Column: Aaron Worm, Behind the Mic

The Academy Awards are coming up in less than two weeks, and usually when it comes to the best picture nominations, I have never seen the films, and in a lot of cases, never heard of the films.

I can now say I have seen one of the movies up for the biggest award. Of course, it’s the one sports movie, “Moneyball.”

With pitchers and catchers reporting later this week to spring training, I was already extremely excited for the baseball season. But after watching this movie, which stars Brad Pitt, on Saturday, I am ready for opening day right now.

If you are not familiar with the movie, Pitt plays Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane, who has to build a winning team on a small market payroll. In 2002, Beane put his team together based on two major stats: on-base percentage and slugging percentage; and not RBI’s, batting average, stolen bases and the knowledge of coaches and scouts.

Oakland had a payroll of only $41 million and won 103 games, had the American League MVP Miguel Tejada, AL Cy Young award winner Barry Zito and set an AL record with a 20-game winning streak.

If you don’t remember, the Twins were the team that ended this magical season for the A’s in the American League Division Series. The Twins won the final two games of the best-of-5 series, including a 5-4 win in Game 5. A.J Pierzynski hit a big two-run homer in the top of the ninth to help the Twins to the win. (Every time I hear A.J. booed when the White Sox are in town I scratch my head because he did help the Twins to their last trip to the American League Championship series).

The Twins won game 1 of ALCS, before losing the next 4 to potential World Series Champion, Anaheim Angels.

Trying to beat the teams with bigger payrolls has always been the challenge for teams like the A’s and the Twins, and it is not going to get easier any time soon. In 2002, the Yankees payroll was over 125 million, last year; it had ballooned to over 202 million. Thanks to Target Field the Twins had the 9th highest payroll last year, at over 112 million, which equaled 63 wins or 1.7 million per win. Big money doesn’t always transfer over to big results. The 2011 Twins were absolutely decimated by injuries which helped lead to the 99 loss season. One thing that baseball has done to try to even the field in baseball was adding the wildcard back in 1995, and having 8 teams make the postseason. Since then 5 wildcard teams have won the World Series, and 5 others that reached the Fall Classic. These are teams that probably wouldn’t have a chance for the postseason in the old, 4 division system.

Last year Tampa Bay won 91 games and made the postseason with a 41 plus million dollar payroll, so it does happen every once in a while. For the Twins, basic questions now are how to rebound to a playoff contending team, and then beat the Yankees in the postseason. Okay forget about the Yankees how about being an above 500 team, baby steps for Minnesota.