Moneyball is the movie of the book which tells the story of a Major League baseball coach, Billy Beane, who was faced with the problem of how to compete with a small budget. Already starting to sound familiar?
Aided by a computer nerd who had no preconceptions about baseball, Beane found the solution was to study player performance data in order to identify what was really important, rather than what traditional wisdom said was important, and then find the cheapest players who could supply those things.
Quite often these players were slightly overweight, or slow, or generally thought to be too old. BB ignored that if they could still get to first base or slug the ball over the fence often enough.
The results were spectacular, with Beane’s team, the Oakland A’s, twice reaching the end of season playoffs and at one point winning 20 games in a row.
Plus he gets to be played by Brad Pitt in the film, which is not likely to happen to, say, Steve Bruce.
The Beane method used statistics to find the best players for the least money. We, on the other hand, tried the Mr Bean method, using agents to find the worst players for the most money.
So Stimson could do worse than take a leaf out of the Moneyball book. Of course baseball is much more suitable than football for the sort of micro analysis that reveals that Player A has a better strike rate to three decimal places than Player B. Baseball sports coverage is just a sea of numbers. Here we value attributes like “wanting it” or “getting stuck in” which aren’t as easy to quantify.
However, by looking beyond miles on the clock, a few dents on the bodywork or a suspicious banging noise under the bonnet we have found some gems in the past, and out of necessity it’s time to do it again.
Here’s a Moneyball XI of our own.
1) Lee Harper – quick pass the Ralgex, Lee’s back’s gone again. But a top keeper to the very last.
2) Graham Reed – League days behind him but 120% commitment and possessor of a moustache that no one dared criticise.
3) Arthur Mann – was older than most people’s grandad and almost certainly the last Poppies player who saw a Zeppelin, but what a cool customer in the left back slot and rarely exposed by opponents half his age.
4) Ian Roper - man boobs and a fuller waist than the last 5 winners of the World Professional Darts Championship, but bags of experience, guts and know how.
5) Big X – a cheapo graduate of the noted Redditch Utd academy, this dreadlocked siege engine was loved for his rampaging runs that resembled a small giraffe galloping through a shopping centre.
6) Rob Taylor – picked up for nothing, and being a student was paid £1 an hour yet was a midfield star for a couple of years.
7) Dougie Keast – from Shepshed obscurity to a decade in a Poppies shirt, and never let anyone down.
8) Brett Solkhon – limited yes and past his peak certainly, but are we likely to find anyone more up for the challenge?
9) David Hodges - he’s fat, he’s round, he weighs 200 pounds. One of Graham Carr’s left field picks, signed from God knows where, this lumbering specimen netted several times in a short spell, including one at Wycombe where we inconvenienced their title procession by inflicting their only home defeat of the season.
10) Frankie Murphy – the greatest player Desborough ever let go - a scrawny, unathletic character who was a marvel and would be worth about 500K today.
11) Ooh Johnny Graham – plucked from Leicester junior football, he nudged, tapped and bobbled his way to 15 goals a season without ever looking like he quite knew how.
Wot no Cohen Griffith?
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