BP Unfiltered: Every Team’s Moneyball, Literally Every Team, In One Post

Throughout Spring Training, we’ve previewed all 30 major-league teams by profiling one thing they do well. One Moneyball each, for 30 teams, making 30 strategies battling in the competitive economics of baseball. What one team pursues might leave them absent in another area, allowing other teams to rush that void until the advantage is no more. Ultimately, the goal is to capitalize on positive-expectation opportunities, and the multitude of markets and team-building methods permits every team, plausibly, to hammer their own Moneyball for value.

Of course, the initiatives we wrote about aren’t necessarily the focus of that team. Teams should be monitoring every market in search of undervalued assets. Sometimes their pursuits appear obvious by the volume of resources dedicated or public dialogue of senior officials. Oftentimes though, being an outsider limits our knowledge of a team’s internal workings, and we’re left to deduce team strategies based on partial information.

That means the initiatives we wrote about aren’t necessarily a focus of that team, either. They might be random patterns we’ve inferred to be an intentional trend. They might be actions that simply stand out more than others. They might even be temporary experiments or ephemeral arbitrage opportunities.

So by living in the public sphere, we’re bound to get it wrong. It’s impossible to achieve certainty unless a team official divulges it point blank, which isn’t happening until… ever. We’re still entitled to our own readings though, and we’ve (hopefully) readily admitted when those readings have gaps in them. The Marlins promote their prospects quickly, except when they don’t. The Dodgers flaunt their cash everywhere, except where they don’t. The Blue Jays trade their prospects before they reach Double-A, except when they don’t.

All of this means, again, is that 1) teams are not married to a single ideology, and 2) they remain flexible to the situation. All Moneyball means, remember, is exploiting opportunities where the expected value exceeds the cost while assuming the least risk possible. Those opportunities can come from anywhere. Some teams take on more risk because they lack the money to buy risk protection. The 30 Moneyballs we cover vary from common to esoteric; the latter are usually riskier propositions and tend to be linked to low-payroll teams. You’ll notice teams like the Dodgers, Nationals, Tigers, and Giants following proven-to-work strategies, while we’ve identified less common ideas for teams like the Marlins, Astros, Indians, and Diamondbacks.

Regardless, there are many ways to build a team, and risk is abound everywhere. In the aggregate, here's how often each baseball operation was the identified topic in our previews, broken down by my arbitrary categorization:

One observation here is how much we covered player development. PD is rarely as visible as scouting or drafting in public baseball coverage; it's all about internal team processes and on-field coaching in the minor leagues, neither of which we’re privy to. But there’s no harm in attempting to discern their efforts, and observing the minor-league trajectories of players does reveal some team philosophies. Maybe there’s more work to be done there.

If we repeated this preview series next year, the counts and placement of teams would undoubtedly change. That’s how short these advantages—taking the leap of faith that we have found some truth in them—last. Like any asset market, value opportunities disappear once teams pounce on them, turning the market from inefficient to efficient. It only takes one big success for everyone else to follow suit. If we ran this exercise 15 years ago, one of the operations would be “analytics” and there’d probably be less than five teams listed. Imagine that.

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If you missed the series, here’s every preview:

3/16: Last year's World Series players, the San Francisco Giants and Kansas City Royals.

3/17: The cash-strapped Rays and cash-rich Dodgers.

3/18: The payroll artists Houston Astros and San Diego Padres.

3/19: The unsolvable-yet-succeeding Oakland Athletics and the solvable-yet-losing Colorado Rockies.

3/20: The front offices of New York (Yankees) and the New York (Mets).

3/23: The winningest teams of the past four years and PECOTA-projected division titlists Nationals and Tigers.

3/24: The market-understanding Pirates and Mariners.

3/25: The handedness games of the Brewers and Indians.

3/26: How production comes from unexpected places for the Orioles and Marlins.

3/27: The mainstream fundamentals of the Twins, versus the hipster indie-ball scouting of the Diamondbacks.

3/30: The drafting philosophies of the Phillies and Blue Jays.

3/31: The shortstop factories of the Braves and Rangers.

4/1: The external Cuban pursuit of the White Sox and internal player development machine of the Reds.

4/2: Projected division winners Angels and their diverse bullpen of specific pieces, plus the Red Sox and their collection of same-position hitters.

4/3: Sunday's Opening Night teams, the player development appliance of the Cardinals, and the job security of Cubs' executives.