Oakland baseball

Freakonomics has been gloating about the Oakland A's poor start this year. Levitt said:

If you look at all the stats they say are so important, the As are totally average! There's very little evidence Billy Beane [the club's general manager] is doing something right.

Since that post, the Oakland A's have been the best team in baseball, and they have a good chance of making the playoffs.

I think that the problem here is that Levitt is an economist, and that economists believe that market rates reflect actual values. If he admits that the A's have built exceptionally good teams with very low salaries, then either the market has failed or the A's have been lucky.