NEW YORK (MONEY Magazine) - In the summer of 2003, it seemed that every value-fund manager under the sun was touting the Michael Lewis baseball book, "Moneyball," as validation of their buy-what's-out-of-favor investment style. Legg Mason Value Trust's Bill Miller loved it. So too did Oakmark Fund's Bill Nygren.
Well, fast-forward a year and the reigning world champions are not the Oakland A's assembled by general manager (and "Moneyball" hero) Billy Beane but a Florida Marlins club whose success flies in the face of Moneyball's by-the-numbers, cheapskate credo.
The Marlins bunt and steal bases even when statistics say it's not worth the risk, and they have a young pitching ace -- 2003 World Series MVP Josh Beckett -- whom they drafted straight out of high school with the second overall pick of the 1999 draft. Every "Moneyball" fan knows that using a first-round draft pick on a high school pitcher is a multimillion-dollar crapshoot.
Lost in the Moneyball hoopla is the reality that sometimes you need to take big, expensive risks to get truly great results.
"Drafting the polished college player may be safer, but there's no question that the great high school athlete gives you a better chance at a real jackpot," says former Los Angeles Dodgers GM Fred Claire, who's been hawking his own baseball book, "Fred Claire: My 30 Years in Dodger Blue."
The risk-taking Marlins, you might say, are baseball's small-market growth investors -- willing to expend their precious resources on a speculative stock or player in hopes of Josh-Beckett-like returns down the road.
Says Firsthand Funds CEO (and diehard San Francisco Giants fan) Kevin Landis, "The way people make really serious money in the market is by owning really great growth stories that just keeping going year after year after year. They may pay up one time -- paying 50 times earnings when they shouldn't have paid more than 35 times, just like the Giants may have overpaid for Barry Bonds -- but they end up way ahead."
To bolster his point, Landis cites Warren Buffett's admission that his biggest investment mistake was not buying Wal-Mart years ago because of concerns the stock was too expensive.
"With Wal-Mart," says Landis, "you could say Buffett was a little too 'Moneyball.'"
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