The Oakland A’s and Billy Beane gained huge notoriety and backlash in the 2000s for their money saving, data driven moneyball theory which led the A’s to mixed results over the years. The A’s push to change the way of doing things was taken to the big screen in the Brad Pitt movie by the same name.
Over the years the system has been praised but also laughed at by many Major League ball players and coaches, to some it was seen as an innovative way to build a roster to others a cheap way of excusing a ballclub of having to spend to get big time talents.
Jeff Bagwell played for the Astros at the height of the moneyball era and was a 4-time All-Star, NL MVP, and rookie of the year. On a television broadcast Bagwell scuffed at the notion that Beane was a “poor” GM that had a gutted team, rather the A’s had one of the best pitching rotations in baseball at that time.
Jeff Bagwell on moneyball
Billy Beane (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images for Beyond Sport)
“I just think Moneyball’s a farce… They had the three best pitchers in baseball. You could have stuck anybody out there. My son’s 15-year-old team, they could have been out there with those three pitchers, and they get all this hype”, Bagwell mentioned.
“I just – I don’t know – whatever. The Braves won for 15 years, with Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine. Mixed in some other great starters around them, they had to score three runs a game and they won 15 years in a row. Why don’t they call them the Moneyball team?”
As the years have progressed the moneyball theory has been implemented by many MLB teams, although for the A’s the theory may have kept them competitive but in the end never equaled championships as the A’s last won the World Series in 1989.
