The Billy Beane Case Study

1. Based on the “Billy Beane: Changing the Game” case, explain how and why the Oakland A’s economic situation after 1995 shaped its:

a) Compensation strategies
In the world of major league baseball, the Oakland A’s defied the laws of baseball economics. The team spent only $34 million (the 2nd lowest payroll) had won 102 games and lost only 60 in 2001. On top of this, they finished first in their division and made the playoffs. Major baseball teams would hire high school players rather than college players. This made high school players costly. The Oakland A’s strategy is to hire college players to save on resources. They argued that college players have already gained substantial exposure and …show more content…
This system was the star. Each minor league team in the Oakland A’s system began to lead it league in walks, and resulted to higher on-base percentage.
2. Explain how the compensation, staffing, and training strategies were aligned or integrated with each other to create on overall HR strategy for the Oakland A’s organization.

The Oakland A’s out gunned their more prosperous rivals by defying the conventional wisdom, particularly in the evaluation of players. Billy Beane, recognized that the accepted measures of player performance critical to the process of scouting and recruitment were flawed. He put in place a system of finding the talent that other teams didn’t want and without spending too much money. His focus: what is the most efficient way to spend money on baseball players? With little money to attract the star players, the “A” players who could command millions of dollars, Beane had to find a way of identifying those talented but under-valued players, the prospects who were being ignored by the professional scouts. With help by
DePodesta, who pored over statistics, Beane accumulated and analyzed a mass of data about objective performance and contribution to team success that other teams were ignoring. In the process he punctured the countless myths about what was important to winning at baseball. Beane’s new metrics, for example, that getting the baseball into the field of play was statistically