CENTRE FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

MONEYBALL
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
Faculty - Prof. Apoorva Kulkarni

GROUP No-19
Shubham Kumar Gupta 21030241227
Hardik Vaidya 21030241198
Arjun Dhurat 21030241195
Koushik Dey 21030241244
Subha B Roy 21030241231
Moneyball
Business Lessons on Value Creation
Moneyball is a sports movie based on Michael Lewis’s book:
‘Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game’. In this
movie, Billy Beane, General Manager at Oakland Athletics
baseball team faced with a limited budget, assembled a
competitive team of undervalued talent with the help of Peter
Brand, a young Yale economics graduate harbouring radical
ideas.

At the end, Oakland Athletics, the team that finished the

previous season with the worst record in Major League
Baseball, sets a new American League record by winning
20 consecutive games in 103 years’ history of American
League baseball and that too with one of the lowest
budgets in the league.
Why Moneyball?
“The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.”

• Moneyball has become a metaphor for everything in

business today: it touches heavily on concepts related to
budgeting, data analytics and productivity. The movie is
about how Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane
revolutionized the process of scouting new baseball players
on a budget by employing computer-generated analysis to
sign new players and when best to put them in the line up. 

• Typically, we tend to think about budgets and constraints as

the enemy of creativity. There is a sense that you need to
think big thoughts, and not be constrained by an accountant
looking over your shoulder. The Moneyball demonstrates
that the hard budget constraints the A's faced were the cause
of creativity—it forced Billy Beane and his managers to
come up with new ways to get the most out of their dollar. 
 Strategy Perspective of Moneyball
Billy Bean’s Strategy
Billy hired Peter as an Assistant GM who then used Predictive Analytics to find values in the
players which nobody could see and came up with:

i) Projected Win% which Oaks can get if they scored certain number of runs where win% can
be calculated as

Win% = (Runs Scored²) /(Runs Scored² + Runs Allowed²)

ii) Players were overlooked for variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws such as age,
appearance, personality, average or ugly looking girlfriend etc, Peter used the formula given
by Bill James the Mathematician to score the baseball players. Higher the score better the
player. Scores were calculated as follows.

Score = (Hits + Walks — Caught stealing)*(Total Bases + 0.7 Stolen

Bases)/(At Bats + Walks +Caught Stealing)

Key Learnings: You must ask right questions while doing analysis.
You must have an out of box thinking capabilities and should be able
to challenge the conventional methods and give innovative solutions
which may not exist till date.
Players Data

Peter talks about a Player named Chad Bradford, who is the relief pitcher in
the movie.
He said he is the most undervalued players in the baseball. His defect is that he
throws funny. No one in the big leagues cares about him because he looks
funny.

This guy could be best pitcher for our team. He is the most effective relief
pitchers in entire baseball. This guy real value would be $3 million a year but
we can get him for $237,000 ($0.2 million)

Key Learnings: You must be able to explain your

analysis with the data available and reject the myths.
This strategy of procuring the relief pitcher proved
to be successful. They saved their money which was
already very less by procuring the relief pitcher.
One must read and analyse data before making a
decision.
 Oaklands A’s challenge:

Billy Beane the General Manager says “There are rich teams and there are poor
team and there is 50 feet crap and then there is us. It's an Unfair Game.“
in 2002, the team lost 3 of their Main Players Giambi, Damon and Isringhausen
to Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees and were in great trouble. When Billy
Beane's asked for more Money to recruit new players, the owner refused to
increase the budget. The team had a tight budget of around $38 million dollars
against Rich team Budget with $120 million dollars.

KEY LEARNINGS:---Being an Analyst it’s very important for you to

understand what challenge or problem you are going to Solve.
 Process to implement Decision by Billy Beans

The Process of Decision Making of Recruiting the

New Players and replacing with the Star Players was
difficult one.

Billy had to face lot of criticism from inside the team from
scouts to team coach and from outside from media to
critics.

But in reality what differentiated the Oaklands A’s under

Billy Beane was the commitment to an evidence-based
approach and a preparedness to question conventional
wisdom rather than relaying on gut instinct. 

He said to his team owner that he would get to see the

winning matches by July 2002. The same thing happened.

You must have believe in what you and your

team do and must be consistent with your
work.
 Communication by Peter Brand to Billy Beans

Peter Brand was Excellent in explaining his findings to GM Billy

Beane's. That's Why recommendations given by Peter were
easily accepted by Billy. Billy then communicated this to different
stakeholders, got the new players recruited and coached.

KEY LEARNINGS:---You must have excellent communication and convincing

skills because you have to present your findings to different
stakeholders and management team. Once they get convinced then only
right decisions can be implemented.
 People:

In the movie it was seen that the Peter Brand was an Economics
Graduate with Excellent skills in handling numbers, He was also well
versed with Computer Programming and had excellent Presentation
and Communication skill.

KEY LEARNINGS:---It does not matter you are from which background. But if you are a
graduate who want to have career in Analytics and Data Science and if you are good with
numbers and you are open to learn then you can start learning now the skills required.
 Learning Outcome

Understand the Gap Between Perception & Reality

Listening Opens up New Possibilities

Seek Criticism to Understand Reality

Be Responsive to Change

Anything Worth Doing is Incredibly Hard

Innovate to beat Giants

THANK YOU