Thread by @shahpriyank25

Here's a🧵on the story of how Oakland Athletics, the team with one of the lowest payrolls in Major League Baseball, consistently managed to make the playoffs and set an American League record of 20 consecutive wins in 2002.
Inspired by my favourite movie and the book #Moneyball.

The general manager of the Oakland A's, Billy Beane, who's at the helm of the events back in his youth, was a promising athlete and was described by the scouts based on their rudimentary judgement of the qualities such as a good face indicative of good character, athleticism

without paying any heed to statistics. Billy was offered a scholarship by Stanford University and was quite eager to study. Beane, a hot prospect was drafted by the New York Mets, and he signs the contract for $125k. Subsequently, Stanford withdraws the scholarship.

Billy had a doomed career in baseball and just remained "another minor league baseball player." Years later, Billy, 40 and multiple years as the Oakland A's GM, changed things drastically in 2002 after the previous year's draft was an expensive disaster.

The man at the centre of the change was Beane's assistant, Paul DePodesta, a Harvard graduate with no experience of professional baseball. The A's had $40mn to spend on baseball players, but their rival had already spent $126mn, with another $100mn in reserve.

Moreover, the team was forced to trade three of the previous year's star players. Although they couldn't outspend their opponents, they out-thought them by adopting rational methods snubbed by many baseball professionals.

Most baseball scouts were biased in favour of what they could see with their own eyes. However, Paul by analyzing statistics about a player’s walks, on-base average, and other obscure information, managers could acquire talented players whom other franchises didn’t find valuable.

Their star player of the previous season Jason Giambi was irreplaceable in one person and thus, the A's "replace the aggregate" of Giambi's contributions to the team with 3 players with the skill set of discipline as a batter and the ability to get on base.

They hire Justice for his skill and temperament even though his ageing body can no longer hit powerfully, Scott Hatteberg who comes off an arm injury that ended his catching career and a 3rd batter. Although the traditional observers would discard the players, Billy picked them

Beane takes advantage of teams who have given up hope&trade away their best players in the middle of the season. His 5 rules for trades are change is always good; don't make a deal just for its sake; know the value of every baseball player; identify prospects precisely & pursue.

A's also pick up Chad Bradford who has a strange pitching action, which looks like "feeding pigeons or shooting craps." Despite achieving results, his team does not trust him to continue playing & hence, A's brought him. He is considered as one of baseball's best relief pitchers.

Slowly, as the season progresses after a series of losses, the A's hold up very well as a team and create history by winning 20 games in a row. They advance to the playoffs for the season. However, the A's lose in the postseason playoff games.

Post the season, Beane receives an interesting offer from the Boston Red Sox, to transform the team for a $12.5 million annual salary. However, he declines since he tries to avoid the mistake from his youth & decide based on financial reasons.

The book leaves me with a few mental models and those are:
1) There's a lot more going on than just what you see with your naked eye and why it's important to let data help you make decisions.
2) Just because the industry doesn't accept your style doesn't mean that it's wrong.

3) When you treat people with empathy and motivate them, they'd draw themselves over the line to win for you.
4) Underdogs have an advantage since they have nothing to lose.
5) A big bank war-chest is not the decider for success in the war.
cc: @aryan_kochhar

My favourite quote from the movie

@aryan_kochhar 👀