...What Sells Game Tickets? A Quantitative Analysis of The 1980 Oakland A’s Home Game Day By Brian Hunter, M.A. In 1980, the Oakland A’s came in second place in the Western Division with 83 wins, 79 losses, and 14 games behind the first place Kansas City Royals. Steward Roddey, the general manager, has requested that an analysis be done to examine all the possible factors that could influence home game ticket sales and to gather information on pitcher Mark Nobel to use in negotiations with Mr. Nobel’s agent. Mr. Roddey gathered data (Exhibit 1) on what he believes would fully account for what factors contributed to the sale of home tickets between April and September of 1980. He is interested in how these variables interacted statistically for each game played: Day of the Week (game was played), Team Performance (Rank and Games Behind), Weather (stadium was open-air), Double Headers (6 in all), Starting Times (day or night), Starting Pitcher (especially Mark Nobel), Opponent (13 teams including the Yankees), Televised Home Games, and Game Promotions. Mr. Roddey believes this is an exhaustive list and would like a report on the findings to use for his future business decisions regarding his management of the Oakland A’s and his salary negotiations with pitcher Mark Nobel’s agent. In addressing Mr. Roddey’s ideas about factors that contribute to and are predictive of ticket sales, several Multiple Regressions were calculated. In addition, nominally...
Words: 556 - Pages: 3
...book Moneyball by Michael Lewis is about a former major league baseball player who became the manager of the Oakland A’s. It tells the story of how he led the team to success despite their low budget by using computer based analytics to draft players. With the help of Bill James, the Oakland A’s came up with a new plan based on statistics to draft players. He went after players nobody wanted due to their low budget and his new plan. Billy led the Oakland Athletics to a successive win seasons by changing the way he measured players. He abandoned the traditional 5 “tool” the other scouts used and adopted empirical analytics. The abandonment of the traditional assessment of players for the analytical approach led to high victory for the Oakland A’s despite their low budget. By applying sabermetrics to baseball the Oakland Athletics found a way to defeat rich teams. Billy Beane had a different approach, he had metrics he used particular metrics to evaluate and pick players. Those metrics are, on base plus slugging, walks and hits per innings pitched, and base runs. James thought the statistics for baseball were inaccurate. James stated that “statistics were not merely inadequate; they lied. And the lies they told led the people who ran major league baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their games” (Lewis 67). By recognizing this, it helped the Oakland A’s find undervalued players because the other scouts were still judging based on only the statistics of the individual...
Words: 662 - Pages: 3
...The Billy Beane Case Study 1. Based on the “Billy Beane: Changing the Game” case, explain how and why the Oakland A’s economic situation after 1995 shaped its: a) Compensation strategies In the world of major league baseball, the Oakland A’s defied the laws of baseball economics. The team spent only $34 million (the 2nd lowest payroll) had won 102 games and lost only 60 in 2001. On top of this, they finished first in their division and made the playoffs. Major baseball teams would hire high school players rather than college players. This made high school players costly. The Oakland A’s strategy is to hire college players to save on resources. They argued that college players have already gained substantial exposure and competition. Beane would recruit new drafts and sign them for less than the going rate. Because of budget constraints, the Oakland A’s recruited Scott Hatteberg, he played six years with the Boston Red Sox’s. He got injured and lacked the prowess in throwing the ball effectively. Hatteberg was, according to the Boston Red Sox’s, a lame player and did not sign him again. With this, Hatteberg’s monetary value diminished and that is why the Oakland A’s recruited him at a much lower salary (because there were no other takers). Unknown to the other baseball teams, Hatteberg is the missing puzzle in the Oakland A’s team. The Oakland A’s noted that Hatteberg had an uncanny knack for getting on base. Management could no longer afford to pay market or above...
