheer unbiased decisions. New Zealand, one
of the cricket teams, after experiencing slump in last couple of months have replaced their normal selection panel with a selection manager. He has been awarded all possible staff he needs for doing research work. He therefore now has effectively embarked
on an ear of scientific selection of players.
Without any doubt, the movie has kicked off a new era in the sporting arena. Sooner or later height of objectivity shown in it has to be embraced. In light of a fiercely competitive sporting arena, one can predict a bandwagon of teams will be jumping on
in near future.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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