[CJFusco]

Absolutely. Building a team begins with a brilliant GM. The statistical revolution in baseball, which arguably began its slow genesis with the discovery of Bill James, has completely changed everything. Billy Beane was the first to question the conventional "old scout" way of evaluating players' worth - namely that star players are born with an innate "body type", and that scouts would "just get a feeling about a guy" - and look at numbers like OBP and BB/K ratio instead. The logic of this approach is that you can develop a player's power, but if he doesn't have patience at the plate, he never will.

After Beane's approach won some admirers, his disciples started to get jobs in the bigs: JP Riccardi at Toronto, Larry Lucchino at Baltimore (and now Boston), Paul DePodesta at LA (and now the Padres), and most recently Theo "boy wonder" Epstein at Boston.

Look at the track records. When DePodesta was at LA, the Dodgers made a run for it, which they haven't repeated since DePodesta left for San Diego after 05 (and they had a pretty darn good team this year). IMHO, the Dodgers would have been well-advised to hold onto DePodesta. Riccardi has put together a great team that keeps getting unlucky with injuries, and Boston. Well, we all know about Boston.

Now, in 2007, every team has hired statisticians and have cut down on their stable of grizzled old scouts. Even the Yankees are getting smarter. A lot of baseball purists scoff at the stat guys, but hey, it works.

Granted, there are flaws. Bill James (who now ALSO works for the Red Sox) doesn't believe in "clutch hitters" - if a good hitter is a good hitter, he will eventually hit well in big situations. This completely disregards human nature. One only has to contrast A-Rod with Ortiz or Jeter to see the difference.