This chapter of my independent reading for the quarter really stuck out to me because this is the point in the story where Billy Beane, Paul DePodesta, and the Oakland A's management really start turning Bill James's theory into reality. Beane's long list of unorthodox methods in choosing players for the 2002 MLB Draft is revealed to the rest of the organization, causing shock and possibly snickering throughout the rest of the league. For example, Beane and DePodesta make a "wish list" of twenty ballplayers who in a perfect world would receive in the draft. To everyone's surprise, they get thirteen of them, when most teams would be happy to get three.
This was an absolute stab at the conventional wisdom and context of running a Major League Baseball team. Before Billy Beane, teams hardly implemented any statistical analysis in the MLB. The other GMs did not realize that they were misinterpreting their players by looking the wrong stats (steals, hits) instead of the stats that actually lead to wins (OBP, slugging). The purpose of this chapter was to show to baseball readers the breakthrough of Bill James's long lost ideas into fruition. This breakthrough will lead to a new outlook toward decision-making in the MLB. That is, of course, not until the A's prove the success of their method.
A rhetorical device used often in this chapter is onomatopoeia, specifically when describing actions being done in the A's management room during the draft. For example, Lewis describes cheers and other sounds every time Billy Beane the A's scouts luck out of a draft pick. Lewis thoroughly accomplished his purpose of showing the breakthrough by capturing the emotion and conveying it to the reader through this device.
This was an absolute stab at the conventional wisdom and context of running a Major League Baseball team. Before Billy Beane, teams hardly implemented any statistical analysis in the MLB. The other GMs did not realize that they were misinterpreting their players by looking the wrong stats (steals, hits) instead of the stats that actually lead to wins (OBP, slugging). The purpose of this chapter was to show to baseball readers the breakthrough of Bill James's long lost ideas into fruition. This breakthrough will lead to a new outlook toward decision-making in the MLB. That is, of course, not until the A's prove the success of their method.
A rhetorical device used often in this chapter is onomatopoeia, specifically when describing actions being done in the A's management room during the draft. For example, Lewis describes cheers and other sounds every time Billy Beane the A's scouts luck out of a draft pick. Lewis thoroughly accomplished his purpose of showing the breakthrough by capturing the emotion and conveying it to the reader through this device.
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