Words: 931 - Pages: 4
...anything. Even more so people love numbers that are easy and straightforward like the ones I have already given. Those numbers do not seem like anything other then numbers put in a paragraph for effect. But they go straight to the heart of everything that modern analytics has tried to accomplish. What are those numbers? Well the first two are the respective team payrolls for the New York Yankees and the Oakland Athletics. The Yankees, the evil empire as they are affectionately referred to as, perennially have had the highest team payroll in all of baseball and the spend big to win big philosophy has paid huge for them as the team has won a record 27 world series titles. Oakland on the other hand has been one of the leagues cheapest teams for well over the last twenty years easily not spending in almost 4 years on their team what the Yankees do in one. How does this pertain to analytics and its business world applications? Well the second set of numbers tell that story, as those are the win totals last year for both the Yankees and the A’s. It was the Oakland A’s who back in the early 2000’s began to embrace “Sabermatrics” or the analytical approach to judging talent and acquiring players to their entire organization. As a result despite being in the situation where they are being...
Words: 1518 - Pages: 7
...film directed by Bennett Miller from a script written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. The film is based on Michael Lewis's 2003 non-fiction book of the unchanged name, an account of the Oakland Athletics baseball team's 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane's challenges to assemble a competitive team. In the film, Beane (Brad Pitt) and assistant GM Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), faced with the franchise's critical financial situation, take a sophisticated sabermetric approach towards scouting and evaluating players, acquiring "submarine" pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond) and former catcher Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt), and winning 20 consecutive games, an American League record. Columbia Pictures bought the copyrights to Lewis's book in 2004. After a number of years in advance, the film was presented at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival and was released on September 23, 2011 to a box office success and positive reviews. The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards together with Best Actor and Best Picture. This movie inspiring me in the way ofWhy entrepreneurs should see it: Bootstrapping is Based on a true story, Moneyball is a movie for anybody who has ever dreamed of taking on the system. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's and the guy who assembles the team, who has an epiphany: all of baseball's conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer...
Words: 392 - Pages: 2
...Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game The Oakland A's, under the management of Billy Beane, found a gap in the baseball skills market that existed because most baseball scouts and managers used traditional methods of selecting players that were outdated and had little relationship with skills that brought success to teams. Traditionally, baseball scouts mainly used batting averages (BA) and Runs batted in (RBI) to sign new players. On-base percentage (OBP) was used too, but it was not given as much premium as RBI and BA. Thus, when looking for players, almost all scouts went for players that scored highly on BA and RBI while ignoring those that scored highly on OBP but had low scores in BA and RBI. However, through analysis of massive amounts of data and reading Bill James’ series of baseball books Baseball Abstracts, Beane and his assistant, Paul DePodesta, found that OBP was the most important factor that determined a team’s success and not BA or RBI. Since OBP was not valued highly in players by most baseball scouts, Beane and DePodesta discovered that they could build a successful team of players with high OBP score but whom, because most top baseball teams had ignored them, could be paid much lower salaries than their counterparts could in big teams such as New York Yankees. Therefore, they could create a successful team on a much smaller budget than their competitors. Thus, the opportunity that Oakland A discovered was set up by scouts placing less premium on...
Words: 1139 - Pages: 5
...English Mini-Assignment Theme | Elements of Fiction/Film Techniques | “In the right circumstances, the underdogs can also be the winner.” | * Theme, Characterization * Lighting, Audio, Setting, Editing | Thesis: The film version of the multi-award winning novel, Moneyball, is a strong adaptation of the story. The director, Bennett Miller, has succeeded in matching author Michael Lewis’ style by using a great sense of lighting, audio, characterisation, setting and editing to help capture the theme; underdogs can be winners in the right circumstances. Just like the book, the movie symbolized hope, unfairness and to never give up. List of 10 Passages: 1. ISU Novel Passage: " There was the bias toward what people saw with their own eyes, or thought they had seen... There was a lot you couldn't see when you watched a baseball game.” (Lewis 19) Elements of Fiction: Setting, Characterization and Conflict between what baseball managers see in baseball players. Film Adaptation: Billy and Paul (his name is Peter in the movie) are in the garage of the Cleveland Indians baseball team and they are both wearing a suit, and there are cars in the background. (Time: 0:20:39) Film Techniques: - Medium-Bright lighting to show enthusiasm - Over-the-shoulder shots - Inspirational music in the background to show inspiration of what Paul (Peter) is saying Analysis/Connection to Thesis: This passage and movie scene relates to the thesis because the thesis is about how...
