< Resistance
Acceptance
Benjamin Baumer, former statistical analyst of the New York Mets between 2004-2012
"[Moneyball] certainly brought the idea of using statistical analysis as one of the primary motivating factors for decision-making and major league front offices to the public. Clearly, that was the moment when things became more widespread. For example, my position, I started working for the Mets in the end of 2003 and beginning of 2004, that was more or less the direct result of the publication of Moneyball."
Benjamin Baumer, former statistical analyst of the New York Mets between 2004-2012, student conducted interview
Despite resistance from traditionalists, the Athletics' success story of utilizing sabermetrics impacted big-market and small-market teams in the MLB, revolutionizing gameplay.
1) Tampa Bay Rays
Observing the A's success, the Tampa Bay Rays, another small-market team, invested in analytics departments to compete against big-market teams.
2008 MLB Team Position Performance by OBP, 2008, Baseball Reference
World Series: Why Tampa Bay Rays do 'Moneyball' better than Oakladn A's, 2020, The Mercury News
2) Boston Red Sox
The Red Sox, one of the big-market teams, showed interest in sabermetrics by offering Billy Beane $12.5 million. Although Billy Beane declined the offer, they brought in Theo Epstein, who melded the financial resources of the Red Sox with sabermetrics to end their 86-year World Series drought.
Baseball; A's Let Red Sox Pursue Beane, 2002, New York Times
3) New York Mets
"I didn't work in baseball before sabermetrics was a thing. To me, the whole reason I was there and the whole point of this was to move things forward. I don't think sabermetrics itself was 'revolutionary' to the New York Mets orginization, since we didn't fundamentally change the way that we think. But, gradually overtime, the infrastructure we built, the buy-in that we got from, and basically the front office, the metrics that we used to evaluate to players, the conversations that we had about players; that did all change gradually overtime. And it changed in the way of focusing in statistics."
Benjamin Baumer, former statistical analyst of the New York Mets between 2004-2012
New York Mets team, 2021, MLB
New Job Opportunities
Following DePodesta's legacy, the industry-wide adoption of sabermetrics created new job opportunities for data analysts who previously had no involvement in the baseball industry.
Seattle's analytics team, 2019, MLB
Breakdown of MLB Front Offcies by Number of Full-Time Emloyees Working Primarily in Analytics, 2014, Quantifying Market Inefficiencies in the Baseball Players’ Market
"There's still an visual aspect used scouting but you're combining that with analytical measure of performance. It just provides the scouts with new sources of information. You're not throwing away the old methods, you rather supplement them with new information."
Alan Nathan, Professor of Statistics at Bowling Green State University and SABR researcher, student conducted interview
"Moneyball opened the door for people like me to get into the front office. So, once that happened, we simply got more and more folks through the door."
Tom Tango, Senior Database Architect of Stats for MLB Advanced Media and member of SABR, student conducted interview
Fan Base
The widespread use of sabermetrics in media platforms has transformed fans' perception of data analytics. Most eventually realized the crucial role of sabermetrics in team performance and included it as a form of entertainment.
Data of MLB players, 2025, Statcast
"Fans are definitely more in tuned then even ten years ago ... we’re seeing scoreboard that will put WOBA (Weighted On-Base Average) on the board our WAR (Wins Above Replacement) getting fans to understand that there’s other statistics than maybe what they grew up with ... it’s over just negotiating how people are gonna deal with it moving forward when you talk about scouts now need to understand advanced analytics at a minimum terminology how it’s applied why its important."
Scott Bush, CEO of SABR, student conducted interview
"First, the prominent voice – sometimes it’s a current or former player, sometimes it’s a media personality – makes the comment. After that, a sizable number of analytics-friendly writers and fans respond by calling attention to the original commenter’s ignorance, stupidity, etc. This, of course, leads to blowback from more traditionally minded people who call for civility or respect, and sometimes they lean on an appeal to authority. Recently, we’ve also started to see the emergence of a thread in which members of the pro-saber crowd demonstrate frustration with their compatriots due to the pointlessness of their anger."
Neil Weinberg, The Case for Confronting Sabermetric Skeptics