Moneyball

• moneyball

After the 2003 book by business journalist Michael Lewis; from money +‎ ball.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌn.iˌbɔːl/, [ˈmɐn.iˌbɔːl]
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌn.iˌbɔl/
• (Canada, cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /ˈmʌn.iˌbɑl/
• Rhymes: -ɔːl
• Hyphenation: mon‧ey‧ball

Moneyball (uncountable)

1. (baseball) Baseball management relying on sabermetrics.
   • 2009 August 7, Tom Kuntz, “‘Moneyball’ Is in a Slump”, in NYTimes Idea of the Day Blog‎:

     Sure, the Florida Marlins and some others have a shot, but the “Moneyball” approach — using spreadsheets and unconventional thinking to fell baseball’s rich Goliaths — seems to have been co-opted by the big guys themselves.

   • 2011 September 2, “The ‘Moneyball’ Effect: Are Sabermetrics Good for Sports?”, in The Atlantic‎:

     Sure, statistical analysis has changed baseball's front offices for the better. A little. But most things haven't changed. The Red Sox version of Moneyball, after all, includes lots and lots of money, and there's nothing new there.

   • 2013 June 20, John Bridgeland, Peter Orszag, “Can Government Play Moneyball?”, in The Atlantic‎:

     The moneyball formula in baseball—replacing scouts’ traditional beliefs and biases about players with data-intensive studies of what skills actually contribute most to winning—is just as applicable to the battle against out-of-control health-care costs.

2. (by extension) The application of advanced analytics to any domain in order to improve outcomes.
   • 2011 October 5, John Sides, “The Moneyball of Campaign Advertising (Part 1)”, in The New York Times‎:

     Campaigns are spending a lot of money, but they are not playing Moneyball.

   • 2012, Patrick Mayock, “Bill Marriott shines in primetime spotlight”, in www.hotelnewsnow.com‎, archived from the original on 2013-04-19:

     The technical savvy on display was enough to show any guest that there’s more—a lot more—to the hotel business than the front desk and housekeeping. As host Wapner said, “It’s moneyball for hotels.”

   • 2015 April 2, Jeremy N. Smith, “When ‘Moneyball’ Meets Medicine”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Now people everywhere can bring “Moneyball” to medicine. A few months after releasing their global numbers in The Lancet, the same scientists supplied the underlying figures for 187 nations.

   • 2017 November 13, Derek Thompson, “Why Amazon Thinks You Want to Watch a ‘Lord of the Rings’ TV Show (or Five)”, in The Atlantic‎:

     For years, Amazon seemed to employ a Moneyball approach to media, spreading its bets across less-than-stellar intellectual properties.