This is another off-topic article that I found fascinating.

From the article:

Billy Beane is an ex-ballplayer who, according to the scouts who recruited him out of high school in 1980, was destined for a successful big-league career. They were wrong. During his 10 years in the majors, Billy Beane’s vaunted athletic prowess and skill never played out. He looked great on the field - everybody said so - he just didn’t play baseball very well.

So in 1990 Beane did the unthinkable for a professional ballplayer in his prime: He voluntarily walked off the field of dreams and took a job in the front office.

Good move. What Beane found there in the Oakland A’s clubhouse was a culture that had begun to question the conventional wisdom about baseball, the same wisdom that had predicted he would be a star. And if conventional baseball wisdom could be so wrong about him, maybe it was wrong about a lot of things. Including what makes winning baseball teams.

When Billy Beane became general manager of the Oakland A’s in 1997, he set about turning conventional baseball wisdom on its ear. With the second lowest payroll in the major leagues, he put together a team of undervalued rejects who came close to breaking the American League record for consecutive wins in 2002.

He did it not with advance scouting reports or hunches or gut feelings or any of the other trappings so dear to the crusty hearts of old baseball pros. He did it the way any actuary would.

He did with numbers.

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