Sabrmetrics (the "Moneyball" approach is essentially application of the principles discovered by Sabrmetrics to building a baseball team) is one of my areas of interest, and I'd like to make a few comments about this.
-There is no more reason to econometrically test whether the A's were correct in discarding standard measures than there is to conduct hundreds of trials of whether adding two of something to two of something will get you four of something. As long as baseball games are won by sending more players from first to second to third base and then to home than the other team does, the "moneyball" approach is superior to the traditional approach. As long as traditionalists like most ESPN announcers are wrong that some players magically "find a way to score" then we can objectively evaluate different strategies of winning baseball games, and know that the moneyball approach is superior. Studies of teams that supposedly use this approach may, if anything, help the arguments of traditionalists because no team (including the As) has been able to fully implement these principles -I used to find the sentiments expressed by the Lewis quote at the end compelling, and felt that logically Baseball should have the least inefficient labor markets. However, I now think that in some ways baseball is uniquely susceptible to such forms of inefficiency. One of the reasons is BECAUSE such detailed, individualized, stats are kept. In most people's eyes, baseball players should be judged by the traditional stats. A relief pitcher with alot of saves is considered very valuable, and a player with lots of stolen bases is considered a valuable baserunner. In reality, it is almost never a good idea to use your best reliever to get saves, and almost never a good idea to steal bases. However, pitchers are always reluctant to be put in a situation where they can't get saves, and baserunners want to steal bases, precisely because their statistics will look better (in the traditional categories). Every team which has tried to implement the moneyball approach has run into lots of resistance for this reason. Therefore, teams don't think it will be useful to hire people who favor this approach because they can't implement it. It becomes self perpetuating. -Traditionalist strategies in baseball, no matter how irrational, can survive because of a cult of tradition. And industries with more of a cult of tradition than baseball are few and far between. Now, this isn't to say that the inefficiency of baseball doesn't suggest that corporate inefficiency is pervasive, but there are some reasons why its not so obvious that baseball should be less susceptible to these problems than other industries.
