Billy Beane's right hand man in Oakland, Paul DePodesta, has written a piece for CS First Boston's Web site on his experiences putting objective analysis to the test with the A's. When DePodesta first came to Oakland, he'd just spent several years with the Cleveland Indians where things seemed ok on the surface, but:
I realized very quickly that subjectivity ruled the day in evaluating players. I sat in a major league staff meeting at the end of 1996 after we had traded for Jeff Kent and listened to one of our staff members say,
