Moneyball: the finale no one wanted to see Billy Beane's strategy and its failures

We have all seen Moneyball, right? Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill. Billy Bean and Peter Brand (Paul DePodesta in real life). The 2002 Oakland Athletics (also known as A’s) and their record-breaking 20 consecutive victories in the MLB American League. A revolutionary approach to baseball, told through a beautiful underdog story. The movie ends with a finale that leads the audience to think that, despite missing out on the 2002 World Series title, the Athletics are still in a good position to show the world what they are made of and that Billy Beane’s strategies still have the potential to revolutionise baseball once and for all. This, however, does not represent the real truth. Moneyball may have had a happy ending of sorts, but real life was much harsher with the Athletics.

The Athletics’ success since the inception of the Moneyball concept (named after the 2003 book written by Michael Lewis, not the 2011 movie) has had its ups and downs. Between 1999 and 2002, the A’s went through their golden age, with the Moneyball strategy reaching its peak during that legendary 2002 season. But what is Moneyball, exactly? In short, Moneyball is the art of waiting for your team’s stars to reach their highest valuation, so that you can then trade them for underrated, young, or emerging players, in the hopes that their output ends up surpassing that of the players that were “sent away”. All of this is done with sabermetrics (advanced statistics that analyze in-game activity), in order to reveal hardly discernible and almost invisible qualities in specific players. It is the perfect small team strategy, characterised by a mentality that allows those with a restricted budget like the Oakland Athletics to have a shot at victory.

And now, the announcement of a land purchase by the famous Las Vegas Strip confirms that the Athletics are planning a new stadium in the city and a relocation that should be done by 2028. Despite the fans begging for the team to be sold and kept in Oakland, the owners want to revitalize their investment and avoid losing further money, putting an end to the Athletics and rewriting Moneyball’s finale. From the players, the fans, the stadium, to the organization, the entire franchise is falling to pieces. The lack of capital from owner John Fischer and Billy Bean’s obsession with operating on a small budget have done more harm than good, and the only thing left to do is to merely watch as this once-great and revolutionary team plays out its last years in the city that has been loyal to it for almost 60 years.