Moneyball has become a shorthand term
for the use of data in sport, but it is not
simply that. It is about finding what is
undervalued and then using that to
determine players who cost less than
they should. Used correctly this simple
insight has had incredible ramifications
in baseball and is already changing the
way that football clubs recruit. The term
comes from Michael Lewis's book about
Billy Beane. Beane had everything as a
player
what scouts call the five tools; running,
throwing, fielding, hitting and hitting
with power. When he failed as a player, he
vowed never to think about baseball in
the same way.
Lewis's book charts have been, by then,
general manager at the poor
unfashionable Oakland A's, used data to
determine player recruitment and achieve
remarkable success on a modest budget.
Beane, following Bill James, the father of
using baseball stats intelligently,
realized the on-base percentage, how often
a player gets on base, was more important
than pure hitting or glory plays like
bunts for stealing bases. Beane started
to look for players who had been
discarded but had great on-base
percentage and were therefore
undervalued. Baseball didn't take on base
percentage seriously, but Beane did and
he started winning for peanuts. Football
recruitment has often been flawed,
big-name signings make fans feel happy,
but if a player has already peaked or
has only done well at an international
tournament, they're probably overvalued.
The availability here stick the idea
that the more easily you can call
something to mind the more weight you
get in decision-making, means that scouts
often privilege recent performances over
long-term trends. Ex pro scouts and
managers also tend to overweigh their own
experience when making decisions as if
it's the most valid; it isn't.
The first managers to really grasp value
were Brian Clough and Peter Taylor, even
though they didn't use data, the pair
would look for players with personal
issues that club's didn't want and then
help them through those issues. Ken Burns
was overweight, liked to fight and a drink,
but Clough and Taylor picked him up for
next to nothing and turned him into 1978
Football Writers Footballer of the Year.
They still used eye and gut, but the sense
that some players were cheaper than
Clough and Taylor thought they ought to
be was crucial to their successes with
Darby and with Nottingham Forest. As
numbers started to proliferate in
football
thanks in part to optic and prozone it
seemed like they might be the answer to
player recruitment. Possession, tackling and
passing were suddenly in vouge as metrics,
not just things that happened on a pitch.
But numbers alone don't tell you much
unless you can read them and crucially
find value.
Nonetheless data can help a club pick up
a bargain. In 2014 N'golo Kante made 4.8
tackles per game, 2.9
interceptions per game and 0.9
clearances per game for the small club
FC Caen, only promoted to Ligue 1 the
season prior. Leicester spotted that, bought
him for 7.65 million and won the league.
As a defensive midfielder five foot six
and a half inch Kante was too small for
most scouts, but the numbers told the
story that the eye missed. When Kante
moved to Chelsea, Leicester made a profit of
over 20 million pound.
Liverpool, whose owner John Henry is a
big fan of Billy Beane and Bill James,
have tried a version of Moneyball at the
club with some successes and some
failures. Brentford famously used
data-driven recruitment for half a
season before changing their minds,
numbers we use to whittle down lists of
players who were then scouted by video
and finally in person. But these are the
high-profile instances, data is now used
by all sensible clubs to find the next
Kante. The key is finding the undervalued
statistic that correlates to winning
before anyone else does. That is
Moneyball