A bottom three payroll in the MLB, losing three star players, and having one terrible roster from bullpen to batters, yet they were still tied with the most wins in the league and went on a 20 game winning streak. So how did the 2002 Oakland Athletics MLB team do it with only 40 million dollars in their payroll?
Ebony Renee Baker, who is a fashion editor, described it best when she talked about how important it is to hire the right people to help you work effectively in a team setting. She also brought up the importance of trial and error into seeing what works and what does not work.
The 2002 Oakland Athletics story does not revolve around how good the players were or how good the coaches were, but instead it was about the team’s general manager at the time in Billy Beane. Billy started off the season with one of if not the worst roster in all of MLB history, he then hired new assistant general manager Paul DePodesta to join him in helping create a new and improved Oakland Athletics.
These two were not only able to improve that Oakland roster but also change the way people scouted players in all sports. Before these two came around statistics were not a very big part of the game it was always based on physical profile and how the players mechanics were. Having a smaller budget that year compared to teams like the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers who had over a 100 million dollar payroll they weren’t able to buy big name players to help improve their team. They had to think outside of the box to get players that were not only cheap but also going to help improve this team.
They came up with a new system that would change sports recruiting forever, they started to look at the statistics and analytics of what each player could do. No matter how bad it looked for the Oakland Athletics at times these two stuck to their craft and kept going at it until the end.
After all the hard work from both Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, they were not only able to help the Oakland Athletics win a division series and go on a 20 game winning streak to shock the whole MLB community but also change sports recruiting forever.