In baseball, teams must use their money wisely. Blowing money on big-time players is not an option for all teams, as some teams cannot afford to purchase those high caliber players. Also, people are not always what they seem to be right off the bat, and the dark horse can be a winner in the right circumstances. The film Million Dollar Arm, directed by Craig Gillespie and the novel, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, written by Michael Lewis, demonstrate that a team does not need a high payroll to sign good players, and reveal that the weakest links on a team often prove to be the strongest.
When it comes to signing players in a market, one does not need a high payroll to do so as shown in Moneyball and The Million Dollar Arm. In …show more content…
In the novel as stated earlier the Oakland Athletics were one of MLB’s lowest payroll teams, yet they were one of the best teams in baseball. So how did they do that? Having not enough money to sign all the best players, Billy Beane, the general manager of the team, had to find other ways to make his team better. The way Beane thought can be represented in this quote “People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.” (Lewis 90) With the past forms of analyzing athletes, there has been often room for bias to sneak in without notice. With the new statistical analysis, bias can be eliminated or greatly reduced by looking at cold hard facts. By looking at in depth stats into the misfits of other team’s unwanted players, Beane turned one of MLB’s lowest payroll teams, to MLB’s best teams. The film also displayed this in a very interesting way. In the film, Million Dollar Arm, scouts searching for players, went all the way to India to see if there are any cricket players who can play baseball. “They don't play baseball in India. That's right. They don't. They play cricket. But we think that we can convert a cricket bowler into a baseball pitcher.” (Million Dollar Arm) The novel and film, both have shown that given the chance the least likely of people may turn out to be the players you are
When it comes to signing players in a market, one does not need a high payroll to do so as shown in Moneyball and The Million Dollar Arm. In …show more content…
In the novel as stated earlier the Oakland Athletics were one of MLB’s lowest payroll teams, yet they were one of the best teams in baseball. So how did they do that? Having not enough money to sign all the best players, Billy Beane, the general manager of the team, had to find other ways to make his team better. The way Beane thought can be represented in this quote “People in both fields operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.” (Lewis 90) With the past forms of analyzing athletes, there has been often room for bias to sneak in without notice. With the new statistical analysis, bias can be eliminated or greatly reduced by looking at cold hard facts. By looking at in depth stats into the misfits of other team’s unwanted players, Beane turned one of MLB’s lowest payroll teams, to MLB’s best teams. The film also displayed this in a very interesting way. In the film, Million Dollar Arm, scouts searching for players, went all the way to India to see if there are any cricket players who can play baseball. “They don't play baseball in India. That's right. They don't. They play cricket. But we think that we can convert a cricket bowler into a baseball pitcher.” (Million Dollar Arm) The novel and film, both have shown that given the chance the least likely of people may turn out to be the players you are