In the What If issue of Sportsnet magazine, Ben Nicholson-Smith explores what might have happened had the Oakland Athletics rejected the sabermetric approach that put the team on the map (and the silver screen). His research led to a whole other “Moneyball” discovery.
When we think of analytically inclined baseball teams, the Oakland Athletics, Cleveland Indians and Boston Red Sox come to mind right away. They’ve all invested in the sort of advanced stats often associated with Moneyball–the ones that make RBI and ERA look like child’s play.
The Milwaukee Brewers have never received much recognition as a sabermetrically savvy club, so I was interested to learn that they’ve made a point of investing in their analytics department in recent years. While reporting this piece for the What If issue of Sportsnet magazine, I spoke to Gord Ash, the former Toronto Blue Jays GM and current assistant GM to fellow Canadian Doug Melvin. Ash cited WAR in casual conversation and said the Brewers even have their own version of the metric (wins above replacement is a complex and much-debated stat used to assess a player’s overall value). He told me the Brewers’ front office has grown considerably in recent years with increased specialization for analysts, scouts and trainers.
Ash and Melvin probably won’t be the subjects of a bestselling book (breathe easy, Brad Pitt you don’t have to worry about replicating any Canadian accents in your next Hollywood movie), and the Brewers likely won’t be tabbed 2017 World Series champions the way the Houston Astros recently were by Sports Illustrated, but my conversation with Ash still reminded me of a lesson from Moneyball. Just as some great players look ordinary at first, some of baseball’s seemingly old-school teams can turn out to be intellectually curious and innovative, too.
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