My document I read for the second part of the report was The Trading Desk. This article was about the brilliant managing mind of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane. The article talks about his ways of building a winning baseball team with very little money to work with. Beane used sabermetric analytical techniques to find players who were undervalued by their team. He would also use this technique when dealing his own players. What this caused was a cost effective way for Beane to get what he wanted which was a winning baseball team. Beane along with other managers changed the way in which people scout, draft, trade, and pay players. In terms of the other article I read regarding the Chicago Black Socks I see a few connections. Firstly both articles are centered around money. The Black Socks were torn between trying to win and taking more money. Billy Beane was trying to find a way to win for the least amount of money. The money in both cases make it look like is more of a game of economics than of the game itself. In my mind both stories revolve around cheating. Obviously the Black Socks were caught after throwing the 1919 World Series. I feel Billy Beane found a way around the rules to make his team good. He manipulated the system and other people to make them think things that were not true. Before this time the only way someone could put together a winning baseball team was with money. Money bought the best hitters, pitchers, and fielders Bean disproved that by messing with the system. In my mind Billy Beane found a way to build a team that was very good for very little money but he did so by in an unorthodox and some might say immoral way.
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