3 ms·

"With hindsight, and much more data, long-term trending analysis of the Sabre-metrics examples given in Moneyball have not correlated with increased team, or ev

"With hindsight, and much more data, long-term trending analysis of the Sabre-metrics examples given in Moneyball have not correlated with increased team, or even individual, performance in baseball." Hmmm... what? The general principles Beane operated from have pretty much been adopted league-wide at this point. Of course, MLB is a zero-sum game, so once everyone adopts something, it's no longer an advantage. The Tampa Bay Rays are operating off the same statistical measurement philosophy (although they understandably don't share which) to make a small-market club operate efficiently, and they're pretty successful with it.

pwhelan 17y ago
A corollary there is that you cannot leverage in baseball like you can in financial markets to play at ever thinner margins and thus the theory becomes largely useless unless you can augment it with better information. Also, people forget that "increased... performance" in baseball often means an increase in profit, not an increase in victories.
- bonsaitree 17y ago
  True. In financial markets, even small inefficiencies and impedance mis-matches can be exploited due to liquidity, fine-granularity, high transaction volumes, and uniform standards of measurement. The same principles don't down-scale to the individual athlete or small-group (team) dynamics. Put another way, financial market strategies (in theory) can be constructed on matching/measuring against a continuous variance in capital efficiencies. Human performance is simultaneously less consistent, discrete, and difficult to measure. Put another way, think of matching the torque/horsepower vs. rpm curves for a typical family sedan's engine versus a high-compression race engine. The former can get good performance with an automatic transmission, the later requires a stick shift and an experienced hand on the till.

pwhelan 17y ago

A corollary there is that you cannot leverage in baseball like you can in financial markets to play at ever thinner margins and thus the theory becomes largely useless unless you can augment it with better information. Also, people forget that "increased... performance" in baseball often means an increase in profit, not an increase in victories.

bonsaitree 17y ago
True. In financial markets, even small inefficiencies and impedance mis-matches can be exploited due to liquidity, fine-granularity, high transaction volumes, and uniform standards of measurement. The same principles don't down-scale to the individual athlete or small-group (team) dynamics. Put another way, financial market strategies (in theory) can be constructed on matching/measuring against a continuous variance in capital efficiencies. Human performance is simultaneously less consistent, discrete, and difficult to measure. Put another way, think of matching the torque/horsepower vs. rpm curves for a typical family sedan's engine versus a high-compression race engine. The former can get good performance with an automatic transmission, the later requires a stick shift and an experienced hand on the till.