Words: 2172 - Pages: 9
...order according to the questions outlined below, and it should show all of the calculations and/or tables used to answer each question. If data collection is part of the question, your paper should include the data collected in a neat and organized manner. Read the December 3, 2012 Sports Illustrated article entitled “Moneyballsy”. The article was sent to your email address 1. (3 pts) Research Daryl Morey’s career beyond what was written in the article and write a ½ page on how his experiences and education led him to understand the importance of statistics in his career 2. (3 pts) Describe in detail (1/2 page) what Bill James’s Pythagorean expectation formula is and how Morey applied it to basketball. 3. (3 pts) How has Oakland A’s (baseball) General Manager Billy Beane influenced Morey’s career? Recall that Billy Beane was the focus of the motion picture Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt. 4. (3 pts) What was the principle statistical reasons Morey acquired James Harden, Jeremy Lin, and Shane Battier? 5. (3 pts) What are the drawbacks of using only statistics to make critical decisions? What other factors are important for success? How would you balance all of these factors if you were a NBA general manager?...
Words: 263 - Pages: 2
...would back off and allow the leaders to duke it out. As these informal competitions became increasingly common and popular, announced competitions became part of a night out at hip hop clubs. Whether they arose organically or they were advertised in advance, this competitive nature helped hip hop retain the "battle" culture that has existed since the beginning. This type of competition can also be seen in other dance forms, perhaps most notably in tap dancing of the early 20th century. *The Hammer Dance (Mc Hammer) MC Hammer brought rap music to the mainstream audience with his album Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em, the biggest-selling rap album of all time. Born into poverty in Oakland, California, in 1962, MC Hammer began his performing career as a young boy dancing outside the Oakland Coliseum during Oakland A's games. He launched himself into full-fledged stardom with the 1990 release Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em, the first...
Words: 1318 - Pages: 6
...anything. Even more so people love numbers that are easy and straightforward like the ones I have already given. Those numbers do not seem like anything other then numbers put in a paragraph for effect. But they go straight to the heart of everything that modern analytics has tried to accomplish. What are those numbers? Well the first two are the respective team payrolls for the New York Yankees and the Oakland Athletics. The Yankees, the evil empire as they are affectionately referred to as, perennially have had the highest team payroll in all of baseball and the spend big to win big philosophy has paid huge for them as the team has won a record 27 world series titles. Oakland on the other hand has been one of the leagues cheapest teams for well over the last twenty years easily not spending in almost 4 years on their team what the Yankees do in one. How does this pertain to analytics and its business world applications? Well the second set of numbers tell that story, as those are the win totals last year for both the Yankees and the A’s. It was the Oakland A’s who back in the early 2000’s began to embrace “Sabermatrics” or the analytical approach to judging talent and acquiring players to their entire organization. As a result despite being in the situation where they are being outspent by their competition for the best talent by almost a 4/1 margin have been able to field a...
Words: 1503 - Pages: 7
...can be forgiven for not noticing at the time, since a little distraction called the Cuban missile crisis had nearly thrust the world into nuclear war in the last week of October. Now approaching its 32nd birthday, fantasy football was born of three fathers -- the founding fathers of a game that slowly matured into the sports colossus that today inspires, infatuates and confounds millions of players. At first glance, 1962 may not seem such a long time ago. American Graffiti offers a snapshot of that era, nostalgically asking the question, "Where were you in '62?" But it was the dark ages in football years. We're not simply talking about a time far enough back that the Raiders still played in Oakland. We're talking about a time so distant, so remote, that the Raiders played in Oakland and were absolutely terrible. Our three founding fathers went on a road trip back East with those terrible 1-13 Raiders, a trip worth remembering only because of the bundle of joy that came bawling into the world one cold, dark fall night. The man who conceived the idea for fantasy football, and who deserves the most credit for the birth of the game, is the late Wilfred "Bill" Winkenbach, who was a limited partner with the Raiders (he owned a financial stake in the team, but had no say in its operation). Winkenbach devised and played precursor fantasy games involving golf and baseball in the...
