The Oakland Athletics has for many years been a relatively low revenue club in B,'ILB that has
fielded a team with a relatively low player payroll. The player payroll since 1998 has always
been in the bottom half, and in most years in the bottom third, of all NLB teams. One
remarkable feature of Beane's tenure as GM has been the relatively high success on regular
season wins. The phrase "Moneyball" was coined to describe Beane's heavy use of analytics in
the search for players with undervalued assets who could make an above average contribution to
the A's winning more games.