Moneyball, past the movie: how sabermetrics rewired baseball
Sports11 min

Moneyball, past the movie: how sabermetrics rewired baseball

How a cash-strapped team's embrace of statistics upended baseball scouting and strategy, the backlash from traditionalists, and the data arms race it set off across every major sport.

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Show notes

The Oakland Athletics identified outs as the scarcest resource, limited to twenty-seven opportunities per game.

Traditional scouting once favored a good face over on-base percentage, which was a significantly undervalued asset.

The Boston Red Sox ended an eighty-six year drought by hiring Bill James to apply data science.

Market arbitrage for player statistics corrected within twenty-four months as wealthy teams adopted analytics.

Basketball three-point attempts doubled since two thousand two as teams prioritized high-value scoring zones.

Football teams now use Expected Points Added to justify aggressive fourth-down attempts on the field.

In this episode
  1. 01Intro1 min
  2. 02The Inefficiency of the 'Good Face'2 min
  3. 03The Sabermetric Resistance2 min
  4. 04The Arbitrage Window Closes3 min
  5. 05The Global Contagion of Data3 min
  6. 06Outro1 min
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