Billy Bean, the manager of the Oakland A’s baseball team, decided to throw out traditional measures of performance for baseball players. The most important offensive measure of a player was simply the chance of not getting an out. Likewise, defensive measures were a sort of “out production.” Each of these contributed to the ultimate measure, which was the contribution a player made to the chance of the team winning a game relative to his salary. At a team level, this converts into a simple cost per win. By 2002, the Oakland A’s were spending only $500,000 per win, while some teams were
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