Don't ask me why, but I'm developing a dislike of Oakland

[Chavez Ravine]

As I grow older, I have become more of a believer in efficient markets. Or at least that people usually aren't as smart as they think they are. Beane was perhaps helped out at first by the fact that MLB was an old boy's social club, not a market. Nowadays it is only sort of an old boy's club, and there is just enough intelligent use of information to make it difficult to consistently fleece everyone else.

There are, of course, big discrepancies in team wealth. But I think that mostly just changes the nature of the risks teams are willing/should make when acquiring players, not necessarily the likelihood that those risks end up coming to fruition.