In Pursuit Of Peak Performance and Better Team Chemistry: The 2019 Texas Rangers’ Possible Crossover Human Relations Lessons For Legal and Business Organizations

Michael Lewis spoke at SMU’s Tate Lecture Series over a decade ago on Moneyball, his book about how Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane created a successful small market, low payroll team by rethinking which performance statistics actually result in winning ballgames.  Beane’s approach transformed the game, and other GMs soon followed his lead, reevaluating which player skill sets they should seek in building their teams.

On first blush, Mr. Lewis’ chosen topic at SMU that night seemed odd, since he surely knew the Tate audience was mainly comprised of aging businesspeople and their spouses, most of whom gave no indication of having much interest in the application of sports data.  It didn’t take long though for his speech to catch fire as he shared Beane’s counterintuitive assessments that turned upside down some longstanding conclusions about best practices in selecting personnel for baseball rosters.