The Oakland A's and their Moneyball Legacy.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Dromali. Stay in Oakland.

Stay in Oakland. Stay in Oakland, the plea from many a die-hard A's fan in the stands of the Oakland Coliseum

this past baseball season, as the team plans a move to Las Vegas.

There remain some potential hurdles to a move, including a vote next week,

by Major League Baseball owners on whether to allow it.

Now even if you don't follow baseball, you may know the story of how more than two decades ago

the cash-strapped A's pioneered the use of high-tech data analysis in baseball.

Michael Lewis wrote about it.

Brad Pitt did the movie about it.

For more on how the A's changed the game,

we called up Keith Law of the athletic who reminded us how the team

found an edge by looking at what some would call nerdy stats like on-base

percentage measuring how often a hitter reached first base safely.

It's the best measure of a hitter because the hitter's fundamental job is don't get out.

If you just boil it down to the simplest thing possible,

and it's the thing that's also the most under his

control he can't control if they're a man on base for example at whether he gets an

RBI or if someone's gonna knock him in when he's already on base but he can

largely control what he does himself when he's at the plate.

And that gave the A's a temporary but significant advantage and led to several years of high

...