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OAKLAND ATHLETICS MANAGER Billy Beane, widely-known as the father of ‘Moneyball,’ says there’s an inefficiency in Major League Baseball no one has been able to figure out.

As one of the keynote speakers at Internet Week New York, Beane said the following, according to Portfolio.com:

“The health of baseball players, the health of football players, is going to be a better predictor of a team’s performance.

And the guy who gets his arms around that is going to be the wealthiest man in the world.”

It seems rather obvious that teams that stay healthy will have the most success, but, for as far as we’ve come in medicine, season-ending injuries are still the norm in sports.

It’s why the Los Angeles Dodgers have a so-called “injury guru” combing over tons of data, a la the on-the-field inefficiencies Beane is famous for touting, to see if someday we can arrive at a time when putting players on the disabled list won’t be necessary.

One need only look at the MLB standings right now to see how injuries affect teams, i.e. the Philadelphia Phillies are in last place with Chase Utley and Ryan Howard out of the lineup.

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