Re:Moneyball teams
by caseysoftware on Monday May 01, 2017 @05:38PM
(#14241935)
As covered in Moneyball (the book), the "sluggers" tend to swing at more. So although they may hit home runs, they also tend to strike out a lot too.
The actual approach was to get a bunch of people who worked to extend the inning by not getting out.. aka getting on base safely. You don't need many big hits when you can get singles and doubles consistently.
A couple years ago, I met a small scale angel investment group that complained "we haven't had a unicorn" but when we chatted more, I found out 60% of their investments were acquired in under five years with them making ~5x each time.
Not as sexy but sounds like a good strategy to me.
(I'd also argue that overall offensive ability trumps a lot of optimization around base stealing or the type of hits.)
ADDED: i.e. I'd argue that if populating a roster with about a half dozen All Star sluggers were financially viable, I'd argue that would probably be a pretty effective team however unbalanced.