[SunDevil]

Team-building with Billy Beane and Theo Epstein

Team-building with Billy Beane and Theo Epstein | Red Sox Blog | providencejournal.com | The Providence Journal

1. Team chemistry
A team consisting of great players almost always will beat a team of great people. But as the Red Sox learned in the last year or two, dysfunction in the clubhouse can ruin a team of great players -- especially in an under-the-microscope market like Boston.
"If you don't pay enough attention to makeup, you can wake up and have a situation like we experienced here where all of a sudden the whole does not quite equal the sum of the parts," Epstein said. "Any potential conflict or any bad fit really gets amplified here."
Having deep pockets allowed the Red Sox to pay a premium for the likes of Jonny Gomes, a clubhouse leader on three playoff teams since 2008 -- including last year's Athletics. There was room in the budget to pay for the personality traits that are intangible yet necessary to a winning team.
Not even Beane, whose portrayal in "Moneyball" made him a paragon for objectivity in player evaluation, would disagree that clubhouse chemistry has value.
"Chemistry really enhances everything," he said. "We had a good team. We had talent. But when you start winning and you have those types of personalities, you can really be successful."
On the flip side, the low-budget Athletics can look at clubhouse malcontents like they so famously looked at bad-bodied players -- as opportunities to obtain undervalued assets.
"(Beane) can find a talented player who might get labeled as less valuable than he should be because of something that happened in his past, some reputation," Epstein said. "He's not nice to the media. He doesn't seek out ways to enhance his reputation. That just creates an undervalued asset that Billy can pluck and make it work."