On Moneyball and Being Contrarian

Moneyball is still an important book, movie, and idea.

The idea of using statistics to build a winning baseball or sports team is now commonplace. But in the early days of Bill James, Billy Beane, and Daryl Morey (to name a few), their ideas were seen at their worst as wrong, and at their best as contrarian. In a competitive and attention saturated world, being contrarian seems like a good way to stand out and become successful. But this might be an example of learning the wrong lesson from the success of others.

Being contrarian in this context, is neither good or bad. What is good, is finding a practical solution to a problem. For Beane it was generating runs and wins with a limited budget. Therefore, we must first understand the constraints we are operating from within before we formulate our plan.

The lesson for Daryl Morey and the Houston Rockets wasn’t do the opposite of other NBA teams because different is always better, but they saw a statistical advantage and they exploited it. Namely, a 3 point shot is worth more than a 2 point one. And it adds up when you’re taking 100 shots in a 48 minute game. This idea was contrarian because it went against a decades long status quo bias of how the game was played. The lesson isn’t be contrarian, the lesson is understand what contributes to winning in a way that is effective. This is usually different than what other teams are doing, but it’s not always the case.

Individual and institutional bias is a big part of the picture here. We should understand the systems around us and the decisions that shape them. We should be contrarian not to be different, but to make things better.