When we look back in 25, 50, 100 years at the turn of the century in terms of its place in baseball history — assuming we are both still around and still care about baseball history — it will be remembered for the emergence of sabermetrics and statistical analysis in public baseball discussion. Well, that among other things. This type of stuff was around for a while before this, but it was clearly popularized when Moneyball the book came out and again when the movie was released. The story, of course, is that the A’s used different sorts of numbers to identify undervalued players to be able to compete with the richest teams in baseball despite a meager payroll.