Has Moneyball backfired for the Tigers?
By Maddy Friend Big things were expected from Richmond this season. It was widely accepted in the football world that the Tigers would continue their excellent form from last year.
That form saw them finish in fifth at the end of the regular season, and qualify for their first finals appearance in decades.
Despite losing that final to Carlton, the signs were there that perhaps the Tigers had finally arrived as a genuine finals contender after so many years in the football wilderness.
However, the improvement has not continued, and many are beginning to question just where the Tigers are at in their development.
Having won just two games so far this season, the Tigers’ lack of run, basic skill errors and over-reliance on key players has led to questions over not just the team’s short-term form, but its overall recruitment philosophy. Ultimately, it would appear that the recruitment approach favoured by the Tigers has not set them up for the ultimate success.
Columnist Michael Gleeson wrote an article in The Age earlier in the week questioning Richmond’s recent recruiting strategy.
His article contends that the ‘Moneyball’ policy pursued by the Tigers, where the team has focused on recruiting proven players to fill gaps and identified needs in the team at the expense of drafting top young talent, has backfired this season.
Gleeson cites the Tigers’ over-reliance on players such as defender Alex Rance, ruckman Ivan Maric, and star midfielder-cum-defender Brett Deledio, as exposing ‘the gulf between the better players and the plethora of battlers’.
It was this group of unfashionable, recycled players who arguably made the difference for Richmond last season.
Experienced heads Shaun Grigg and Bachar Houli were brought in from Carlton and Essendon respectively, and made immediate contributions to the team. Small defender Steve Morris, recruited from the state leagues, brought a hard edge to his role as a shutdown small defender.
At the end of 2013, Richmond enticed Port Adelaide defender Troy Chaplin to the club, thereby filling their need for a developed, experienced key back. On the results of previous seasons, it seemed that the Tigers’ recruiting strategy had borne fruit.
However, with the team’s poor form this season, that view has shifted. Perhaps the most recent example of this was the decision to use pick 28 in last year’s draft on much-maligned Carlton ruckman Shaun Hampson. The decision originally looked fortuitous when Maric went down with injury at the beginning of this season.
However, since the opening round, Hampson’s form has been less than impressive – a statistical example is his seven marks in five games. This raises the question over whether the decision to recruit him at the expense of young talent has been worth it.
This brings us to the central argument: does Richmond’s decline in form point to the death of the ‘Moneyball’ principle as a recruiting strategy?
First coined in US baseball’s major league by the Oakland A’s in 2002, the strategy was devised to allow an under-resourced team to compete with its bigger, richer rivals by recruiting players undervalued by the rest of the baseball world.
These players lacked star quality, but had proven abilities in certain areas. The strategy was a success for Oakland, taking them to the playoffs in 2002 and 2003, and has since been the blueprint for competitiveness for smaller sporting teams around the world.
Richmond has been the greatest exponent of this within the AFL. Rather than use their early draft picks to select talented, but untried, youngsters, many of whom would require years of development, the club chose to bring in mature players from other teams or state leagues. Houli, Grigg, Hampson, Morris, Chaplin and a number of others were all identified by Richmond chief recruiters Blair Hartley and Francis Jackson as being able to fill a need for their team.
These players have performed admirably over the past few years, and their presence has arguably allowed Richmond’s brigade of young players to develop and hone their skills. Richmond’s top draftees from the past few years – Brandon Ellis, Reece Conca and Nick Vlaustin – have all benefited from having mature, more experienced heads around them as they have embarked on their football careers.
However, the development of these younger players has stalled this year, and the more mature heads are not performing to the expected standard. Hence the Tigers’ slide down the ladder.
It appears then, that ‘Moneyball’ as a strategy, can work in the short-term, but may not be a guarantor of long-term success. Too much depends on the performance of mature players week-in, week-out, while the younger players who do come in are often found to be out of their depth.
Contrast this approach to the one taken by Geelong, regarded has having the best list management strategy of the past 10 years.
Despite having had few low draft selections due to their high ladder finishes in recent times, Geelong has managed to blend experience with youth to great effect. Chief recruiter Stephen Wells has a knack of unearthing high-calibre players with late draft picks, Allen Christensen and Matthew Stokes being two recent examples. They top up with players from other clubs only when they fill an immediate need, or when the club does not have any quality youngsters pressing for a spot in that position.
The club has backed its young players to the hilt, not being afraid to throw them into high-pressure situations and give them positions of responsibility. The players have been all the better for it – young defender Cam Guthrie is one such example. In the absence of stalwart defenders Joel Corey (retirement) and Corey Enright (injury), Guthrie has stepped into their shoes with seamless aplomb, often curtailing one of the opposition’s most dangerous small forwards.
It would appear then that the success of ‘Moneyball’ as a recruiting strategy depends on the culture of the club in question, and the quality of the players already there.
For a team such as Geelong, with superstar experienced players such as Joel Selwood, Jimmy Bartel and Steve Johnson, topped up with players from other clubs, it merely helps to cement this culture of success.
However, for a team such as Richmond, which boasts a number of star players, but many more ‘battlers’, recruiting mature-aged players over future stars serves to make the team solid, but lacking in the star power needed to win games.
In order to achieve the success they so desire in the next few years, the Tigers would be better served conserving their draft picks to use on young, talented players.
With the right development, these players could add the star factor the team needs to be a finals contender in the coming years.
http://www.theroar.com.au/2014/05/08/has-moneyball-backfired-for-the-tigers/
