Money Ball Is For Baseball Is What Battle Stats Is For Rugby

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I am sure most of you have watched the film "Moneyball" which is a film about the Oakland Athletics baseball team managed by Billy Beane. Beane used statistics to create a baseball team that went on to break the all time winning streak record of 20 games in a row. The problem with the stats is it needed time to let them come true allowing the players performing to their potential.

I think the turning point was when the team understood why they had been selected when everyone else never rated them. Each player was seen as providing a certain number over the course of the season for the team to be successful. Once you know the role you are supposed to play then it all falls into place. Money can buy success, but this is not necessary if you have a well thought out strategy using data as your guide.

Battlestats is very similar to Moneyball as it uses data to assemble the perfect squad. Only when those players understand what the plan is will it work.

Here is a quick back ground on Rassie Erasmus the South African Rugby coach/manager. When he was playing for the Springboks under coach Nick Mallet he went and bought the double video VHS machine. There were no analysts back then in the 1990's and the coach was all you had for strategy. What he did back then no other player was doing and why he could anticipate the oppositions next moves due to studying them. He was the one who cracked the lineout codes and seemed to always be one step ahead of the opposition.

The Battlestat idea no doubt came from the film "Moneyball" and why the teams success has been gradual when he took over in 2015 when the team was ranked a lowly 7th in the world. This was where the Battlestat journey began and in theory was an 8 year plan. The team won the World Cup in 2019, 4 years ahead of schedule. 2023 apparently is when this plan was supposed to all come together.

The idea is that you have 15 players who have the best stats for their positions and another 2 players with the next highest stats backing them up. The players are told about this and have no choice, but to buy into the idea. They know to maintain their stats each week means at some point they will be replaced during the match due to playing at such a high tempo and work rate. This will have an impact on the opposition leaving them vulnerable for the last 20 minutes of each match and the outcome is inevitable. The replacements with fresh legs know their roles and finish the game off.

In theory this should work but theory on paper doesn't always play out on the field. A player booked and sent of can mess up the overall result, but in general you should win more than you lose. This is taking the strategy and thinking to another level. When you start to think about this having 10 out of 15 of the highest scoring statistical players for their positions in the world on your team the chances of victory are upped in your favor.

I find this all fascinating and I am sure some of the other top coaches in other sports have been working on something similar. Maybe not Pep Guardiola as he is always spending money, but possibly a club like Brighton who have no budget and are turning the game on it's head. I am sure they are using statistics when they are buying players and then selling them off a few seasons later make fortunes.

Statistics may not be how we think of sport, but with the developers developing personalized bespoke programs today anything is possible. I an sure AI could throw out a possible team sheet if you fed it the right information and this is what the SA rugby team has been based on since 2016. It is scary to think how sport is changing and it is all down to the advancement of technology and those that know how to use it to their advantage. Will they win this weekend showing how powerful statistics and data really are? No one knows the answer yet and I am keen to see if this has worked or not. One could argue what has been achieved already is proof it has worked.