It's not so much the fact that I lost, it's the way I lost that really peeves me here. 1-23 three point shooting when my outside scoring was equal to his outside defence? 31-16 final quarter when his team had 4 players that played 48 minutes or close to it? BB logic never seems to make sense... but his team's weekly wages were triple that of mine so I can't exactly say I was robbed.
I bolded the point where you hit the nail on its' head.
Your ratings were higher because you were playing at home, had better game shape, played a PG on SF spot and probably higher enthusiasm. Effort does not show itself in team ratings. But talent trumps moneyball every time. Don't you remember what happened with that Brad Pitt-leaden team in the playoffs?
Anyway, your shooting skills (JS/JR)from PG to SF was:
PG: 9-6
SG: 10-9
SF: 10-6
His outside players's OD is probably in 12-14 area, so you really couldn't have hoped to beat that. Yes they played 48 minutes, but they were so much better defensively than your players that it didn't show.
A combination of managing my own team well, salary efficient players, and other managers in the league managing their teams poorly
I bolded the parts that were the reasons for your good league record. D.III in decent to bigger countries (400 users and more) are filled with managers that don't know how to manage game shape and enthusiasm. So by the definition of Moneyball, your team wasn't that. Moneyball takes "bad" players with specific skills and utilizes them to full potential in combination with other bad players with different specific skills. This is an example of BB Moneyball player:
JS 9, JR 5
OD 5, HA 16
DR 17, PA 17
IS 7, ID 17
RB 16, SB 12
A 60k player that plays like a 90k PG in offense and 200k C in defense and is very competitive in any D.I. His only weakness shows when facing a 2-3 defense, but who is playing that anyway, right?