  WALTERS: Why won't California play 'moneyball'?    • Dan
Walters  With the All-Star Game break over and major league
baseball teams back in the pennant stretch, the Oakland A's,
with one of the game's smallest payrolls, are sitting atop their
division.  It's another example of how “moneyball,” the concept
of analyzing players and their costs by contributions to winning
games, pioneered by A's executive Billy Beane, is still working.
Rather than relying on the traditional, subjective evaluations
by baseball scouts and coaches, moneyball applies objective
metrics to get the most out of limited payroll dollars. It's
just common sense, when you get down to it — getting the biggest
bang for the buck.  Two former high-ranking federal budget
officials, Peter Orszag (who worked for President Barack Obama)
and John Bridgeland (an aide to former President George W.
Bush), wrote an article for the current issue of Atlantic
magazine, lamenting that the moneyball principle is not applied
to governmental services and pr