Billy Beane from America to Milan. When the moneyball method works

Billy Beane he made money, as a sports manager, consultant, investor. But he would have done even more if he had demanded a dollar for every correct quotation of the book dedicated to him by Michael Lewis, Moneyball, and the methods that inspired it and a dollar and a half for every incorrect quotation. After all, this was the week of Beane and Moneyball, of algorithms and lots per kilo, of scientific methods of evaluation and unscientific words of comment. Yes, Gerry Cardinale’s Milan, of which Beane is a consultant, will do without Paolo Maldini and Frederic Massara, whose work will pass to a group led by Geoffrey Moncada and inspired by the analysis of data, numbers and trends to choose players with impact at a reasonable price. But over this method, the moneyball method, which has also been applied in football for at least a decade, an exaggerated and surprising clamor arose, which at a certain point broke in two between truthful narration and inflated mythology.

The book, then: published in 2003 and turned into a highly successful film starring Brad Pitt, tells how Beane, general manager of baseball’s Oakland A’s, changed the traditional way of evaluating and acquiring players, in a sport where the technical gesture can be broken down into a myriad of elements, not even conceived before. The hitter, previously judged only by his ability to hit home runs or hit frequently, was now also analyzed in his ability to evaluate the pitch and therefore choose whether to hit or not, in the ball’s exit speed, in the consistency in hitting it with the point of the club that generates the most power. Variations in centimeters that can make the difference between a powerful but ‘lucky’ hitter and one that is less powerful but more continuous in his approach and therefore destined to have a higher performance over time.

The concreteness against the appearance, the hidden detail that belies the evidence. As recounted, in football, a series of episodes in 2015, in Liverpool, narrated years ago by the New York Times: Ian Graham, head of the statistics department, showed the newly hired Jürgen Klopp a dossier on his Borussia Dortmund 2014-15. Dortmund had finished seventh, but by studying every action in every game Graham had determined that his real value would be that of second place. Klopp reacted astonished when he heard mention of a 0-2 draw against Mainz in which any advanced statistics would have determined a clear victory for Dortmund, defeated instead by a lucky goal and an own goal, and the gist was this: if seventh place was actually worth the second, Klopp had perhaps done a better job than in the two years of winning the titles and also for this reason he had been called to replace Brendan Rodgers.

But Graham, who is leaving Liverpool these days after 10 years, did even more: studying the data, he suggested the purchase from Fiorentina of Momo Salah, who had previously been branded as unsuitable for the Premier League on the basis of just 13 games with Chelsea. Graham discovered that in reality on those few occasions the Egyptian striker had fared no worse than what he later did at Fiorentina and Roma, and that it was therefore worth buying him. Finally, in 2020, Diogo Jota was taken because the analysis of his performances with Wolverhampton had shown a very high ability to make precise passes with his weak foot, the left, and discovered that with his pressure and recovery the ball had forced a defender to commit fouls from the last man and subsequent expulsion every 10 games, perhaps a detail but capable of influencing that game a year which perhaps makes the difference. Three examples of an approach that is spreading everywhere and at any level, with the variant given by slightly different criteria that the various clubs can adopt and use for the final choices.

What was striking, at the beginning, was that people like Graham and his collaborators, graduates in subjects between quantum physics and astrophysics, didn’t even see the matches, despite the passion of some of them (Graham first) for football : their task was to study the pure data and transmit to the sports directors the lists of the players most suited to a certain type of philosophy, not yet known and therefore still cheap, and to the technical staff the characteristics of the opponents. Technical staff who in the case of Liverpool have always meant video managers: it is then up to them to produce concise, digestible documentation to be passed on to Klopp and his collaborators, who can choose whether to use it in whole or in part. Because it must be remembered that Klopp himself, in Germany, had always preferred to rely on traditional methods, unknowingly taking up the age-old conflict between old and new school, also visible in the film Back in the game, starring Clint Eastwood, and only after that interview with Graham he had convinced himself to include statistical information in the preparation of the matches.

Beyond fideistic and fanatical attitudes, therefore, the moneyball method, a term often rejected by the specialists themselves, is simply the latest stage of an evolution that had followed different paths depending on the country. In England, for example, as early as 1950, a football-loving air force commander, Charles Reep, had begun to study matches with a notebook and, analyzing his notes, he had found that most of the goals came from actions with three or fewer steps. Hired in February 1951 as a consultant by Brentford, who were in the relegation zone, he helped save them by bringing the goal average from 1.5 to three and influencing numerous coaches including Charles Hughes, future technical director of the English federation. In fact, the joint thinking of Reep and Hughes led to the adoption of the kick and rush, practiced by at least two generations of English footballers. Hughes had responded to critics, especially foreign critics, quoting Arthur Rowe, coach of Tottenham champions in 1951 who instead practiced push and run, give and go, play short passes and movements and yet had said “if I had players capable of making precise throws of 50 meters I would use them without problems”. The studies by Reep and Hughes have been partially denied by deeper analyses, but in that approach there was the basis of the current methods which have found their most famous application in recent years at Brentford, as well as in the sister club, the Midtjylland. And after all, even Beane, whose A’s did better than expected but never won anything, despite the subtitle of the book (The art of winning), has only deepened and expanded what had already been conceived many years earlier by a historian and journalist, Bill James, author since 1977 of an annual almanac called Baseball Abstract. The long march of detailed analysis, according to a memorable article on The Ringer website, ended victoriously in October 2016, when the Chicago Cubs won the MLB championship, after 108 years, thanks to the management of general manager Theo Epstein. an architect of the moneyball method, even if he didn’t call it that. Also availing himself of the advice of James, what an old-fashioned coach (and in any case MLB champion) like Sparky Anderson had defined, with contempt, “that fat guy with a beard who doesn’t understand anything at all”, Epstein in 2004, only 29 years old, had brought back to the title, after 86 years, the Boston Red Sox, of which he had become GM after the refusal of… Beane. The Red Sox have been owned by the Fenway Sports Group since 2002, which in 2010 acquired Liverpool, of which in 2021 a group (RedBall) led by Cardinale and Beane was about to become a 25 percent shareholder, and the circle is now closing to Milan.

It’s mathematics, they would say in some parts of Italy. Paradoxically, that’s right.