Moneyball 2013 : The Rise Of The A’s

11 years later, and so far Moneyball is showing itself again in Oakland. The Oakland Athletics have the second lowest payroll in the Major League (~$60.3 million), and yet somehow they have they second best record in the American League (41-27). They don’t have many big name players, however one of their stars this season has been Josh Donaldson, who’s got a .310 BA with 42 RBIs and 78 hits, all of which are team-bests. But you don’t need a stacked lineup in order to have a great baseball team. Money in baseball is becoming more and more of a necessity if teams want to try to make big pushes to go deep into the postseason. We see it every year, the wealthier teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Phillies for example, are able to offer large sums of money to players they want to keep in their city. While it may not seem fair to those teams who can’t afford to pay over $200 million in salaries, that’s how it’s been done recently.

But these past few months for the Athletics have shown the low salary teams that you don’t need to have the best, top-notch players on your team to have success. You can win games by paying half of the players under $1 million for the year. Maybe the A’s will be able to go farther this season than they did during the actual Moneyball year, when they lost to the Twins in the ALDS.

Billy Beane should be proud.