Story here: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091003&content_id=7302990&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

How long before everyone stops kneeling at the holy altar of Moneyball/Billy Beane? The A's have sucked for years and Ricciardi couldn't hack it for the Jays. I guess Theo Epstein has succeeded but he's got billions of dollars to work with.

Even at the time my one thought about Moneyball was, "This all makes sense, but it's ignoring the insane amount of luck that Beane and the A's had in having Zito/Hudson/Mulder all on entry level contracts at the same time. (Even if it's not luck, it doesn't have anything to do with math.)