The Shrine

Since the movie's coming out, I've always questioned why they quantify it as a success story. As far as I knew, they didn't win the World Series or even got there. Sure the A's had very little money to spend, but that's like saying if I tried to fund a MLB team with a bunch of nobodies and we miraculously won a game with a salary of $100 then that means I can make an invinicible team with $100 million. There certainly is no shortage of example who spent a ton of money on the wrong guys. It's true that winning itself doesn't mean the methodology was right, but here the team didn't even come close to winning a World Series.

The Houston Rockets are also another often cited team for bracing advanced statistics, and I don't think they ever got out of round 2. Sure they had some bad luck (Yao Ming getting hurt), but then Yao Ming getting hurt should be part of the risk when you draft him since it's pretty well-known that guys that tall just aren't going to last very long. The Rockets also spent a ton of money on Tracy McGrady who turned out to be not worth it. Sure some of the guys they got for cheap turned out to be pretty good, but again the team never got anywhere deep in Playoffs, and no I don't think you can say since they played the Lakers tougher than anyone else did, and Lakers eventually won the championship that means Rockets were really the second best team. Even the Clippers make the playoff sometime, and their strategy seems to be just 'don't pay anyone money'. Does that mean Donald Sterling is a super genius?

Honestly I'd say the San Antonio Spurs are a better story of a franchise that doesn't spend mega bucks that have success. I mean, they actually won the championship multiple times too, as opposed to just making the playoffs.

Success doesn't make for interesting stories. It tends to imbue crummy sports stories with the illusion of being good just because at the end people are cheering and that's supposed to make you feel good out of habit.

polishing a turd = the american dream.

Or so I understand.

The only thing better than turning shit to gold is being able to do it without any work

Then the Clippers must be the winners of life.

Well making money managing and playing a game must be pretty high up there in winning life

Clippers are surprisingly profitable since they pay next to nothing to their players and barely meets the minimum salary standard. But nobody would make a movie about them.

What Billy Beane did is being copied all across baseball by every team. Why do you think the stats WHIP, OBP, Holds, Runs Scored, and OBS (even pitches per AB) became regular stats that are shown all the time? Because he proved that they mean something. Before the late 90s, the only stats you ever really heard about were Batting Avg, HR, and RBIs for batters and ERA, Wins/Losses, and Ks for pitchers. And I'm taking when the guys came up to the plate during the game or when they were warming up. .

So when you get teams like the Yankees and Phillies doing what the A's did AND they have the coin to pay the big bucks, there's no advantage the others can exploit anymore. It becomes really, really tough for the bottom-feeders to find the bargains when the entire market is looking for them. That's why teams like the A's really can't compete anymore. Some teams, like the Pirates or the Royals, got on the boat way too late, which is why they never did compete