New Hall of Fame owners bring a bit of 'Moneyball'

The employees at Hall of Fame Racing gathered for a meeting Wednesday morning, but the business at hand had little to do with the racetrack. Instead, every team member received a black Arizona Diamondbacks jersey, the one the Major League Baseball team wears for Sunday home games. On the back of each was the employee's name and the number 96, the same numeral carried by the NASCAR organization's blue, black and white racecar.

It was a fitting presentation, given that the team's new majority owners are front office executives with a Diamondbacks club that begins play Thursday night in the National League Championship Series. But the baseball influence at Hall of Fame, founded last year by former NFL quarterbacks Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman, goes much deeper than a few pieces of cloth.

AP

Jeff Moorad

Diamondbacks managing partner Jeff Moorad and chief operating officer Tom Garfinkel, who purchased controlling interest in the team from Staubach and Aikman in September, helped build Arizona from an organization that lost 111 games three years ago to one that now stands on the cusp of a World Series appearance. They've done it with a team with the fifth-lowest payroll in all of baseball, using a disciplined, strategic approach based on a meticulous attention to detail, and one they hope will also apply to NASCAR.

"That's what we're going to try to do here," Garfinkel said. "It's going to take time and patience and kind of a disciplined strategy to do it. This is as competitive a sport here as there is, and we're just trying to fit into the community and do the best we can and earn people's respect here."

They've certainly earned the respect of J.J. Yeley, who has signed to drive for the team for the next three years. When Yeley and Joe Gibbs Racing announced their impending split after this season, the driver didn't really consider Hall of Fame as a viable primary option for 2008. That changed after Garfinkel and Moorad took over.

"I knew there was a possibility of going to the 96 DLP car earlier in the year. I actually talked to [former managing partner] Bill Saunders at one point and thought, maybe this was a good backup plan. But it was never going to be a primary," Yeley said.

"I know they have a great sponsor, they have great people in place, but sometimes it just comes down to looking toward the future to really make an organization better. To see they could raise the bar to take that next step of being a team capable of winning multiple races and a championship, I didn't know they had the groundwork set for that. I think with the ideas that Tom and Jeff have in place, they want to be in the sport for a long time. They want to make an impact. They want to be successful. I think they can definitely get that done."

The baseball influence was evident before Yeley even signed with the team. Hall of Fame's new owners ran a statistical analysis, and found that with a few exceptions, drivers seemed to enjoy career breakouts somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 cumulative laps turned in the Nextel Cup, Busch, and Craftsman Truck circuits. Yeley was at 36,000. Garfinkel and Moorad thought their prospective new driver compared well with others studied in the analysis, and believed the time was right to sign him.

"It just shows how much detail they put into every thought process," Yeley said. "I know they could have had the opportunity to have some other drivers, and they felt very confident that I could get the job done. That makes me a lot more confident going into next year, knowing they put that much work and effort into making sure I was the right guy, that I would fit in well. It comes form their background with the baseball team. They're always looking at any competitive advantage they can get."

It's a tactic right out of Moneyball, the book detailing how general manager Billy Beane built the Oakland Athletics by relying heavily on statistical analysis, an approach that saved teams millions of dollars and revolutionized the way baseball executives think. While Moorad wouldn't say what data was used in the Yeley analysis, or what other drivers he was compared against -- "I think we view that as proprietary," he said -- the process was not unlike the way baseball teams study blossoming minor leaguers, searching for that next big-league star.

"We certainly appreciate the fact that motorsports is an entirely different discipline," Moorad said. "But we also believe that some of the strategic, disciplined thinking we've used with the baseball team applies to NASCAR. I'd be giving the wrong impression if I suggested that they're interchangeable techniques and skills, but there are certainly similarities."

Garfinkel has a background in racing much longer than his career in baseball, having worked for five years as executive vice president at Chip Ganassi's NASCAR organization before Moorad lured him to the desert to help rebuild the Diamondbacks. The two buried themselves in baseball, trying to right an organization that had won a World Series in 2001. But in their free time, they found themselves talking about racing. Moorad had long been a friend of Aikman's -- a former agent, he and partner Leigh Steinberg represented the quarterback during his playing days -- and that association led to thoughts of entering NASCAR.

Moorad said the team explored opportunities for much of the last year, expecting to get involved with a larger organization until Aikman convinced him that Hall of Fame might be a good fit. The two sides talked for the first time at the March race in Las Vegas, and the deal was announced before the Labor Day event at California. Garfinkel said Aikman and Staubach still maintain ownership shares, are still involved, and will be consulted before big decisions are made. But as Wednesday morning's employee meeting will attest, the baseball boys are in control now.

"It was easy to see after just two meetings with both of these guys that they're very intelligent businessmen, and they understand racing," said Yeley, coincidentally a Phoenix native and D'backs fan. "Those two things are hard to find in this sport. You have teams that have been around for a very long time in this sport that are maybe racers, but don't have the best of the business side. And you have these new guys coming in who are complete businessmen who don't completely understand the racing. I think they've got both sides of the spectrum covered."

While Moorad and Garfinkel hope to be tied up with baseball through October, they plan to attend upcoming Nextel Cup events at Texas, Phoenix and Homestead. Garfinkel was at the Sept. 30 event in Kansas City, flying in from Denver the morning after Arizona clinched the N.L. West crown. Although some cross-promotion between Hall of Fame and the Diamondbacks is possible, this arrangement isn't like the recent merger between Roush Racing and the parent company of the Boston Red Sox, where ownership is common on both sides.

As for any NASCAR side bet between Moorad and Red Sox owner John Henry, it may be a bit premature. "I'm knocking on wood as I even hear that question," joked Moorad, whose baseball team has to deal with the Colorado Rockies first. "That actually hasn't even conceptualized yet."