Words: 2735 - Pages: 11
...step Beane took was he hired a new assistant GM Ivy League grad Peter Brand. Brands view of replacing Giambi with 3 players instead of one higher paid player helped the A’s stay within their budget and produce the same amount of efficiency. Next human relations management approach was used with the actual signing of these just as efficient players that were never given a chance by any other organization. Next was the process approach to management, which came into play after the team had lost a game and Billy Beane had went into the locker room and music was playing and the team was playing around like they had just won game 7 of the world series. The next day Beane had made trades to get rid of Giambi and Penya too of the team’s best players, and brought in to under paid but harder working and just as efficient players, to show that losing is not fun and that he will have players playing for him that will buy into the system that he is preaching and believes in. The managerial roles identified in the text and portrayed through the film of the main characters were first off General Manager Billy Beane. Beane’s role was the interpersonal one. Beane was the leader of the organization he was in charge to recruit, select, train, evaluate, motivate and then direct his followers which were the players of the Oakland Athletics. Next we had Peter Brand the Assistant General Manager, who is in the informational role of the organization. Brand gathered the information on the players that...
Words: 506 - Pages: 3
...Course Project: Leadership Review of Moneyball (2011) Introduction: Moneyball (2011) is a movie based on the truth story for Mr Billy Beane and his attempted to have the perfect team to achieve the baseball game win. Based on Moneyball: The art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis 2003. The lead actor in this movie is Brad Pitt (Billy Beane) and his assistant Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). This story changes a lot of concepts in management especially in the recruitment process. On this article I will write down the leadership skills that Billy Beane got it and also a brief talk about his personality. Leadership: * Negative: Introducing a new member in your team is a must, letting your team knows what you are planning to is a very must. As a leader you must make everyone of your team member on board so it will be easy for all to share common goals. Hiding team member activity or your strategy as a leader is mistake that you need as a leader. What we are facing in most of Saudis companies that we deal with new employees as they know the company inch by inch, while actually they don’t know anything. An orientation program is necessary tool for new joiner. In the movie Beane didn’t communicate the new strategy to his team. They have no idea what he is doing and why he is doing it. How can your employees help you if they don’t know what you are up to? Beane and Brand are trying to do one thing, and the rest of the recruiting team is trying to do something different. * Positive:...
Words: 1595 - Pages: 7
...TermPaperWarehouse.com - Free Term Papers, Essays and Research Documents The Research Paper Factory Join Search Browse Saved Papers Home Page » Business and Management Business of Baseball In: Business and Management Business of Baseball Mgt. 110 Business of Baseball Jordan Core 1. Baseball is full of decisions; every single last pitch is a decision, whether to pitch it high, low, inside, outside. The coach must make the decision of which players to play on certain nights and whether or not to take a pitcher out of the game. I think baseball has the most decisions to be made out of all the “big four” sports. Most decisions in baseball are structured problems, they are easily definable. If a slugger keeps hitting the fastball, it’s time to make the decision of pitching him curveballs away from his hotspot in the strike zone. There is a standardized way of handling almost every type of player and situation. Granted, there may be certain decisions that are unstructured problems and are not faced everyday by the manager such as a star player going down with an injury. The manager must make the decision of how to fill the void left by the injury. If you believe in it, luck can be an unstructured problem as well. In baseball all decision makers are faced with either risk or uncertainty. I don’t believe there is any certainty in any sport. Even the best pitchers have games where they falter so nothing is to be expected. To be the best...
Words: 392 - Pages: 2
...Melissa Vazquez Journal #2/ Article #2 “Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather than to pick a strategy that is more efficient,” said Palmer. “The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.” – Michael Lewis, Money ball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game. That was the quote that came to my mind when and while I was reading this article. But before reading this article, I had no idea how marketing can just like baseball in many ways. Let alone, did I think or believe that you can use the “Moneyball,” method within marketing. But just like baseball, I think you can use that method because at the end you are trying save tons of money while trying to market your product the best out in the field. In order to have your marketing team use a “Moneyball” method you need to able to trust your team, trust your gut and trust your data. I personally believe now after reading the article and seeing the movie marketing and baseball are so likely in many ways. In baseball and marketing, you got to be able to trust your team with the decisions that you guys make. As well as that in both you have to be able to trust your gut with either what player you decide to sign or what you want to market. As well as in both you have to trust your data that you have on either players or what the market tells you about the products that are being marketed out there. In Moneyball, Beane was success in what he did because he trusted his team. He put...
Words: 768 - Pages: 4
