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In MONEYBALL Michael Lewis points to a baseball financial expert/lawyer in NYC named Doug Pappas who did a set of calculations covering the period '99-'01, pretty much the middle of a ten-year period in which the Oakland A's won more regular season games than anyone but the Atlanta Braves on "very little" money (e.g., their $34M payroll produced 102 wins in '01; in '00 $26M won them the division). Pappas figured that the absolute minimum needed in payroll for a major league team - then - was $7M, but that given the "small" actual differences in the aggregate between a whole team of rookies and a so-called regular team, and luck, the minimum number of wins such a bargain basement team would accumulate is 49. Then, he set out to calculate the cost, based on payroll, for every team's every win above #49. Only two teams had paid less than $1M for each of those wins - the Twins paid $675,000; the A's a mere $500,000. For that period, the Orioles and Rangers were actually paying over $3M for each and every win past the 49th. What's behind this is what the Phillies don't get. They consistently let players go whom they should keep (past and future e.g., G.C. Alexander, Billy Wagner and Aaron Rowand), and overpay players they shouldn't (e.g., Darren Daulton, Danny Tartabull, and Rod Barajas).

How do these other guys do it - meaning the A's and Twins? Well, the A's for sure and lately the Red Sox have employed the principles developed by Sandy Alderson and others in Oakland and Bill James, the now famous baseball numbers-cruncher with an imagination. In Oakland these principles have been implemented by General Manager Billy Beane, one of those guys with a "good body" and, once, an assumed future star. The supposed value of an athletic physique, in its extreme form, has actually caused MLB scouts talk about players with "good faces" (phrenology!). Billy Beane, for example, was thought to have a good face - sharp, chiseled features. BUT Beane was a bust at the MLB level because he basically ignored the mental aspect of hitting (see below), or couldn't grasp it because of his emotional intensity. Rather than become The Next Mickey Mantle, Beane became The King of Smashed Water Coolers...but might actually go into the Hall of Fame as a GM. The A's principles devalue the scouts' favorite notion of the player with a "good body" or terrific, observable athletic skills, and rather depend on the notion of studying the guy's actual numbers, regardless of what he

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