1.
MISMANAGEMENT IN MONEY BALL THEORY
SETBACKS IN SABERMETRICS
Presentation by: Yaw Owusu-Akyaw, Seth Marshall, Anna
Hartsuff, Louis Matrisciano, Natasha Manor, and Taylor
Schenk

2.
PRESENTATION OBJECTIVE
• Presentation Objectives
• Display how the sabermetrics failed to support recruiting decisions.
• Reveal the ineffective aspects of the General Manager’s decision-making methods.
• Explain how managerial decision led to adverse psychological impacts.
• Unveil the lack of fairness used in the recruitment process.
• Critique the minimum qualifications the level reliability.

3.
OVERRELIANCE ON STATISTICAL DATA TO
CREATE MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
The Measurement process evaluates employees potential to perform task related to an
organization’s overall goal.
Situation:
The General Manager use the players’
statistical playing attributes to measure (OBP)
potential.
Problem with Measurement System:
- Managerial decisions are solely influenced by
the numbers generated from the measure.
- Fails to recognize external factors affecting performance
• (Experience, Cognitive Reasoning, Motiviation, Personality, etc.)
Attribute of Interest:
Baseball Runs
Operational Definition of
Attribute:
On-Base-Percentage
Measure:
Sabermetrics
Measure’s Administration
Method:
Practice and Games
How Measure is
Evaluated:
Number of Runs made by
player
Unable to provide the full picture
of players/employees.

4.
MEASUREMENT’S NEGATIVE EFFECTS ON
MANAGEMENT
• Mismatching positions due to heavy
reliance on numbers rather than
experience.
• Creating recruiting decisions that
counter the goal of the measurement
process.
• Forecasting future performance solely
on the numbers displayed for short
duration of to time.
• Example one: General Manager attempts
to place a former pitcher as the team’s
first-baseman. Role ambiguity causes a
decrease in player’s performance and
confidence.
• Example two: Statics leads management
team to use three players to replace one
effective player. Data should have been
used to find one player that matched to
the former athlete's ability.

5.
DECISION MAKING

6.
DECISION MAKING
• Predictors were solely based on money and past performance.
• Low face validity, some players didn’t understand why they were recruited i.e. a
catcher being recruited to play first base.
• Very narrow focus which had a negative impact on the team

7.
DECISION MAKING
• The predictive selection hypothesis was the sole focus of the recruiting efforts. If the
statistics and price lined up the players were recruited.
• Experience and mostly intuition were the focus of Billy Bean.
• Unreliable and not measureable.

8.
DECISION MAKING PROCESS
• Beane disregards Clinical prediction
• Expertise of scouts
• Experience of the manager
• Predictors are overly related
• Don’t take into account other predictors
• Predictors should be more independent
• Would be a better predictor of success

9.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACTS
• Transactional Contracts
• Beane largely held psychological contracts that were transactional in nature.
• Narrow involvement – makes decisions without input
• Low commitment – manager doesn’t listen to Beane
• Relational Contracts
• Beane should have developed psychological contracts that were relational in nature
• Mutual loyalty – manager would have considered Beane’s thoughts
• Higher commitment – manager and scouts would have went beyond minimum
• Open-ended collaboration

10.
RECRUITMENT & FAIRNESS
PERCEPTIONS
• Distributive Fairness-Perception of
fairness of hiring outcome
• Procedural Fairness-Perception of
fairness of organization’s policies and
procedures
• Interactional Fairness-Perception of
information and personal treatment
given during hiring process.
Billy Beane’s methods could have led to
Spillover Effects:
 Recruitment tactics used to hire Scott
Hatteberg
 The poaching of Peter Brand from the
Cleveland Indians

11.
BILLY BEANE AS A RECRUITER AND GENERAL
MANAGER
Ineffective Characteristics:
• Poor Interpersonal Skills
• Angry rages after losses including throwing things,
screaming and damaging property
• Pointing and snapping at Peter Brand during a
meeting to relate data and figures without
introducing him to the rest of the scouts as a new
employee
• Lacks Warmth
• Isolates himself from players and team in general
and refuses to attend games
• Terminates players with his “bullet to the head”
method and does not express any sympathy

12.
BILLY BEANE: THE NO-SHOW!
Other Ineffective Characteristics:
• Too focused on the “goals game”
• Prematurely resolves tension
• Refuses to accept solutions from his scouts,
even when he had no solutions himself (at the time)
• A strong focus on individual games (instead of the season as a
whole)
• Can lead to emotional (bad) decision making!

13.
DETERMINING MINIMUM QUALIFICATION
• But only by changing the categories were the
A’s team able to afford players that would
show results
• Instead of increasing or decreasing the high
and low cut scores the team looked for
different skills
• This is how they then determined the level of
satisfaction and dissatisfaction in
performance
x
x
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x x
x x
x
x
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x x
xx
x
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x
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x
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x
x
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x
x
x
x
x
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x
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xx
x
x
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false
positive
false
negative
true
negative
true
positive

14.
RELIABILITY OF METHOD
• Sabermetrics was not meant
to be successful in a short 7
game series but in a 160+
game season
• When comparing the
traditional stats of each
player Beane’s team would be
ranked the lowest in baseball
history

15.
QUESTIONS OR THOUGHTS?

16.
REFERENCES