“You have $40 million to spend on twenty-five baseball players. Your opponent has already spent $126 million on its own twenty-five players, and holds perhaps another $100 million in reserve. What do you do with your forty million to avoid humiliating defeat?” pg. 119

This comes to show that the A’s were truly at a disadvantage.  Not only do they lack many all-star quality players.  they also have a  budget that is one-third of other teams.  Currently, the Oakland Athletics’ budget is $83 million, which is still about a third of what the Yankees’ budget.  In 2002, the A’s average salary was $1.5 million, which was $700,000 less than other teams.  Yet, they still found a way to succeed using Moneyball.

(1) http://deadspin.com/2014-payrolls-and-salaries-for-every-mlb-team-1551868969

“He had even allowed the scouts to choose a lot of their own guys in the higher rounds.  That changed about five seconds after the 2001 draft, which had been an expensive disaster.” pg. 15

In this excerpt from Moneyball Billy Beane shares his thoughts about how horrible the the 2001 draft had gone for the Oakland Athletics.  First of all, the Oakland Athletics were paying for expensive contracts.  Second, the athletes who were drafted may have been worse than some of the cheaper players that could have been picked.  After this moment, the gears started turning in Billy Beane’s head.  From that point forward he knew that he would have to change his approach to the game in order to win against higher salary teams.  According to the MLB drafts in previous years, first round draft picks were paid very high signing bonuses.  In the long run, many of those players failed to be a valuable return on the investment. This shows that you don’t need to have the “big buck” players in order to succeed; a player that shows skill over potential can be more beneficial to a ball club.

Today in Kauai my family along with 2 more families went on an adventure through the Kauai outback.  It all started out at a long river we were provided with a Kayak that would be manned by two people and then we travelled up stream two miles.  I wasn’t very good at the kayaking, my journey consisted of zigzagging across the stream.  Although along the river we learned some rich history and were also informed on some old legends.  On the river banks there would be giant ponds in which the Hawaii natives would trap fish inside so it could be accessible whenever needed for them.  To add on the myth was that there were two different races one built the fish ponds and the other was trying to learn their secrets.  Therefor one night the king sent down his children to find out the other tribes secrets.  Afterwards the children were cast into the mountain as stones because the king that was hiding the secret found them and the fish ponds were never finished.

During our adventure we covered many acres filled with new sights, smells and sounds.  We toured across movie sets, these include Several Jurassic Jarks, The Descendants and a few more.  If we looked around we saw lush valleys filled with nothing but vegetation.  We later walked/hiked through the trees, there were many natural plants that granted many purposes from medical products to natural shampoo.

After the hike we ended up at a couple ziplines, the first one spread 800 feet but that was just a teaser compared to the next zipline. the next zipline cover 1800 feet and it flew us over the tops of the trees.  While riding the 1800 I could feel the air rush by my face and to add there was so much to see since I covered so much distance while “zipping”

On the way back we refreshed in a watering hole that was originally meant to be for royals. then it was finished.