Yankees - Dodgers World Series: Can we finally put to rest the bullshit Moneyball theory of baseball?

 Among all of the major sports, Baseball has resisted the idea that Superstars are not only a sufficient condition but, also a necessary condition to win a Championship.  We've been assured throughout our childhoods that how you play the game is the most important aspect and that a scrappy team of fighters can overcome the obstacles and win.  This is so much nonsense.

Moneyball caught everyone's attention, mainly when the Brad Pitt led film came out in 2010 but, also with the book in 2002.  And all the Sports Nerds who asserted that professional scouts, and baseball managers and general managers didn't know the game at a deep fundamental level were ignoring the Holy Algorithm first established by Bill James, and then expanded refined, reinvented by PECOTA, Sabermetrics, Wins Over Replacement, or On-Base+Slugging Plus or any of the cutesy, new fangled statistics and statical measurements which many people claim are the true measure of the player and of the game.

Well, it's all crap.  And it's always been crap.  You need Superstars to win in Baseball, and superstars cost money.  Look at these rosters for Dodgers and Yankees.  Aaron Judge and Juan Soto?  Shohei Otani and Freddie Freeman?  These teams aren't comprised of plucky, grit and gristle, hustle players but, with players who cost more by themselves than many other teams rosters.

This list of the Team salaries for 2024, shows the top 6 highest payrolls made the Playoffs and #2 and #5 made the World Series.  You can go back to 2011 and find this pattern every time, the highest payrolls make the Playoffs and one of them wins.  But, you might point out other teams with lower payrolls also made the playoffs; and yes some teams get there and get bounced and then their best players are cannibalized by the Dodgers or Yankees. 

What's the last team you can think of built not bought to make and win the World Series;  the Kansas City Royals of 2014 and 2015?  That team hit with players on the rookie deals who panned out and since then when those players left (for Big Contracts) the Royals haven't sniffed the Playoffs until this year with a new crop of players on rookie contracts playing well.

And that Moneyball team in 2010 movie didn't win because of David Justice or Scott Hatteberg even though those players performed well enough, or because of Billy Beane's savvy mathematical wizardry.  They had Miguel Tejada (131 RBI), Barry Zito (23wins), Jermaine Dye, and a young Eric Chavez.  None of whom were even mentioned once in the movie.

But, nobody wants to admit that money is more important in this game than the vaunted Sabermetrics and even more important than old head baseball man Ken Hawk Harrelson's "TWTW" The Will to Win...  because then everyone would understand that as long as there are rich teams and poor teams, the rich are going to dominant the Playoffs and World Series and undercut the Hollywood fantasy of a Bad News Bears scruffy team of misfits catching lightning in a bottle and banding together to win it all, and all the LIES and PROPAGANDA sold to the GenX and Millennial kids about the True Champions winning.

This guy wants to tell me we're living in a community. 
Don't make me laugh. I'm living in America, 
and in America, you're on your own. 
America's not a country. It's just a business. 
Now fucking pay me.

So enjoy this Dodgers/Yankees World Series with big name players but, don't fool yourself into believing anyone can build a team and win because it's like everything in America, as Brad Pitt (playing Billy Beane) said about America in Killing them Softly the Official/Unofficial sequel to Moneyball...